________________________________
From: John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:38 PM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> The biggest energy source we have available in fact is energy efficiency.
>
>>I am certainly in favor of energy efficiency, only a fool would not be, but
>>it is not the solution to our energy problem because when a commodity like
>>energy becomes cheaper people simply use more of it. If somebody invented a
>>gadget that doubled the fuel efficiency of jetliners it would not cut in half
>>the amount of fuel that airlines use because people would fly more often and
>>airplanes would hold fewer people due to their larger more comfortable seats.
That is a failure of the markets. If energy efficiency marginally lowers the
rate of consumption of fossil (and other) energy resources thus increasing the
available current supply -- because we almost exclusively rely on these short
term market price signals to determine consumption/production -- demand will
tend to rise. This is well known.... paradoxically in effect punishing virtue
and rewarding a self centered I-don't-give-a-damn mentality of consuming every
resource as fast as possible.
Over the long term this will lead to our species discovering what the meaning
of going over a cliff really is in the hardest of hard terms -- up to and
including species extinction.
Energy and all other non-renewable and critical resources should be taxed and
taxed heavily -- IMO. This is the other side of encouraging conserving these
critical and non-renewable resources. Take phosphate for example -- the world
is running out of the economically recoverable sources -- mined principally
from just three sources: in Morocco (land seized by Morocco actually) ,
Florida, and if I recall somewhere in Russia. There is no incentive to conserve
this vital resource and global supplies seem to have already peaked.
Phosphorous is a critical ingredient of fertilizers.
Relying on market signals alone to determine how -- and at what pace -- finite
resources are consumed is a recipe for disaster. The market will encourage us
to burn through these resources as fast as we can, which is precisely what our
species is doing.
Not the wisest course of action though, and a clear example of how the market
mechanism is sending our civilization over the cliff.
>>By the way, have you noticed that politicians are always urging us to
>>conserve energy but they don't seem to find it necessary to command us to
>>conserve angular momentum?
Is there any real point here; or is this a political rant freebie?
Chris
John K Clark
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