Self-sustaining energy and economic policy

[notjenschiz]

Originally published at Jason's Fresh Produce. You can comment here or there.

I have a fairly big concept floating around in my head and I’m struggling to bound it and solidify it. Perhaps writing this (and getting comments from all of you) will help.

When we were a hunter/gatherer society, the output of our efforts had a 1:1 relationship with our

Comments

[ian_tiberius]

We (probably) won’t have to fight over sunlight reserves with other countries.

One sense in which a solar economy is a limited resource is that you need somewhere to put those solar panels. Does that involve going to war with other countries for land? Probably not, but it does raise issues.

Some people have estimated that we could produce all the electricity needed for the whole U.S. with 100 square miles of prime real estate (sun-wise) packed with solar thermal plants. Those estimates come from that industry and are probably overly optimistic, but even so, they don't include replacing other energy draws (like, say, electric cars after a conversion from gasoline) and they represent current power consumption. Our economy is only going to get more energy-intensive over time; the population continues to grow, and so does our individual power use - computers draw more than they used to, we have more electronic gizmos in general, etc. Some day we might have a real problem trying to figure out where to put all the solar plants

alternative to the alternative

[notjenschiz]

yeah, I just use "solar" as my shorthand for "alternative energy," since I think it's one of the best current options.

I am a big fan of nuclear, although the NIMBY factor is hard to overcome.

I think corn ethanol is crap, but biofuels might have a place, insofar as we're always going to have lots of plant matter waste, so we might as well do something with it (as long as we're not growing food specifically for the purpose of fuel-izing it, which is dumb).

Re: alternative to the alternative

[ian_tiberius]

Corn ethanol's definitely crap. (I now officially have it on record from an Iowan!) Cellulosic ethanol (from stalks and husks and such) probably has some future, but I don't see it being a sizable percentage of our energy economy. (You can also grow cellulosic ethanol sources explicitly - like switchgrass - but there's got to be more lucrative cash crops that could be grown on the same land.)

Still, energy independence is likely to involve a lot of solar, a lot of nuclear, and then lots of small sources - wind, cellulosic ethanol, tides, geothermal - and I'm not going to knock anything that gets us closer to the day when we can say "Oil? Sorry, we don't need any."

[swmartin]

You might want to look at recent research on the transition between hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies. A lot of historians and anthropologists are of the opinion that early agricultural food production, at least until modern industrial times, required MORE labor input per calorie than hunting and gathering. (Agriculture also probably reduced general health levels due to shifts in diet and increases in disease

strainer

[notjenschiz]

there's a reason they call oil and coal "non-renewable" resources. With the exception of finding more, organic material doesn't become fuel without thousands (tens of thousands?) of years of pressure and heat under ground.

I strongly question the idea that agriculture was more energy intensive than hunting/gathering. Why would they do it if that were the case? I suspect there are some gray accounting issues here. Like, how do you account for the "cost" of not having a permanent home?

In addition, there are all the associated costs of burning fossil fuels, namely the impact on the environment which, by any accounting, will ultimately be tremendous.

And my overall point still stands, I believe: when fossil fuels run out, the economy collapses. Solar power doesn't run out. Nuclear power does run out, but fairly predictably, and if utilized correctly, is more than adequate for our needs.

Re: strainer

[swmartin]

It's true that the numbers are controversial, but most agree that even if agriculture brought labor savings it wasn't much. Instead it brought other advantages: more predictable food supplies and overall greater food supply per acre. A population that can sustain a large population in a small area will beat out a small population spread over a large area, even if they're less healthy and have to invest extra labor into food production.

And hey, solar power is a finite resource! There's only so much available. It's just renewed more rapidly than we can, with current or even forseeable technology, conceivably use it.

Re: strainer

[doctorray]

Have you read "Guns, Germs, and Steel"? I think Diamond really lays out effectively the case for labor-intensive agriculture