Fuel For Thought

Depletion of natural resources. Climate change. Species extinction. Overpriced energy. Pollution. These problems, among others, are all evidence that our current way of living is severely unsustainable. We rely so heavily on exhaustible resources to support our world economy that we are inflicting grave damage upon our planet. Something serious has to be done.

So what’s causing the problem? A significant and rarely discussed factor lies in the way we operate our world economy; specifically, the existence of a phenomenon known as forced scarcity. An explanation: simple free market principles denote that the greater the supply of a given product or service, the lower the price. Take supermarket goods as an example: a product like flour is relatively cheap, because it can be grown in vast quantities and at little cost. However, a product like avocados costs more, because the crop is far less abundant and much more labour-intensive to farm. In short: where profit is the motive, abundance is not desirable, so scarcity is forced wherever possible.

We can see this happening in the energy industry today.  If you think about it, energy is all around us: from the wind that rustles through the trees, to the sun shining overhead and the waves lapping at our shores. Indeed, it’s actually the most abundant resource this planet has to offer. So why do we still use fossil fuels – a distinctly finite resource that requires millions of years to replenish – when there seem to be so many alternatives? The answer is profit; and seeing as the industry is driven by profit, the environment is treated as a mere externality.

An example of these market forces in play can be seen with the electric car. The recent surge in popularity of hybrid and fully electric cars might have you thinking that this is a developing technology. In reality, electric cars were built and used as far back as the nineteenth century and were actually extremely popular. Alas, these early vehicles were slow and could not travel far, so they were soon replaced by petrol powered vehicles. This being said, the idea was not forgotten, and in the late 1990s General Motors (GM) launched the EV1 – a fully electric car with practically the same range and speed as models being released today.

What with rising fuel prices, this car started to become quite popular in the USA… but then the manufacturers unexpectedly recalled and crushed every single one. Why? Well, GM’s publically stated reason was ‘lack of demand’, but the 10 yearlong embargo that the whole automobile industry subsequently put on the production of electric vehicles seem so severe a measure to suggest that some other forces might have been at play. Suffice it to say that a car that doesn’t require petrol is not particularly profitable.

The problem goes deeper. It goes without saying that electric cars are far more energy efficient than their petrol powered cousins; however, they still require charging at a mains supply – a source of energy supplied in most countries predominantly by expensive, polluting and exhaustible fossil fuels. Indeed - from planes and ships to lorries and trains - our entire infrastructure is powered in the same way. Add to this the fact that more and more manufactured products are built with plastic, which is also derived from oil, and it doesn’t take a push to see just how addicted we are to these substances. Sadly, like with any other addiction, the consequences will be debilitating and potentially fatal.

The main barrier to progress in the fields of energy and infrastructure is investment. Incredible technology exists today to vastly improve our energy efficiency, quality of life and success as a species altogether.  Like with the electric car, the ideas have either been around for years, or simply require the time and capital to be properly developed. There’s just one problem – where’s all the money going to come from?

That’s a good question. As discussed above, we can’t look to multinational corporations, because profit is their overarching motive and an abundance of energy would create astonishingly low prices.  We can’t look to governments, because most of the world’s countries are in billions of dollars of debt, so there simply isn’t enough readily available capital.

So what can we do? Well, as long as we allow fossil fuels to dominate the energy industry, there really isn’t much. Small inroads are being made both in the UK and abroad to promote clean energy – but it simply isn’t enough. The only option is for the governments of the world to agree together to implement a programme that will phase out the use of non-renewable energy forever. This might be entirely counter-intuitive to our global system of a profit-driven economy, but it’s fast becoming our only hope for truly positive progress.

Below are some examples of what we could achieve, were we not so stunted by this exhausting dependence on fossil fuels and careless strife for profit.

Solar Roadways

This multi-faceted renewable energy solution is the brainchild of partners Julie and Scott Brusaw. The idea is simple, but ingenious: replace the entire road system with computer controlled solar panels. The main benefit of this would be the huge exposure created for collecting solar energy, but many other positives come in to play as well; for example, inbuilt Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) powered by the panels would eliminate the need for street lights, road markings and most road signs. These would be controlled by prefabricated micro-processing chips, allowing for further benefits, such as pinpoint tracking, inbuilt intelligent motion sensors that alter the road’s LED display when an upcoming obstacle is detected and thermo sensors that turn on prefabricated heating elements to melt away surface snow and ice.

All this technology would be encased in a material specifically designed to withstand the huge loads. It would also be possible to house other infrastructure in this casing, such as communication and electrical lines, removing the need for overhead pylons. The project has been taken very seriously: thus far, the US Federal government has awarded the company $850,000 for research. Unfortunately, this is but a tiny dent into the investment required for true progress.

Maglev Trains

Instead of wheels and tracks, these trains use magnetic levitation to propel the vehicle forwards, achieving super-fast speeds unrivalled by conventional methods. This is not science fiction: the Japanese ‘Bullet Train’ uses maglev technology today, and the science behind it is actually very simple. Ever played around with a couple of fridge magnets, sticking them together and pushing them apart, as if by magic? Well, that’s basically it. Firstly, the undercarriage of the train and the guidelines of the track are electromagnetically charged to the same pole, resulting in repulsion. This means that the two do not actually touch - instead, the carriage levitates a couple of inches above the rails. Secondly, propulsion is then achieved by charging a secondary rail just ahead of the carriage to the opposite pole, hence attracting the train forwards.

Because this system is frictionless and requires no moving parts, reliability and energy efficiency are high; indeed, the only factor that increases energy consumption is air resistance as the train moves forward. This hurdle can also be overcome: patents exist today for a system of running maglev trains through an evacuated tube, hence eliminating the slow-down factor of air resistance, enabling phenomenal energy efficiency, and speeds of over 1000mph. This kind of transport would reduce the journey time between London and Tokyo to under four hours.

Geothermal Energy

Using a process known as ‘heat mining’, this form of energy is derived from the natural heat present in the earth’s outer core. Beneath the crust, natural water deposits are heated by the planet’s molten core to temperatures in excess of 200^oC. A shaft is drilled down hundreds of meters to where these deposits exist, and the water is pumped to the surface, where it converts into steam and is used to power turbines to produce energy. Finally, the steam is condensed again into water, and returned to the earth’s core to be heated once more and eventually reused. Utilising the right technology, this process emits but a fraction of the emissions created by burning fossil fuels, and it’s also practically inexhaustible.

A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 concluded that around 2000 zettajoules (two trillion quadrillion joules) of energy is easily available using this process of heat mining. To put this into perspective, the whole world uses just one half of a zeta joule per year, meaning that geothermal energy alone could satisfy the world’s current requirements for approximately 4000 years. Regrettably, a meagre 20 countries around the world currently utilise geothermal energy, of which Iceland is the current champion, deriving 30% of their national energy production from this source. 

Cistern bags won't save us from the system.

I spent Friday the 11^th of March saving the world. Or rather, I didn’t, I stood for 10 hours in a local Sainsbury’s giving away free “energy saving kits”, wearing a cyan tabard that made me look as if I’d just escaped from Broadmoor via a freak printing accident, resulting in me having “I GIVE FREE THINGS” emblazoned across my chest. Most of the day was spent gazing into the horrendous pit of mundanity that consumes most peoples’ working lives in this world, interrupted occasionally with the great pleasure of guiding old people through the gargantuan task of filling in their name on a bit of paper, like some sort of morbid ferryman guiding a cup of poisoned apple juice to the lips of a Dignitasee. Oh, and also explaining to people that, no matter how much my foiled wrapped energy kits looked like microwaveable paninis, that I didn’t work for Sainsbury’s so I couldn’t direct them as to where to indulge their delusionally aspirational gambling habits, nor how to operate the change machine so they could convert their bingo money into notes. One man had over £300 worth of coins! I was very tempted to ask him whether he’d robbed a penny arcade, but he looked quite nervous, so he probably had and I’m guessing he wouldn’t have appreciated it if I’d brought it up.

Anyway, it was such an under-stimulating experience that I felt less like a human by the end of it and more like pond life. The most interesting thing I could come up with to do was a game I called “spot the weirdest shopping”. The winner was a Chinese man who bought 10 whole packs of Sainsbury’s basic tissues and a pot of honey – weird. Anyway, the product I was pedalling was a bag which one can fill with water and put in one’s toilet cistern to save about a litre of water per flush and a plastic adapter that fits between the shower hose and head that restricts water flow, achieving a similar saving. I proudly boasted to the public how utilising both gadgets could save them up to £100 per annum on utility bills. This, of course, was minus the addendum that they also had to follow an “energy saving guide” provided in the free pack if they were to achieve anything like this kind of saving.

The energy guide, although containing some genuinely worthwhile suggestions like “wash at 30^o” and “don’t use a tumble drier”, was mostly filled with such obvious advice that Captain Obvious could not achieve such levels of obviousness, even with his extra special super power, that being: The Blinding Strike Of The Obvious. Such advice included: “don’t leave the TV on 24 hours a day”, “don’t take hour long showers” and “don’t heat your living room to similar levels of warmth as experienced in the desert”. This made me wonder how stupid the government really think the British public is. Then I remembered that this is the age of brainstorms, think tanks and grass roots (whatever the hell those are), and that these sorts of operations have millions of the tax payers’ pounds thrown at them so that “extensive market research” can be conducted in order to “optimise the effectiveness of the campaign”. Well guess what, the fruits of their labour must have concluded that Britons are totally thick. Scarily thick.

Peak oil is something that we really need to be worried about. Our entire species has become addicted to the stuff and we depend on it probably even more than a heroin user depends on getting their next hit. You may be familiar with what happens to a human body when one tries to rehab from heroin addiction: it usually involves a reaction so violently unpleasant that people need to be locked away in their rooms and sometimes even strapped down to their beds. This is basically what is going to happen to the world - and I’m not even being slightly melodramatic or sensationalist. Oil powers almost everything we call “modern life”. It gives us electricity, powers our cars and trains and planes, heats our houses, packages our food and drink, builds our cities and it’s even responsible for The X Factor. And Justin Beiber. 50 years ago it seemed so abundant that we developed a culture of treating it like an infinite resource and, although we were all taught in school how it definitely IS NOT, the human race still treats it as if it is.

You’d think that with all the smart people in White Hall and Washington that someone would have noticed by now and started enacting changes to wean us off our addiction. Well, they’ve encouraged us to recycle and use energy saving light bulbs and they’ve even started handing out free energy saving kits.  The problem is that probably more energy was used to make the plasticy bits of the kit than the contents could ever help to save – totally useless. This goes for all the other half-arsed energy saving initiatives that our government employs. Basically, it’s the equivalent of attempting to treat a malignant stomach cancer with a glass of warm Ribena. There are a number of very complicated reasons as to why nothing serious has been done, but it all boils down to a systematic failure of what 95% of the brainwashed people of this earth believe to be the corner stone of modern humanity: the free market. Extreme right-wing capitalism ensures that those with the most money rule. Who has the most money? Well, it’s obviously the oil companies, seeing as they are the dealers of this drug we are all so fantastically fond of. Money is power and the result of this is that the governments of the world are mere puppets on the strings of their oily masters. And there’s no way they’re going to give up all that power so easily – even if it means the end of the world.

Meanwhile, here in Britain, we continue to drive around in our 4x4s and indulge in exotic fruits that we don’t even need that have used 100 times more energy to get to us from Guava than the energy they will actually provide our bodies and, basically, we don’t give a shit. The problem we’re seeing now is that the dealer is running out of stock and so he’s starting to massively raise his prices. When petrol is suddenly £5 per litre and or utilities bills double and all the shops have to raise their prices to cope with extra energy costs and no one’s wages are getting any higher because all our employers are dealing with the same problems... then we will see the biggest shift in standard of living ever experienced in human history. Maybe when most of us can’t even afford to feed or clothe ourselves; maybe then we’ll start doing something about peak oil.

Watch this film for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqy6717el78&feature=player_embedded