Solving the Oil Crisis

Up front, may I be a broken record and say:
WIND, SOLAR, GEO-THERMAL, TIDAL, HYDRO-ELECTRIC.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, there are some good ideas in the article for more judicious use of oil and for sharing of oil to include those who are hardest hit by the rise in prices.

But I wonder about this: "There are only two ways to reduce prices: increase supplies or reduce demand." What about reduce profit margins? I suspect there is market manipulation and speculation going on. It does not make sense that prices would go up so much based solely on supply and demand. If people drive less, as it seems they are, will prices go down?

I would like to see some analysis of pricing of oil from the ground to the gas pump or the home furnace. Where is the price being set along the way? Why is it so different from one year ago? Paul Krugman? Any takers?

The more obvious immediate remedy (not solution) is to make available E-85 ethanol for the 7 million or so vehicals now flex fuel ready, many of which cannot use this renewable greener alternative to petroleum gasoline due to its unavailability at gas stations. As we now use 10% in our gasoline as a safe oxygenator, done before the more recent production increase, it should be easy to increase this to 20% as they have done in Brazil, now Middle East energy independent largely using E-85 or 95. When batteries become more practical we can then covert from cellulosic ethanol to electric motors.

End income tax on imcomes under $100k. Make up for the revenue loss with taxes on energy.

Free idea for some techie who wants to get rich. Create a system that lets you join a club to use your cellphone (with it's gps) to get and give rides. Any time you are heading out in an empty car you enter your trip coordinates. Other's on the network without cars have listed where they are and where they want to get to. If you are crossing their path conveniently your phone gets a signal and a picture of their face. You set a pick-up place and transmit it to them. If they are there you snap time-stamped photos of each other with your phones and these are uploaded for your security. You ride together, use the HOV lanes! When you part you can rate the ride and the rider and a preset price per mile travels from the rider's bank account to yours to help you pay for your gas.

I know an overnight switchover to solar charged electric cars would be better but until then it should be a social faux pas worse than wearing socks with sandals to be seen driving alone in your car.

Thanks yurbud! I want the "use it or loose it" laws put in the common conversation. Technology won't solve problems- politics (the broad definition) does. But it is common practice for oil & auto companies to buy up any patents that could be a threat- our common tech pool would be vastly superior today if we utilized our peoples' genius. Couple that with the shameful figures of national investment dollars and tax breaks in petroleum/nuclear vs. renewable energy r&d.

One element I'd like OUT of the common discussion centers around China and India. Yes these are huge markets, and may very well pass the US in consumption…. But today the US is still consuming 25% of the world's energy. That is huge, and fortunately it is located in one spot, and with a people with democratic mechanisms and infrastructure. The point being, though the Asian Herring has some merit, US reform would have a huge payoff. Besides, what do We have a better chance at affecting? Our country or someone else's?

Mayors are leading the charge in actual reform. And mass transit and city planning are taking a turn for the better. We must find ways to fund them.

CAFÉ standards are the 1st thing to do. Again, the tech is there, is the public will? It would have to be pretty strong to overcome entrenched interests.

Frank mentioned some things I want to respond to: raising tax on smoking has decreased the amount of smokers. I know the decline is not as much as we would like, but …. Also a crazy thing happened- Raised taxes on tobacco, and the lottery system, all that money was supposed go to supplement education funding- but of course the primary ed budget (property taxes) gets reallocated because there is the tobacco back up- then when tobacco revenue is declining, overall ed money goes faster than ever before. As for fast food, certain people are eating less, but when food is so expensive and people so poor, fast and packaged food consumption goes up. We at least know it's bad, we just can't afford anything else.

Tax credits….. I won't go into it, but a National Sales Tax (replacing income and value-added taxes)…. It's better than you think.

And let's all keep the Local Food movement in these arguments. One of the biggest threats is how much food prices will rise with the price of oil.

I would like to see the mayors pursue a municipal solar grid (encouraging property owners to install solar panels, while keeping the "grid" decentralized)

And thank you! Professor. Military spending, while crowding out domestic programs or refocusing our engineering genius on such a specialized field, also consumes a very significant amount of the world's energy.

As a romantic, I like the idea of ending oil and auto tax credits, subsidies whatever…. Not bailing them out but buying them out and nationalizing them. Could we do it before the corporations do?

-raise CAFÉ standards
-Fix patent laws
-mass transit & freight
-Local Food
-decentralized renewable energy investment
-shift of tax process

Only in the sense that an addict can have a shortage of heroin can we be considered to have a shortage of fuel. The Arctic Ice is collapsing, yesterday the Polar Bear was listed as "threatened". And worst of all, the new findings from NASA's Dr James Hansen's new paper--Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?--informs us that the max safe atmospheric CO2 concentration is 350 ppm. SAD TO SAY WE ARE ALREADY AT 385 PPM.

I already posted this link on another thread (sorry) but I think it might be useful to this discussion:

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay08/cycle-depletion.html

iammyself: And don't forget to turn out the lights when not in use. Thanks!

lizard: YES to electric transportation of all sorts. As long as it can be plugged into a solar panel or wind turbine. Let's save what oil we have left to build all the electric generating components we are going to need. Burning it up seems pretty stupid!

"How about conservation?"

Well, this is really key, timebiter. We should go for the lowest hanging fruit first, and conservation is the lowest of all and easiest to implement.

In my workplace, a retail store, we have over a hundred 75 watt floodlights illuminating the store shelves. One would have thought that someone would have suggested something easy and cheap by now, such as fluorescent flood lights. Well, I did, and have been replacing the tungsten bulbs with fluorescents as they burn out. The store has already started seeing cheaper electric bills.

Conservation is easy and should be done by everyone today! Changing light bulbs will not solve the problem of global climate change by itself, but it is a necessary step, along with thousands of other necessary steps we must all take. Don't let the naysayers convince you otherwise!

karlof1: You are on it!!!

Look folks, we cannot get out of this one long term by either conservation or techno fixes. We must change our way of life. And that is going to mean decentralization of EVERYTHING! Electricity grids, combustion power (oil, alcohol, or whatever), food, jobs, and everything else you can think of. If it can't be done locally, you don't get to have it.

Our current life style cannot be sustained. Mother Nature is going to call a halt to our excesses whether we like it or not. We are facing not just peak oil, but ecological disaster. And the tipping point for doing something radical is racing toward us at breakneck speed. And no government solutions are going to bail us out. Not this time. You either prepare locally and make the life changes necessary or you (or your grandchildren) will die. Got that? DIE. Either from starvation, global warming, methane gas burps from the permafrost, or nuclear anhilation caused by resource wars.

I know this sounds really depressing, but it really isn't. We actually do have the opportunity to make a successful transition to a sustainable lifestyle. I look at it as a challenge not a problem. And I know we can do this. Together. But we all have to be on a path that will eventually take us to a place of peace with the planet and our neighbors. We have to agree on one realistic long term goal. How we get there is up for debate. But don't take too long. Time is running out.

In the meantime, it's Spring. Go out and plant something. Anything. Watch it grow. I like stuff I can eat and share. Don't have a garden? Dig up the lawn. No lawn? Buy some pots. No pots? Start a community garden. There are no excuses but lots of rewards.

Nobody is energy independant. We all need energy. Essentially, all energy comes from the sun. We have for thousands of years used solar energy to grow our food and that of our animals. We still do, it is the most important activity on the planet. You mean we can become independant of oil. Well yes, by finding ALTERNATIVES to COMBUSTION. Oil has been and is wonderful, but it is STORED solar energy and therefore its use diminishes our stored solar energy reserves. It should not be burned, it should be used to make synthetics. Because we burn oil inefficiently, we cause pollution, but even efficiently it produces CO2. If you extract energy from the break up of a carbon-carbon bond by combustion, you will produce CO2. Electric cars should already be the norm. The heat you experience when you get into a car that has been sitting in the sun should not be there. It should be cool in the car, with all the energy from the sun stored in your ultramodern high capacity batteries.

This hasn't happened for political reasons.

This pro-alcohol argument is uninspiring. For so many PhDs in the crowd, it offers conjecture after conjecture while assuming acceptance which they will likely get.

Eminent domain. Eminent domain. Eminent domain.

Buy out oil companies - socialize them. Make all their profits public revenue, by virtue of public ownership - not just the taxes they otherwise shift to consumers anyway.

Buy out - not bail out - not tax - not requlate. Buy out. Eminent domain provides the authority to do it.

Most of these ideas are about government intervention, but they're toothless unless government owns the oil companies. As long as private institutions operate privately but on the scale of government, they can and will oppose government intervention successfully. They will stop opposing only when they are public instead of private.

Eminent domain. Buy them out. Make their profits public revenue.

Note that this hasn't nothing to do with "market forces" because markets will not change. Buyouts happen all the time. All that will change is where the profits go.

Cutting the military by 95% would have a large effect on our use of oil. Domestically, a rationing system that charges exponentially higher prices for gasoline(EX: 2$/ gallon for your first 100 gallons, 4$/gallon for your next 100 gallons, 6$/gallon for the next 100 gallons, etc) would force the ultrarich to pony up for their overuse of resources.(this could be applied for all precious resources). Simultaneously, taxing gas guzzlers and hausoleums out of existence and applying those funds to more efficient energy uses could help. We are in deep sh..... and need to take dramatic steps to avoid near future resource wars among us.

Leaving energy resources in private hands will only ensure that transformative steps, such as those proposed in this article, are marginal to meaningless.

Now let's get back to reality:

1. Raising the tax on cigarettes was supposed to cut down on the number of American smokers - it has not. Widely reporting the truth about fast food, soda and obesity was supposed to steer Americans towards healthier lifestyles - it has not. A higher gas tax will have no effect on most Americans' driving habits, because most of their driving is done out of necessity. Plus, how does one dump their SUV when there's no one to buy it?

2. No more subsidies for American car companies. They've been bailed out enough with our money, and have thanked us with a royal screwing every time. No - in America, if Car Company can't do the right thing the right way, f**k 'em. It's called the free market, remember?

3. A rationing system would only result in the rich ignoring and it or finding ways around it while the rest of us fought over the remaining droplets.

4. Lower income Americans do not give a shit about tax credits. Period. All studies show most are not even aware of the credits available now, and most do not itemize. Plus, the IRS continues to target this group of Americans while ignoring the abuses of the rich, and taking a "gas-tax credit" would only result in more audits of said group. (Better idea: collect the $50-70 billion/year in taxes wealthy corps and individuals avoid by hiding their profits off-shore, then refund that money as gas vouchers to lower income Americans.)

5. Only people who have never telecommuted push telecommuting. But a tiny segment of occupations can accommodate such a thing, and most people are unable to be productive working in their pajamas with the kids crying and dog barking. Plus, for most, the workplace is both a sanctuary away from home and their main source of social interaction.

6. Better mass transit would take decades to create, and the "wealthy" continue to fight systems which allow the "lower classes" easy access to their gated compounds. (See LA, Dallas, etc. In Dallas, for example, it takes me an hour by bus and train and foot to travel a total of 9 miles.) And carpooling is already peaked, because few are willing to leave their lives in the hands of some driver (40,000 killed on the roads every year, another 5-6 million injured,) and also because so few who work together live near each other.

Want an easier solution? Promote using as much gas as possible until it finally runs out.

Only when Americans are left with no other choice will they adapt, like the drunk who stops driving drunk only AFTER he's killed a kid, or the smoker who stops only AFTER the major coronary.

No one's mentioned it yet but I will just to introduce it into the discussion so I can make a point: An increase in the gas tax would be hugely regressive. Lower income people would be much more effected by more expensive fuel.

That is why it would need to be accompanied by the introduction of a strongly-progressive income tax (think Great Britain when George Harrison wrote "Taxman"). A voluntary lowering of our standards of living - which is what needs to be done - can only be done peacefully in an egalitarian society.

Item for item...

1. Increase the current tax on gasoline to a level that would dramatically decrease auto driving, reduce air pollution and global warming while using the money generated to repair roads and bridges and to modernize mass transportation............................................ $4.00 per gallon is not stopping people from driving...why would an additional tax do it??

2. Subsidize the auto companies in their retooling to produce cars that obtain 50 miles to a gallon. Why should we wait until 2020 when the technology is available now? Let the automakers repay over a period of years....................................... The auto companies are complicit with the oil barrons. Notice what happened to the electric car.

3. Institute a rationing system for gasoline and heating oil with special allotments for transportation to and from work.........................................This will just create an out of control black market. Why should people who are simply trying to keep warm suffer for the greed of the oil and auto industry?

4. Allow a tax credit or refund for people of lower income to offset

the increased tax.......................................................................These are the folks that will be paying MOST of the tax..take that away and the program fails...see # 1.

5. Encourage (with a tax break) work by telecommuting that would reduce pollution, traffic and unhealthy stress on workers who sit in gridlock twice a day.................................................................................This one makes sense and is easily initiated.

6. Promote a nationally coordinated program of car pooling, ride sharing and more efficient mass transit............................................................................This has been tried and only works to a small degree.

Bring back the electric car or any vehicle with an alternative engine or fuel source. The technology is there, but the greedy corporate giants buy out the patents or the inventor disappears.

Subsidize some manufacturers to build these vehicles. The electric car works..it's been proven. That's why they were destroyed...they worked too well.

Pie in the sky, eh? Sure is because big money makes the rules. Where are all the philanthropists who could put their billions to good use AND make money for themselves? Sorry, no leadership or courage left in this failing nation/state. Reality..it's a bitch!!

I have news for the item's author: There is no "Solving the Oil Crisis." The charts here show why this is so. Conservation will be imposed by geology and price, and the US is very vulnerable because it never prepared for this time, unlike Europeans. Because too many folks in the USA are already living paycheck to paycheck, with more joining those ranks daily, and with real unemployment already over 11%, we will see fuel rationing by price as the economy spirals downward gripped by stagflation. The worst aspect is this recession won't cause lower fuel prices as before because global demand already outpaces supply, and any demand slack caused by a US recession will be taken up by booming economies in the MidEast and Asia. That is the ugly reality being ignored by many. $4 gas is already becoming a reality for many (remember, Bush dismissed the possibility not long ago), and soon we'll see $5 diesel. EU prices for these are already close to or over $9, but they use 1/2 the fuel per capita of US and Canada.

A two-pronged policy of massive build-out of renewable electric generation and electrified transit of all types coupled with the rapid rollback of the US Empire to provide the funding for such policy would be considered the start of a new paradigm that recognizes and accepts the end of the Oil Age and Business as Usual.

yurbud,

I see that you are following the Cobasys/Chevron-Texaco (and soon, Hydro-Quebec/Phostech) patent shneanigans. Are you an EV experimenter?

There are only two ways to reduce prices: increase supplies or reduce demand. This is basic Capitalism 101...

Actually, Jerome, the law of supply and demand, and capitalism, are two entirely different and unrelated things. The law of supply and demand applies to any kind of economy; market or command, collective-ownership or capitalist-ownership.

And, the the high prices largely have nothing to do with environmental regulations or cartels (OPEWC has been largely emasculated for at 20 years now), they have to do with the fact that production cannot keep up with demand because almost all the easily-produced oil is gone and over the next few years, will begin to decline.

How about conservation? Go for a drive late some night and see all the signs and non-security lighting around stores that are closed till the morning. Have non-essential lighting turned off. Start a government program that would give solar hot water heaters to homeowners who earn less than $80k or so a year. Make sure that those heaters are domestically made from domestic supply sources. (It would be a better investment than the war or the defense industry give away of your choice, missle sheild coming to mind). These are just two simple ideas that could work right now.

These would disproportionately effect consumers.

A better way to go would be

* a carbon tax that is used to build renewable infrastructure

* a "use it or lose it" law on patents on battery and other energy storage technology, so oil and car companies can't buy them and sit on them. They must immediately license any such tech, and if they don't put it into production themselves within five years, they should lose it altogether.

* all highway funding should include mass transit like like light rail along the same right of way. If people can see the train zip by while they are sitting in rush hour traffic, they may eventually decide they'd rather ride than drive.

* An escalating zero emissions requirement for car manufacturers that would encourage them to make electric cars.

* A ten year ban on sales taxes on electric cars, and a proportional tax break on hybrids based on percentage of horsepower that comes from the electric portion.

* A sunshine law requiring all contact between oil company execs and lobbyists and legislators and bureaucrats to be a matter of public record, and not subject to any secrecy or classification of any kind without exception.

* A 50% tax on oil extracted from any foreign country where American troops are stationed within 500 miles.

* in time of war, the Department of Defense will only pay oil companies cost for any of their products they buy.

and so on.

Also, the Advisory Board to the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture helps us develop programs to meet the growing needs of our students and our planet. They include:

Daniel Claudio Martinez Carrera, Ph.D.
President Institute of Applied Neotropical Mycology
Editor, International Applied Mycology Magazine
Professor of Mycology, University of Mexico, Puebla Campus

William (Bill) C. Holmberg
Lt.Col. USMC (Ret.)
Chair, New Uses Council
Pushing Frontiers of the Biobased Economy

Héctor Sáez, Ph.D.
Environmental Program and Community Development and Applied Economics
University of Vermont

Jeannette Diaz-Veizades, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Harvest for Haiti
Executive Faculty, Saybrook Graduate School

Gar Smith
Editor Emeritus, Not Man Apart
Friends of the Earth

Ernest Callenbach
Author—Ecotopia & Ecotopia Emerging
Editor Emeritus, University of California Press

Bob Theis A.I.A.
Architect/ Permaculture Designer

Joe Jordan Ph.D.
Researcher/educator
NASA Ames Research Center

Noah Owusu-Takyi Ph.D.
President
Insitute of Tropical Agriculture-Ghana

Larry Korn
Editor/Translator
Author— One Straw Revolution

David Sutton Ph.D.
Ecological Biologist
President-The Antaeus Organization

Ryan Sarnataro
Treasurer/ ED emeritus
Ecologicial Farming Association

Felipe Montoya-Greenheck Ph.D.
Founder/Director —MILPA Foundation-Costa Rica

Daniel Robin
President Integrated Investments Intl.

Deborah Mytels
Outreach Director —Foundation for Global Community

They all agree that:

1. Almost every country can become energy-independent. Anywhere that has sunlight and land can produce alcohol from plants. Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world imports no oil, since half its cars run on alcohol fuel made from sugarcane, grown on 1% of its land.

2. We can reverse global warming. Since alcohol is made from plants, its production takes carbon dioxide out of the air, sequestering it, with the result that it reverses the greenhouse effect (while potentially vastly improving the soil). Recent studies show that in a permaculturally designed mixed-crop alcohol fuel production system, the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere by plants—and then exuded by plant roots into the soil as sugar—can be 13 times what is emitted by processing the crops and burning the alcohol in our cars.

3. We can revitalize the economy instead of suffering through Peak Oil. Oil is running out, and what we replace it with will make a big difference in our environment and economy. Alcohol fuel production and use is clean and environmentally sustainable, and will revitalize families, farms, towns, cities, industries, as well as the environment. A national switch to alcohol fuel would provide many millions of new permanent jobs.

4. No new technological breakthroughs are needed. We can make alcohol fuel out of what we have, where we are. Alcohol fuel can efficiently be made out of many things, from waste products like stale donuts, grass clippings, food processing waste-even ocean kelp. Many crops produce many times more alcohol per acre than corn, using arid, marshy, or even marginal land in addition to farmland. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of the autofuel we get from the Mideast.

5. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, we can easily use alcohol fuel in the vehicles we already own. Unmodified cars can run on 50% alcohol, and converting to 100% alcohol or flexible fueling (both alcohol and gas) costs only a few hundred dollars. Most auto companies already sell new dual-fuel vehicles.

6. Alcohol is a superior fuel to gasoline! It's 105 octane, burns much cooler with less vibration, is less flammable in case of accident, is 98% pollution-free, has lower evaporative emissions, and deposits no carbon in the engine or oil, resulting in a tripling of engine life. Specialized alcohol engines can get at least 22% better mileage than gasoline or diesel.

7. It's not just for gasoline cars. We can also easily use alcohol fuel to power diesel engines, trains, aircraft, small utility engines, generators to make electricity, heaters for our homes—and it can even be used to cook our food.

8. Alcohol has a proud history. Gasoline is a refinery's toxic waste; alcohol fuel is liquid sunshine. Henry Ford's early cars were all flex-fuel. It wasn't until gasoline magnate John D. Rockefeller funded Prohibition that alcohol fuel companies were driven out of business.

9. The byproducts of alcohol production are clean, instead of being oil refinery waste, and are worth more than the alcohol itself. In fact, they can make petrochemical fertilizers and herbicides obsolete. The alcohol production process concentrates and makes more digestible all protein and non-starch nutrients in the crop. It's so nutritious that when used as animal feed, it produces more meat or milk than the corn it comes from. That's right, fermentation of corn increases the food supply and lowers the cost of food.

10. Locally produced ethanol supercharges regional economies. Instead of fuel expenditures draining capital away to foreign bank accounts, each gallon of alcohol produces local income that gets recirculated many times. Every dollar of tax credit for alcohol generates up to $6 in new tax revenues from the increased local business.

11. Alcohol production brings many new small-scale business opportunities. There is huge potential for profitable local, integrated, small-scale businesses that produce alcohol and related byproducts, whereas when gas was cheap, alcohol plants had to be huge to make a profit.

12. Scale matters—most of the widely publicized potential problems with ethanol are a function of scale. Once production plants get beyond a certain size and are too far away from the crops that supply them, closing the ecological loop becomes problematic. Smaller-scale operations can more efficiently use a wide variety of crops than huge specialized one-crop plants, and diversification of crops would largely eliminate the problems of monoculture.

13. The byproducts of small-scale alcohol plants can be used in profitable, energy-efficient, and environmentally positive ways. For instance, spent mash (the liquid left over after distillation) contains all the nutrients the next fuel crop needs and can return it back to the soil if the fields are close to the operation. Big-scale plants, because they bring in crops from up to 45 miles away, can't do this, so they have to evaporate all the water and sell the resulting byproduct as low-price animal feed,which accounts for half the energy used in the plant.

#4 (tax credit or refund) is only useful if it's a "refundable credit" like the Earned Income Credit. I have done tax prep for several years, and the people who are really hurting don't owe enough tax to make a credit useful.

I don't have a better solution. I wonder about a food stamp-type ration coupon system. You don't want to encourage people to live far from work, but especially in this housing market a lot of people are pretty much stuck living wherever they're living.

As a peak oil planning consultant advising multiple municipalities (Portland, Eugene, Bellingham, etc.), I would encourage municipal planners to consider www.brightneighbor.com.

The full solution will be revealed at the International Conference
on Peak Oil and Climate Change: Paths to Sustainability
May 30 through June 1, 2008

http://sustainabilityconference.org/

Some very good ideas here. The only missing element is a mention of peak oil and how cheap petroleum is gone for good.

If we had political leadership that was willing to speak honestly to the public about peak oil, I think most Americans would "get it" and would be willing to change their lifestyles, to some degree anyway.

But absent such leadership--and a broader media discussion of geological limits--we shouldn't be surprised if most people remain confused and angry.