Nobody is a bigger supporter of energy efficiency than I am. Yet, it is urgent we understand that it is not a solution to our climate crisis.

What is the efficiency paradox?

The proposition was first put forward by William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. In it, Jevons observed that England’s consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen’s earlier design. Source: Wikipedia

Why is it that coal consumption soared after the efficiency improved? From an economic perspective, this should be perfectly obvious: as the efficiency of the coal engine increases, it becomes a cheaper option and is thus used at an increased rate.

The same is true with gasoline engines. The more efficient they become, the more likely it is that people will continue to use them. Even if the entire developed world spent tons of money to convert to electric cars and alternative energy, this would only make gasoline an even more viable option for countries which are still developing.

This summer, Tata Motors is releasing a $2,000 car in India called the Nano. It has taken a century for internal combustion automobiles to mature to a point where they can be produced at such low cost. The internal combustion engine is unhindered by patents and has been mass produced for almost 100 years. New electric engines are unlikely to hit that price point in the foreseeable future, and thus the fastest growing parts of the world are highly unlikely to choose them in an unregulated marketplace.

Energy efficiency will also decrease the price gap between the raising of livestock and the growing of plants. Considering the worst contributor of greenhouse gases is actually the livestock industry, this does not bode well for our planet.

Granted, in certain markets people’s habits do not greatly change as a result of efficiency gains. Hybrid car owners do not drive much more than regular motorists, and people who buy more efficient refrigerators are unlikely to use it more wastefully. Yet, the overall number of these machines purchased would likely increase and still cause any efficiency gains to evaporate.

If climate change is likely to cause significant problems for our civilization in the next century, we cannot expect the free market to correct the problem. If measures are not put in place to improve the competitiveness of carbon-neutral technologies, then drastic measures such as geo-engineering are inevitable.

The risks, moral hazards, and political implications brought forth by geo-engineering are going to be challenging indeed. Considering the overwhelming evidence pointing to humanity’s dangerous impact on the environment, we better prepare for this sooner rather than later. Geo-engineering must move closer to the center of the debate on climate change.

Other longer term options such as space colonization should also be considered. Interestingly, learning to live sustainably is a prerequisite for space colonization. Permaculture, recycling, vertical farming, energy efficiency, and the creation of harmonious ecosystems are key to living in space. NASA has known this for some time now, and it is time we start treating our situation here on Earth with as much foresight. Sustainability is key no matter what course we take.

Filed under : Economics, Risk, Sustainability, Technology

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Social Ecology is a philosophy which states that environmental, social, and economic problems all have the same root: namely, the way people treat each other. By this same logic, if we can establish new structures and norms by which to operate, we can alleviate many of these problems.

There are a few different ways to apply this in the real world. One way is to build communities which seek harmonious relationships between people and the environment. Based on similar thinking, thousands of “intentional communities” have sprung up. These include everything from eco-villages to religious communes to survivalist enclaves. There are even some more tech-based communities such as CyborgSociety.

Now, each of these communities believes that their mode of interacting with one another is the most sustainable and desirable, and perhaps there is room for all of these communities. Live and let live. Decentralized communities have a distinct advantage when it comes to resiliency. Much less information is needed to govern a small community than a large one, and having multiple models functioning simultaneously ensures all of our eggs aren’t in one basket. Nevertheless, it would be instructive to examine what a truly sustainable community would look like.

In the name of resiliency, clearly there must be some attention to self-sufficiency. Now, insular autarkies are notoriously unstable, but so are economies that are completely dependent upon foreign trade for basic necessities. The ideal situation is clearly somewhere in the middle between those extremes. What we need is largely self-sufficient communities which are at harmony with nature and engage in voluntary trade with neighbors.

This same way of living could be applied by individuals or families operating within the community, to further decentralize production. If individuals, including urbanites, were given the tools for automated growing of food and simple manufacturing, imagine the potential for automatic wealth generation. Not to mention the environmental benefits of local production.

RepRap is dedicated to building open source desktop fabrication machines which can make the majority of its own parts using local materials such as fermented organic matter. Their version 1.0, codenamed “Darwin,” is a working proof-of-concept, and version 2.0 is already in the works. As such machines become more mature and more efficient at self-replication, it could soon eliminate the necessity of wage labor for survival.

Using such techniques, communities are already forming. Factor e Farm is dedicated to building such communities for all sorts of productive purposes. They have already set up one self-sufficient community using alternative energy and processed rainwater, and they are interested in building many more decentralized communities with a high quality of life. On their website, they claim, “This quality of life is based on efficient operation, plus 100% voluntary lifestyle, based on transcendence of material constraints. When resource constraints become a non-issue through wise choice of technology, skill, and open source knowledge-enabled flexible production systems for self-sufficiency – then freedom and human creativity are unleashed.”

What is especially inspiring is the potential this has for eliminating poverty. As they say, give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat for the rest of his life. As the tools for local production continue to drop in price, we can likely enter into a post-scarcity world. As we speak, there is already more than enough food being produced to feed everyone on the planet. The problem is the logistics of distributing it to everyone. Capitalism as it is currently practiced distributes in an unequal fashion, and no matter how much philanthropy we do, it is not feasible to ship resources to remote regions. What we can do is provide the tools for people to produce locally.

We are just now witnessing the beginning of what is surely going to be a huge wave of self-sufficient communities, enabled by the new modes of production made possible by the Internet and communications technologies. The prospects for this are enormous for everyone, but especially those in poorest and most dependent places on Earth.

Filed under : Decentralization, Post-Scarcity, Sustainability

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The controversial animal rights organization known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have temporarily shifted their focus away from photographing nude celebrities to do something truly revolutionary.

As anyone who has taken a critical look at the production of animal products knows, the meat industry is horrendous on many levels. Obviously, it causes massive amounts of suffering to animals. The meat industry also wreaks havoc on the environment. To raise and transport the animals takes enormous amounts of land, energy, food, and water, and creates enormous amounts of pollution. A huge portion of the pollution that is creating the climate crisis comes from the CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide created by the meat industry; it is even more damaging than all the automobiles.

The current meat production methods also pose significant risks to human health. The health hazards don’t just come from the much publicized contaminants such as antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and other toxins. As Jared Diamond has shown in his book, Guns Germs and Steel, domesticated animals have been largely responsible for the spread of modern diseases. The looming threat of avian flu, whose predecessor was responsible for more deaths than World War 1, is just one of many examples.

Yet, it cannot be denied that meat provides many nutrients which cannot be acquired through the consumption of plants. Humans have evolved to crave meat, and to dismiss that or suggest otherwise is naive.

Luckily, there is a solution that can solve both these problems: In Vitro Meat. Unfortunately, many have been slow to take up this cause. PETA has finally woken up to its amazing potential. In Vitro Meat can fulfill the human need and desire for animal products without causing wanton harm to animals, the environment, and our health. It involves growing muscle cells and other tissue using the stem cells of animals. It would be a humane and extremely efficient way to produce authentic meat.

Even more profoundly, PETA has decided to create a million dollar prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” Using prizes is an extremely effective way to promote such a cause, since it draws big publicity and fosters competition. The X Prize is a prominent example of such a tactic, and it has been quite successful.

However, I have one criticism of this prize strategy, especially with the larger prizes. It seems silly to offer such large prizes and let the inventors copyright their inventions as well. It would seem more prudent to only award the money if the inventors agree to release their work into the public domain, to be used freely by all.

That said, I commend PETA for their support of In Vitro Meat, and am glad they are focusing their attention on this crucial issue.

Filed under : Sustainability, Technology

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The massive amount of meat production is currently wreaking havoc on the environment, and too often the animals are treated inhumanely.

Yet, it is simply not practical that we will all become vegans any time soon. Certain animal products are very nutritious, and humans crave it too much. The only sustainable and ethical way to fill that desire is in-vitro meat and similar technologies.

Unfortunately, innovation in the field has been slow. Furthermore, what little innovation there has been is currently patented. Patents often stifle innovation and provide unnecessary government-guaranteed monopolies for certain individuals.

Interestingly, the great Arthur C Clarke, who recently passed away, had once written about the possibility for geostationary satellites to be used as telecommunications devices. His work was declared as prior art to successfully defeat a patent regarding telecomm satellites.

I remember reading his book 3001: The Final Odyssey and it spoke of meat substitutes, and predates some of the patents by a few years. However, I am sure there are other works that are much older that could invalidate some of the patents. It is a fairly obvious idea, and there is absolutely no reason why patents should hinder innovation in this area.

Thoughts?

Filed under : Open Source, Sustainability

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