Big oil missed a huge business opportunity

Climate change is forcing businesses to change. In the automotive industry there is now a massive effort underway to develop complete product lines of battery powered all-electric vehicles, apparently with the goal of one day eliminating all gas powered cars. That would certainly help to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But I’m not so sure that it’s what consumers actually want.

It takes 8 to 10 hours to charge a Tesla at 220 volts. The Tesla Supercharger can recharge a Tesla battery up to a 220 mile range in about 15 minutes. Imagine trying to travel cross-country with an all-electric car. A trip from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida is about 3300 miles by car. That would require 15 stops at a Tesla Supercharging station, with a 15 minute wait at each. If the only charging stations you can find along the way are wired for 220 volts, then you will have to spend 8 to 10 hours at each stop. That just doesn’t seem like something most road travelers would want to do.

What if there were another option– one that doesn’t produce carbon dioxide and that therefore doesn’t contribute to global warming, but one doesn’t require ridiculously long times to refuel? In fact such an option is available, right now, in the current marketplace. It’s hydrogen. The Toyota Mirai uses fuel cell technology that is powered by hydrogen and which produces nothing but water as its waste product. And it only takes five minutes to refuel.

The nation’s oil companies have one major advantage over any automotive manufacturer that dreams of replacing gas powered cars with all-electric cars. Oil companies have thousands of gas stations all across the country. Many, of course, are franchises, but all could quickly add hydrogen refueling stations. Consumers are already adapted to the pattern of refueling at a gas station. A five minute stop to refuel, with maybe a quick trip into the company-owned convenience store for a few snacks– and you’re back on the road again. That’s not a pattern that a battery powered all-electric car is ever likely to support.

The nation’s oil companies have known for a couple of decades that climate change was going to destroy their businesses. If they had been smart, they could have sided with the early developers of fuel cell technology (NASA has been using it for 50 years) to build a nationwide infrastructure that would support hydrogen powered cars with their existing gas station infrastructure. Doing so would have ensured the survival of their industry far into the future.

But instead the oil companies did everything they could to trick the American people into believing that climate change isn’t real, or that it isn’t caused by humans, or that it isn’t nearly as bad as tree-huggers claim. The cost was that they completely missed out on what was certainly one of the greatest business opportunities of all time.

It’s going to get a lot worse

Climate change is going to affect those nations of the world that are least able to contend with it. The people of those nations will be beleaguered by rising temperatures, extended droughts, rising sea levels, and ever more powerful storms.

In the United States, most of the state of Florida will eventually be submerged. At present rates, and with the present lack of concern about the future, the ocean’s waters are expected to rise four to eight feet by the end of the century. The highest point in Miami is about seven feet above sea level. So the likelihood is that most of Miami will be submerged by the end of this century. That means that trillions of dollars of real estate equity will be wiped out. The homeowners who lose their properties will become refugees. The United States has the resources, though not necessarily the will, to absorb many millions of climate change refugees.

But similar catastrophes will play out in slow motion all around the world, but the developing countries where they will strike with greatest severity won’t have the resources to absorb millions of displaced refugees. And where will those refugees go? They will head for the richest countries in hopes of gaining entry to a better life.

The refugees that fled the Syrian civil war inundated Europe and precipitated a massive wave of anti-immigrant fervor. In the United States Donald Trump fueled anti-immigrant sentiment with a torrent of hateful and misleading rhetoric. The people of Central and South America who left their homes and headed toward the United States were fleeing violence in their home countries.

But the Syrian civil war was partially fueled by a drought that was the worst in 900 years (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kw77v/the-drought-that-preceded-syrias-civil-war-was-likely-the-worst-in-900-years). And the violence in Central America follows a drought that created massive food shortages across the region (https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/04/17/central-america-climate-drought-migration-and-the-border/).

These problems are all going to get worse. Climate change assures that. The nations of the world could make herculean efforts to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than another degree Centigrade or so. But at present the world’s leaders are not demonstrating the necessary resolve.

More and longer lasting droughts will mean more refugees. More flooding will mean more refugees. More refugees will fuel more anti-immigrant sentiment. All of this will inexorably lead to more calls for limits on immigration, for tighter and more expensive border security, and for limits to the rights of asylum seekers.

Climate change assures us that refugees will flee poorer countries in ever greater numbers. And where will they go? They will naturally gravitate to the rich nations. And those rich nations will do everything they can to protect themselves from a massive influx of poor, homeless foreigners.

These are the conditions that paved the way for Donald Trump to win the U.S. presidency, for Bolsonario to become president of Brazil, and for Boris Johnson to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain. But climate change assures us that this problem will be far worse in the future. The natural impulse of world leaders will be to protect national interests and to defend against the incursions of refugees. And the simplest and easiest way to accomplish those objectives is by invoking martial law.

President Trump has shown future despots the way. Inflame nationalist fears. Warn of the ill intent of refugees. Denounce them as immoral and depraved. Declare a national emergency– or several. Divert funds to defending border security. Do everything you can to limit or remove the civil rights of immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers. Accuse anyone who stands in your way of disloyalty. And inundate the electorate with an avalanche of lies and obfuscation.

There is only one possible defense against such an attack on democracy, and that is vigilant resistance. It means calling out the lies of our leaders and retorting with the truth. It means standing up for the rights of climate refugees, and for people made homeless by war and famine. It means telling the public again and again that it was our own lassitude that brought us to this extreme and that we only have ourselves to blame. And above all it means not giving up. The problem of climate change can be solved. Yes, it’s too late now to prevent the loss of large regions of human habitation. But the problem of human caused climate change is self-limiting, to an extent. When the numbers of human beings to succumb to the ill effects of climate change are so great that only a few humans remain on earth, those who remain will be less able to produce the greenhouse gasses that make climate change the great terror of our time. Humanity will survive, though many millions are sure to be ruined, financially, physically, or spiritually by the depredations of climate change.

Written 2019-09-29.

Orderly Abandonment

The world is on track for a four to eight foot rise in sea levels by the end of this century. (The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells, pg. 59.) The highest point in the Miami city limits is about seven feet above sea level. The Mayor of Miami recently had huge pumps installed to push water out of downtown during days of high tides. But that won’t save the city in the long run. The land on which Miami is situated is resting on a bed of limestone– which is porous to water. Miami could never build a seawall high enough to keep the oceans out.

The average elevation of New Orleans is one to two feet below sea level. When Katrina hit the storm surge inundated the Ninth Ward to such a depth that most houses were covered to their rooftops. And these are only two of the coastal cities in the United States that are destined to become uninhabitable when the waters rise.

We all know that American political and business leaders are too selfish and cowardly to call for the prevention of climate catastrophe. Some have argued that snowfall is proof that the world’s climate isn’t getting hotter; others that the climate has changed many times in the past and that therefore it’s not a human problem to solve; others that even if the climate is warming and humans are responsible for some portion of it, global warming is a problem that humans cannot solve because it would cost too much.

These various arguments all have an element of truth, but they are all completely wrong in the broader context of the present scale of climate change. Yes, it does indeed continue to snow in many parts of the world today– but that’s an example of weather, not of climate. Yes, the climate has warmed dramatically many times in the past, and often due to massive increases of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gasses) being injected into the atmosphere. What’s different today is that the carbon that is being spewed into the atmosphere is for the first time being produced by processes that are under human control. Yes, the costs of addressing the changing climate are likely to be immense. But the costs of doing nothing will certainly be even more immense. The loss of massive regions of human habitation will inevitably result in the liquidation of trillions of dollars of real estate value. That will inevitably result in the impoverishment of millions of property owners all around the world. The vast majority of those property owners will become refugees who will be forced to flee to more habitable regions of the planet, thereby creating what is certain to be history’s largest and most violent mass migration.

The time to have saved Miami and New Orleans– and the many other low lying great cities of the world– would have been 40 years ago. There would have been ample time then to develop long term plans that could have minimized the effects of climate change. But we are well past that point now. We are now at a point where it is too late to save low lying cities like Miami, or sweltering regions of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. Our best option at this point is to plan for the orderly abandonment of the regions we know cannot survive rising sea levels and burning heat. Step one of such a plan would be to halt all new construction and refurbishment of existing structures in these regions– immediately. Step two would be to disallow the resale of any existing buildings that rising waters or excess heat have rendered unusable. And step three would be to sell off buildings for scrap as they become unusable. These steps at least offer the possibility of limiting the scope of financial ruin that will inevitably engulf those who own property in hazardous regions. Such a policy may seem cruel, but at least it would be more honest than to hope for a salvation that has virtually no likelihood of materializing.

Written 2020-02-02.

Terraformation

NASA is currently developing plans for sending manned missions to Mars. There has even been talk of establishing permanent colonies on Mars and even of terraforming the planet. Imagine a Mars of the future with oceans, lakes, and rivers– teeming with life, and enjoying a temperate climate. Mars could be the first experiment of the terraformation of planets throughout the galaxy which our species may one day inhabit.

But before we get too ambitious perhaps we should try our hand at terraforming some of the currently uninhabitable lands of our own planet. About twenty percent of all terrestrial land is desert, most of which is uninhabited. Why don’t we demonstrate our terraforming prowess on a vast terrestrial wasteland such as the Sahara before we attempt to transform another planet?

The Sahara is about 3.6 million square miles, about the same area as the United States. It has the highest sand dunes in the world– some as much as 590 feet high. The Sahara receives less than 4 inches of rain a year, and a large portion receives less than an inch.

Transforming the Sahara into lush, arable land may seem daunting, but why would anyone think that terraforming Mars will be less difficult? The Sahara is inhospitable, arid, and hot. Mars is inhospitable, arid, and cold. If we can demonstrate that it is possible to tame the Sahara then there might be reason to believe that we could one day do the same for Mars.

Think of the challenges. The winds of the Sahara can blow at hurricane force. When the rains come they are torrential. Dunes drift across the landscape like waves on the surface of the sea. And there are neither flora nor fauna in vast regions of the deep desert. How can humans improve such an immense wasteland?

The most feasible approach would be to begin at the periphery and transform sand to soil mile by mile. Water can be extracted from atmospheric humidity. Solar power is available year round. Resources are available and can be exploited, should anyone think it worth doing. Why do we think it is more noble to terraform Mars than to make the Sahara habitable? Millions of people could benefit today from the transformation of the Sahara. Any benefits the terraformation of Mars might return would only be realized in future generations.

Of course there are national borders to consider. The bulk of the Sahara exists within the bounds of a number of African nations known for instability and civil war. Perhaps the venture is just too risky to pursue.

But will it be different on Mars? Once humans begin to colonize Mars– or any other planet– claims to national sovereignty will be made, borders will be claimed, and battles over those claims will likely be fought. Anyone who thinks that Mars will provide a clean slate from which to build a pristine paradise simply hasn’t thought deeply about human nature.

There are a great many technologies that can be developed and tested today, here, on planet Earth for the terraformation of inhospitable lands. We don’t need to travel to another planet to prove them out– we can do that here, now. And millions of people could benefit immediately from such a bold vision today.

The “System” is BROKEN

A recurring slogan one heard from the radicals of the 1960s was that the “system” is broken. Some of them went so far as to claim that the structure of American society is so out of whack that it can’t be repaired– it will have to be burned to the ground and rebuilt.

Although this claim was never articulated clearly enough to know what precisely was meant by the word “system,” there was plenty of evidence that the radicals were right. The Vietnam War dragged on and on because none of our leaders wanted to admit defeat. Minorities were repressed throughout the country and prominent leaders at the national level were working actively to prevent them from being treated as equals. Several cities across America were on fire due to protests over discrimination. Pollution was fouling our air, rivers, and lakes and polluting corporations were doing everything they could to prevent the government from taking action. And the US Congress seemed to be stuck in a pattern of hysteria and inaction.

At the time I reasoned that ours is a democratic government and that as the truth got out to the American people eventually they would demand action. The crushing defeat of George Wallace and his segregationist movement in 1968, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1970, and the end of the Vietnam War all seemed to confirm my deductions.

But more recently I’ve come to realize that the 60s radicals were right all along. My mistake, I now see, was in believing that our government is a democracy. Yes, Article VI of the Constitution guarantees each state a republican form of government– and yes state Governors and Legislators are elected directly by the people. But at the national level our government is designed chiefly to represent the states, not the people. That’s why it’s called the United STATES of America, not the United People of America. The President is elected by a body that is apportioned by state. The Senate is clearly designed to represent states. And because of rules enshrined in Article I Section 2 of the Constitution and in The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 the House Of Representatives is skewed toward protecting the power of small states.

The belief that ours is a democratic form of government is deeply ingrained in American culture. It’s taught in schools, it’s repeated daily throughout all news media outlets, and it’s stated again and again as if it were an obvious truth in every political campaign. In consequence there is no perception in the general public that anything about our form of government is truly broken. But the 60s radicals were right, even if they couldn’t articulate clearly what was wrong. It’s the Constitution itself that is broken, and our national government has almost no chance of fairly representing the will of the people until these major structural flaws in our government are fixed.

I’d like to believe that we could pass a couple of amendments and thereby put our society on a truly democratic footing. But I know that the residents of small states would never agree to give up their advantage. Perhaps a national campaign to communicate the Constitution’s inherent unfairness could succeed in stirring the people to action, but I see no evidence that any such program could get off the ground. Certainly no one at the national level is arguing that the Constitution is in need of significant revision.

So at present it appears that the most extreme radicals of the 60s– those who argued that the entire system has to be torn down and rebuilt– were right. There is simply no other way for our society to restructure the national government as a representative democracy other than to burn it all down and to hope that whatever emerges in its place will in most respects be an improvement. Large majorities of the American people want more gun control legislation, not less. Sizable majorities want abortion to remain legal. Most Americans want an improved health care system. Most Americans want the government to take the lead on climate change. And yet the US Congress can’t make progress on any of these issues because it doesn’t represent the will of the people.

The obvious problem with that view is that we have ample evidence from history that chaos more often leads to autocracy than to democracy. The revolutionary fervor that led the French to tear down the Bastille eventually devolved into the autocratic imperialism of the Napoleonic Empire. The Russian Revolution led to a highly stratified and oppressive nation, not the paradisal society of equals its leaders had foretold.

There are a good many non-governmental issues that have impeded progress as well. First and foremost of these, in my view, is the absolute avalanche of misinformation that pollutes the public discourse. It’s certainly a good thing to have healthy discussions about matters of public policy, but that doesn’t seem to be the least bit feasible at present. Too many of our public leaders have advocated outrageous lies and fantasies. President Trump’s many false statements about COVID19 are but one example. If you don’t even have agreement on a basic set of facts you can’t hope to have a meaningful conversation about something truly complicated like the national economy, or immigration, or climate change.

But I strongly believe that the best and surest way to solve that problem is to change the form of our national government. Why did President Trump repeatedly lie about the lethality of COVID19? He did it to set red states against blue in the expectation that doing so would juice his chances in the Electoral College. The imbalance of our national government distorts all aspects of public discourse and national policy.

If we could tomorrow change our national government to represent the people, rather than the states, it might take 50 or 100 years to know if I am right. I’m pretty sure there is no philosopher or scholar of government who could give us a definitive answer to that question today. But the fact is that just about every other possible form of government has been tried at one time or another in the past and none has proved to be as capable of providing for the economic, social, and emotional needs of a populace as democracy.

We’ve endured much turmoil during the Trump era, but much worse is yet to come. Climate change will eventually destroy most everything we love about this country. There will be literally millions of climate change refugees vying for water, resources, jobs, and living space– many from Central and South America, but a good many millions from within our own borders as well. Environmental turmoil usually results in political turmoil. So one very likely result of the disruptions that will inevitably arise from climate change will be the very revolution that the 60s radicals sought to ignite.

Written 2020-11-15