Energy Efficiency

Bees are under attack by a mite decimating the bee population around the world bar – so far – Australia.  Bees are largely taken for granted yet are responsible for about 70% of all crop pollination; they work for us humans for nothing, we steal their honey and provide little for their welfare, but why talk about bees?

Well simply, they epitomise what humans do to every resource in the world. They are exploited and abused and are not accorded any value in the financial structure we humans use to place a value on what we do.

Corporations and governments (corporate government) see natural resources as a commodity they have a natural right to use; they don’t ‘pay’ the Planet or the local environment, most times after raping and pillaging the land, they leave an environment mostly devoid of the life and vibrancy that existed before they got there.

Everywhere we see signs of what over-population of the human species does to Mother Earth and we are suffering far more than we are ‘improving’ the quality of our lives; at some point in time we need to place a true value on what the environment is before we touch it.

For the last 20+ years I have been trying to have local and state government recognize the need to reduce energy dependence through energy efficient house design; trying to explain that if we design a comfortable house, it won’t need all the energy to make it comfortable, no need for air-conditioning. I offered – in 1997 – that if we built houses that required less energy (less than half is easily achievable), that at a rate of 100,000 new houses a year (now 12 years on) we could have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 9,600,000 tonnes. Record air-conditioner sales for the last 10+ years clearly show that the governments did nothing of any consequence.

But from a financial perspective can you blame them, they spent a lot of money on power generating stations and want a dividend return; if people use less power, they won’t make as much money !  [This is also why government water utilities are stressed, they need to have a supply to sell – although they didn’t pay for the natural resource of water – and yet water restrictions reduce revenue]

Which leads me to the Copenhagen global climate accord; you see there is no money to be made when people buy less, and on top of the current ‘cap and trade’ structure could lose out if a new scheme takes over. Although the ‘cap and trade’ seemed like a good idea (for about a day or so), in reality it was a corrupt and ineffectual approach with – in reality – offsets and bribes that purportedly reduced carbon emissions. An apt description is the ‘cap and trade’ is like religion, ‘you can indulgence yourself and sin as long as your pay the Corporate Middleman Church for forgiveness.

Corporations purchasing ‘offsets’ to fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions are just bull; science provided unambiguous data that our ‘leaders’ continue to ignore, that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning remains in the climate system for millennia, the only solution is to move to reduce consumption and clean energy.

The big problem is that fossil fuel is the cheapest energy, if you don’t count the irreparable damage to the environment. Problem is though, the price does not currently include the damage to human health generally or Planet Earth specifically, we have got to get away fro the notion that only human beings count in the equation; while people and religion may feel we are the peak of all evolution on Earth, a quick trip to the dump or third world countries tells the complete opposite.

The Kyoto Protocol was but the first step, but it also illustrates the deceit of our governments, which do not have the intestinal fortitude to stare down the fossil fuel industry (mind you, hundred’s of millions of $ in election campaigns buys a lot of ‘loyalty’).  Global fossil fuel emissions were increasing 1.5% per year prior to the 1997 Kyoto accord; after the Kyoto Accord, emission growth accelerated to 3% per year.

While a few developed countries reduced their fossil fuel use, the important fact was that fuel was burned in other places and products were shipped back to developed countries.

So does this make the Kyoto Protocol and the (now defunct) Copenhagen Protocol worthless ? As l alluded to before, the only things that makes fossil fuels the cheapest energy is because the full cycle is not factored into the price.

All the world countries must cooperate and accept ‘full cycle’ on any resource, from the humble bee to a lump of coal; while the bee’s body easily breaks down, every kilo of coal burned takes two kilos of air, resulting in 3 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions; for this a combination of vegetation (on land or in the sea) roughly 100 times that is needed to reabsorb the emission, so population growth must be included in the equation, (not just in consumption but the fact that humans displace plant life as their foot-print increases).

Many expect that a new energy source will be discovered … bullshit, the most effective and cheapest energy is concentrated solar energy otherwise known as coal, oil and natural gas; technology improvements will not save the day, only reduced consumption; the climate solution requires a true cost of fossil fuel energy. We need a rising price on carbon applied at the source, the coal mine, oil or gas wellhead; it has to be like a GST (goods and services tax) fee attached at every transaction that culminates into true vegetation ‘banks’.  This cost will move people to a smaller carbon footprint.

As I’ve said before, there are three ‘ruling parties’ on this planet, corporations, government and religion and in this instance, the governments would collect the revenue and disburse it the likes of farmers and land-holders and as the governments ‘own’ the land, they can monitor and control the necessary planting and upkeep through the DPI and CSIRO etc.

Cap-and-trade is a hidden tax that increasing energy costs but with no environmental dividend; the infrastructure costs the public, who then fund the profits of banks and speculators, it is only advantageous to energy companies with strong ‘loyalties’ in government officials who dole out proceeds from pollution certificates to favoured industries.

A fee-and-dividend – in contrast – is a non-tax as it completes a cycle of use; the Australian public would probably accept a rise in the form of a carbon fee because they can see and visit public domain areas (parks) and their families benefit from cleaner air and healthier lifestyles.

This is of course short term, as in less than 50 years, by which time petrol will cost at least a week’s wages and it will be cheaper to use less and leave the coal in the ground.

Australia can lead the way by example; we were first to make seat-belt wearing compulsory and banning smoking in pubs and restaurants or in cars with kids under 15.

Can we make it work is best answered by ‘yes we can’ and we can export to other countries – less fortunate – our programs and in some instances, they can ‘lease’ emission absorptions to augment feeding of their own populace.

Can we ‘trust’ America (with their currency value in question), or China (with a massive population and possible revolution), or India or Pakistan or Europe or England or even our own federal and state governments ? The answer is probably no, so we need to consider who we vote for next time.  If we don’t get it right, Nature will.