I believe... (my credo)

[Brian Ellis]

I have seriously updated my credo on environmental and energy matters, with links. As I mention in the introduction, this is Utopian but more than just a pious hope of what some may perceive as extremism; it is how I perceive our medium-term future, at least along general lines, no matter where we live.

I have deliberately avoided the political and economic aspects of the environment and energy. This is because necessity will become the mother of the political and economic means to implement these measures, little-by-little, country-by-country. How any pressures will be applied to individuals, corporations or nations are not my concern but I hope my document will help decision-makers come to the right conclusions.

This credo is published for the first time as a stand-alone document with its own one-page website. It is free-to-copy in its entirety but not for commercial purposes; it is not sponsored nor does it carry advertisements. It is not written in stone and I may modify, add or delete clauses at any time without notice; suggestions are always welcome.

Please feel free to copy or link it.

Best regards,

Brian Ellis

[dZeus]

A commendable credo, but I think it's largely unrealistic.

Implementing any type of government regulation to reduce fossil fuel usage would require someone (either consumers or industry) to pay above-market rates for energy. This is only possible when (for industry) energy is not a substantial part of production costs, or (for consumers) energy is not a large part of disposable income. In the current financial climate, I fear that absolute energy costs are more likely to become more important than less important.

What (I think) will happen is a logical result based on ever rising energy costs in general (both due to a fall in available supply as well as world-wide monetary expansionism which is the current 'fix' for all our financial issues).

Personally I think to tackle our (western world) energy issues lies in looking at a combination of low-tech and high-tech:
- Access to cheap energy (pre-peak oil) has created a lot of dependencies that are superficial; we're used to an energy intensive lifestyle that doesn't necessarily increase our quality of life that much. Doing away with this will reduce per capita energy consumption by a huge degree. For example, would it really matter a lot if fast long haul travel (inter/cross continent) becomes something very special again, only affordable to the rich or connected?
- Many systems in place before cheap oil were perfectly fine, but were disbanded because of access to (relatively) unnecessary levels of luxury. I'm looking at all these cars in the streets driving with 1 person behind the wheel and no passengers, while having capacity for 3-4 passengers or more. Rising energy costs (and total costs of living) in combination with high-tech solutions (e.g. 'uber' taxi service) will likely tackle this issue. In many cities in Europe and the US there was an extensive light-rail network connecting sub-urbs and parts of the city with each other, that got disbanded after the 2nd world war. We'll need to re-introduce these relatively energy efficient means of transport. Other solutions that are interesting are for example what Tokyo did: only give parking spots to people driving sub-compact cars, with very specific engine and chassis size restrictions. These are basically 1-2 person cars.
- The way modern buildings are built in most places are plain stupid. They don't take into account the actual climate and require air condition / climate control to be habitable year round. Traditional houses (before the advent of cheap energy) were built in a way where they were cool in summer and warm in winter.
- Other examples of places where humans try to live in a way that are only feasible while having access to cheap energy. For example, anecdotes of people fleeing their region/country during power outage in those parts of the world that are too hot to inhabit without dependency on cheap electricity.
I suppose in an indirect way this also holds true for areas that are below sea level or exposed to recurrent flooding events, where infrastructure costs to prevent this are extensive especially in light of rising sea levels. (hello Netherlands, parts of Japan, etc.)
- Those usage of energy that are crucial to maintaining our living standards can be improved by increasing the efficiency of the devices that use it. Just as an example, where an ordinary personal computer and television (CRT) of 10 years ago would each use something like 150+ Watts, this can easily be reduced to less than 20 watts in the next 5 years.

Call me misanthropic or pessimistic, but I think the current size of human population is really stressing the available resources and social fabrics of society. We're bound to destroy ourselves, some way or another. Short term vision is just too ingrained in our species (and no, I don't see that as a licence to carry on business as usual).

[Brian Ellis]

I never said that that the credo was realistic in the context of modern geo-environmentalism. In fact, I use the word "Utopian" in both the text and my original post. Living in a country where there is no reasonable public transport system, your point of cars with one person behind the wheel and no passengers is very valid. However, I shall never see a decent public transport system in my lifetime. To illustrate this, I live in a village where there are three buses a day to Larnaca, a bit over 20 km away. There are no buses to the capital city Nicosia 25 km away, nor to Limassol about 40 km away. Without a car or a taxi it would take half a day to go to Nicosia or Limassol via Larnaca by bus. The driver-only car is therefore practically a necessity and this is shown by most families having at least two cars. But what kind of car? By economic necessity, the poorer families have relatively small but old cars, often quite polluting. Those who can afford a bank loan will run about in gas guzzling SUV's or, at the least, large Mercedes or BMWs. If they want to be hip, they might go for a double cabin pickup with four-wheel-drive and a 3 L diesel engine. You could probably count the number of people who deliberately purchase a low emissions car in the tens per year. Then there are a number of people and companies that buy ultracompact urban runabouts like the Smart but these are not driven economically. As a general rule, I respect the highway speed limit of 100 km/h ± 5 km/h; how many times have I been overtaken by these, flat out at 120 or 130 km/h, undoubtedly consuming much more fuel than my car.

On the other hand, in complete contrast, I spent 35 years of my life in Switzerland where there is a very good public transport system by rail and bus. Using this is part of the mores of the country, where possible. The trains are usually very well frequented, as are the buses. As a result, you possibly see proportionally fewer driver only cars around the urban landscape or even on the motorways. Obviously, there are many cases where a businessperson may need to make a number of visits or is carrying heavy samples and a car is absolutely essential for his job. But what is interesting is that there are proportionally many more low emissions vehicles in Switzerland than there are in Cyprus (hybrid or small diesels).

I don't think that cheap energy is necessarily a factor. Again comparing the same two countries, electricity in Switzerland is mostly hydroelectric and nuclear, so it is relatively cheap especially if you take into account the average income in each country. On the other hand, the electricity here is practically 100% oil generated and it is one of the most expensive electric tariffs in Europe if not the world, especially compared with the low salaries here (the new minimum is €465 per month). The point I'm trying to make is that, four equal numbers and types of appliances in the household, I doubt very much whether the Swiss person would consume many more kilowatt-hours than a Cypriot, just because the electricity is cheap. If anything the opposite may hold true because the Swiss is by nature more economical in his mindset than the Cypriot.

You may have noticed that I have deliberately avoided any reference to extreme weather events or the potential results of climate change. I did not want to raise any controversy about what we do not know but can make educated guesses. However, this does not mean that I do not think that we are in for a bad time!

I agree with you about the stupidity of modern construction but this is also a question of cost. When I bought this house, the window frames were cheap aluminium profiles with gaps all around. Despite the cheap double glazing, it would hardly have been worse if there were no windows at all! I replaced them with UPVC ones and immediately external noise dropped by an estimated 30 dB and the house became draught-free. The cost difference between the two types of window frame was CY £2000, representing about 3% of the cost of the house. If you added up all the potential 3%'s, the price of a house would be non-competitive on the market.

I agree with you that the numbers of the human population are really too high for reasonable sustainability. However I do not want to get into this subject!

[dZeus]

Public transport in relatively sparsely populated regions does not make sense (other than inter-city trains).

These regions have most to gain by car-sharing services (owning one car per multiple households, or letting a commercial service take care of it) or carpooling (which e.g. the 'uber' service is trying to popularize by intermediating between owner/driver and passenger for a small fee).

As for the correlation between energy consumption and costs... maybe cultural differences play a bigger role than this?

[UtwigMU]

I've travelled across some ex-Soviet countries where people are poorer than in Europe. There public transport works even for long range (think 1000km).

It's not very comfortable but long haul (24h) buses and long distance (few days) trains are usually sold out and ticket costs about 10-30 EUR for 1000km. So I don't think, we'll have to give up long travel. Also planes are getting more energy efficient and airships may make a comeback. I don't think this will happen by some government mandate, it will happen by market forces. Already in Slovenia the number of cars which peaked is reducing, low efficiency houses have dropped in price and are becoming abandoned

I think by 2030-2050 energy level per capita will drop to 1960s levels, not to pre oil levels. With cheap low power ubiquitous computers, networks, solar, more energy efficient buildings (here new buildings are energy efficient and old buildings are getting overhauled) and public transport our quality of life will not fall much.

Differences will be great though:
- Europe which has halted population growth and has a lot of hydro, coal, nuclear and is already more energy efficient will be OK
- Russia if well managed will be doing great as they have the most energy reserves
- USA will be OK, though they will have to reduce their oil per capita consumption
- Africa and Middle East are screwed. They will have high uneducated population and very low energy levels (except for some places), lots of wars and unrest