{"id":703,"date":"2010-10-10T18:25:23","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T22:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=703"},"modified":"2010-10-10T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:11:00","slug":"there-is-no-outside-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"There is NO OUTSIDE anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am reading a book about kangaroos by Tim Flannery<\/a>, who is also the author of the “Future Eaters<\/a>” (published in 1994 and\u00a0 made into a TV documentary<\/a> in 1998).\u00a0 I also spend far more time than I would like commuting, and so listening to public radio.\u00a0 The near continuous coverage of mid-term US politics is a soothing background to thinking about energy.\u00a0 A newspaper article out of Germany this week hits the topics that are floating around, and relates to the job I am trying to do.\u00a0 My good friend Charles (the Prince of Wales) is out with a book as well; \u201cHarmony<\/a>\u201d (He even reads an excerpt here<\/a>).\u00a0 Charlie gets a lot of bad press about his do-gooding attitudes, and one has to admit that being an organic farmer and looking to protect the architectural heritage of the world is a lot easier when you have a lots of inherited and tax-payer provided money to start with.\u00a0 But if one gets past all that, his basic message is very relevant and necessary.<\/p>\n

The central point of all this input is:\u00a0 “THERE IS NO OUTSIDE!”<\/p>\n

We are so used to thinking of the inside vs. the outside.\u00a0 We bring water and food and clean air from the outside of house, and dump wastes and polluted air (from cooking and burning oil, gas, coal and whatever) back to the outside.\u00a0 If we use an air conditioner (an air source heat pump) we bring cold air inside and dump hot air outside.<\/p>\n

On a farm we bring water (via irrigation), fertilizer, fuel and all sorts of other material in, then we send concentrated food (good) and a heap of waste water, fertilizer run-off and green-house gases back out (not so good).<\/p>\n

On a community level we again bring water, food and all sorts of materials inside, and then we dump sewerage and trash to the outside.<\/p>\n

The ocean is one of those great \u201coutsides\u201d; we pull resources from it, like fish and oil, and then dump huge amounts of pollutants and trash back into it.\u00a0 Hidden by a pretty, ruffled surface what goes on beneath is invisible to most of us.<\/p>\n

On a national level we in the US, and the Europeans, are almost hard wired in this perception of the world.\u00a0 We are \u201cinside\u201d, they are \u201coutside\u201d.\u00a0 We pull in resources from outside, including energy, food, cheap labor, every possible consumer product and so forth.\u00a0 Then we dump our trash, including old ships, electronics parts with heavy metals, carbon dioxide, and all sorts of other stuff back to the outside.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It can\u2019t keep going that way.\u00a0 We should have woken up when we saw the first pictures of Earth from space, during the Apollo missions.\u00a0 But somehow, driven by profit and greed and \u201cgrowth\u201d, we ignored all the signs.\u00a0 The \u201cgreatest generation\u201d didn\u2019t buy into a whole world view \u2013 the inside\/outside view was just too ingrained.\u00a0 The boomers, to our shame, overwhelmingly went along with the growth mantra.\u00a0 Even now, when the preachers of growth and profit at any cost have been proven so conclusively wrong, we still look up to them and continue on the same path.\u00a0 Growth will get us out of the recession.\u00a0 Maybe \u2013 but growth in what?\u00a0 And how long can we grow?\u00a0 Mathematically infinite growth in a closed system is impossible.\u00a0 Maybe the political party that wants to \u201ctake back America\u201d has the answers.\u00a0 \u201cBack to where?\u201d is my question.\u00a0 Back to when the world population was 2 billion?\u00a0 Back to teaching phlogiston and Ptolemaic theories?\u00a0 Back to no votes for women, slavery, burning people who doubted the current doctrine at the stake?<\/p>\n

Sorry \u2013 we can\u2019t go back.\u00a0 We can only go forward, and we can\u2019t go forward in the \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d style.\u00a0 There is no way that we can have a global economy where each country tries to bring the things they desire from the outside, and dump what they don\u2019t want back to the outside.\u00a0 There is no outside anymore<\/em>.\u00a0 If we imagine a world of 10 billion people, all consuming and polluting at an American or European rate, then we really do have a nightmare scenario of empty oceans, eroding fields and filthy air.<\/p>\n

Of course we don\u2019t have to do anything right now.\u00a0 We can probably wait until the last of the boomer generation is old and grey, and probably a bit beyond that.\u00a0 But as we wait the range of choices becomes narrower and narrower.\u00a0 In the same way as our choices become less as we fall into debt, we will be restricted in what we can do as we misuse resources, and neglect promising technologies.\u00a0 We can look to a crash program \u2013 oh, say fifty years from now \u2013 to rectify \u201ceverything\u201d.\u00a0 Maybe\u2026.<\/p>\n

If I had an answer I\u2019d be rich and famous by now.\u00a0 So, no answer, just more questions.<\/p>\n

How does all this relate to the job at hand?<\/p>\n

There is no clear energy policy in the US.\u00a0 Even the fierce debate evident in Europe and Australia is absent from the front pages of the US media.\u00a0 The energy programs keep ticking along at a low key.\u00a0 Our energy audits show home owners how to save energy, save money and live in more comfort, through tried and proven methods.\u00a0 We air-seal, insulate, replace inefficient boilers, furnaces and hot water systems, use CFLs.\u00a0 We get to 25%, sometimes a lot more in savings.\u00a0 Not bad at all. \u00a0The investment makes sense.\u00a0 Government subsidies, rebates and 0% loans help \u2013 a lot.<\/p>\n

But I cannot get rid of \u00a0that nagging feeling that we are going nowhere near far enough, fast enough.\u00a0 Where is the impetus for really tight houses (with the needed heat recovery ventilation)? \u00a0Super-insulation? Solar?\u00a0 Wind?\u00a0 Ground-source heat pumps? Grey water reuse? Not here yet \u2013 in the future sometime\u2026<\/p>\n

In the meantime we are consuming the future of our children and grandchildren \u2013 future eaters indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Globalization has local consequences<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}