[Greenbuilding] a devil's bargain

Jason Holstine jason at amicusgreen.com
Thu Aug 16 15:09:10 CDT 2012


There¹s a very fair assumption that 90% of the exports would end up in
China, and it¹s a very fair assumption that China will continue building
nasty coal plants at ridiculous rates unless fracked gas or another fossil
supplants that coal. There is little expectation for China to reduce total
energy demands (they need to keep GDP growth above 7% to prevent civil
unrest b/c of mass migration), so in this prism the framework is realistic
that swapping coal for gas in that economy is a GHG improvement. Now,
getting the Commies to reduce total energy increases or understand other
health concerns and all that is another topic for head bruises.

Here may be the real irony: China is looking at doing its own fracking
domestically in order to offset coal. Preventing civil unrest is the
fundamental basis the Chinese government operates around. B/c they see
pollution as a potential for unrest, they want to reduce coal loads. So if
we build all these domestic fracking and exporting operations and they end
up unused b/c the Chinese keep it in house...maybe that¹s the best argument
to keep it in the ground here?


On 8/16/12 3:27 PM, "Reuben Deumling" <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is so much myopia in that article it is hard to know where to start.
> 
> "exports would likely reduce global greenhouse gas emissions"
> No fossil fuels (extracted and burned) reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless
> we subscribe to an Alice in Wonderland logic. The argument he's implicitly
> making is that natural gas has a lower carbon footprint per BTU than coal is
> irrelevant because we have no framework in place, have barely started the
> conversation about the need to keep it all in the ground. Until then powerful
> interests have all kinds of reasons to drill and frack and sell and burn it
> all.
> 
> "Blocking exports wouldn¹t push natural gas into automobiles ‹ it would mostly
> keep it in the ground, because there would be less incentive to extract it."
> 
> Levi says that as it it were a bad thing.
> 
> 
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