Change the target.

[JohnB]

This post was inspired by comments at Collide-a-scape.

 

I think that it is now obvious to all but the hopelessly optimistic that major CO2 reduction plans (carbon taxes and cap and trade, etc.) are dead in the water. Nor is it likely that they will become politically possible in the near future.

 

Russia doesn't care, China and India are not going to sacrifice the immediate development and well being of their respective peoples for some far off possible disaster. A carbon tax is not possible in Australia and I doubt that the US will move anywhere near one in the next few years. Face it, the game of "CO2 reduction" is lost for the forseeable future.

 

Why is it lost? Strangely enough it's not because of some mythical "denialist propaganda machine" or some "oil industry shills" that are part time bloggers. The answer is quite simple, the game is lost because economic development requires large amounts of affordable power. That's it, bottom line.

 

If a nation, say India for example, has $100 billion to pay for energy generation and infrastructure, then it will go for the cheapest energy it can because that allows it to provide more energy to more people for the same outlay. It will not have its people live in poverty and sickness one day longer then it has to just to appease some Western societal sense of impending doom. That is the simple economic fact and I suggest people get used to it.

 

However, in this economic fact (disaster for the warmers) is also the answer.

 

Change the target.

 

Rather than driving for "CO2 reduction" drive for "Clean, cheap power". One could argue that this is what we are doing with solar and wind power, but it isn't, not really. The target is still "CO2 reduction", wind farms are seen as a means to that end. What is wrong with clean, cheap power from wind farms being an end in itself?

 

At the moment everything is viewed through the lens of "Will it reduce CO2?" How about viewing it through the lens of "Will it produce clean, cheap power?"

 

The big plus of a coal fired power station is that it is very basic technology. Burn coal -> Boil water -> Make Steam -> Run steam powered generator. It can be put anywhere you can get a coal train to. Unlike wind, solar and nuclear siting isn't that much of a problem.

 

If the target is changed then the approach and the solutions change. Rather than "We need to reduce CO2" how about "We need to generate clean, cheap electricity that doesn't have major siting or reliability problems". These are distinctly different targets, however it should be clear that to attain the second automatically attains the first.

 

To give an example of the second, and I'm not saying that it is feasible, it's just a thought. Let's put a heap of mirrors on a hillside where the reflected light is focussed onto a water tank. The tank boils the water, which provides steam to run the generator. Nice, clean, low tech and simple. The problem of course is that the Sun doesn't shine at night. So let's take 10% of the power output and use it to electrolyse a second large tank of water and store the hydrogen. Now when the Sun goes down, we burn the hydrogen to boil the water and produce the steam to run the generator. It won't run all night, but you should get a couple of hours out of it. Note that we're still pretty low tech and therefore cheap.

 

It's not a great idea for temperate climates, but most of the third world is in the Equatorial or Tropical regions where sunlight is better. Nor is it a complete answer and would still require reactors or similar in the grid.

 

However the target of providing clean, cheap power is reached (in part) and CO2 reduction comes as a byproduct of that.

 

What do you think? Should the target be changed?

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, cheap power is actually more the problem than the solution. Coal-fired power plants are pretty cheap, even cheaper if they don't clean their smoke before emitting it.

 

Price is already a very important consideration: the objective is to reduce CO2 as cheaply as possible. The "as cheaply as possible" need not be explicitly stated since we always try for that anyways. Cost is a major consideration for clean energy because we all know that it is unlikely to be accepted if it costs too much more.

[Marat]

The problem with setting the target to that of producing 'clean, cheap power' is that clean and cheap are typically mutually inconsistent. Nothing is cheaper than taking all the pollution generated from energy production and dumping it unprocessed into the environment where it is socially regarded for economic purposes as 'off the balance sheet' and thus has no assigned cost. Of course it does have a real cost in damaging the environment, increasing medically significant toxins, etc., but as long as these are not acknowledged, not paid for at all (by just letting the quality of the environment decline), or are paid for off the balance sheets (in terms of loss of health quality for which no medical care is ever purchased), the cheapness of the energy supply within the explicit economy is preserved.

 

Capitalism constantly generates profits which must be reinvested to make more profits, in an endless, upwardly moving spiral. As capital accumulates, the opportunities for profitable investment of capital become tapped out, and already in the 1990s profit margins on invested capital had begun to decline. The long-term cause of recessions such as we have just experienced is the reduction of profit margins for surplus capital. But if we now have to start investing capital massively in things which do not themselves produce any marketable commodities, such as things which merely 'clearn up' after industrial enterprises operate, the total profit margin of capital investment in the economy will fall even lower, since so much of it will be soaked up by things which do not generate saleable and thus profit-making goods.

 

Thus welcome to a new, never-ending recession.

[mississippichem]

I think if we ever want clean and cheap power, we're going to need a menagerie of solutions all employed simultaneously. I feel as though everyone seems to be looking for a magic bullet when it probably doesn't exist. If we attack the problem from both sides (clean energy, [ce]CO_2[/ce] reduction), we will be better off. I feel that the OP does strike a chord though; solving the clean energy problem automatically wipes out the other.

 

I think the answer lies in local solutions. If you live near a rushing river...hydroelectric. If you live in a desert...solar. If you live anywhere (or evidently, in France)...nuclear. Of course I'm making a grotesque over simplification, there are still dollars and thermodynamics to reconcile. However, there are practical solutions that are feasible right now. There is a trend now in Israel of powering water heaters with a small solar panel on the roof. That is a low-tech, simple solution much like John B's "solar-mirror-water electrolyzer" in spirit. All that to say that a lot of small solutions can add up to a complete solution. Energy product makers and service providers should stop waiting on the energy revolution and start making those first painful yet important steps.

[JohnB]

Well, cheap power is actually more the problem than the solution. Coal-fired power plants are pretty cheap, even cheaper if they don't clean their smoke before emitting it.

 

Price is already a very important consideration: the objective is to reduce CO2 as cheaply as possible. The "as cheaply as possible" need not be explicitly stated since we always try for that anyways. Cost is a major consideration for clean energy because we all know that it is unlikely to be accepted if it costs too much more.

Thank you for so clearly illustrating my point for me.

 

Cheap power is not the problem. Cheap power is what will lift the third world out of poverty and those gevernments are well aware of this fact. The problem is that the cheapest power is rather dirty.

 

As to the rest, your "objective" is unattainable. Developing nations will not use more expensive power for their development when cheaper sources are available. Developing nations have shown that they will not accept clean energy if it costs more than dirty energy. The practical outcome of your objective is to tell the developing world that they must spend more on power than we do and delay their development. They are refusing to do this, and who can really blame them?

 

The objective has failed and has no hope of succeeding in the forseeable future. Are you going to push a failed objective, or change the target and maybe get an acceptable outcome?

 

I used the coal fired plant earlier to show how basic the technology is, it boils bloody water to spin a generator. Natural gas fired and even nuclear reactors do exactly the same thing, they boil water to spin the generator. Some methods just produce more pollution and CO2 than others.

 

Your objective leads to the question "How can we reduce CO2?" whereas changing the target gives the far more practical question of "How can we cleanly and cheaply boil water?"

 

Can you see that this is an entirely different approach that if the question can be answered automatically answers your question? Answer my question and yours goes away.

 

CO2, black soot and all the other pollutants are not the problem. The problem is that the cheapest power source is rather polluting and dirty. The solution to the problem is for clean power to be cheaper than dirty power. That's it, simple. Have cheap clean power and the developing world will use it. Their need is for cheap power and they don't give two hoots where it comes from. (And they won't fall for phony cost addons either.)

 

To use an analogy and readers can decide which approach has the best chance of working. (Also which approach is most like the "reduce CO2" campaign)

 

You are the mayor of a city and you want to encourage people to use public transport. It gets cars off the road, reduces pollution and road maintainance costs, lots of benefits.

 

Do you;

A. Expand the public transport network making it cheaper and more convenient for passengers than taking their car would be. or

B. Institute a petrol tax and bulldoze half the carparks thereby making driving more expensive and inconvenient than using public transport?

 

Note that one approach works by making the PT option better and more attractive while the other works, not by improving a single damn thing, but by making alternatives less attractive. One approach is positive and improves life the other is negative and adversely impacts life.

 

Choose.

 

PS. This doesn't actually change my stance at all on AGW. I'm trying to point to objectives that warmers and sceptics can both support and work towards.

Edited December 4, 2010 by JohnB

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, your idea is much more restrictive, and as such potentially more expensive. For example, dumping iron into the ocean might be a way to cheaply reduce CO2, such that cheap coal power plants can still be used. Charging a carbon tax would also be an option, making CO2 emission costlier so that clean energy is comparatively cheaper, or similarly giving incentives for using clean energy. While your idea will nicely solve the problem, it excludes many possible solutions and it might not even be possible (or at least not for a while).

[lemur]

Coal mining has the nasty effect of leveling mountains and when it is mined from underground people get trapped and sometimes killed. More importantly, coal and other fossil fuels are non-renewable except to the extent that no more of them is harvested each year than is being created by new sunlight/biomass. Politicians have focussed on CO2-driven climate change when the real issue is unsustainable supply. Since that has been known for years, however, they were wise to try a new approach that might have worked. Rationality would dictate that if you are going to run out of something and there's no more to get after that, you would start weening yourself off of it slowly to avoid a more abrupt transition. Ideally, you would leave as much in the ground as you could just in case you might need it for an emergency sometime in the future. Global governments are, unfortunately, dealing with social-economic forces that are short-sighted and narrow-minded. If such a thing as popular rationality existed, it wouldn't be necessary to convince people to police their consumption and transit habits to begin with. They would do it voluntarily on the basis of clearly understood knowledge. Instead they focus on obfuscating knowledge that fails to promote the lifestyle(s) they desire.

 

The only way that fossil-fuel usage is going to get curtailed is the way it has been since the first oil crisis. Political instability promotes speculation on higher prices that drives up the prices. As prices go up, consumption becomes increasingly limited to elite markets, which results in a mass-market for alternative technologies. Surely this is the economic condition that has led to pedestrian/bicycle/public-transit friendly cities in the places where they have evolved in the world. In the mean time, various governments and ngo's will attempt to maintain fossil-fuel supply markets as stable as possible, but the profitability combined with the non-renewability factor makes it almost inevitable that de-stabilizations are always just around the corner. As more and more people get tired of dealing with the fallout of such instability, they will increasingly choose for more renewable technologies and lifestyles, but it will be difficult for them to compete in an economy where fossil-fuelers are attempting to compete them out-of-business as much as possible. Eventually, however, we'll probably end up with fleets of modern sailing ships, pedestrian nomadism, and human/animal-labor agriculture. In the mean-time, however, we're going to have to keep listening to everyone who sees such alternatives as excessively primitive and will call investing time and labor in them resource-waste.

[JohnB]

Well, your idea is much more restrictive, and as such potentially more expensive. For example, dumping iron into the ocean might be a way to cheaply reduce CO2, such that cheap coal power plants can still be used. Charging a carbon tax would also be an option, making CO2 emission costlier so that clean energy is comparatively cheaper, or similarly giving incentives for using clean energy. While your idea will nicely solve the problem, it excludes many possible solutions and it might not even be possible (or at least not for a while).

 

Reread my post. I said nothing about cheaply reducing CO2.

 

The developing world requires cheap energy. The problem is the lack of clean, cheap energy. As I have tried to point out, and I thought most people had realised, a Carbon Tax is no longer a politically acceptable option, it simply isn't going to happen. Western governments are not going to hamstring their economies compared to India and China when we already have enough trouble competing with them due to wage differences. Also remember that economically speaking the West has zero leverage against India and China. Nor is there political leverage because it would be seen as "Western Economic Imperialism" throughout the developing world. Do you really have that many friends that you can afford to intentionally make enemies?

 

Add to that a carbon tax is going to hit the poorest in western society the hardest. It's all very well to say that it will "encourage people to use less power" but it's bloody silly when you look at what most of the daily power is used for, which is heating water and cooking. Some savings will be made through CFL lights, but to make a real impact in the home power usage the poor are going to have to bathe in cold water and eat salads all year. Some might call this a plus, but the Carbon Tax would have also raised food prices.

 

I take it from your answer that you would choose option B in my analogy, thinking that the best course is to hobble the opposition rather than improve your preferred product.

 

I also don't see how correctly identifying the problem "excludes many possible solutions". The lack of clean, cheap power is the basic problem, everything else flows from that. By concentrating on "reducing CO2" you are treating the symptom, by finding clean, cheap energy we are going to cure the disease.

 

Coal mining has the nasty effect of leveling mountains and when it is mined from underground people get trapped and sometimes killed. More importantly, coal and other fossil fuels are non-renewable except to the extent that no more of them is harvested each year than is being created by new sunlight/biomass. Politicians have focussed on CO2-driven climate change when the real issue is unsustainable supply.

 

To the first part I can only say "So what?", harsh as it sounds. Iron mining levels mountains too, so does uranium mining and bauxite mining. People die in every industry every day so to attempt to use mining deaths as an argument is quite pointless. Shall we close down the Police departments? I'd be willing to bet that in the West more cops die performing their duties each year than coal miners.

 

Supply is certainly an issue regarding oil and perhaps natural gas. Going from the BP Reportusing only proven reserves and assuming current usage rates. We have some 50 years worth of oil and 65 years worth of Natural Gas however coal for a good 150 years. I believe that a good way of looking at the situation is to view fossil fuels as "Starting Capital" for our civilisation and as such we should use it to develop better and longer lasting supplies.

 

For those interested the 2009 BP Report (which is referenced by the USGS as definitive) lists energy usage worldwide in million tons of oil equivalent for the different energy sectors as;

Oil: 3882.1

Natural Gas: 2653.1

Coal: 3278.3

Nuclear: 610.5

Hydro: 740.3

 

Total World energy consumption = 11,164.3 million tons of oil equivalent. Any way you look at it, that's a lot of energy.

 

lemur, I think that you're being simplistic in the fossil fuel/renewable area. It would be a very poor oil company CEO that didn't look at the numbers and attempt to position his company to be competitive when the oil runs out. BP is quite heavily involved in wind power you know. The whole "Big Oil is trying to stop it" idea is so illogical and to be tin hattery.

 

As to the future, there are many options that will or might become available. I posted in the "Science News" section of a new superconductor that works at -9C. Rather than sailing ships, the future might be electric cargo vessels with decks covered with PV panels. Or a surplus Super Carrier that gets converted to cargo carrying.

 

We might see the return of the Dirigible as once filled with Helium they require no power to stay aloft. The Hindenburg had 4 x 16 cylinder engines that put out 1,300 hp each which is pretty poor by todays standards, yet it still managed a cruising speed of 125 km/hr while carrying over 100 passengers and crew plus freight. The Graf Zeppelin managed a top ground speed of 288 km/hr during it's round the world flight, but rode a hurricane to do so.

 

I wouldn't be too quick to assume the worst just yet.

Edited December 5, 2010 by JohnB

[lemur]

it's bloody silly when you look at what most of the daily power is used for, which is heating water and cooking. Some savings will be made through CFL lights, but to make a real impact in the home power usage the poor are going to have to bathe in cold water and eat salads all year. Some might call this a plus, but the Carbon Tax would have also raised food prices.

Raising prices on meat wouldn't be a bad idea since producing meats require a great deal more energy and water than vegetables. Taking short, hot showers doesn't consume that much energy compared with keeping a sizeable indoor air volume at a comfortable temperature. You'd be better off taking a 5-15 minute hot shower every day or two and wearing warm clothes indoors than taking cold showers and then lounging at 70-75F.

 

I also don't see how correctly identifying the problem "excludes many possible solutions". The lack of clean, cheap power is the basic problem, everything else flows from that. By concentrating on "reducing CO2" you are treating the symptom, by finding clean, cheap energy we are going to cure the disease.

Curing the disease involves cultivating relative energy-independence. This means substituting energy-expensive activities and goods with energy-cheap activities and goods. This is called "conservation."

 

To the first part I can only say "So what?", harsh as it sounds. Iron mining levels mountains too, so does uranium mining and bauxite mining. People die in every industry every day so to attempt to use mining deaths as an argument is quite pointless. Shall we close down the Police departments? I'd be willing to bet that in the West more cops die performing their duties each year than coal miners.

I just forwarded this paragraph to the coal company along with your CV;)

 

 

Supply is certainly an issue regarding oil and perhaps natural gas. Going from the BP Reportusing only proven reserves and assuming current usage rates. We have some 50 years worth of oil and 65 years worth of Natural Gas however coal for a good 150 years. I believe that a good way of looking at the situation is to view fossil fuels as "Starting Capital" for our civilisation and as such we should use it to develop better and longer lasting supplies.

Except for that's not how people/industry is using fossil-fuel. They're using it to maximize profit and leisure and very little else.

lemur, I think that you're being simplistic in the fossil fuel/renewable area. It would be a very poor oil company CEO that didn't look at the numbers and attempt to position his company to be competitive when the oil runs out. BP is quite heavily involved in wind power you know. The whole "Big Oil is trying to stop it" idea is so illogical and to be tin hattery.

I wasn't blaming oil companies or their management. If anything, I would blame oil-consumption interests, i.e. consumers.

 

As to the future, there are many options that will or might become available. I posted in the "Science News" section of a new superconductor that works at -9C. Rather than sailing ships, the future might be electric cargo vessels with decks covered with PV panels. Or a surplus Super Carrier that gets converted to cargo carrying.

I don't know if electric cargo vessels would be ultimately more efficient than sailing ships. Sailing ships are awfully simple and low tech. They might take a long time to arrive, but they get there - and with the improved food-storage technologies, IT, and medicine available today, I think sailing ships would be much less dangerous than they were in the days of slaving.

 

We might see the return of the Dirigible as once filled with Helium they require no power to stay aloft. The Hindenburg had 4 x 16 cylinder engines that put out 1,300 hp each which is pretty poor by todays standards, yet it still managed a cruising speed of 125 km/hr while carrying over 100 passengers and crew plus freight. The Graf Zeppelin managed a top ground speed of 288 km/hr during it's round the world flight, but rode a hurricane to do so.

Why not, but I don't think this is a mass-transit solution. What about a pedestrian bridge between Alaska and Russia and global pedestrian nomadism? Don't ask me how people would weather the cold but some combination of good planning and igloo-building might make it possible.

 

 

[Pangloss]

Why not, but I don't think this is a mass-transit solution. What about a pedestrian bridge between Alaska and Russia and global pedestrian nomadism? Don't ask me how people would weather the cold but some combination of good planning and igloo-building might make it possible.

 

You're advocating nomadism as a solution to global warming?

[JohnB]

Raising prices on meat wouldn't be a bad idea since producing meats require a great deal more energy and water than vegetables. Taking short, hot showers doesn't consume that much energy compared with keeping a sizeable indoor air volume at a comfortable temperature. You'd be better off taking a 5-15 minute hot shower every day or two and wearing warm clothes indoors than taking cold showers and then lounging at 70-75F.

 

I think that it says much about your attitude that you are quite happy to suggest that the poorest should have an even poorer diet and truly become "the great unwashed". Do you intend to join their ranks, or is this "lesser" lifestyle only for the proles?

 

Abundant cheap energy ends poverty, why do you wish to increase it? Abundant clean cheap energy also ends poverty and doesn't pollute.

 

BTW, if you wish a conversation, then please do so, simply parsing sentences with sound bites is a rather pointless way to converse. Virtually nothing else in your post framed a coherent enough idea to talk about.

Edited December 5, 2010 by JohnB

[lemur]

You're advocating nomadism as a solution to global warming?

Humans use energy for transportation and to keep warm. Walking from place to place takes longer but it keeps you warm and satisfies the desire for mobility. I believe that in the distant future, pedestrian nomadism offers the prospect of keeping people warmer, healthier (from the exercise), and satisfies their urge to travel.

 

I think that it says much about your attitude that you are quite happy to suggest that the poorest should have an even poorer diet and truly become "the great unwashed". Do you intend to join their ranks, or is this "lesser" lifestyle only for the proles?

"Unwashed?" I said that hot showers were not the biggest waste of energy. When did I say the poorest should have a poorer diet? You think vegetarianism is less healthy than eating meat? I would not advocate any lifestyle that I wouldn't choose for myself. I actually usually find that more efficient living turns out to be healthier and liberating once you get over the initial culture shock of giving up the usual poisons/indulgences that addict people to mediocre health.

 

Abundant cheap energy ends poverty, why do you wish to increase it? Abundant clean cheap energy also ends poverty and doesn't pollute.

Poverty is the distance between the floor and the ground, if you get that metaphor. In other words, abundant cheap energy stimulates economic activities that widen the gap between normal consumption and abject poverty. Westerners are prone to interpreting images of poor Africans eating white mush and swatting flies as painfully sad. Meanwhile, cassava-flour "mush" is actually pretty tasty and filling, especially when mixed with local greens, which grow plentifully when there's no drought. Flies are annoying but fly-control does not require abundant clean cheap energy. I have nothing against abundant cheap clean energy, but I would still use it as conservatively as possible to avoid over-dependence since anything more than renewable sources like solar, wind, tides, etc. are subject to depletion in the long-term.

 

BTW, if you wish a conversation, then please do so, simply parsing sentences with sound bites is a rather pointless way to converse. Virtually nothing else in your post framed a coherent enough idea to talk about.

Funny, I thought I packed a lot of insight into succinct explanations. Which one(s) did you think sounded like empty sound-bites, because they really were simple explanations of valid insights, imo.

 

 

[cypress]

One, more subtle challenge to your target change proposal is that many or most of the thought leaders and promoters of the current plan seem to have multiple goals. I'll mention two of the more questionable goals of which your proposal does not address.

 

Many see using fear of climate change uncertainty as an opportunity to make fundamental shifts in worldwide social parity. Your target change would make energy cheaper for the poor in developing countries, but would also make it cheaper for the wealthy in developed countries so that the gap between poor and wealthy could rise further. The current plan includes a redistribution of energy rights and thus wealth and it places the power to enforce this redistribution in a binding world treaty enforceable by a world governing authority. It is essentially a shift from free a free market energy economy to a socialist energy economy.

 

The second goal is to put humans more in parity with the balance of the biosphere. By restricting energy, one restricts productivity and the ability to use technology to further human society above other populations.

 

Your target of clean cheap energy, does not aid the primary but questionable drivers for these two additional goals.

Edited December 5, 2010 by cypress

[Pangloss]

Humans use energy for transportation and to keep warm. Walking from place to place takes longer but it keeps you warm and satisfies the desire for mobility. I believe that in the distant future, pedestrian nomadism offers the prospect of keeping people warmer, healthier (from the exercise), and satisfies their urge to travel.

 

For a few miles, anyway. It's an interesting idea, and certainly contrary to the way things seem to be going, which is a future that looks more like couches and virtual reality.

[Mr Skeptic]

I take it from your answer that you would choose option B in my analogy, thinking that the best course is to hobble the opposition rather than improve your preferred product.

 

No, I don't think that but that is not what you are suggesting. You are not suggesting improving clean energy tech, you are suggesting making it cheaper than dirtier tech. As I showed in the case of normal pollution, more pollution means cheaper, period. Yours is a good idea, but I question its possibility (in the near future). Sure, eventually oil and coal run low, and their price raises and eventually they will definitely be more expensive than clean tech.

 

I also don't see how correctly identifying the problem "excludes many possible solutions".

 

Because it does not identify the problem. There are two separate, linked problems. Treating both together is nice, but it also excludes the possibility of treating them separately. Hence, more restrictive. I gave examples of solutions your idea would exclude.

 

Also, I note you have not made mention of reliability. This is a problem for many clean power techs, and could exclude them for a long time from being the dominant tech, even if they are cheaper at the per watt level.

[lemur]

For a few miles, anyway. It's an interesting idea, and certainly contrary to the way things seem to be going, which is a future that looks more like couches and virtual reality.

I have the sense that VR has the effect of stimulating interest in physical reality. This new video game system that uses motion-sensors to allow you to control the animated figures with your body-movements: It is intriguing at first because of the virtualilty being that much more sophisticated than its predecessor. However, once the technology loses its newness, the underlying urge to use your body to interact with an environment remains. So VR seems to keep pulling people in the direction of active physical interactions. Ultimately, physical horizons/frontiers never disappear; they just become culturally coded as old news so people get bored with them for a while as they pursue textual/virtual frontiers instead.

 

Media portability is the technological evolution that really stimulates nomadism. People like laptops, smart-phones, GPS tracking, etc. because it enhances their mobility. Currently, however, mobility is limited by costs and other limits of driving and other mechanized transit. Also, motorized transit has the effect of causing people to feel relatively disempowered on foot or bicycle. The other factor is relatively inflexible institutional scheduling in jobs and schools. People get just enough free time to drive or take a flight or train to somewhere interesting and get back in time for work/school without wasting more of their precious vacation in transit than is necessary.

 

What would happen if IT was used to create nomadic work scheduling where people could work en route through multiple destinations? Imagine that instead of working 50 weeks at Walmart to get two weeks to travel, people could work at one Walmart on monday and work at another one 30/50 miles up the road on wednesday and spend tuesday hiking or biking? This would open up a pandora's box of issues but it would be very appealing in terms of "seeing the world" without having to invest loads of savings, wait for retirement, etc. If everyone lived like this by car or air-travel, the traffic would be a nightmare, but if people were hiking or cycling it would be manageable.

 

To me it would be great if the culture to do this opened up tomorrow but realistically it is more like something that would make sense in a very distant future in which energy-costs and infrastructure overloading make it necessary for most people to do most things by foot or bicycle. At that point, nomadism has the benefit of keeping people healthy and warm while in transit to new destinations, and it also solves the problem of seasonal migration between warm and cold climates, which will become increasingly more attractive as heating costs continue to rise.

 

 

 

[Pangloss]

Maybe. The cost motivation is probably more realistic than the environmental motivation.

 

I saw a story the other day about people traveling around the country following temporary employment. They live in recreational vehicles, working at a Wal-Mart here, an Amazon fulfillment center there, and so on. I guess there's some kind of motivation there, however unrealistic it may be in the short term.

[lemur]

Maybe. The cost motivation is probably more realistic than the environmental motivation.

Why?

 

I saw a story the other day about people traveling around the country following temporary employment. They live in recreational vehicles, working at a Wal-Mart here, an Amazon fulfillment center there, and so on. I guess there's some kind of motivation there, however unrealistic it may be in the short term.

Interesting. Did they explain how they got the jobs? I have the impression that most people who need low-paying jobs are afraid to lose them out of fear that they might not be able to get a new one right away or that they would lose the longevity benefits they've built up by sticking with the same employer/manager for a while. A while ago I had heard that Walmart allowed people to park their RVs for free in the parking lot, which would facilitate nomadism at a substantially lower cost of living. It would be quite interesting if people could actually sustainable plan and execute their lives in this way without undergoing excessive stress with all the uncertainties and obstacles they would encounter due to present institutional constraints.

 

 

[Mr Skeptic]

I don't know if electric cargo vessels would be ultimately more efficient than sailing ships. Sailing ships are awfully simple and low tech. They might take a long time to arrive, but they get there - and with the improved food-storage technologies, IT, and medicine available today, I think sailing ships would be much less dangerous than they were in the days of slaving.

 

Hm, but sailing ships still have significant energy costs. There's the energy and material costs of manufacturing the ships, and repairing/maintaining them, and feeding the crew. These costs are common to all ships, of course, but you have to consider that if the sailing ships are slower, you need more ships to carry the same cargo, so you have to build more ships and maintain more ships. And the crew has to eat too, and while the energy in the food itself is nothing compared to ship fuel, there's quite a bit of energy costs associated with actually making the food and delivering it. Longer trips with more crew means more food eaten while transporting ships. Overall it would probably be lower energy costs than for fueled ships, but it won't be free.

 

And now for some reason I have an image of a giant cargo ship using kiteboarding to increase its sail size.

[Pangloss]

Maybe. The cost motivation is probably more realistic than the environmental motivation.

Why?

 

Well, of those two motivations that you raised, I would say that presently more people are motivated by their more immediate needs than the needs of overall society. Wouldn't you agree?

 

Personally I don't see any appeal from "nomadism", either walking or driving, except in the most limited, temporary sense (the wife and I are big fans of the national park system). But I could see how something like that might have mass appeal.

 

 

Interesting. Did they explain how they got the jobs?

 

Apparently they're posted on Web sites related to recreational camping. Isn't that an odd hook? Makes sense, I guess.

 

Here's a link to the video story (runs about 2 min + ad):

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/finding-jobs-road-families-seasonal-work-travel-road-rv-travel-amazon-12280510

[JohnB]

I'll reply to other bits later but....

 

lemur, do you see this migratory worker idea as a sort of outgrowth of the backpacker/seasonal worker that already exists?

 

I don't know the situation in the US but down here backpackers from all over the planet work for a month or so in a region and then move on to work elsewhere. Experiencing the Australian lifestyle and seeing the countryside as they go. They normally either buy a cheap car or van or simply use bus and rail transport between cities.

 

Seasonal fruit picking is also a way of life for some already. If I was still doing it I would be in Young NSW picking cherries at the moment and roughly up to Christmas. After that I would go to Leeton and pick apricots for about a month. Then I would head down to Mildura in Vic for the grapes. From there Shepparton is good for pears and other fruits. One could certainly do the circuit on a bike but it would take a couple of days between towns.

 

Isa n expansion of this type of migratory work what you are thinking of? Or do you think that the expansion of wireless internet will allow more people to leave the "office" and do work for a company as they travel around? It's not too hard to think of jobs that don't require a person to be in one physical location all the time. Maybe an outgrowth of telecommuting perhaps?

[lemur]

Hm, but sailing ships still have significant energy costs. There's the energy and material costs of manufacturing the ships, and repairing/maintaining them, and feeding the crew. These costs are common to all ships, of course, but you have to consider that if the sailing ships are slower, you need more ships to carry the same cargo, so you have to build more ships and maintain more ships. And the crew has to eat too, and while the energy in the food itself is nothing compared to ship fuel, there's quite a bit of energy costs associated with actually making the food and delivering it. Longer trips with more crew means more food eaten while transporting ships. Overall it would probably be lower energy costs than for fueled ships, but it won't be free.

Nothing is free but the question is what extra waste is being created. After all, the people running the ships would be eating the same food whether running a sailing ship, cargo ship, or on land. You're right about the materials and energy to put them together, but then the question becomes whether the shipping is worth the investment. If some other method of powering ships besides fossil fuel is found, it may be more efficient to use that than sails. It's just that fossil fuel has been around, what, about 200 years now and it's going to probably run out in the next couple centuries as well. Wind will long outlive fossil fuel, at least for those humans who survive the end of fossil fuel, provided it happens abruptly instead of in a series of pro-active adjustments designed to avoid haphazard transition.

 

 

Well, of those two motivations that you raised, I would say that presently more people are motivated by their more immediate needs than the needs of overall society. Wouldn't you agree?

"Society" has no needs. It is an abstract concept used to differentiate between self-interest and interest in helping others. You would be more correct to say that people are more often motivated by immediate needs then long-term planning. It's called short-sightedness. What is "societal" about that short-sightedness is that because the economy entails exchange and structured exploitation of labor and resources, many people can bet on being a part of a privileged elite who gets the luxury of wasting scarce resources even as others suffer from their depletion. So it's actually "society" that causes people to be short-sighted. If they had to grow their own food for the winter, for example, they would plan ahead so as not to starve. Because of society, people can wait until they get hungry and then go to the supermarket or get prepared food.

 

Personally I don't see any appeal from "nomadism", either walking or driving, except in the most limited, temporary sense (the wife and I are big fans of the national park system). But I could see how something like that might have mass appeal.

You never travel? You enjoy spending all your time at home? You would rather work out of your house than commute to a workplace? If so, I think you're an exception. Most people like to be mobile, I think.

 

 

 

 

lemur, do you see this migratory worker idea as a sort of outgrowth of the backpacker/seasonal worker that already exists?

It could be, but the nomadism (migrant work) that I'm familiar with is stigmatized in terms of race and class status (i.e. poor Mexicans) so many people would eschew the very idea of such a lifestyle because they associate it with people they don't want to associate with.

 

I don't know the situation in the US but down here backpackers from all over the planet work for a month or so in a region and then move on to work elsewhere. Experiencing the Australian lifestyle and seeing the countryside as they go. They normally either buy a cheap car or van or simply use bus and rail transport between cities.

Sounds fun, but my idea is a response to energy limitations so I see a culture of nomadic walking/bicycling emerging due to the energy it would save.

 

Seasonal fruit picking is also a way of life for some already. If I was still doing it I would be in Young NSW picking cherries at the moment and roughly up to Christmas. After that I would go to Leeton and pick apricots for about a month. Then I would head down to Mildura in Vic for the grapes. From there Shepparton is good for pears and other fruits. One could certainly do the circuit on a bike but it would take a couple of days between towns.

Again, this sounds fun. I don't see how it would be sufficient to pay for the costs of a vehicle and driving, though, if you did it that way. Also, if you're looking for better pay and benefits, etc. agricultural labor rarely provides that, from what I have heard.

 

Isa n expansion of this type of migratory work what you are thinking of? Or do you think that the expansion of wireless internet will allow more people to leave the "office" and do work for a company as they travel around? It's not too hard to think of jobs that don't require a person to be in one physical location all the time. Maybe an outgrowth of telecommuting perhaps?

Exactly, telecommuting. But I can also see IT allowing traditionally fixed-location jobs to be organized in a way that trained people can combine travel and work. For example, if you were trained to work at Walmart, you could work at one store for a few days or a week and then spend some of your days off walking/biking to another store some distance further down the road. Working low-paying jobs in this way would probably require low-cost camping facilities or hostels where people would basically take care of all their own amenities and work for the hostels/campgrounds as they travel. The details could take shape in many different ways, but I don't see any reason why nomadic work-scheduling couldn't be done by floating managers with the aid of telecommuting IT systems.

[Pangloss]

"Society" has no needs. It is an abstract concept used to differentiate between self-interest and interest in helping others. You would be more correct to say that people are more often motivated by immediate needs then long-term planning.

 

This is a different subject from the question that I was answering, lemur.

 

 

You never travel?

 

I've visited almost a dozen other countries and about a third of the American states. We're not discussing travel and mobility, we're discussing nomadism via walking. I think you're on to something, but the motivations are a little different. It's a valid question as to whether existing travel motivations might translate to nomadism if the motivation to do so were sufficient. It might or it might not, but it's certainly worth exploring the possibility.