Global CO2 emissions are soaring. Scientific report after scientific report, book after book, article after article shout the urgency of doing something to stop the rise of atmospheric CO2. As I mentioned in the previous post, almost nothing in the way of actual concrete proposals has been offered by anyone besides a few bloggers and of late a few courageous individuals. The following post is my attempt to enter the fray and offer actual proposals on how we might reduce our CO2 output. Warning: some of the proposals may be disturbing to some viewers and these proposals do not represent the opinions of Blogspot or its owners, lackeys, or supporters. These proposals represent my thoughts and opinions and I am well aware they will be controversial and implementation unlikely. Some may prove to be half-baked and poorly conceived. I will certainly have to retract some of these ideas and replace them with more feasible ones . It will be apparent to everyone that my proposals will reduce economic activity worldwide.I am cognizant that what I am calling for is the wholesale dismantling of the bloated out of control industrial monster we call the Industrial Revolution. My tacit assumption is that the Industrial Revolution is on its last legs and global industrial collapse inevitable. An additional assumption is that we must dismantle the Revolution in a controlled fashion or have it dismantle us in chaos and fire. The industrial Revolution is at its core a story of growth and progress of the human condition. It is a story made possible by harnessing millions of years of fossil energy. This fossil energy like our planet is finite, and infinite growth on a finite planet with finite resources is impossible. This story is also an ecological story of humans expanding their niche with tools and machines made possible by this fossil energy. It is the increasing cost and ultimate scarcity of this energy that is dooming this revolution. And as we now know the waste products of this Revolution could very well doom the planet and its human and non human inhabitants. A fundamental precept of ecology is the concept of carrying capacity and overshoot. My assumption is that we are there. I think we were there decades ago. Our choice is to create a new niche reliant on careful use of our remaining fossil energy and utilization of renewable energy. This was the operational energy envelope for most of the last 200,000 years. We did it once and can and will do it again. My proposals are directed at the US but it should be obvious that this has to be a globalized strategy.
My previous post listed the various sectors supplied by the various energy sources. 80% of all energy in the US economy is supplied by fossil energy. In 2017 that amounted to 97.7 quadrillion BTUs or 1.024 Trillion Megajoules. I will try to use consistent units and I have chosen the joule and because the joule is a relatively small unit I will use the mega(million) joule. Fossil energy supplied 80% or 78 quadrillion BTUs or again 810 billion MJ. (I hope i got my math right!).
The first sector to attack CO2 is the transportation sector which consumed 29% of primary energy. 97% of that energy was liquid fossil energy mostly oil(92%0 and gas(5%) and renewable(2%).
My easy peasy solution to cutting transportation emissions is a tariff, a tax. There needs to be a tax at the mine opening, the wellhead, the import dock or pipeline. This needs to be assessed at domestic as well as imported oil, gas or coal. For the sake of discussion I will confine this to oil as the US is energy independent in both coal and gas. Taxes will need to be assessed if this situation changes. This is the "carbon" tax. No one is exempt including the military, agriculture, shipping or airlines. No exceptions. no subsidies. In addition there needs to be a tariff on refined fuels. The current federal taxes on gas and diesel and jet fuel is negligible. It should be a percentage of the fuel cost. Let's shoot for a nice even number: 50% for example. Wholesale gas is around $2/gallon. That brings us to $3/gallon. See what I mean? easy peasy. Since I am now making automobile, truck and train and plane transportation more expensive I would direct the revenue to routing people and goods to more efficient modes. Away from cars and trucks and into trains and buses or other modes of mass transport. My money would go to rail and port infrastructure and not to concrete highways and bridges and runways. More on concrete later in the show. This 50% tax is pretty minimal but enough to start to force a change in behavior of how people get around and how goods are delivered. It would need to be scaled up over time using a floating target of reducing CO2 from this sector, say 10% per year. If the target doesn't hit 10%, it's raised.I would like to see the tariff raised to 100% at the outset but 50% is probably necessary to give people and companies time to adapt. Eventually I think the tariff should be 200% to 300% of the wholesale cost. 300% tariff is only $6 /gallon which is less than what Europeans pay currently.
I would hit private automobile transportation hard because it is perhaps the greatest waste of energy in our entire system. The gasoline ICE(internal combustion engine) is only about 20% efficient, 25% in the most efficient iterations. But consider that most of that gasoline energy is being used to move 3000 to 6000 hunks of steel with only a 150-200 lb payload, comprising 3 to 5% of the entire weight of the car. This makes the true efficiency about 1-2 %!! Moving people to diesel powered trains increases the efficiency massively. Diesel trains are electric trains so I am proposing using electricity to move people around as is done in countries like Switzerland with it's electrified rail system. An explanation is in order. Diesel trains are in fact diesel-electric trains because the diesel engine drives an immense electric motor . The huge diesel engines in trains are among the most efficient ICE ever invented , over 50%. Most electric power plants, particularly coal plants are in the 30%+ range. Notice I am not outlawing cars or trucks. I am giving incentives for people and companies to conserve energy such as carrying more passengers or making long distant shipping of goods more costly which would make closer sources of goods more competitive. Asian sweatshops would now be competing with domestic manufacturing. MAGA! I would tighten the screws on use of the automobile infrastructure. For example bridge tolls could be a tiered structure. One occupant: high toll. 2 occupants, 50% toll. Full car: no toll. No toll for full buses . Hefty tolls for semis. I would add a tariff on new cars and additional tariffs on imported new cars. We have more than enough new cars. The effect of these tariffs would likely clear some of the congestion on the roadways and reduce incentives for private automobile travel.These tariffs on fuel would increase the cost of airline travel which is among the most wasteful and polluting forms of travel. Additional disincentives to air travel could be instituted such as banning private jets at airports whose tax base subsidizes these elite travelers. Since car travel is the worst of the worst in terms of energy inefficiency, there would be no bailouts of car companies as has been the case in past decades in the US. Car and plane travel would certainly decline. That after all is the goal. This would obviously reduce discretionary travel by automobile,fewer long vacations to the National Parks for example, reduced tourism. I live just outside Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park and while automobile tourism would decline, people would still come just as they did 100 years ago but they would come by rail, just as they did 100 years ago. Ban all cars in the parks and provide buses or trains, just as they do in Disneyland. Think of the savings in road maintenance and animal fatalities. Would these measures doom the automobile and airline industries? Undoubtedly they would shrink in size. They would also emit far less CO2 by virtue of using less steel and plastic and paint. The airline sector might survive or even thrive by virtue of manufacturing light and strong aluminum rail cars, just ground based versions of what they send into the air. cars might eventually become a niche product the way they were 100 years ago before Henry Ford and cheap gasoline. I am of course aware that making automobile transportation more expensive will wreak financial hardships on people in flyover country such as myself in Wyoming. We in Wyoming have the highest per capita energy use of any state. Number 50. A dubious distinction.No worries. It's the best state in the nation and I'm not moving just because driving my 7500 lb Cummins pickup became more expensive. The next post will look at CO2 reductions in the Industrial sector.
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