Peak Oil response: Hardware vs. Software
by George SeldesMay 28th, 2007 at 08:16:47
The main issue in planning our response to peak oil, it seems to me, is determining how to best use the abundant oil we have while it is still abundant, and staving off any attempt to shift to liquid fuels produced from coal.
Thus, it appears that the issue, in practical terms, is whether to pursue “hardware” or “software.”
By hardware, I mean replacements and substitute technologies, mostly things, that allow us to keep moving about in a frenzy, keep globalization going, keep flying, etc. In other words, all the wonder toys, as someone called them, that let us keep the high consumption, high energy lifestyle going. Biofuels are a hardware approach, because they fool people into thinking that we can simply substitute one liquid fuel for another, and nothing else has to change.
By software, I mean new approaches to what we do, mostly NOT things, that help us adapt and enjoy NOT moving about in a frenzy, NOT keep globalization and its endless search for cheap labor going, NOT keep flying, etc. Software is about redeveloping the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of mostly local self-reliance and the intelligent use of technology to avoid the need for the massive use of fossil fuels.
The main threat to hardware approaches, in my opinion, is that it means further investment in a way of life (auto dominated society and development) that must end if we are to have a habitable planet. Further, I am convinced, that the more we invest in hardware approaches, the more we insist that technology is the answer, the more likely we are as a society to ignore the skull-and-crossbones over the box marked “coal to liquids” and try to keep it going even longer with coal. If we can’t make the shift off petroleum by choice in an era where we have as much cheap energy available as we could want, then we are surely unlikely to make the switch if we’ve squandered all that cheap energy and the transition is more like deprivation and less like intention.
James Howard Kunstler, as so often is the case, expresses it well in his latest blog entry:
It only made me more nervous, because this longing for “solutions,” strikes me as a free-floating wish for magical rescue remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us to make a hassle-free switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something less likely to destroy the Earth’s ecosystems (and human civilization with it). And I think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our problem — certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly about these things.
I said so, of course, which seemed to piss off a substantial number of my fellow festival attendees.
My position on this can be easily misunderstood. I don’t want civilization to collapse (I like Mozart and access to root canal). I don’t want Homo sapiens to go extinct, or the planet to parboil. I certainly don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of this emergency. But I also don’t believe we are going to make any hassle-free switch in the way we run things — or that we should want to. Would the USA be a better place if we could run Wal-Mart and Las Vegas on wind power? I don’t think so. Would the public benefit from another hundred years of suburban living — and an economy based largely on creating ever more of it? All the Prozac in the universe would not avail to offset the diminishing returns of that bullshit.
In my travels, I have noticed a disturbing theme among the educated minority of eco-advocates: they are every bit as dedicated to the status quo (in their own way) as the NASCAR morons and shopping mall developers. The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?
I encountered this ethos most strikingly a few years back at Middlebury College in Vermont, where angry biodiesel advocates assailed my lack of enthusiasm for their particular “solution” — which seemed geared mainly to allow them to continue to drive their dad’s old cast-off SUVs to the snowboarding venues of that progressive little state. But the wish to keep running all our cars permeates what little public discussion there is of the global warming / energy crisis issues at all levels. Even the elder statesmen of the eco-movement talk it up incessantly. The first great victory will come when they shut up about it and put their minds to other tasks.
The eco-advocate community is still hooked into the Faustian bargain of technology with little consciousness of its diminishing returns, and to some extent have made themselves unwitting tools of the truly clueless and wicked who run business and politics in our land.
May 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I don’t see development of biofuels, wind power, etc. and development of walkable communities as mutually exclusive. Coming up with solutions to our crisis of sustainability is too important to allow ourselves to be mired in philosophical controversies about hardware vs. software. That said, each element of the solution does need to be carefully scrutinized to insure that it doesn’t merely substitute one basic problem for another (as in the case of ethanol from corn).
May 28th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
If I thought it was merely a semantic or philosophical argument, I would agree.
However, based on my experience, the proponents of “hardware” will not allow or even discuss any “software” changes, because there is always another rabbit ready to be pulled out of another hat that will make the software changes unnecessary.
As I see it, if we make the “software” changes (changes in zoning, changes in the whole panoply of laws that privilege sprawl and carburbia over compact forms, taxing fossil fuel use so that it bears its full costs, to name a few) that we need and they succeed, then we will have bought a lot more time to tinker with and improve the hardware. In other words, hope for the best plan for the worst, and you might get lucky, but whether you do or not, at least you have set yourself up for the best result.
But, instead, we plan as if the best case was a sure thing, hope the worst never occurs, and forego the software changes. Thus we end up siding with the eternal opimists in the hardware side, the ones who never run out of hats from which rabbits might conceivably be pulled. Thus, policymakers constantly hear that there is no reason to do anything drastic like, you know, stop driving towards the cliff at full speed (except maybe to throw some subsidy money towards the current rabbit du jour).
I note that there seems to be a consensus here that ethanol from corn is a loser—no one speaks up for it, anyway. However, if you go to the Legislative website and look up HB 2210, you’ll see that there’s nothing in that subsidy package that disallows subsidies for corn (although it carefully avoids the word) ethanol.
The bill allows a credit of 90 cents per bushel for “grain crops, including but not limited to wheat, barley and triticale” (See Sect. 5).
Since the rabbit called “cellulosic ethanol” is still a gleam in a chemist’s eye, why would we be subsidizing a technology we know to be a loser?
Because that’s what hardware fixes do every time–they are the sirens of desire luring us onto the rocks by promising that, if we just come a little closer, subsidize them a while longer, they’ll give us our fondest wishes.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I would argue that the single-minded focus on biofuels and electric vehicles among some environmental advocates takes far too much attention away from more viable solutions that are both scalable and effective at reducing our environmental impact.
Yesterday I heard a radio show on an environmental radio station in which an advocate for plug-in hybrids sang the glories of electric vehicles. Of course there was exactly ZERO mention of where all this electricity is going to come from (wind and solar ain’t gonna do it), where all the nickel from the batteries will come from (strip mines in places like New Caledonia), or whether it was a good idea to perpetuate our individualistic drive-everywhere-all-the-time lifestyle. Instead it was presented as a simple(-minded) techno-fix that won’t require anyone to change anything about their behavior, except how they fuel up their SUV.
I don’t consider this environmentalism, though it’s often dressed up as such. More like “status-quoism.”
May 30th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Orygunner,
Thanks, I agree. Yes, the EV (or PHEV, or serial hybrids, or whatever is the fancy of the moment) is the most alluring siren of all, constantly promising that we can maintain carburbia and that we can ignore that half of America’s power (and 40% of Oregon’s) is from coal. The Tesla sports car ($98k) is the new fantasy of the people you’re talking about.
Wind and solar can be a huge part of the solution, but the solution doesn’t start until we radically reduce our energy demand, starting with the energy we waste moving 180 pound people around in 2,000 pound cars.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:48 pm
George,
I’m still feeling my way around this site, trying to figure out what Onward Oregon is about. I notice that you make almost all of the posts to the blog. I’m wondering if this post summarizes the Onward Oregon view: we have to get people to stop doing most of the things they are doing that use energy.
Some of the other posts make more sense to me if that is the view. Is that it?
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Errr, I don’t think I can speak for OO (as an institution) or other OO bloggers, but (speaking for myself) I don’t think that summarizes my position accurately.
BTW, I didn’t take a test or sit an interview to be an OO blogger—I responded to the call for volunteers that’s on the OO home page, and submitted some writing samples. I believe the OO powers-that-be would welcome additional folks–at least the invitation is still up there. I think they would be delighted if there were more bloggers and more active bloggers.
So, essentially, what I know of “the OO view” is from digging around the website and reading posts and some of the introductory material here, sort of as you are. It’s about making Oregon a better place, is about all I can see. There doesn’t seem to be a set of positions you have to take, or if there is, I failed right off.
Energy & the environment happen to be overriding interests of mine, and that is probably reflected in my posts; certainly they’ve been the subject of a lot of legislative action this session, which has prompted a lot of what I write about.
In particular, we still have a big piece of pork threatening to establish itself in Oregon law (HB 2210, a subsidy program for biofuels that doesn’t even require that the biofuels produced have a net positive energy return, or be made without fossil energy, or not destroy the soil, etc.).
But every OO blog post has the author’s name on it, and that’s all it represents–the views of that blogger. So it would be unfair to tar anyone else with my opinions.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:02 am
George,
Thanks for the response. I’ll keep hunting for the big picture. It is helpful to realize that you are a “special focus” blogger (if you’ll excuse the term) and not the voice of OO.
I’ll certainly read your stuff and comment from time to time. Climate change is a major hot button for me this election cycle, and I want the ammo to point out when a particularly stance by a candidate will worsen the climate situation. (Obama’s support for coal liquification, probably prompted by the coal companies in southern Illinois, is a good example.)
Maybe I’ll write something up on health care issues and send it to the blog police (just kidding) to see if I qualify.