It’s past time to shelve the fantasies of limitless energy and the hubris that goes with them. We must start paying attention to the tools, technologies, and modest but real energy sources that can actually have a positive impact on human existence in an age when only natural phenomena have gigawatts at their disposal any more.
Transportation: Is There An Ecological Solution?
Nowadays, a dozen large and small auto makers are bringing out battery-powered cars of various kinds, ranging from compacts like the Ford Focus and Nissan Leaf to exotic items like the Aptera and the GEM. They range in price from high to astronomical, and all of them have their share of drawbacks, mostly in terms of range and reliability, but a significant number of people on the green end of things are hailing the appearance of these vehicles as a great step forward. As things stand, that’s a bit of an oversimplification.
Most all the electricity these vehicles use will be generated by burning coal and natural gas, and the easy insistence that the grid can easily be switched over to solar and wind power won’t stand up to close analysis. These points have been discussed to some extent in the alternative energy scene, but there are other points that deserve at least as much attention.
From Gas-Powered Cars to Coal-Powered Electricity for Cars?
First of all, the best way to reduce your ecological footprint isn’t to replace a gasoline-fueled car with an electric car. It’s to replace it with a bicycle, a public transit ticket, or a good pair of shoes. Now, of course, the built geography of much of rural and suburban North America makes it a little challenging to do without a car, but close to a hundred million people in the United States live in places where a car is a luxury most or all of the time.
For those Americans who actually do need a car, how about the new electric vehicles? Will they really decrease your carbon footprint and your fossil fuel use, as so much current verbiage claims?
The answer is no. First of all, the vast majority of electricity in America and elsewhere comes from coal and natural gas. Choosing an electric car simply means that the carbon dioxide you generate comes out of a smokestack rather than a tailpipe. The internal combustion engine is an inefficient way of turning fuel into motion — about three quarters of the energy in a gallon of gas turns directly into low-grade heat and gets dumped into the atmosphere via the radiator, leaving only a quarter of the total to keep you rolling down the road.
The processes of turning fossil fuel into heat and heat into electricity, storing the electricity in a battery and extracting it again, and then turning the electricity into motion is less efficient still, so you’re getting less of the original fossil fuel energy turned into distance traveled than you would in an ordinary car. This means that you’d be burning more fossil fuel to power your electric car even if the power plant was burning petroleum. Since coal and natural gas contain much less energy per unit of volume than petroleum distillates, your electric car is burning quite a bit more fossil fuel, and dumping quite a bit more carbon in the atmosphere, than gasoline-powered cars do.
The Energy Cost of Manufacturing New Cars
This isn’t something you’ll see discussed very often in e-car websites or sales flyers. It’s even less likely that you’ll find any mention there of the second factor that needs to be discussed, which is the energy cost of manufacture. An automobile is a complex piece of hardware, and every part of it comes into being through a process that starts at an assortment of mines, oil wells and the like, and proceeds through refineries, factories, warehouses, and assembly plants, linked together by long supply chains. All this costs energy.
Working out the exact energy cost per car would be an unmanageably huge project because it would involve tracking the energy used to produce and distribute every last screw, drop of solvent, etc., but it’s safe to say that a very large portion of the total energy used in a car’s lifespan is used up before the car reaches the dealer. Electric cars are just as subject to this rule as petroleum-powered ones.
Promoters of the more grandiose end of alternative energy projects — the solar power satellites and Nevada-sized algae farms that crop up so regularly when people are trying to ignore the reality of ecological limits — are particularly prone to brush aside the energy cost of manufacture with high-grade handwaving. Factor in the energy cost of manufacture, and there’s a straightforward answer to the question we’ve just been considering. If you really feel you have to have a car, what kind involves the smallest carbon footprint and the least overall energy use? A used one.
Additional Benefits to Buying Used Compact Cars
If you buy a used compact instead of a new electric car, you’ve just salvaged the energy cost of manufacture that went into the used car, and saved all the energy that would have been spent to produce, ship, and assemble every part of the new car. You will also be producing less carbon dioxide than the share of a smokestack that would be needed to power an e-car. Since it’s a used compact, furthermore, you won’t be tempted to drive it all over the place to show everyone how ecologically conscious you are, thus saving another chunk of energy.
Finally, of course, the price difference between a brand new Nissan Leaf and a used compact will buy you a solar water heating system, installation included, with enough left over to completely weatherize an average American home. It’s a win-win situation for everything but your ego.
The private automobile is the ultimate poster child for the age of cheap abundant energy, hopelessly unsustainable without immense inputs of highly concentrated energy and vast and ongoing investments in infrastructure.
Walking, bicycling, and public transit of various kinds are all options, and there are doubtless others.
*Subtitles by InnerSelf
©2013 by John Michael Greer. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
New Society Publishers. http://newsociety.com
[Editor's Note: While we face difficult choices as individuals, those choices are far simpler than the decisions a society must make. The ramifications of a society's choices are very complex and far-reaching and oftentimes ignored. Other costs that must be considered are the health costs of the extraction, refining, and use of fossil fuels, as well as the military and diplomatic costs of maintaining the free-flow of oil. It is essential to continue and rev up the research into, and development of, a variety of renewable resources for the future -- meanwhile we need to wean ourselves from non-renewable resources.]
This article was adapted with permission from the book:
Green Wizardry: Conservation, Solar Power, Organic Gardening, and Other Hands-On Skills From the Appropriate Tech Toolkit -- by John Michael Greer
In ancient times, a wizard was a freelance intellectual whose main stock in trade was good advice, supported by a thorough education in agriculture, navigation, political and military science, languages, commerce, mathematics, medicine, and the natural sciences. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about decreasing our dependence on an overloaded industrial system and, in a world of serious energy shortages and economic troubles, making life a great deal less traumatic and more livable. From the basic concepts of ecology to a plethora of practical techniques, Green Wizardry is a comprehensive manual for today's wizard-in-training.
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About the Author
John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history and an internationally renowned Peak Oil theorist whose blog, "The Archdruid Report," has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society. He is the author of more than 30 books including The Wealth of Nature and The Long Descent. As well as being a certified Master Conserver and devoted organic gardener, he continues to practice a myriad of skills honed during the appropriate tech movement of the 1970s. He has been active in the contemporary nature spirituality movement for more than 25 years.
