This is not a diatribe - and should not be taken as such - against clean energy. Who doesn't want clean energy? We love our cordless tools, flashlights, phones, cameras, etc. And, more universally, don't we just want energy? All forms of energy, from all sources, because machines - inventing them, utilizing them - are what separated us from all other living organisms on the planet. Machines made us more productive, made us perform work that were impossible to do, made us advance our civilization, fulfill the ambitions that our ancient forefathers only dreamed about.
Now, in the strictest sense, there is no such thing as dirty energy. At its fundamental nature, energy - kinetic, electrical, sound, heat, nuclear - is clean. The debate has always been about their side effects, so to speak, and their residual impact after their application. Take sound, for example. A mother's hum or whisper soothes her sleeping baby; the distant crashing of ocean waves against the rocky shores may lull us to sleep; but a jackhammer, a loud rock band, the blast from a nearby cannon, will produce harmful decibels to deafen us temporarily or even permanently. It's the same sound energy with devastating side effects.
The most basic and original form of energy since the beginning of time, a fraction of which were condensed to become matter, created the kind of universe we see today but a gamma ray burst, ultraviolet radiation that traveled through space a few hundred, even thousands of years ago, can alter or end life of any living thing billions of miles away. Nuclear plants will provide power to thousands of homes for a hundred years but a nuclear bomb will annihilate a hundred thousand people in a few seconds.
From the moment Grog, the first caveman, who saw fire created by a lightning strike on a tree nearby, and keeping it lit by feeding twigs and branches to keep it going, and generations after him who found other ways to make fire, man harnessed the first artificially induced form of energy. I wasn't personally there to witness Grog first hand, but that version is as good as any story anyone can come up with.
Firewood, for eons, was our primary source, alternatively a carrier, of energy. It has always been fuel (wood) plus oxygen plus source of initial ignition (F+O+i=Heat). If we must think about this, for millions of years, the way energy was acquired had always been through that shortest route. Inefficient, yes, but its delivery was the shortest possible. The point of this boils down, no pun intended, to accessing energy with the least amount of the proverbial "middleman" in between - metaphorically speaking, that is.
Energy today is largely commoditized, such that at every point of the hand off there is cost to be accounted for. Let's get to it quickly.
Today, in a typical modern household, before we get to the (F+O+i=Heat), we begin with P (petroleum, exploring for and pumping it from the ground) + T (transporting the crude oil) + R (refining) + S (storage and shipping) + p (piping from provider's storage) + h (Home appliance: heater, stove and furnace), only then do we get to (F+O+i=Heat). So today, in a nutshell, this is how it has become for the modern Grog and Groga's family : P + T + R + S + p + h = (F+O+i=Heat). At each point and in between is a cost.
Substitute h with C (car) and G (gas station), before we get to (F+O+i=Heat) which by the way is still the same heat energy (F+O+i=Heat) from the rapid, continuous, repeating explosions in each cylinder in every engine that propels the car, and we have the same equation working. Every item or element we add is a cost.
Now, substitute h with c (charger or charging station + B (battery for storing electrical energy before the motor) for the electric vehicle (EV).
We will not quibble with how we get to the battery by mining for lithium and other rare earth minerals from remote and relatively hostile places and horrible working conditions, to get to the manufacture of EVs. We will not quibble with the fact that to manufacture lithium batteries, we employ furnaces and machines that run on electricity generated predominantly from fossil-fuel-fed plants. It is true for all large scale manufacturing processes, which include making the entire body of the electric vehicle itself.
However, we will quibble with the all-or-nothing agenda to choose only one over another form of energy to the full exclusion of the other. Such rhetoric as "end the fossil fuel industry entirely" and the numerous slogans that activists come up with regularly - the printing and dissemination of them had become a business by themselves - is as unproductive as Don Quixote's quarrel with the windmill, as glaring an ironic metaphor that image conveys to the misuse of land for the "almighty wind turbine". Splattering egg and mashed potato on museum art to protest against oil by young activists when such waste of food could have fed a hungry child for a day somewhere in an impoverished corner of the world that these ignorant protesters pretend to care about from one side of their mouth, is another Quixotic insanity.
We quibble with getting rid of fossil-fuel-fed emergency vehicles that are the only go-to equipment during and post natural disasters. Try using EVs during flood rescue operations. Diesel powered earth moving equipment will not only clear roads and debris handily but they will do it with zero downtime to recharge batteries. Even a nuclear powered submarine has in its belly a standby diesel engine, in case its nuclear power fails.
There is obviously much more to quibble with those who aim for totally carbon-free generators of energy, but suffice it to say that the world is better off finding ways to balancing the application of all energy - endeavor for cleaner fossil fuel vehicles along with EVs in a manner that allows for a meaningful co-existence instead of an all or nothing war where there will not be one winner. EVs have a place in modern transport but it will not be able to do all; so why get rid of the alternative that is definitely more capable at meeting the demands of the heavy lifting, literally speaking, including dealing with natural disasters and mass transportation of massive loads, not the least of which is air travel and hauling air cargo; and delivering goods and produce across land via 18-wheeler transport.
From the moment of creation, the Creator saw to it that from that moment on matter and energy may be interchangeable but no longer shall either be created or destroyed. All matter, all energy, was and still are a blessing to all creatures. What is stored in a pound of coal, gas in a gallon of fuel oil, lightning sparks from ionized clouds, even the rushing water on a waterfall, wind as warm air rises and cold air rushing through, are all part of the energy from since creation, forever part of the universe. So it is with that premise that we must always widen our views, to include considering other ideas instead of narrowing it only to those who agree with us and reject and ostracize those whose opinions do not conform with ours.
Image below: Do we want this kind of solution? Someone claiming to have run his Tesla for 1600 miles without having to use a charging station is clever but Quixotic. He installed a lawn mower engine that ran constantly to recharge his EV batteries. Clever or foolish or he is not aware that there is such a vehicle called a hybrid that has been on the market for quite some time now.
Let's not be Quixotic with clean energy.
Referring back to the first paragraph, we do not ban jackhammer, rock bands and cannons (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture comes to mind). We've come a long way towards clean emissions from the days of the Model T, plants are spewing less contaminants to the environment from all kinds of pollutant reducing measures and stiffer regulations.
Car engines today are not only more efficient, they last longer and regulations keep them in check. Meanwhile, the push for electric vehicles must be tempered with anticipating issues that could arise from discarded lithium batteries and other harmful rare elements associated with batteries after their useful lives. There are already widespread discarded lithium batteries just from flashlights and myriad portable tools and appliances. It is not too inconceivable that the next generation of activists will be protesting against lithium wastes and their deleterious environmental impacts not fully anticipated and understood today.
One more word to those who claim concern for world catastrophe from fossil fuel, oil, the oil industry, gasoline engine, etc. If there is one universal truism, it is that 99%, if not all, that we worry about constantly, are likely to be superseded by something else we didn't quite anticipate.
We can't ask the dinosaurs what really worried them 67 million years ago but we can be certain it was not the asteroid that hit what is now The Yucatan Peninsula. That single event caused the ultimate extinction of the dinosaurs after reigning at the top of the food chain for 160 million years.
While the Biblical plague caused three days of darkness over Egypt, the year 536 A.D., described by archaeologists and scholars of historical catastrophe, as the worst year to be alive, had much of the world in darkness for a full 18 months, due to volcanic eruptions. Think about climate change as a result of that.
As it turned out, severe climate changes have always been the recurring pattern to rule much of our history, to include six ice ages and alternating global heating, long before there were cars and trucks and fossil-fuel-fed industries. And don't forget what ended the reign of T-Rex.
The war on fossil fuel is as foolish an errand as that of The Man from La Mancha. If he had only listened more to the wisdom of Sancho Panza - his "uneducated" sidekick.
No comments:
Post a Comment