Alviston Blog

The Detroit auto show was a couple weeks ago and Toyota, once again, showed why they are leading when it comes to high-mileage, low-emission vehicles.

Toyota showed off the FT-CH (the CH stands for compact hybrid), which gets better mileage than the Prius. The FT-CH is smaller and geared more towards younger people. In addition, it will be more affordable than the Prius.

However, the thing that really impressed me was what Jim Lentz of Toyota Motor Sales said at the show. Lentz said that within 20 to 30 years, we will reach peak oil and enter a period where demand for oil will be higher than supply. This means the price of oil will skyrocket. Lentz says we need to “re-invent” the automobile to one that “eliminates or greatly reduces the use of conventional petroleum fuels.”

People have different opinions about when we will reach “peak oil.” Some say we already have. Nevertheless, the critical issue here is that big car companies see the change coming and are now pouring money into hybrid and electric technologies. They want to be prepared when the price of gas rockets up again, because this time, it may not come back down.

Actually, we cannot wait for oil prices to force us to start using these newer, cleaner technologies. That is putting economics in front of the environment, and that is something that simply cannot continue, as we now know.

–Mark Alvis

Jacques Cousteau was my hero. I think that his show, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” changed my life. I learned how to scuba dive the year before I went to college and dove in the Monterey and Carmel area many times. The diversity of life below the surface was incredible. It was as if I had entered a different world, where different laws applied.

To scuba dive, something called a buoyancy compensator is worn. By adjusting the buoyancy, a “neutral” point of neither sinking nor rising can be achieved. It feels like flying. Incredible. You can fly through forests of kelp and see animals flying right beside you.

Even though I have spent a lot of time in the ocean, I did not know much about it until recently. I knew little about the critters, because some of them were very tasty. As I have become more interested in how the different ecosystems of the Earth work, I have learned more about how closely we are tied to the oceans. I have always said, “Everything is connected,” but I never realized the complexity of the connections. For instance, I did not know how much oxygen is produced by the ocean or how much CO2 is absorbed by the ocean.

We have always been aware that the weather affects us, but it is a relatively new concept that it also works the other way. Nature operates in “closed-loop” systems. Nothing is wasted; it just cycles. We need to learn from nature and calibrate our energy use and resource use with it. The oceans can absorb CO2, but if it absorbs too much it becomes acidic and this prevents certain types of animals from forming their shells. Some of these small animals form the basis of the ocean’s food chain, and without them, everything up the chain will be affected.

Even though the ocean may seem like a different world, it is not. It is intimately connected to the atmosphere, the land, and to us. Even though we understand a little about how the ocean works, it is still hard to imagine the importance of the ocean. Unfortunately, most of us do not really know much about the ocean at all, or how critical it is to our very existence. Without this understanding, it is very difficult to motivate people to change.

I bet that if everyone got a chance to fly in the ocean and feel the life surrounding you, we would do everything we had to to save it.

–Mark Alvis

I remember learning about the “population explosion” in elementary school, which was a while ago now. People were worried about how we were going to produce enough food if the population continued to grow at the rate it was.

In talking about climate change, most experts focus on the burning of fossil fuels as the main cause of excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Others, like Dr. Joseph Bookstein from UCSD, say we are missing a very simple point. He says that all the technological fixes are fine, but they will not be enough if we do not do anything to control the exploding population.

Dr. Bookstein says that we will need to get the fertility rate down worldwide, to the point that will cause the global population to decline instead of increase. We are at 6.7 billion now, and predicted to hit 9 billion around 2050. Dr. Bookstein says to curb global warming, we need to get the population down to 4.5 billion by 2050 in addition to all the tech fixes, such as solar and wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric, and other renewables. Moreover, we need to eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source altogether. Otherwise, we will just continue to get warmer as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

While population control may not be a popular idea, it seems to fit into the “sustainable” model. Many countries have taken steps to control population, by making contraceptives more available, and empowering women to make the choice to have fewer children. Some countries have fertility rates less than one.

As we have said many times, everything is connected, and we need to deal with the hard questions if we are going to solve this. We have realized for many years that climate change was coming, and yet we have gone on putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We have known for a long time that there was a limit to how many people the Earth can sustain. By using the stored carbon in fossil fuels, we have been able to produce enough food. Although we knew there was a limit, we may not have known what would eventually cause the limit. Now we do.

All the countries in the world know about climate change. For twenty years, the world has held conferences to try to reach an agreement as to what to do. As of yet, world leaders have not seen the seriousness of the situation. They are fixated only on money, referring to the negative effect renewable energy usage and population declines would have on the economy. However, it seems obvious that if civilization collapses, the economy will not matter all that much.

–Mark Alvis

Most of the arguments about how to solve the problem of global warming occur because of the misconception that we cannot grow our economies without carbon emissions. In other words, we have to burn fossil fuels. Developed countries, like ours, are afraid of losing money if they reduce their use of fossil fuels. Developing countries say they cannot develop without this cheap source of energy. However, once you get past the “payback” time, solar and wind are not only cheap, they are free.

Therefore, fossil fuels are not our only source of energy and we do not need them to keep our economies going. Nobody actually needs CO2 emissions.

If we look back in recent history, we see that only a few years ago we did not have cars, or planes. We did not use petroleum much at all. We worked with “current sunlight.”

At some point, we decided to use a different type of energy, oil, which is like “fermented sunlight,” you can say. However, this was just a decision that we made. It was not the only possibility then and it is not now. We simply decided to develop our economies based on oil, gas, and coal, and have continued to do so. It made sense when we started. There were a lot fewer people, so there were fewer cars, trucks, planes, buildings, etc. Besides, we did not know what the result of burning so much oil, coal, and gas would do. Now we do. The buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing us to heat up. The more we put in, the faster we heat. Therefore, we need to stop.

At any given point since the beginning of the industrial age, we could have said, “Let’s get serious about cleaning all this up.” In fact, we have designed and built many ways to make power without burning fossil fuels. We have had them for a long time. However, for some reason, we did not develop our economies around them. So it turns out, this really is not an emissions problem; it is a development problem.

What we need to do is quickly transition to an economy that is developed around sustainability. Since the economy revolves around energy, this means making clean energy, which we can do with renewables. The first and cheapest tool we can use is energy efficiency and conservation. We can all do this simply by using less, and by having respect for the planet and compassion for those who will come after us.

Despite what some people think, the United States is an “energy rich” nation, with enough potential wind energy to power the entire country, plus, enough potential solar energy to power the world. We just need to develop them. Where will the money come from? How about from the subsidies that all the oil and coal companies get? That would seem to make sense.

Renewable energy, including solar electric, solar thermal, wind, geo-thermal, hydroelectric and others, together with energy efficiency, can be used to deal with many of the tremendous problems the world faces today. Renewable resources are readily available worldwide, there is lots of sun and wind, and no one is fighting over them.

If the U.S. leads the way in this, new, clean, energy economy, it will create many new jobs, solving the current economic crisis. It will eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and it will cut our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80%. Can we do it? Yes, but it will be the people, not the politicians and corporations, that will make it happen.

–Mark Alvis

I was surprised to find out that the city of Los Angeles still gets 40% of its power from coal plants in Arizona and Utah since California prides itself on leading the way when it comes to environmental issues. I had heard a long time ago that most of the power generated in California was natural gas. I had not thought about the power that we import. Portland also gets a large percentage of its power, around 44%, from coal. 

However, both cities are working hard to dump coal entirely. L.A.’s mayor has pledged to increase renewables from 8% to 20% by 2020. Portland plans to phase out coal all together. Energy efficiency measures, such as switching all the street lights to LEDs and making uses of alternative power generation like wind and solar, are already helping to make these goals a reality.

Seattle, blessed with huge water resources, gets most of its power from hydro. San Francisco uses a mix of natural gas, hydro, and nuclear. San Diego uses mostly natural gas.

While these improvements are certainly welcomed, the ultimate goal is not to just get rid of coal, but to convert entirely over to renewables, to decarbonize the grid altogether, by using wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and most importantly, energy efficiency and conservation.

What we do not want to do is simply add the renewables on top of the existing ways of making power. We need to replace fossil fuel generation with renewables, as quickly as possible.

-Mark Alvis