Misguided politics & some favorable politics ….

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-19-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

In addition, the United States will not be in as good a position as might be desirable when that happens. A recent story says that China has been buying oil supplies and reserves world wide and on a large scale.

So, taken together, it’s quite clear that we need to find ways to use much less oil without harming our economy and begin to really expedite doing so.

In the long run, cap & trade or other methods of adding taxes to oil, coal, and other fossil fuels or beginning to withdraw subsidies, all of which will add to the cost of using these fuels will speed up this process.

It’s also clear that this needs to start very slowly while such increased costs will be applied to most of the energy used by our economy.

Lastly, it’s quite clear that the largest priority needs to be to add massive amounts of renewable energy and ways to substitute it for energy from fossil fuels.

The Clean Economy Network sends out an email with regular updates on clean energy related government actions and debates.

The most recent one yesterday had some very bad news and some very good news.

Here’s the bad news:

"Energy & Climate Reform Opponents Take Cues From Health Care Reform Foes to Manufacture "Grassroots" Opposition.

Having observed the tactics deployed by opponents of health care reform, the American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, and others are funding rallies in 20 states during the August Congressional recess. The groups have founded EnergyCitizens, which is warning that "Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain."

Discussing the rallies, the Washington reports that the American Petroleum Institute is asking oil companies to recruit employees and retirees to attend the rallies to put "a human face" on opposition to energy reform."

Instead of putting their money into lobbying for well thought out ways to minimize the initial economic impact of the different ways of putting the brakes on fossil fuel consumption and on how to actually make money from helping to build the alternatives needed, the Petroleum industry is trying to use it’s influence to disrupt the process entirely. Even worse they are doing it in a way that usually causes more friction and negative fallout than useful compromises.

I think this is extremely bad management on the parts of the companies involved.

It’s similar to taking their shareholder’s money to hurl insults at an oncoming tsunami while spending no money – or far too little money -- on getting out of its way or harnessing its power.

In the early stages of the switchover from sailing ships to steam powered ships, the Clipper ships were a very elegant and successful design that represented the state of the art in sailing ships. The steam ships were klutzy and were often dangerous and somewhat unreliable.

But the underlying fact was that once steam ships evolved just a bit more, Clipper ships became obsolete.

The ship builders who stuck with only building Clipper ships and other sailing ships went out of business while the ship builders who began work on building the best steam powered ships they could survived and often prospered.

Would it have helped if the sailing ship builders had set up pressure groups to try to ban steam ships?

Nope. Even had they succeeded, steam ships built in other countries would have taken over their markets anyway.

The management analyst Peter Drucker points out that a classic cause of failure in once successful companies is to focus all the resources of their company on defending and supporting the old and once successful product even after it begins to decline while starving their efforts to profit from the growing opportunities in the products that are beginning to take over the market.

He points out that all too often, the money spent to support “yesterday’s bread” winds up being mostly wasted. Then when the company needs to transition to “tomorrow’s bread”, too little has been invested in it to work & the company fails.

Having grown up in an area where I benefitted from the success of the oil companies of that day as everyone who lived there did, I’d much rather the oil companies redefined themselves as energy companies that began in oil and started making much greater efforts to become part of the new energy economy and completely stop trying to save the waning part of their business.

I’d much rather they continue to prosper. But if they persist in acting like clueless fools, they won’t make it.

The very good news in the Clean Economy Network email yesterday was this.:

"Democratic Senators Move to Disentangle Climate & Energy Aspects of Legislation. The Business Insider reports that a group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Blanch Lincoln (D-AR) recommends cleaving energy legislation from cap-and-trade provisions and passing a bill this year that establishes only a renewable energy mandate.”

Since the very clear priority is to add massive amounts of renewable energy and ways to substitute it for energy from fossil fuels, regardless of how cap & trade turns out, a bill that focuses on creating much more renewable energy and that alone would be very valuable.

And, since the wasted heat and hassle apparently now being generated plus the very legitimate concerns of starting cap & trade very slowly until we have more renewable energy in place to switch to will result in no cap & trade bill or one that is both too harsh in some ways and way too little, too late in others, having a strong & separate bill mandating much more renewable energy would make the probable bad or no cap & trade bill much more safe and OK.