If you read Bruce Schneier, as any good geek should, you probably are familiar with the term "security theater": measures that provide the feeling of security while doing little or nothing to actually provide security.
OK, digression. We had this recycling program in Chicago where we put our recyclables in blue bags into the trash, and they pick the blue bags out of the trash. One imagines fancy computerized systems. In reality I think there’s just some people who watch trash go by on a
conveyor belt.
This all seemed fishy, but I hate waste on principle so I would dutifully recycled my trash, washed out containers, all that stuff. You’d sometimes hear an environmentalist criticize the program because there was little perceived benefit, and so people didn’t actually recycle much. The system seemed a little improbable to me too, but then I also realized that recycling is a balance and it’s easy to put more effort into recycling programs than is saved through the recycling itself. So maybe this was efficient, all things considered.
Then I learned that actually only 8% of recycling in blue bags is recovered. 92% of the time when I clean things out and put them carefully in their own container, I might as well have just thrown them away. This really pissed me off, because it made it obvious that there never was an honest attempt to reduce waste through recycling. Blue bags were just what they would give people to make them stop complaining about recycling.
The irony is that the environmentalists didn’t complain about the recovery rates (which always were estimated at a low amount). They complained about how many people were recycling. Of course with a recovery rate that low it didn’t matter how many people were recycling. The entire program was a total farce. Now that the program is going away there doesn’t seem to be much anger about how deceptive the program was, and I don’t know if anyone is paying attention to the actual environmental impact of the new program.
Even if they recover the recycling it might still just be a game. Recycling is filled with farce. Metal recycling is great. That’s why there’s trucks that roam the alleys around Chicago looking for scrap metal. There’s a market and someone is willing to pay for the results. There’s not much of a market for anything else; maybe some glass, maybe a little plastic.
People actually get angry when recycling programs restrict the plastics they will take. It doesn’t occur to them that some plastics are simply garbage. They are worthless, and moving them around in special recycling containers just wastes everyone’s time. They are angry because they want to pretend they aren’t being wasteful. They aren’t getting enough environmental theater.
A more concerning kind of environmental theater is ethanol. With an EROI (energy invested vs. energy produced) that hovers just above one, it’s not helping the environment. Biofuels on the whole seem quite questionable. Brazil has more efficient ethanol, but it’s paired with deforestation. A similar thing happens when trees for palm oil replace natural forests. And of course in all these cases, if plants weren’t grown for fuel then plants would be grown for some other purpose. So I can’t really see any advantage in terms of CO2 emissions — and when you consider the relative inefficiency compared to attaining fossil fuels, the net effect of biofuels is probably worse.
Now that environmental concern is mainstream I think we need to be on the watch for environmental theater. Many of the people who play their parts in this theater are well meaning, which can make it awkward. These are people who believe that The Important Thing Is To Raise Awareness. But awareness has been raised, so the time for that kind of bullshit is past. Lying about solutions, exaggerating specific problems, being fuzzy about facts — that’s always been bullshit, and I’ve never found it acceptable. But it’s unfortunately become the norm among advocates of all sorts in these times. The irony is that the advocacy has been done, the case has been made, enough people are convinced, but it may be hard to move beyond the theater to meaningful action. Especially as the well-meaning people are replaced with cynics out to make money.
Alexander Limi | 02-Aug-07 at 8:48 pm | Permalink
That’s an interesting figure. I was surprised to learn that the recycling percentage for San Francisco is an astonishing 69% — which I found very impressive.
(Source: http://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9249262 — worth a read)
I would be pissed off too.
The bigger issue is that it’s very hard to find facts on things like what really helps, energy-reduction wise. I have the (increasingly less, but still) unpopular opinion that nuclear energy in 2007 is clean, safe and our only realistic way of curbing carbon emissions. And for those of you who are still nervous about nuclear energy (which has killed less people than any other energy form, wind/solar power included) — read up on “pebble reactors” and how they work.
People focusing on hybrid cars (how much pollution and energy do you think it produces to create a new hybrid car?) and other questionable measures really make me question the US strategy in this area.
Stop worrying about the cars, and get rid of the coal plants first. That’s at least doable, and should have significant impact. :)
Alexander Limi | 02-Aug-07 at 8:48 pm | Permalink
…and my </rant> tag got lost from the above post. :)
Alexander Limi | 02-Aug-07 at 8:59 pm | Permalink
Not to spam your blog or anything, but I just found the talk given at Google recently called “Fission is the New Fire”, which talks about the current state of nuclear power:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5505092608762987007
Worth the time it takes to watch, IMO.
It’s one of those rare talks where I don’t really like the presenter or his approach, but the message and reasoning is informative.
Ian Bicking | 02-Aug-07 at 9:06 pm | Permalink
Electric cars powered off coal power plants aren’t probably good environmentally. Arguably it gives you more flexibility so that you can later clean up the energy production. But then, you can clean up the energy production right now; only when we have an excess of clean electricity does it really mean we don’t have enough electric cars.
I’ve heard arguments that nuclear isn’t all its cracked up to be. That it is as expensive as things like wind and even solar. I imagine it could be made cheaper with better reactor design and whatnot. Though that is probably true of any technology which isn’t mature, which includes wind and solar. And uranium is also not a renewable resource. But nevertheless, it might offer a reasonably clear path to an excess of electric energy, so we can start replacing other energy with electric.
Back when the EV1 was out, I did see analysis that said it was worse than a normal car. Though that depends on a way of weighing different kinds of pollution — electric cars have lots of batteries, and batteries use metal which is incredibly polluting to extract and then may leak into the environment. Batteries haven’t changed much since then, though it does seem hopeful that they may change soon. For instance my new B4 XO laptop has a neat LiFePO4 battery, which might offer some improvements.
Alexander Limi | 02-Aug-07 at 9:38 pm | Permalink
Correct, uranium is not “renewable” as such, but at least there’s enough of it to last us ~100 years, so we can figure out other clean energy sources in the meantime. Handling that amount of nuclear waste is also a trivial task compared to the alternatives (the scope of which is discussed in the video I posted).
The carbon dioxide emissions can’t be stabilized at 2007 levels, they need to be reduced drastically.
Cost is also an interesting factor:
(Source: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8140053)
More statistics: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8330382
I do read other things than the Economist, honest — they just happen to have a lot of good data on this stuff. :)
Ian Bicking | 02-Aug-07 at 10:49 pm | Permalink
If we want to stave off global warming, is it really realistic to do so through reduction at all? I’ve started to wonder if the only reasonable way to stop global warming is through positive (unnatural) action, not just reduction. It would be nice if we could fix things through reduction, but I’m not sure we can.
Of coarse coal plants are still bad even if CO2 isn’t a problem, and natural gas is in rapid decline, so nuclear might still be good even without considering global warming.
dbt | 02-Aug-07 at 11:02 pm | Permalink
Two blog entries in an afternoon. You are feeling better.
I think biofuels are worth the time. consider switchgrass, which can (supposedly) produce 1000gal of gas per acre with very little production costs. (This is about 150% more output per acre than corn.)
And they’re zero added carbon. extracted fuels are all added carbon.
Kevin Horn | 03-Aug-07 at 12:40 am | Permalink
I’m afraid you’ve hit one of my hot buttons here, Ian, so pardon me while I spew some opinions…
“Environmental Theater”
Love the term. Describes exactly what irritates me about the so-called “environmentalist movement”, which is so full of cock-ups, stupidity, flame-fanning, and outright lies that it makes me physically ill.
Global Warming
Prime source of “environmental theater”. Is the Earth warming? Is it our fault? Even if it is, does it really have anything to do with CO2? With the data available to me through public sources, I can easily answer any of these questions either affirmatively or negatively, depending on which sources I quote.
Ethanol
Due to rising gasoline prices, ethanol is now somewhat financially viable, but has a few problems…low volumetric energy density compared to gasoline (but almost everything has that problem…there’s a reason gasoline is a prime vehicle fuel), and emissions. While some would have you believe that ethanol is a super-clean fuel, this depends entirely on how one defines “clean”. Ethanol does boast impressively low NOx emissions (which cause smog), but it also has Formaldehyde as one of its combustion by-products, and I think I’d rather have the smog.
Biofuels (ethanol and otherwise)
Not a terrible idea, but not a cure-all by any means. The main problem with biofuels (on a large scale at least) is that making them requires arable farmland. Since the beginning of 2007, when ethanol started being put in everyone’s gas in the US, food prices have gone up appreciably for the first time in decades. Why? Corn being used for ethanol. Corn prices go up. Corn is also used to feed cattle, etc. Beef, pork, poultry prices go up. Corn is planted instead of other crops (so it can be used for ethanol). Soybean, wheat prices go up. The only solution is more farmland. Now consider that the biggest environmental impact that humanity has on the rest of the environment is agriculture. Not fossil fuels, not DDT…agriculture. The only advantage biofuels have is that they aren’t finite in supply.
…and as far as the “no added carbon” argument, I don’t see how that works. Corn to ethanol takes carbon from the soil and puts it into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels take carbon from the ground and put it into the atmosphere. Either way carbon goes into the air that wasn’t there before. The fact that the fossil fuels come from deeper than the carbon in corn is probably of little relevance.
Coal Plants
By all means, get rid of them first. Carbon Dioxide is at least non-toxic. Coal emissions are nasty. The problem is that coal energy is really really cheap. Hopefully the new “clean coal” plants coming on-line in the next few years will live up to their promises. That should help considerably.
Electric Cars
The engineer in me cringes. What a horribly inefficient way to get around.
Also, you’re right, the batteries are generally pretty awful for the environment, and it takes a whole lot of energy to make one. This goes for hybrids too. Check out this article, or search Google for “prius hummer” for more on this.
Nuclear
I’ve been talking about pebble reactors for years…nice to see someone else talking about it for a change. :)
Again, not a cure-all, but better than a lot of things.
wow…I did kind of go on, didn’t I…
Sorry, just gets under my skin.
Luke Opperman | 03-Aug-07 at 12:52 am | Permalink
After talking last week I’ve come to agree on your last paragraph - “raising awareness” without being aware of the truth behind what you’re doing is the height of stupidity.
This post on co2 per mile travelled compared to this graph compared to this first google hit for co2 per mile travelled show some commonalities and some wide variation that is inscrutable without digging into the methodologies. A gapminder-esque project for aggregating environmental data and exposing it to the masses sounds good.
Should we make a distinction between simple “raising awareness” short-sightedness and “taking a partial step”? Say, the minimal advantage of dual natural gas/Hydrogen combustion vehicles, leading to hydrogen infrastructure leading to built-in impetus for clean hydrogen production? There are many alternate paths, I suppose we can’t avoid the need for vision. Alexander’s comment just made me think of the difference between choosing to advocate an absolute goal, a relative goal, or a relative goal combined with an exit strategy. Along the lines of the cradle-to-cradle movement, we need to consider the next moves that become available from a given choice. Nuclear waste for instance fails this test spectacularly in the medium->long term, but it all depends on the timeframe we’re concerned about.
And ethanol just pisses me off. Rawr! Ok, I’ve ranted enough about stuff I haven’t thought enough about (contra one of the points of your post), I’m going to go mull over gapminder-for-carbon-choices.
Paul Boddie | 03-Aug-07 at 5:11 am | Permalink
Alexander, I’d like to see the figures behind the assertion that “nuclear energy […] has killed less people than any other energy form, wind/solar power included”, especially if you consider indirect causes of death. Perhaps China has some pebble bed reactors running (Wikipedia claims only a single prototype), but it’s not exactly contributing to the nuclear “bottom line” right now. Meanwhile, people in various places - Norway, even - are somewhat excited about Thorium, but there’s always the issue of waste disposal.
Really, the sooner people can figure out viable generation from nuclear fusion (aside from solar generation, of course), the better, but the vested interests do seem to love pushing their non-solutions like biofuels, presumably because there’s money to be made in appearing to be doing something for the environment whilst switching pet special interest groups from one form of subsidies to another.
Robin Munn | 03-Aug-07 at 8:12 am | Permalink
Another cost of biofuels, especially corn, is the amount of corn being produced that won’t be used for food. (Whether that’s human consumption, or being fed to animals that are raised for milk or meat). To produce large amounts of biofuels, we would need to either find thousands of acres of new, prime farmland that’s not currently being used (ha!), or else switch over current cornfields from food production to biofuels production. That means a lower supply of corn in the food industry, which means a higher price on everything that uses corn, whether it’s beef (corn-fed beef, at least) or soda pop (which has corn syrup as its #1 ingredient).
I have no idea whether the increase in food prices has been taken into account in those EROI-just-above-1 figures you mention. But I would guess that it hasn’t, because it’s an economic cost, not an energy cost. It should be considered, though: anything that raises the price of food hits the poor much, much harder (proportionally) than the rich. What’s the energy gain for that economic cost, and could that same energy gain be realized through other means with lesser costs? (Such as, for instance, replacing coal plants with nuclear reactors, as has already been mentioned).
Paul Boddie | 03-Aug-07 at 10:02 am | Permalink
Nice to hear that global warming is “environmental theater”. Whether or not the planet gets warmer all by itself every now and again, there are huge challenges in dealing with the impact of climate change without even considering why it has come about: for example, “follow the mammoths to higher ground” doesn’t cut it any more as a crisis management strategy. But we do have a responsibility to determine what kind of climate change is occurring and to what extent human activity is responsible, and if that gets a lot of publicity, then so be it. Ultimately, society in the developed world is going to need to make some fairly tough changes to its collective lifestyle - at a level of discomfort greater than that causing the squealing one usually hears as fuel prices in the US exceed some threshold which would be considered ridiculously low in Europe and other places - so I hardly think anyone is getting a raw deal being told about such stuff now, especially when the weight of scientific evidence does point to a human role in climate change, and when most people are now surely aware that there will be a struggle to meet their energy needs in future at current levels of consumption.
Ian Bicking | 03-Aug-07 at 10:07 am | Permalink
Well, since I’m kind of trying to coin a term, as an analog to “security theater”, global warming can’t qualify as “environmental theater”. The analog is a means to help the environment that looks useful but has no real benefit. Global warming is a problem not a solution.
It’s true that people can be rather melodramatic about our problems, environmental or otherwise. But that’s not what I was trying to talk about when using that term.
Rob Miller | 03-Aug-07 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
some quick thoughts:
regarding corn: corn production, in the U.S. anyway, is heavily subsidized, and as such is artificially inexpensive. corn is a taxing crop. it shouldn’t be used for nearly as many food products as it is (high fructose corn syrup, anyone?), much less as a fuel source. there’s a reason why ethanol from corn is the only non-petroleum-based fuel source that bush ever mentions; certain folks he is sympathetic to stand to make a ton of money off of that solution.
i’m not familiar with switchgrass, but that sounds like a promising possibility. i also know that good ol’ marijuana (nee hemp) can produce a startlingly high amount of fuel per acre, and the byproduct of extracting the oil is a high-protein seed cake. early Ford cars were powered by hemp fuels. Henry Ford even made cars from hemp. there’s a famous photo of him taking a sledge-hammer to the trunk of a car made entirely from hemp plastic, see http://www.ashevillehempcompany.com/About_Hemp.html. you can find an abundance of info on this by googling for ‘hemp fuel’; the most useful page i found with a quick search is here: http://www.masscann.org/hemp/
regarding “energy theater”. i love the term, will start using (and propagating, hopefully) it immediately. and yes, it’s rampant. real conservation, like security, is hard. and complex. just like the total cost of ownership of software is rarely indicated by the licensing fees alone, neither is the total energy cost of some “green” initiative measurable by the energy expended at the end-user level; you’ve got to consider the whole picture. consider organic produce… in general, it’s a better environmental choice. but when your apple came from new zealand, then is it a better choice than the inorganic produce from the valley only 100 miles away? probably not, when you consider the total energy cost in getting it to you.
anyway, enough rambling… thanks for the fodder!
Christian Schneider | 09-Aug-07 at 7:46 am | Permalink
“Correct, uranium is not “renewable” as such, but at least there’s enough of it to last us ~100 years, so we can figure out other clean energy sources in the meantime.” There’s resources that will tell you that (”easily” accessible) uranium will only last around 50 - 60 years… but even if the 100 years projection is right, those calculations are still based on the CURRENT consumption of uranium. Ever read statistics about how little a percentage nuclear energy currently has on the primary energy mix? As little s 6%… if you would want to replace CO2-emitting power plants with nuclear ones you would have to triple or even quadruple the number of nuclear power plants worldwide (increasing consumption of power of countries like China not included in the calculation) that would mean that you’d have to divide the timeframe in which uranium is still available by 3 or 4… even with your (very optimistic) 100 years estimate that would lead to 25 - 30 years. Everyone who paid attention in their economy lessons can project what will happen to uranium prices once there’s a shortage, and that is just adding to the fact that uranium prices have sky-rocketed (and will continue to do so) in the last years. I wonder how much longer your “nuclear energy is cheap” theory can stand. Then again, when including the “inofficial” subsidies nuclear power has and still does receive that theory isn’t really valid anyhow.
“Handling that amount of nuclear waste is also a trivial task…” How would that be a trivial task? There’s no terminal storage here in Germany because nobody can say if the proposed locations are really safe for the thousands of years that the waste still be highly radioactive. And of course no one wants to live next to one of those dumps, just as nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant.
And as for your “nuclear power is safe enough” statement, I suggest you visit the (huge) area that was contaminated by the Tschernobyl disaster in Ukraine and talk to the victims that are still alive (but most likely have cancer) about it. Just skimming through the (official) lists of malfunctions in nuclear power plants you can find on the net might prove to be somewhat enlightening as well (you wouldn’t believe how many times things ALMOST went seriously wrong).
Renewables are here now, they aren’t too expensive now and prices are dropping rapidly (unlike any other form of electric energy source). Even with a reduced decline of prices for renewable energy, they will have a “break even” with traditional energies within the next 5-10 years. If it weren’t for the crap that the lobby and marketing machinery of the nuclear and oil industries feeds us (renewables = de-centralazation = no money to be made by conventional power companies) we might actually start using them on a big scale and solve both climate and price problems in a time-frame that is much shorter than that needed to build a couple of hundred new nuclear power plants.
Gay Bicking | 12-Aug-07 at 9:24 pm | Permalink
I was so excited to see that I could click on politics to hear what you were thinking. Unfortunately, son, you are STILL way over my head. Oh, I get the numbers, but then all the comments are so technical. I guess, I’ll go back to reading “Folktales from Ethiopia,” my latest interest.