Tar sands, pipelines, and big-picture decisions

The Sierra Club is having a campaign to stop the oil pipeline from Canada down to refineries here in the US; the complaint is partly about the environmentally-damaging source from tar sands, too. (Or would we like fracking contamination of our drinking water?)

Normally I would stand with environmental protection concerns. But after much thought about the bigger picture, on this one I abstain from the vote of participation. It is the bigger picture that must be consulted.

The reasoning is as follows:

We Americans have built our lifestyles around cars and trucks. This consumes an incredible amount of oil for the energy to propel these vehicles, that we send huge amounts of money overseas to get more oil, tens of billions per year.

Much of my life I too consumed gasoline in my cars as if it were in endless supply and of our own produce. But nowadays, people know better, and have the choice to moderate their petrochemical fuel consumption.

But they generally choose not to. Instead of buying their teenagers bicycles to use to go to school, the soccer moms fire up the family SUV to take them to school and bring them back in style. To go get a couple items to finish off dinner prep, again fire up the SUV or other gas hog vehicle to make the trip there and back, the foreign-bought fuel pushing the multi-thousand-pound vehicle to grocery and back, with the half pound of grocery food treasure. The local Walmart has a huge supply of bicycles for sale, along with basic supplies like helmets. But when I put on my backpack and bicycle to Walmart to get groceries and supplies, mine is usually the only bicycle parked on the parking rack there at the store.

Point is, we Americans could be doing lots more to reduce our oil consumption, yet we are not doing that. We still live it up, burn the gas, to heck with the nation and world problem it makes.

Thus we need more and more oil to feed this problem. There are security problems about the supply from overseas, as was so well experienced in the gas lines during the gs shortages of the early 1970's. Could happen again, even lots worse.

We have a better chance of protecting a pipeline from Canada to refineries in Texas, than to guarantee endless oil from overseas.

We have not been able to wean ourselves from excessive use of oil for energy, despite being aware of the problem for decades. Sure, it is hard to change ones ways, even a little bit. But life is ever changing; we constantly adapt. But to the energy problem, we just have not adapted.

Even lots of politicians say there really is no oil supply problem, no CO2 building up in the atmosphere due to our industrial civilization, altering the basic energy balance from the Sun. It wasn't taught them in school; therefore it does not exist. It is all a plot by the politicians on the other side of the ball court.

America must have a continuous supply of energy, and lots of it. We are making some success such as some solar panels up and a few wind turbines up, but we are stuck on the notion that it has to be cheaper to get energy from wind and solar, before we will abandon coal and oil as our primary source of energy. Energy to run our factories and light our homes and swirl our washing machines. The idea of building wind power infrastructure when it is in competition with other energy sources, is ridiculous to those who do not comprehend that even some energy from local sources is better than none, when things have gone sour.

Can we continue to guarantee that things do not go sour on us re invasion by another country, simply by reminding them that we have enough nukes to destroy all life on earth including them? Well, we cringe that North Korea or Iran may make a nuke or two, that we don't control. Hardly enough to destroy the world like we can do, but enough to make a terrible mess of a big city or two, or vaporize one of our great aircraft carriers at a strategic moment. Yet perhaps the bigger risk is that we will be conquered by starving us of critical supplies, and energy is the most obvious one. All energy self-sufficiency we can arrange as fast as possible, is a better protection than waving our world-destroying pile of nukes, to guarantee we get enough energy to power our lives.

It is abundantly proven that we cannot curb our demand for petrochemical energy sources, in great quantity. It is a choice thing, as pointed out. Therefore we need to do second-best, and that appears to involve more secure and diverse petrochemical sources, such as the Canadian tar sands pipeline.

Actually it is "third best" in my opinion. We could have already solved this energy problem, if we had taken on the task of building the Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit project, well outlined back in 1989, plenty of time to have developed it and have it operational used to lift construction materials to be building abundant Solar Power Satellites beaming totally clean electrical energy to America, in quantities enough to start shutting down coal fired power plants by now. (Sure, call me a crank, a loner, lots of bad names, reaffirming the rightness of business as usual. I just mention it here, as it rightfully belongs in the energy picture. Period.) And sure, wind turbines ans solar panels on the ground, are pitifully weak compared to the enormous energy demands of the industrialized world. This KESTS to GEO transportation system and the SPS energy sources could have well solved the problem, but it was not in the hands of the wealthy and powerful energy producers, so it was suppressed and had no chance to be done by now. And sure, they will eventually take the project over as if totally their own, when petrochemical sources peter out. Is lots easier to do that control game. But lots of suffering for humanity has to happen first, in the profit-controlled scenario.

Anyway my tirade about "KESTS to GEO" over, back to the current apparent scenario. We need petrochemical energy for our cars and trucks. They do not go very well without gas in them. Compromises need to be made. We chose not to go the KESTS to GEO solar satellite power route. We have done foot-dragging re the wind turbine and solar panel route for even a significant share of the energy needs. We are stuck with petrochemicals as our energy primary source, for a long time.

A pipeline from Canada's tar sands to our Texas refineries, seems a more secure supply route for a significant supply of our petrochemicals to move our cars around back and forth to our jobs and back home.

Beside the offshore oil sources, particularly in the middle-eastern areas, we are dependent on lots of oil pumped from ocean oil rig sites. In a big conflict, do you realize what happens if the other nation(s) use subs to chop those oil lines up from the ocean bottom, with no chance to shut their blowout protection system? The environmental disaster would be incredible, but right now since we are talking about fuel for our cars nevermind the environmental consequences, think of all that oil not getting to our refineries so that soccer-mom can drive little Suzie to school in the huge SUV?

Part of long term survival involves shifting from hand-to-mouth little-picture attention, to wider view big-picture attention in which our many little pictures all are all laced together.

America needs to have her greatness not so much on her ability to march off to war to save the world, but to save the world in other ways. Like, adequate clean energy to power our lives. Or if we continue to be unwilling to be part of the solution, at least not be so much a part of the problem.

Diversity in energy sources is likely to confer resiliency

Just as biodiversity of life forms makes for more resilient biological systems, diversity in energy sources is also likely to confer resiliency to our way of life. And our civilization is dependent on abundant and immediately present energy to do the enormous work of our busy life which is quite impossible for our human muscles. As anyone intimately knows when he has had to push his two thousand pound car even a few feet, not to mention the tens of thousands more of those feet the car must move merely to commute to work that day. We are very dependent on enormous amounts of supplemental energy from external sources, in our daily life.

Electrical energy is often what is considered when we talk of "energy" in daily life, probably because it is so easily transported along wires from its generating source to the point of use, such as to a room's light fixture or a microwave oven cooking dinner at home. So diversity of energy supply seems particularly applicable to electrical energy. This applies most easily to electrical utilities; having some sources of wind power and solar electric power fed into grids mostly energized by coal fired plants and nuclear powerplants, might only provide ten percent of the overall energy from coal and nuclear, but when coal and nuclear quit, that ten percent from wind and solar could become very important to life. Hydroelectric electrical energy is also an important but relatively small contribution to the overall enormous electrical energy we consume each day.

Energy, of course, comes in many forms, some more applicable to specific uses than others. Hydrocarbon combustion is essential for making cement for concrete. Gasoline has been the energy source of convenience for cars for much of a century, because of its portability and usefulness in internal combustion engines. On site windmills were important for lifting water from wells out far from other energy sources, even before electrical or gasoline driven motors were available to lift the water for farm use.

The article "Preparing for climate change 'will boost economy" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12384389 points out that climate change (regardless of whether mankind's enormous CO2 input to the atmosphere is the primary cause of it, or merely is nature capriciously freaking out nowadays) will increasingly bring interruptions to energy supplies, and being ready to deal with that is prudent. Energy source diversity ought to be a factor in public electric utilities, instead of solely depending on whatever is the lowest cost, making it the only energy source.

It also seems prudent then to include local energy supplies at the user level, such as at each home. A rooftop solar panel that provides say 100 watts in daytime, along with electrical energy storage such as a battery, could provide lighting, computer use, a few minutes microwave cooking, and some small hand tool use during extended main power outages; rooftop water heating could similarly reduce routine energy consumption and provide hot water during outages of power mains. Given suitable places outdoors to use them, solar ovens can cook meals, bake cakes and heat coffee water, when there is no other power source other than a clear sky's sunshine in the daytime. If each home had these prepared, and occasionally in use just for practice and a bit of added energy efficiency, resiliency in basic lifestyle survival could be enhanced greatly.

Mean and tough vs responsible aware solving problems

Looking at a Sierra Club email I just received, asking people to sign a petition to stop the creation of an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to Houston Texas, it points out that we ought to be creating jobs for clean energy here in the US and not importing either that oil nor the billions we send each year to the oil rich nations in the middle east.

It is a hard decision for me. A better solution seems to me is to get the nation into a major mode of focusing on efficient economical transportation for America - and that is not at all limited to making electric cars and high speed trains - and focus on wind and solar energy gathering and efficient appropriate uses (eg solar cooking ovens are quite efficient and usable much of the time but not always, and could be built into houses), creating productive jobs for Americans at home. (Of course my own solutions to the energy, toxic wastes, and even living space construction, via the KESTS to GEO transportation structure concept, would have already prevented many of the problems; but powerful conventional business and politics intent on staying in total control are still heavily suppressing all that, so it is not an option - I did my best to help, by providing the conceptual keys to solutions others missed.)

The realities of the situation I see, looking around this desert town is not much different from other places in the nation I have seen: the neighbors and townspeople will not accept not having their big muscle SUVs and trucks in which to go get groceries in style; and moving those tons of metal around that way costs lots of petrochemical energy, mostly the money gets sent to the countries in the middle east, where they build fantastic cities with the money while we just burn the corresponding petrochemical fuel up here and nothing left to show for it but more CO2 to breathe. Is that very wise, or even wise in the slightest?

In other words, we apparently are simply not smart enough to figure it all out and deal with it responsibly. We are tough and a bit mean; that is about it. What can I say.

We wait for giant wealthy corporations to give us jobs doing whatever those folks think will make them the most profit, nevermind what we as a nation need for prosperity. This is flag-waving Free Enterprise, apparently. Sure, we don't want a dictator telling us what to do. That is just not at all the only other option of how to get things done. Are we not educated, have brains?

Thus we are stuck with the need to focus on getting oil from Canada neighbors tar sands ripping up the environment there, or else continuing to send all those billions to the mid east so we can continue to strut around in our gargantuan wheels. And to power our industry and much of our electricity needs too.

I wonder if there is a way to use our marvelous communication systems of TV and internet to make people aware of what their individual actions are causing to the big picture, and offer options for moving towards far more wholesome solutions and ultimately a better lifestyle. Most likely those whose success is assumed to be derived from being mean and tough - and the women who worship those mean & tough guys with their big wheels - would ignore such options, but among them might be a few who are of a more responsible nature. Would have to make it interesting, and in places even involve competitive games to keep their interest, perhaps. Although I would prefer it all be done with full comprehension of all involved - that means all Americans, homeless and billionaires alike - with the common intent to solve the problems for all of us, that the standard of living would rise in the country; but in my 70+ years I have learned a bit of the reality of "human nature" so I realize that is mere fantasy.

But civilization has not advanced and solved its problems and prospered by not going for solutions, intermittent that that progress is.

I wonder just how bad the situation will get before it finally gets people's attention, and the women to realize that their mean & tough men are not getting life fixed at all. Will it be here like in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Checknia? Will they have to fling around all those nukes and warcraft in frenzy, making one heck of a mess, before we get around to thinking of getting responsible?

Well, maybe another cup of coffee will help my viewpoint later. I have a nice new roof over my head keeping the rain off, thankfully.

"Energy Flows Where Attention Goes" applies to the news too

There is a saying that has been around for quite awhile, attesting to its validity, despite its unconventionality: "Energy Flows Where Attention Goes." "Energy" meaning here as "that which makes things happen."

One of the major things that gets my attention is the online news, of a half dozen news websites. Similar to the paper newspapers of my past, the headlines and front-page articles have titles that grab attention.

If I catagorize those headlines and their articles, as to "constructive" vs "tragedy" then the vast majority of them fall into the category of "tragedy."

Thus the logical conclusion that, due to our mistakes, this kind of energy flows to make more tragedy, due to the choices to focus attention on those kind of events instead of constructive types of events.

We could instead similarly focus our attention on the news items about constructive, healing, productive events.

Would this help turn our nation's struggles around, becoming a constructive healthy productive nation again?

Is it even possible to focus our news-attention on this type of items. Are we inbuilt programmed to focus on our internal minute-by-minute affairs, except when outer events are in crisis, to which our attention is drawn lest we be drawn into the crisis or its results? When no crisis, then back to normal busyness, feeding our face, combing hair, etc. Which does not sell newspapers nor get ads to be put in the news to pay for the news gathering and distribution. Is this a Catch-22 kind of thing? It has been with us for a very long time.