Is the future of energy just more coal?
Here in the nation’s capital I am the program chair for the National Capital Region World Future Society. (www.natcapwfs.org) Every month we have dinner meetings featuring experts from around the world telling us about the strategic implications of trends in their industry.
Last week our group was lucky enough to feature Alan Hegburg and Frank Verrastro, both experts in the oil and gas industry as well as fellows at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for their presentation on the geopolitics of energy. (After all, doesn’t it seem like a major concern surrounding the conflict in the Middle East is the presence and flow of oil?) We wanted to hear how things would be different.
Al and Frank possess a depth of expertise that is impressive. They have forgotten more about the intricacies of the energy industry than I will ever know. But one part of their presentation disturbed me. Their forecasts for the energy market predict that in 2025 the mix of sources (oil, coal, nuclear, renewables) that go into providing the world’s energy…will be precisely the same, only bigger.
Huh? Really? No change at all?
I am not questioning their expertise in the matter. Part of being a good futurist is listening to top-shelf experts, which these gentlemen clearly were. But is there really no change on the horizon for energy?
Are we doomed to just keep melting the ice cap?
Is the future of energy really just oil, coal, nuke, and a little ethanol here and there?
This could be. Hegberg and Verrastro point out that the developing world’s growing thirst for energy will outpace conservation measures.
If that’s our future, the world’s designers need to go back to the drawing board, because that’s just not a sustainable future. To put it mildly.
–Garland
You bastards and your eco-criminal MICROWAVE OVENS
Now class, we all know what totally irresponsible, EVIL, eco-criminal behavior looks like, right?
No question, when the average “environmentalist” thinks about people wasting the planet’s vital resources, the venal, selfish, brutish Hummer comes to mind. This is what Darth Vader would have driven, tearing up lilacs and spewing smoke. Oh yeah, pure satanic lust is what makes you buy one of these monstrosities.
Wait a minute, hybrid car owners — don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back just yet. I discovered a lot of dirty laundry about you guys too.
What I love about systems analysis is that it reminds you to take a much broader view of the world. In this week’s The Economist they have their Technology Quarterly, which rounds up the implications of a bunch of technologies. And in there I discovered what the TRUE face of energy-wasting evil is:
Oh, don’t pretend you don’t have one. It’s the NEW face of malevolence the MICROWAVE OVEN.
Before you think I’ve lost my mind, check out “Pulling the plug on standy power” in The Economist. It turns out that there are billions of devices that waste as much as 5% percent of energy consumption by staying in “standby mode.” Even though the microwave take 100 times more power than the digital clock to actually cook food, 99% of the time it’s just sitting there, slowly draining power to run the clock. Just like your damned VCR. And the DVD player that’s sitting there, sucking away your children’s ability to live on the planet.
Seriously, this is another design issue, where we can make significant (five percent!) increases in efficiency with no noticeable loss of lifestyle. This is a fascinating point — could you save 5% of your country’s energy consumption just by having a windup clock instead of a little digital clock in 12 places around the house?
This is another example of the fact that we shouldn’t wait for a miracle technology to bring zero-point energy — we have tremendous progress we can make by simply being mindful.
Parts per billion, paranoid CT scans, and too much information
Could the information age drive us crazy with too much data?
I don’t just mean too many emails, cell phone calls, direct mail offers from credit cards, and data about Tom Cruise’s latest girlfriend– I mean about stuff that basically matters. Threat assessment data is being collected at an unprecedented rate and level of accuracy - but will it make us jump at shadows?
Let me be specific. An interesting discussion at my house last night tied together a lot of things I’ve been wondering about threat assessment in the future. My fiancee, a first-year doctor of internal medicine at the University of Maryland hospital, began complaining about the abuse of the “Whole Body Scan.” You see, people go out and get an extremely detailed scan of every possible clot, tumor, occlusion, and absess in their entire body. Many of these imperfections are the kinds of things that happen every day in the human body. Most would never have resulted in disease. Now, a spooked patient comes in and wants lots of invasive, possibly complicating biopsies, tests on everything under the sun.
For sure, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure…most of the time. But what cost is it to the healthcare system if we now have to check everything that might even look like a disease marker? Will doctors be stuck jumping at shadows? My fiancee and her colleagues are a bit wary of too much information.
Now this reminds me of a recent talk by fellow futurist Jerry Glenn, the executive director of the United Nations University Millennium Project. His recent unveiling of this year’s State of the Future revealed a fascinating conundrum in the world of environmental protection. Apparently, the development of hyper-powerful sensors is giving scientists the ability to sense pollution in the parts-per-billion. For example, you could discover that you’ve got a couple parts-per-billion of arsenic in your apartment.
Now here’s the problem: So what? This new, super-sensitive data collector may not tell us anything more useful about the danger, but it can sure scare you into thinking that your apartment is a toxic waste site. Maybe a secondary impact of all this data is it will make the environmental watchdogs seem even more hyperbolic about potential threats.
To me, this all ties together with the demands on today’s decision makers. We live in a world where everyone is trying to assess threats — Do those guys have WMDs? Is that company entering my market with a better product? Have I got lymphoma? Is that creepy guy following me to my car?
We live in a time where we crave data about threat assessment, but once we find ways to collect it, what are our strategies to create wise plans of action? That’s the trick.
We’re having a special sale on defective mice!
When you come from the rural Northeast, as I do, you wonder what people do for a living. Lots of deserted roads, pretty countryside, expensive houses and high heating bills — how do people survive?
In Bar Harbor, Maine, they are getting into the lucrative business of mouse ranching. This company in the heart of lobster country is providing genetic-engineered mice with precise ailments to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Check it out on CNN.com at “Mighty Mice for Sale.”
The story is about the high price that genetically-tailored lab mice are getting in the healthcare research industry. It’s pretty interesting — want three blind mice? No problem. You want three blind mice with epilepsy? Also no problem, but it’ll cost you. If you want a custom mouse to your own specs, it can go into the tens of thousands!
The existence of this industry leads me to a couple conclusions:
First, we’re going to be increasing innovation in of pharmaceutical and biotech therapies. Much research relies on repeating the results of a certain compound on a specific illness. The genetic engineering aspect here guarantees that researchers will be comparing apples to apples, or in this case mice-with-bladder-cancer to mice-with-bladder-cancer.
Secondly, considering the advances in the understanding of the human genome, this genetic engineering experience will one day be applied to humans. I’m not sure when, but with 50 years (probably much sooner) the custom creation of mice (with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, etc) will be applicable to humans (blue eyes, musical ability, low body fat, etc).
We’ve got a lot of ethical considerations to make.
-Garland
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