....noted
David Strahan, leading the discussion at last night's
Energy 2.0 Brainstorm, put on by Simon Grice and Tony Fish in order to discuss and debate how the 'Net can be used to help to reduce carbon emissions, global warming etc etc.
David has just published his book The Last Oil Shock, and the overall thesis, that in fact the major energy crisis is not carbon emissions per se but the coming end of cheap oil - Peak oil - is the real danger facing us today. Being familiar with a lot of this from way back in at Uni modelling Club of Rome sorts of simulations it was interesting to revisit a subject which has been drowned by Global Warming as the Green Person's Topic du Jour in recent years.
In essence, the Peak Oil argument is that in about 10 - 15 years time there will be a turning point, where oil consumed will be greater than oil produced plus oil in reserve, leading to shortage - and that the resultant increasing price of oil on which a huge amount of our (western especially) civilisation relies, will make many of the things we take for granted today - like cheap plastic things, cars, low price food, flights, heated homes etc - impossible to afford in the future. In some scenarios CO2 emissions will disappear as an issue because we won't be able to afford the oil etc to produce them in the first place - (addendum - in others Co2 emissions go up as we use far dirtier fuels - coal based and "biofuels" - to make up for the oil bust.....in other words Co2 is a dependency of Peak Oil )
After that, all the usual stuff trotted out to do with CO2 reduction, global warming etc in the local colour supplements looked pretty darn tame. Humankind spews out about 5% of the planets CO2, the UK is about 2% of all of that, of which Joe Public is responsible for about 1/3rd directly and indirectly in total, and your TV on standby consumes about 1/10th the power of a standard electric light bulb, so
switching that off is really going to save the planet.
Not.
No, when you start to look at the big numbers, for the "GreenWeb" to be of any real use, it has to do some pretty heavy lifting - like removing the need for say 50% of car and aeroplane trips for example (or the need for 50% of the cars and aeroplanes even), or ensuring the efficiency of the global logistics system improves by 50%, or changing the way entire nations are employed and live to remove a whole horde of "long tail" energy wastage issues, like that TV on standby - or your fruit salad that went 5 x round the world by plane to get to you.
This is quite an interesting challenge, and last night we argued and debated around it - 3 areas where the "GreenWeb" can really help emerged in my view:
(i) Firstly, as a means of organising global logistics - for both humans and goods - more efficiently, as this consumes a huge amount of our oil directly - find a lift, load that plane's return trip, reduce the number of commutes per week, get a second hand X rather than a new one - a sort of giant Transport eBay come VideoConversation (maybe buying Skype wasn't so dumb after all). Reducing direct oil dependency, as opposed to energy dependency, is helpful as there are more options to replace fossil fuel generated electricity than to directly replace oil.
(ii) Secondly, as a means of managing the large sinks of energy - our buildings, factories etc - and the many "long tails" of energy wastage in them. Home Management, Enterprise monitoring systems etc all would fit into this gambit
(iii) Thirdly, as a change agent - in my view best as an
unbiased information source (1) and social network to help people make informed, unbiased and socially supported decisions on what they can do to reduce energy, and find viable alternatives - not just for themselves, but to frame policies to force on politicians...as individuals, communities, societies. As a way of exerting pressure where it is needed. What became very clear to me last night is that we are being beset by two forces now:
- the more traditional resistance to doing anything to "prevent growth" by a number of well funded vested interests, and
- increasingly the determined wish to milk our guilt and altruism to flog us wholly inappropriate "Green" stuff - the "GreenScam" - by a whole host of parties from Politicians on bikes to sellers of dodgy (but self enriching) carbo footprint programs, wind turbines, and biofuel projects etc that won't really help anyone except the peddlers.
In addition, the 'Net has to look at itself - can we make our equipment less power hungry, especially in datacentres (where for every KW of power you generate, you need about the same again to remove the heat generated) - some people have calculated it costs the same energy footprint to run a 2nd Life avatar as live in Brazil.
But, there are some very big forces that may be insurmountable, or at least can only be solved with the will of a planet. For example - the US consumes 25% of the planet's energy, with c 3% of the population - and its entire structure relies on this. Some people have nearly all the gas (Russia) and oil (Mid East). Some people have extremely large populations and are industrialising rapidly (China, India) and want to get to Western levels. These things are all unsustainable.
And some of our comfortable alternative energy assumptions are just untrue - David shows that producing enough biofuel to replace the oil is well nigh impossible - there is not enough land (especially if oil for nitrogen fertiliser is unavailable), and much of what is there is in places where it will be in direct competition with locals who want to fill their own bellies with food.
In the past (including the very recent past) some very nasty wars have been fought for these sorts of resources. The above lineup is not looking hopeful.
So, how can the 'Net help here - communication is always held up as a Good Thing, but "promoting international brotherliness on Facebook" is about as good as it gets right now, so suggestions gratefully received.....
Until then, its time for some Tom Lehrer and
National BrotherHood Week....
(1) reading David's book it is clear that the amount of bias, cant, hypocrisy, misinformation, greed and overall fudge in this area (and some of it even deliberate) makes the tobacco industry look positively transparent and benificent.
Postscript...the meme is catching...GigaOm notes Google is also
thinking GreenWeb
