Al Gore, our former Vice President and Nobel Prize recipient, has done more than any other human being to warn the world of an impending, global, ecological crisis.
On November 9, 2008 he published an OP-ED article in the New York Times explaining his five-part plan for avoiding this major disaster. He introduces his plan by saying “It is a plan that would simultaneously move us towards solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis – and create millions of jobs that cannot be outsourced.”
Let us review his five points. His first suggestion is that we build more solar plants and more wind farms. OK.
His second proposal is the installation of an improved, national power grid. Especially well taken is his point that new high-voltage, low-loss underground lines need to be installed and be made part of a redesigned, national grid. OK.
His third recommendation is to help America’s automobile industry. This is ok for preserving jobs. However, his suggestion to depend increasingly on electrically powered cars is premature, excessively expensive, and will only marginally reduce petroleum imports for many years. It will not reduce carbon dioxide emissions for the next couple of decades.
His fourth proposition aims at improving insulation of buildings and homes. Reducing energy losses is ok as long as they can be economically justified.
Unfortunately, the fifth element of his plan misses the mark by a wide margin. Earlier in his article, Mr. Gore correctly states “…. thinking anew requires discarding an outdated and flawed definition of the problem we face.”
Therefore, let us define the problem concisely. The world is facing not one but several, distinct crises.
The climate crisis or ecological crisis is caused by the escalating emission of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. As a result, global temperatures are rising and will lead to severe global overheating as early as 2050. There is only one, single way to stop this destructive, irreversible lunacy; we must end the burning of all fossil fuels.
A coming energy crisis announced itself, when skyrocketing petroleum prices in July 2008 peaked at close to $150 per barrel. Transportation of people, foods, commodities, and goods is entirely dependent on plentiful and affordable liquid fuels. The transportation sector consists of an immense fleet of automobiles, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft. A multitude of very expensive oil refineries and an enormous, worldwide fuel distribution system support this sector and will cost tens of trillions of dollars to replace.
It will be foolish to scrap these wonderfully effective systems and replace or weaken them by mandating that automobiles must be powered by electricity or compressed natural gas. Instead, we must learn to produce renewable fuels and petroleum substitutes. If we do not realize that the world cannot function without renewable liquid fuels, we will incite a third, an economic crisis, which may destroy world economies and civilizations.
A fourth crisis will develop when a construction boom tries to install energy conversion equipment to prevent the ecological and energy crises from happening. Suitable technologies, materials, manufacturing facilities, fabricating skills, engineering services, investment capital, and time will be in very short supply.
Right now, only the USA has the scientific, technological, manufacturing, and institutional capabilities to attempt a potentially successful rescue attempt. Such an attempt cannot be organized by the private sector.
The US must defend its role as leading world power successfully by making three major, national changes; it must become independent of petroleum imports, it must stop carbon dioxide emissions, and it must proceed with an implementation plan that will achieve these targets in forty years. Only by achieving these three objectives can we arrest climate change, can we avoid worldwide economic collapse due to lack of motor fuels, and can we reclaim our leadership role.
The most difficult and exacting challenge of such a plan we have not mentioned, yet.
Any long-term plan must be workable for centuries! We cannot afford to install and pay for short-lived solutions.
The missing piece of the puzzle in Mr. Gore’s proposal is the complete absence of renewable fuels. Without the production of renewable fuels and particularly of liquid transportation fuels from renewable biomass this plan and other previously proposed plans will fail! They are incapable of powering world economies for centuries!
We must learn to grow large amounts of high energy yield biomass on arid, barren, or fallow lands in two broad bands on both sides of the equator.
In this region, the tropics and subtropics, the flow of sun energy reaching the ground is the highest. Water resources will be lacking in most locations. However, we have learned how to build desalination plants. What we do not know yet, is how to design highly efficient, industrial type biofuel plantations that can produce very large amounts of renewable energy without competing with food production.
We also have to learn how nature converted biomass into petroleum and other fossil fuels.
As soon as we understand how to convert biomass into petroleum substitutes or into other fuels, we will have solved the world’s remaining energy supply problems and we can continue the use of our automobiles and airplanes. Best of all, we will be able to pay for the renewable fuels that are going to power our transportation fleets.
Mr. Gore, we need your support for publicizing and promoting the conversion of renewable biomass into plentiful, affordable petroleum substitutes and other novel fuels!
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