Al Gore

The decision in Bush v Gore is widely regarded as a landmark mistake, both because the Supreme Court acted politically and because of President Bush’s accomplishments and legacy.

While it is too recent for a historical consensus, and too political to be without controversy, virtually all liberals and progressives view the results of Bush v Gore, 2000, (Cornell Law School / Wikipedia) as disastrous based on the Bush Administration’s environmental, economic, and foreign policies, i.e., the Bush tax cuts, ignoring intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden on 6, August, 2011 (here), not killing bin Laden when we allegedly had him cornered in Tora Bora in 2001 (here), the War in Iraq, appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, etc.

George Gilder, writing in the Wall Street Journal, 11/18/10, in California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby complained of the defeat of the repeal of the “Global Warming Solutions Act.”

“Economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I’m not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races. … This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state’s economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That’s a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.”

Gilder also wrote: “California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016.” That’s $120 Billion over the next 6 years. This is a state of 37 million people (US Census). It should be able to borrow that money at 4% or 5% – which is $3083 per capita. Borrowed at 5% interest over 20 years, it’s $20.35 per person per month – which does not seem to be enough to push someone into bankruptcy.

Carbon Nation, by Peter Byck

Gilder calls for exploitation of natural gas and then says ‘All the so-called “renewables” programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land that feeds the world.’ I would urge Gilder to see Carbon Nation, a film by Peter Byck,  Gasland, a film by Josh Fox, and read Vapor Trails, a novel by Bob Siegel and Roger Saillant.

Gilder should understand that:

1. Rooftop solar is built on rooftops, which are not arable land.
2. Big solar thermal projects are built in deserts, which are also not arable land.
3. Gilder complains that “so-called ‘renewables’ programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land’ and he calls for exploitation of natural gas – has he seen what “fracking” does to land? (CBS / NY Times ).
4. Gilder really doesn’t seem to understand wind, solar, geothermal, other renewable or sustainable energy systems, or energy efficiency.

Vapor Trails

Gilder describes Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers as “Al Gore’s investment affiliate.” I’m not sure when KPCB was founded, but characterizing it as “Gore’s investment affiliate seems to be misleading at best. Gore might be a client, but with a net worth estimated to about $100 Million, (Celebrity Net Worth) he can’t be a significant client for the venture capital company the New York Times called “One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms ” (here).  John Doerr – characterized by Gilder as one of Gore’s investment buddies, joined KPCB in 1980 – when Gore represented Tennessee in the U. S. Congress (and, according to PBS, Gore co-sponsored the first Congressional hearings on the implications of global warming.)

According to the Kliener Perkins web site, Doerr backed

• Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt at  Google,
• Jeff Bezos at Amazon,
• Scott Cook, Bill Campbell at Intuit,
• Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla at Sun,
• And the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec.

Altho Sun was recently aquired by Oracle and Compaq was aquired by HP, these were started in the 1980s, when then-Representative Gore was in Tennessee.  Macromedia was started in 1992, when then-Senator Gore ran for Vice President.

Gilder concludes that a transformation of the energy economy will take $45 Trillion. I don’t know where he gets that figure. NJ has 8 million people and needs 7 GW of electric generating capacity. Extrapolating that to the US 300 million people, and we can conclude that the US needs about 260 gigawatts, gw, of electric generating capacity. Let’s suppose that’s half of the energy we need – so we need the equivalent of 520 gw.

If we used wind and solar we could implement 300 gw of wind and 220 gw of solar. Wind is $2.0 Billion to $3.0 Billion per gigawatt. Let’s say $3.0 Billion. Solar is $5.75 to $6.25 Billion per gw; let’s say $6.25 Billion per gw. (Please note that I’m ignoring efficiency, geothermal, marine hydro, algae based and other biofuels for the purposes of keeping this model simple.)

• 300 GW of Wind at $3 Billion per gw is $900 Billion.
• 220 GW of Solar at $6.25 Billion per GW is $1.375 Trillion or $1,375 Billion.

This adds up to $2.275 Trillion. A tremendous amount of money, but 5.1% of $45 Trillion.

This sloppy journalism is about what I expect from News Corp.’s “Faux News”. It is not what I expect from News Corp’s Wall St. Journal.

Second in a series  (1, 2) that began on “Earth Day” (0).

“In order to make Policy, you have to be good at Politics.”

- Deborah Stone, “Policy Paradox”

President Obama, Official Photo

I like and respect President Obama. I think he’s a well educated lawyer and law school professor, with a good grasp of the Constitution, and the realities of Chicago machine politics and Inside-The-Beltway politics. He understands Stone. He’s also a moderate liberal. However, his economic advisors – Tim Geithner and Larry Sommers – only know what’s good for Wall Street, so every answer is “what’s good for Wall Street.” They don’t appear to know anything about ecological economics.  Obama needs to listen to Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, Paul Krugman, Robin Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and others with a long term view and a better understanding of what neoclassical economists call “externalities.”

Perhaps worse, his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is focused on carbon sequestration, nuclear power, and what we might as well call “Drill Baby, Opps.”

I heard Secretary Chu on “On Point” on NPR talk about energy on 5/5/10. He said “we need to be competitive with new 21st C. energy technologies.” He’s right. However, when asked point blank, “Why not just require all new homes to have solar panels, the way the cars require catalytic converters?” Chu, who’s from California – which leads the U.S. in PV solar, who therefore should

The Deepwater Horizon Spill

Conservation is important. We probably waste 70% or more of the BTU’s and KWH we generate,* but even if we were 100% efficient, we would still continue to need to produce energy. With all due respect, Chu’s “New Energy Vision” – Coal Oil and Nuclear – is 50 years old.

The Kingston, Tennessee coal ash spill of 12/22/08 (Earth Observatory, CNN) was a disaster. The Upper Big Branch mining accident of 4/5/10 (MSHA) was tragic: 29 miners lost their lives. Their families will be devestated. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (NYTimes) was also tragic: 11 riggers lost their lives. But if the oil enters the Guld Stream, (and it’s called the Gulf Stream because it originates in the Gulf) it will be catastrophic. When interviewed on NPR on 5/5/10, Mary Landry, Coast Guard Rear Admiral “slipped” in describing BP as “our partner.” That was a telling slip. We can’t allow the Administration to continue to privatize economic gains and dump economic liabilities on the taxpayers.

Gov. Palin, Official Photo

If I wanted a President who supported offshore drilling, I’d have voted for John McCain. We need to hold Barack Obama accountible for his promises.

Chu himself said “We need to lay the foundation by which we are able to compete on 21 C energy in 25 to 50 years.” This is wind, solar, geothermal, and marine current, not coal, oil, and nuclear. Wind is $2 or $3 per watt at a utility scale. Solar is $5.75 per watt installed today in NJ on a residential scale, and probably $4.25 per watt on a utility scale, and is dropping – with maintenance costs in the north-east that are close to $0. Coal with Carbon Capture and Sequestration is $14.22 per watt (assuming it works). I can’t calculate nuclear costs because I don’t have sufficient data. However, it starts at $8 to $10 per watt without factoring in the costs of the NRC, the Price Anderson Act and other government costs and taxpayer subsidies – for fuel, waste management, oversight, regulation – How do you price security costs for 100 to 1000 years?

Senator Al Franken

As Sen. Al Franken might say, “There are a lot of funny people in Washington. Most, however, are not funny on purpose.”

Obama is now pushing loan guarantees – taxpayer subsidies -for coal with CCS, offshore drilling, and nuclear power, none of which are clean, renewable, or good for the economy or the planet. He campaigned on Clean Energy, not “Drill Baby, Opps.” The President should be listening to Van Jones, Amory Lovins, Bill McKibben, Roger Saillant, and me; not Stephen Chu, Don Blankenship and Sarah Palin.

Whether you define sustainability as “meeting the needs of people today in ways that do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs”, like the Bruntland Commission, “flourishing today and forever,” like John Eherenfeld, or “harnessing natural processes rather than consuming and destroying natural resources and creating toxic wastes”, nuclear and fossil fuels are not sustainable.

Al Gore

As Al Gore (350.org, RepowerAmerica) said, “we are borrowing from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf /rip coal out of the ground/ and burning it ways that are destroying the planet. Every bit of that has got to change.” Deepwater Horizon was not what Gore had in mind.

– Note –
* The Toyota Prius and Honda Insight get 45 to 50 mpg with technology that has been commercially viable for 10 years. If the mean milage of the North American auto fleet is 22.5 mpg, and it’s probably less, then 50% of the gasoline burned in the US is wasted. And that’s assuming that every mile driven by every car is necessary,  no energy is used in drilling, refining or transporting gas, and, no oil is spilled. The Bright Automotive Idea One is a 100 mpg delivery van. If that design was incorporated into cars, then about 77.5% of the gasoline we consume is wasted.

I was invited to join a panel on Jumpstarting the Green Economy hosted by the Sustainable Business Incubator at Fairleigh Dickenson University on May 21, 2009.  Copies of the conference presentations are available from the organizers for about $50. Copies of my presentation in audio and powerpoint format are available for $15, including shipping and taxes. Call or E-Mail me here or at Furman Consulting Group.

It boils down to this: Wind, Solar, Geothermal, other sustainable energy and Negawatts vs. Coal, Oil, and Nuclear; to Sustainable Business or Bernie Madoff and the Mafia.

After thanking Matt Polsky, the moderator, introducing myself – I’ve been interested in Clean Energy since 1976 – and plugging the MBA in Managing for Sustainability at Marlboro College, and my forthcoming album, It’s Raining Outside the Cave by XB Cold Fingers, I spoke for about 20 minutes on Energy, the Economy, and the Environment.

We face some major challenges – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Dead Zone in Chesapeake, Global Warming.

• Energy
• The Economy
• The Environment
  

There are Gyres in every ocean, and they are accumulating masses of plastics and toxic organic molecules. Plastic in the toxic soup of the North Pacific Gyre outweighs plankton 6 to 1. While it photo-degrades, into smaller particles of non-digestible plastic, it doesn’t biodegrade. There are no metabolic pathways by which this stuff is “food.” Birds and turtles eat plastic, and Die.

Dead Zone in Red

In the Chesapeake, a shallow estuary fed by waters from what we humans call New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, a dead zone in the northern spur has developed. Chicken manure from factory farms feeds aglae, which bloom, die, sink, and suck up all the oxygen.  This kills fish, shellfish, and plants. The once fertile Chesapeake is as full of life as mars or the moon.

As Gore noted, “We’re borrowing from China to buy oil from the Middle East, and burn it in ways that destroy the planet.”

And as T. Boone Pickens noted, “We burn 12 million barrels of oil per day.  Saudi Arabia produces 9 million.”

This paradigm challenges to the environment, national security, and the economy. This energy economy is, in a word, UnSustainable!

President John F. Kennedy, on May 25, 1961, challenged us:

This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

And we met the challenge on on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong, followed by Buzz Aldrin took

One Small Step for (a) man, One Giant Leap for mankind.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, considers Gore’s Challenge – 100% clean renewable, sustainable electricity in 10 years – to be easy and conservative.

I also spoke about Ceres and BICEP. Organized in 1989, after the Exxon Valdes disaster, Ceres is composed of Investors, and Environmental Organizations who, for the health of the planet and its people, have decided to integrate sustainability into capital markets. The CERES Principles demand:

• Honest Accounting,
• Abolish the folly of Free Pollution
• Higher Standards of Business Leadership
• Bold Solutions that Accelerate Green Innovation
• Smart New Policies that Reward Sustainability.

The principles are vague, so Ceres evolved into BICEP – Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy.  BICEP looked at the Ceres Principles, and announced the BICEP Goals. These are, in management parlance, “S. M. A. R. T.” – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. The BICEP goals include a Renewable Portfolio Standard of 20% by 2020 and 30% by 2050, and Carbon Sequestration.

Renewable Portfolio Standard 20% by 2020 is not bad, but Gore and Schmidt say we can do 100% by 2019, so why settle for 20% by 2020? And as for 30% by 2050; that’s ridiculous.  Regarding Carbon Sequestration, it’s hard to tell if it’s cost effective; we don’t know how to do it! And we don’t know What will it cost.

The goals are SMART, however, they are Also S.T.U.P.I.D.

• SMART
• Then again
• Under
• Powered
• Insufficient and
• Dumb

Alfred E. Newman, by Norman Mingo

There are Limits of Private Enterprise.

Voluntary Environmental “Regulation” doesn’t work.

Private police protection characterizes banana republics run by strongmen and drug pseudo-states.

If the fire department was run by an insurance company, and if my house were to catch fire, and I had no insurance, then my house would burn down. And so would yours.  This is the problem with insurance company run health care.

When you start thinking in terms of sustainability, “Cradle to Cradle,” The Chicken Manure in the Chesapeake, The Plastic Swirling Around the Oceans, even, Mercury, Arsenic, Carbon from Coal are Resources.

Markets for Manure -

1. Feed it to Algae -
2. Pull Carbon Dioxide out of the Air
3. Harvest for Glycerine / BioDiesel

In 1849 – “There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills!” Today – “There’s Gold in them thar Garbage!”

Here’s the choice: Nike, Timberland, Seventh Generation, Patagonia, or Madoff Investments and the Mafia. Or, as noted by Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s CEO, “Business can produce food, cure disease, employee people, and generally enrich our lives. It can do good things and make a profit without losing it’s soul.”

Sustainability – harness a process, rather than “consume” a resource. Sustainable Energy: Wind & Solar: The Wind Blows, The Sun Shines, regardless of the presence or absence of wind turbines or solar panels.

• No Fuel,
• No Waste
• No Green House Gases
• No Radioactive Wastes
• No Mercury

We are here -

Earth From Space

The Gore Energy Challenge- 100% clean, renewable, sustainable electricity in 10 years, can be described in 3 words. Reasonable, Achievable, Visionary. Here’s how:
download Young Guns

40% Land Based Wind = 100 GW: $200 Billion.
40% Offshore Wind = 100 GW: $300 Billion.
20% Solar = 50 GW: $325 Billion.
The Cowboys divx
Whisper movie
100% Clean Energy = 250 GW: $825 Billion.
Save the Earth – Priceless.

Charlies Angels: Full Throttle ipod

The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. And the age of fossil fuels is ending not because we have run out of fossil fuel, but because we have figured out how better technologies. Biofuels, Geothermal, Marine Kinetic, Solar, Wind, and of course, Conservation.

The Gore Energy Challenge: Clean and Green by 2018.  Visionary, Reasonable, Achievable. Ask T. Boone Pickens at The Pickens Plan, and Peter Mandelstam at Blue Water Wind.

We could meet the electric power requirements of the United States, estimated at 250 Gigawatts, GW, of generating capacity with wind turbines and photovoltaic solar arrays, for about $811 Billion in 10 years.

• Land Based Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.0 Billion per GW: $200 Billion.
• Offshore Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.86 Billion per GW: $286 Billion.
• PV Solar: 50 GW, or 20% at $6.5 Billion per GW: $325 Billion.
• Total Cost: $811 Billion. (less than has been squandered on the war in Iraq.)

• Saving the earth: Priceless.
  

Key Benefits:

• Good Jobs.
• Healthy Economy.
• Enhanced Emergency Response Capability.
• Stronger National Security.
• Clean Environment.
• No Toxic Wastes.
• No Mercury.
  

• No Radioactive Wastes.
• No Coal Mining Disasters.
• Less Government Regulation.

This plan doesn’t exploit solar thermal, marine kinetic, geothermal, deep geothermal, cogen, biofuels, or conservation, which will be integrated into this plan in the near future. The plan also focuses on current electricity demand. It does not yet forecast increased electricity demand from population growth, transition from fossil fuels for heating or cooking, or increased reliance on plug-in hybrid cars.

Clean and Green By 2018!

Via Ron Fournier of the Associated Press, Gore sets ‘moon shot’ goal on climate change, dated today (16 July 2008). An excerpt:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are “way ahead” of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

[We haven't examined either candidates' positions on these issues carefully - but we take Senator Gore's implicit  point - that the necessity will be present whoever wins the election - Eds.]

-  snip -

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

“This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over,” Gore said. “It’s an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels.”

Excerpted from Gore sets ‘moon shot’ goal on climate change. By Ron Fournier of The Associated Press.

We understand – or believe – that the AP has been concerned about excessive use of their reports. We believe the above excerpt complies with the “fair use” doctrine. Also – Fournier’s lead – the comparison to the space program – is particulary apt, and should be useful in public discussion.