While the costs will be much higher, I don't see the supply of liquid petroleum fuels running out on us any time soon. Keep in mind that peak oil means that half of the oil is gone. It was the easy half, but there remains a lot of ever-more-expensive-to-extract stuff left. As the price rises, it will be used increasingly for essential uses -- such as developing and maintaining an alternative energy infrastructure.
Joel At 07:08 PM 10/8/07 -0400, you wrote: > >On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:54:15 -0400 "George Adams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >writes: >There is also a more long term kind of question I have never heard raised >but on a list like this it ought to be asked: what kinds of metals, and >inorganic materials go into these PV systems? In particular, when they >have >reached replacement or obsolescence age, will they be a disposal or >recycling burden such as our old computers and TV sets have become? Are >some PV technologies inherently more environmentally sound than others? >I >would assume disposal costs should be part of total life cycle and a >requisite part of the thinking if we really are all about sustainability. > > >In my view George is right - few people attempt the full energy >accounting to find out if so-called renewables like solar, or any other >'green' technology is really sustainable without oil. A most important >question in addition to the ones George asked is: How much oil does it >take to build and maintain an alternative energy source? > >I think a true energy account will reveal that key processes of >constructing, delivering and maintaining alternative energy like wind or >solar on a scale that would replace much of current fossil fuel >consumption, require oil itself in large quantities. As an example, let's >take massive, centralized, grid-feeding wind electric, of which, on a >recent trip across Spain I saw many arrays across the landscape, each >bigger than the array we have in New York in Madison County. Unlike >electrical energy from wind, solar, or any other source, oil energy has >special properties (liquidity, high energy density) that are necessary to >do the heavy work of earth moving to prepare the sites, mine the raw >materials to make the big wind machines, forge the metal, make the >plastic parts, transport these monsters to the sites, and erect them, and >then do all that all over again to replace them when they wear out. > >We are so used to an oil-dependent industrial infrastructure that it >become invisible and left out of our accounting when we consider what >technologies might facilitate our inevitable conversion to a non-oil >society. > >Small, local energy alternatives for on-site energy use that use simple >technologies and materials and supply minimal needs, not the gross >overconsumption the industrial age is used to, might fare better by >comparison, in a total life cycle assessment of sustainability. > >Karl North >Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA > www.geocities.com/northsheep/ >"Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard >"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying >_______________________________________________ >RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: >[email protected] >http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins >free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
