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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Roberts contends that it took the threat of actual fuel shortages -- in particular, the California electricity crisis in the summer of 2001 and the oil-shock crises in the '70s -- to inspire widespread conservation. Going even further back, only the development of massive supply shortages impelled societies to move from energy infrastructures based on wood and biomass to coal, oil and natural gas. It's hardly a surprise, then, that the United States, with trillions of dollars of sunk investment in fossil fuels, isn't leaping to do anything about global warming or some future energy shortage. The effects of neither have been felt acutely enough to drive change.
Part of the paradox of American energy use, which Roberts neatly traces, is that as we get more efficient, we respond to that trend by consuming more. Our appliances, cars and houses have become far more efficient over the last few decades; "Today's car travels twice as far on the same gallon of gasoline as [it] did in 1970," he writes. But consumers spend that so-called energy dividend by supersizing their lifestyles with bigger cars, trucks and homes, which use more energy.
Between 1975 and 2000 the amount of energy required to produce $1 of the gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 40 percent while the economy grew by almost 50 percent. Thanks to better technology, we are already doing more with less, but it only makes us want to do more. The same trend makes advocates of hybrid cars wonder if, as their favorite technology becomes more mainstream, consumers will respond to the greater fuel efficiencies by simply buying even bigger cars, thereby wiping out the savings in gasoline and greenhouse gas emissions.
As one California energy consultant quoted by Roberts puts it: "Our environment does not respond to miles per gallon. It responds to gallons" -- meaning that how fuel efficient a country becomes doesn't mean anything if you are still consuming the same amount of energy -- or more -- overall. Even worse, argues Roberts, conservation can prove to be its own worst enemy. In the case of oil, when consumers fear shortages enough to conserve, prices fall, which in turn eliminates the economic incentive for conservation.
Roberts winds up by making a case for what he thinks the government could do to give both consumers and companies an economic incentive to conserve and consequently emit fewer greenhouse gases. His suggestions include adding a $5,000 penalty to the sticker price of massive, inefficient vehicles to account for their "life-cycle costs." But his own arguments about American energy obliviousness would appear to undermine the possibility of such a regulation ever going into effect, even with a change of presidential administration.
Ultimately, one is forced to conclude from his presentation that nothing but massive shortages, or a global warming catastrophe that oil-industry-funded climate-change skeptics won't be able to convince the public is caused by something else, will inspire Americans to curb their hyper-consumptive ways. "The more we learn about the history and character of our energy system, the harder it becomes to see how the world can escape some kind of massive disruption, given current trends," he writes.
Only then will we finally change our ways, and by that time, it could easily be too late.
