energy players

Fareed Zakaria continues his series of interviews. Here's one with Chris Somerville. Zakaria asks:

Are biofuels going to get us out of the energy trap?

What trap, Mr. Zakaria doesn't explain.

Earlier Mr. Zakaria interviewed Lovins on efficiency, Raymond on oil and Hefner on natural gas. Of Raymond, Zakaria asks:

Do you think the world is running out of oil?

Raymond's answer:

As the study says, the world is not running out of the resource. The problem we're getting into is the question, can we develop it in a timely way, given the constraints we have on the political front, the economic front, and just the time it takes to get things done?

Mr. Zakaria in an earlier piece wonders:

I don't know if the world is running out of oil, a subject of heated debate.

See my earlier posts on Raymond and on Lovins, here and here.

on Discovery Channel

aired this weekend: Addicted To Oil: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting
Mr. Friedman points out that cars use up most of the oil we import. He emphasizes foreign oil dependency as the immediate problem, as it fosters tyrannies, especially those who would do us harm.

He interviews Amory Lovins, who argues that further efficiencies can help us wean ourselves from dependency, while ethanol from switchgrass can do the rest. Another person argues that wind energy can provide us with one-half of the electricity we use. These arguments are highly questionable.

See also Thomas Friedman on Charlie Rose and the Year earlier discussion with Thomas Friedman on subject


coming up July 16 on the Discovery Channel:
Global Warming: What You Need to Know, with Tom Brokaw

Report: U.S. Coupon Wealth Largely Untapped

The Onion reports that the Department of Consumer Savings says that, in the midst of inflation, Americans are missing out on big money-saving opportunities.

Amory Lovins would be proud.

Tying the pieces together

Earlier I criticized the Amory Lovins' article in the September's issue of Scientific American for not adequately addressing the depletion of fossil fuels. The next-to-last article in the printed version more directly addresses my concerns; it's entitled Economics in a Full World.

Society can no longer safely pretend the global economy operates within a limitless ecosystem.

the alternative to a sustainable economy, an ever-growing economy, is a biophysical impossibility.

the disaster will be felt eventually. Avoiding this calamity will be difficult. The sooner we start, the better.

The article points to the Laws of Thermodynamics as inviolable. Interestingly Lee Raymond, head of ExxonMobil , as noted earlier, refers to those same Laws when comparing oil to other sources of energy.

In a sidebar to the article, the author, Herman Daly, lays out 3 precepts that need to be followed for a sustainable future. We violate these precepts (call it a protocol, if you wish) at our peril.

Another blogger, in his Economist's View, quotes from the Sciam article: Measuring Human Well-Being.