[Greenbuilding] Depletion Economy

[elitalking]

Reuben Deumling writes:
The truth of the matter is we would be wise to figure out how to stop all burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible and probably a lot sooner than that. Why this needs restating is a source of continuing frustration. Doing this, figuring out how to make it happen--politically, technically, economically, ethically, emotionally--is a big challenge, but judging from the tenor of this article what we really need to do is figure out how to calculate more significant figures of the coal vs natural gas difference in climate impacts. 


My comment:

I appreciate this list because I find people who have a similar view.  I have begun to use depletion as my buzz word to characterize what is happening.  The complacency of depending on and rapidly depleting finite nonrenewable resources is quite alarming.  A sustainable economy is able to renew itself without depleting.  All waste is recovered (zero waste).  Anything less is a depletion economy.  In transition, we reduce our depletion to give our community more time to ultimately learn how to not deplete.  

Eli 



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Reuben Deumling 
  To: eadvocates at yahoogroups.com 
  Cc: Gill & Bruno ; Cynthiakmitchell at gmail.com ; Greenbuilding 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 3:31 PM
  Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] [eadvocates] Climate Benefits of Natural GasMay Be Overstated


  One thing that bothers me about the title of the article, and about much that passes for energy policy language these days, is a confusion of the relative and the absolute, of benefits, on the one hand, and varying degrees of damage on the other. The extraction and combustion of natural gas offers no climate benefits, properly understood. It is a fossil fuel, and extracting and burning it is widely recognized to result in an unqualified disbenefit to anything that might pass for climate stability. 
  Comparing its life cycle impacts on atmospheric GHG concentrations to coal's is perfectly reasonable, but I take issue with the squishy phrasing, the pathological avoidance of straight talk when it comes to climate-prudent energy policies. 

  The spectrum of options available to us is, of course, far greater than coal+sequestration or natural gas (why, for that matter, are we talking about building any new power plants?) but the framing of the issue in this article obscures that.

    The utilities are in a bind because they have to build new power plants to meet the nation’s demand for energy, while anticipating an as-yet-undefined set of federal climate and emissions regulations that they believe are inevitable. Do they build new gas-fired plants, which can cost $2 billion and take three years to bring online? Or do they wait for proven systems that can capture carbon from coal-fired plants and sequester it underground? 

  Why the supply focus? Why so unimaginative when it comes to demand? Why assume _always_ that electricity demand is fixed, off limits, that it will grow forever? How helpful, how realistic is that?

  The truth of the matter is we would be wise to figure out how to stop all burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible and probably a lot sooner than that. Why this needs restating is a source of continuing frustration. Doing this, figuring out how to make it happen--politically, technically, economically, ethically, emotionally--is a big challenge, but judging from the tenor of this article what we really need to do is figure out how to calculate more significant figures of the coal vs natural gas difference in climate impacts. 

  Reuben Deumling
   



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