First
panel: How California can effectively invest the auction funds to meet the
goals of Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32) including support of long-term,
transformative efforts to improve public health and develop a clean energy
economy?
Second
panel: What criteria should be prioritized in the development of an
investment plan for auction funds and why?
The best investments will be in longterm sustainable
appropriate technology and infrastructure such as permaculture and eco-villages
rather than in transitional projects such as electric cars or ‘smart’
computerized buildings. Investments in truly sustainable projects only need to
be made once, whereas investing first in transitional projects just means more
resources will be required for two or more investment stages rather than just
one.
The best way to prioritize investments is with a
goal-oriented global criteria for efficiency:
clean
air and water, healthy food, snug shelter, and plenty of sleep and exercise
Efficiency =
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energy
& resources
Investing so as to transform our overdeveloped economy into
one which produces optimal health and happiness can best be leveraged by
focusing on real variables such as our true physical needs: clean air and
water, healthy food, snug shelter, and plenty of sleep and exercise. It’s these
physical needs which are most relevant to the issue of physical energy sources.
All of these needs are (and have always been) available without any fossil
fuels, including nuclear. It’s only recently that we have gotten addicted to
these jackpot fuels.
The path to renewable sustainability has few benchmarks or
milestones. One of them is the idea of the 2000 watt society, described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society.
The rate of 2000 watts is the approximate global per-capita average energy use,
and the Swiss use about 5000. Their estimates indicate that a substantial
proportion of energy use is societal rather than strictly individual, so a
market-dominant policy approach will be incomplete.
Adaptation to climate change can be most effective and
efficient by giving the highest investment priority to reviving traditional
means of meeting the needs listed above. Their direct and local production
offers simple ways to radically improve efficiency, and will only require one
stage of investment.
Another useful parameter is for an investment to clearly
lead to projects that meet the constraint of the energy price of human muscles,
or biofuels grown with no fossil fuel input. As a rule of thumb the price of
humanpower is about $800/gallon, at least in the U.S. In other words, it takes
a healthy and energetic person 100 hours straight to put out the work we can
get for $4/gallon now. While this is a stringent criteria, it will require only
the one stage of investment.
For example, rearranging habitation patterns so that
people’s needs for producing food and water could be met within walking or
bicycling distance (as was traditional until 100 or 200 years ago) would be a
very effective way to adapt to climate change so as to reduce GHG emissions
substantially and cost-effectively. Concerns about mobility should be reframed as the goal of access. Judicious removal of suburban asphalt would be very
effective when replaced by local and intensive urban neighborhood farms.
Similarly, supporting education in traditional methods of producing and using
food, as well as fiber, wood, cloth, and other basic artifacts would be a very
reliable long-term investment for reducing GHG emissions without deprivation.
Fortuitously, many manufacturing and consumption processes
which are now powered by fossil fuels can be revised to use muscle power
instead. The classic example is the electric can opener, but there are many
more processes now performed by devices powered by engines or motors that could
be accomplished with manually operated mechanisms. Good candidates for such
substitution include leafblowers, lawnmowers, washing machines for clothes and
dishes, blenders, and many carpentry tools.
Since sustained 1/10 hp power output is possible for many
people, investing in manual mechanical devices to replace the many existing
devices that (can) use less power than that offers very attractive real returns
on investment in terms of reducing GHG emissions. The elegance and potential of
low-power mechanical designs is widely underappreciated, in my engineering
opinion.
In most cases there is likely to be a traditional tool or
design already available that accomplishes the same purposes without using any
fossil fuels except perhaps in the initial construction. And adroit designs
could expand the number of processes that can be re-manualized, developing new
mechanisms which leverage our strength ergonomically.
Moreover, many traditional trades and craft processes have
multiple benefits, such as providing healthy exercise while simultaneously
producing/preparing healthy food or constructing buildings which can serve as
both residences and workplaces.
Even more fortuitously, reducing many unhealthy aspects of
excessive fossil use can dramatically reduce both costs and externalities. We
know fossil fuels are themselves toxic, and their extraction is becoming
increasingly so, not to mention all the costly ‘side effects’ of fossil fuel
technology (in addition to climate change), from addiction to drugs such as
sugar, and fracking contamination of ground water, to ocean dead zones and
collapsing bee colonies. Investing for a healthy planet would put fossil fuel
investments dead last. For example, it would be better to invest in a bicycle than
in a bus, better to buy a solar cooker than a microwave oven, and better to
have composting privies than low-flush toilets.
Maslow’s hierarchy lists 5 basic levels of a well-rounded
human: Self-actualization, Esteem, Love/belonging , Safety, and Physiological. The
most basic, physiological level corresponds to ‘clean air and water, healthy
food, snug shelter, and plenty of sleep and exercise.’ There is evidence that
people usually experience life on all these levels even during scarcity. Thus,
a modest sufficiency of physical needs suffices for the pursuit of happiness.
And fossil fuels really only pertain to the first, physiological level; beyond
that, we just need each other.
But fossil fuels have warped our lives and culture so that
all levels are now more or less larded with unnecessary energy consumption that
tends to distract or even block us from living as we were evolved (or created)
to live. Thus, another possible criteria could be reviewing an investment
candidate from this wholistic point of view, and, again, prioritizing
investments in the basics: clean air and water, healthy food, snug shelter, and
plenty of sleep and exercise.
Historically, environmental agencies have gotten beat up for
alleged attempts at ‘social engineering’ instead of more command-and-control
regulations that chambers of commerce dislike. Curiously, many of the
complainers are in both cases the same financial engineers wearing tailored
three-piece suits. Still, such complaints are a good opportunity to remind
everyone of the priorities that pertain to physical energy and fossil fuels.
And businesses that often express anxiety about unpredictability in the market
can take comfort from the likelihood that a stable, equilibrium, no-growth
economy would be reassuringly predictable, once we get it set up.
Priorities can never be about the money, because money can
never be the independent variable. The real independent variables that are
relevant here are: clean air and water, healthy food, snug shelter, and plenty
of sleep and exercise. Money is simply one of the interdependent means to these
particular ends, ends which are the most relevant ones when the issue is
physical energy sources.
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Information about this workshop and other meetings can be found here, and the comments of various stakeholders and members of the public can be found elsewhere at www.arb.ca.gov.
