Two news stories today together illustrate the problem. One is from the NY Times' Green blog:
Less than 50 Years of Oil Left, HSBC Warns
The second is President Obama's speech today about energy. You know the one by now, in which he triangulates about more domestic oil and gas production, more nukes, but hey, you liberals, a little conservation too. And biofuels, which are vexing in many ways.
They reminded me of an old Talmudic story.
The HSBC report says that world oil supplies are likely to run out within 50 years, due to finite supplies and increasing demand from the developing world. It's simply a recognition that the planet isn't producing it nearly as fast as we're burning it. Hence it's not sustainable. We've been finding more and more but eventually it runs out. And in the end it's awfully expensive. No surprises here; it's just a reminder that the oil could run out in our lifetime or our kids' lifetimes.
Obama's speech was aimed at the short term too. Drill more, so we consume what's left faster. Burn more gas, presumably with more fracking, putting more water at risk. More nuclear power too. All three of those activities are environmentally risky. They theoretically could have a fairly low risk (other than from CO2) if they were well regulated, but hey, this is America! We're moving back farther and farther towards industry self-regulation. Let BP run the oil rigs, TEPCO run the nukes, and Dick Cheney run the gas. Regulation is a taking, a form of socialism --just ask the Koch Brothers, our new co-monoarchs. So we can expect more messes, more disasters.
But what about our kids, and their kids? Where will their energy come from?
We need to put the planet on a renewable energy footing. Not just for the sake of global warming, which alone is enough reason, but for the sake of our kids' and their kids' futures. And that's like carob trees.
The Talmudic story is called Honi and the Carob Tree. Honi the Circle Maker meets a man planting a carob tree. Honi asks the man how how long it will take to bear fruit, and the man says "70 years". Honi asks him why he's doing it since he won't be around in 70 years. The man replies that his father and grandfather planted carob trees which he can enjoy now, so he owes it to his children and grandchildren to leave carob trees for them.
Nice story. And it underscores a few things that are not quite right about modern America. For one thing, nobody plants carob trees any more. After all, if it takes 70 years for them to fruit, capital is tied up for 70 years before making a return, and that's just not a great investment! Certainly there's more money in annuals, or in short-maturity perennials. Dwarf lemon trees, sure. Pomegranites? Maybe. Carob? Never. Ally Bank (f/k/a GMAC) would get stuck in an endless loop of its silly "sleeping money alerts" if someone tried!
And we're treating energy the same way. Who cares about 50-100 years from now? Who cares if it takes decades to create a replacement strategy? Certainly not the Land of the Free. Maybe India and China will do it. We've outsourced everything else to them, so why not let them solve our problems? No, you'll never hear a politician admit to that as a strategy.
The Christian Right (Talibangelicals) has its own answer, of course; they're simply co-conspirators with the carbon-based energy mining industry. What we don't need is policy that's based on their story that The Rapture is coming soon, so any long-term policy is a sign of insufficient Faith whose supporters will thus rot in Hell forever. That keeps their voting base in line while their financial base rapes them all. Definitely not Talmudic.
America needs a long-term energy strategy. Not that will make a 20% return on investment in the next quarter, but one that will work for a century. Such a strategy must depend on either renewable sources, or very, very plentiful sources that will not run out for many, many years. Renewables usually begin with the sun, in some form. Improved photovoltaics. Sun-to-steam mirror farms. Wind turbines. Water power. Tidal power, though that's lunar, not solar, in origin. Biofuels? Maybe, but probably not by diverting food crops like corn. Maybe algae grown in pipes, like the system tested a few years ago on the roof at MIT. But that company tanked.
Is nuclear part of that bargain? I don't see current-generation uranium plants as having much role. The risks are too high -- if the uber-quality-conscious Japanese could screw up as badly as they did, how could we, seriously, do better? Plus the waste storage isn't solved yet. Thorium-based reactors, particularly the LFTR design, are promising, because they are just barely fissile enough to keep going (hence no meltdown), leave much less waste behind, and there's a whole lot more Thorium than Uranium out there. Of course you can guess which two countries are doing most of the work nowadays, even though something like it was tested in the US over 50 years ago.
Since growing carob involves slow returns on capital, it is simply not attractive to Wall Street, which is obsessed with quarterly profits. So it has to be the public sector that steps up to the plate, either by financing it directly, or by creating new incentives for the market to step in. We owe it to our grandchildren.