"here's a flash movie about climate change with a happy ending"

I just received this email (edited for space):

April 17, 2006 – With 2005 the warmest year in a century, and growing awareness that global warming is no longer abstract theory, but an alarming fact, here's a flash movie about climate change with a happy ending.

"Climate: A Crisis Averted" looks back from 2056 and recounts how ordinary citizens in 2006 – realizing that global warming was a scientific fact and not a climatic theory -- take action to demand clean energy and other planet-friendly options. The movie, which launched today on the internet, describes how a movement called RenewUS effected real change with an action plan, or 'call-to-arms' on global warming.

The four-minute film can be downloaded at www.RenewUS.org, or from the project partners websites – www.stonyfield.com, www.earthday.net , www.cleanair-coolplanet.org or www.greenbiz.com.

I watched the film and it is fun (e.g., my "big ol' laptop," the feel good, no collar wearing, windmill guy). I can understand how society will be better off without climate change than with, but how will the DOW soar over 20,000 based on green energy. I guess we must hope that someday, somehow, green energy will become significantly cheaper than fossil fuels (not the higher priced fossil fuels of tomorrow, but today's cheap prices). No one has explained that one to me yet.

If you're gonna try, please use demand and supply analysis.

Comments

[joshua corning]

MC Fuel!!

McCain/Obama for president!

Fly cars but no robots and aging has not neen reversed?? I think Vinge might have something to say about this.

Anway the most amusing thing about it is the self congradulations that renew US has for itself and for the enviornmental movement in general.
I have little doubt that by 2056 CO2 emission will platue if not begin to recide but this has more to do with general trends in technology and good old fashion free market capitalism then with "people getting together" and signing up on a please regulate me more greeny web site.

I do look forward to the day when I can get off the electiric grid at my house and "refuel" my car with hydrogen produced at my own home.

[joshua corning]

I guess we must hope that someday, somehow, green energy will become significantly cheaper than fossil fuels (not the higher priced fossil fuels of tomorrow, but today's cheap prices).

solar energy has halved in price every 10 years for the past 30 years...trend expected to continue...similar trends can found in wind nuclear and biofuel.

That is how john.

Did you pay attention at all to the micro processor revolution. You know the thing that allows us to communicate via the internet? Moores law and all that?

[odograph]

Ringtones, man.

In the future we will all buy and sell ringtones for a living.

[John Whitehead]

Joshua,

It's not as simple as that and the computer analogy doesn't necessarily fit nonrenewable resources.

First, part of the cost decrease in renewables is due to subsidies. These weaken a macroeconomy. Second, it is difficult to believe that costs will halve forever. Won't diminishing returns set in? Third, nonrenewable prices will rise to meet renewable prices someday. At that higher price is where we'll switch over to renewables. It is difficult to imagine, given today's economy, how at those higher energy prices the economy will enjoy increased growth rates and a 20k DOW.

John

[Dano]

I think John's last sentence is the cause of all the fear-mongering about our future. Our population expansion has been largely - er - fueled by cheap fossil fuel energy. When that goes away, what next? Soft landing or hard landing?

The DoD is making contingency plans now about possible hard landing scenarios wrt widespread societal unrest and resource unavailability combined. They ain't purty.

Best,

D

[joshua corning]

Second, it is difficult to believe that costs will halve forever. Won't diminishing returns set in?

why? As a member of the secret private enterpise club i realize that even though less profit will be made per unit (deminishing returns) that the market will grow with the lower price.

But lets look at as me a developer. I have a choice on how i can get power to a piece of property that is 3 miles from the nearest power line....i can spend lots of cash on putting in conduit or putting in power poles or i can just split the property up into big pieces and let the buyer deal with it.

But lets say i can get power with wind mills and or solar panels and i can store it and it is cheaper to do then putting in wire.

10 years ago if I had suggested putting in power this way to my boss he would have laughed in my face...now he wants price quotes.

A consumer driven market for alternative power is not far away.

[joshua corning]

The DoD is making contingency plans now about possible hard landing scenarios wrt widespread societal unrest and resource unavailability combined. They ain't purty.

The DoD also has contingency plans for a Canadian sneak attack.

"First, part of the cost decrease in renewables is due to subsidies. "

And fossil fuels haven't been and aren't being subsidized?

[John Whitehead]

Anonymous,

You miss the point and are helping me make my point. That statement was in response to an observation that renewable prices are falling fast. Since renewables and nonrenewables are both subsidized, it is difficult to imagine a boost to the macroeconomy when we switch from renewables to nonrenewables as the movie suggests.

John

[hugh]

sorry about being anonymous last time, mostly laziness.

Assuming that the government expenditures on non-renewable subsidies is far greater that the current renewables subsidies, which is probably true even though those who contend that its true tend to stretch the definition of subsidy. If one were to decrease the subsidies to nonrenewables, the prices of nonrenewables and renewables would approach eachother more quickly. Although the subsidies to renewables would increase as a % of government expenditure, subsidies in renewables could also be decreased as investment in the industry naturally increased. Government expenditures decrease, taxes go down, investment increases, and there is maybe, hopefully, economic growth.

[joshua corning]

Since renewables and nonrenewables are both subsidized, it is difficult to imagine a boost to the macroeconomy when we switch from renewables to nonrenewables as the movie suggests.

63,139,599,560,413.46

at 3.5% growth over 50 years starting at 11 trillion...population would be about 400 million for about $158,000 per capita gdp.

and thats not even considering the the flying cars, imortality and the Lucy Lui bots

[don wallace]

Hi All. Well I watched the movie...

I live in Australia. You Guys like happy endings, don't y'all?

Nicely produced (loved the sweet background musak) but pure fantasy. Since when has people power in the States actually worked on a long term basis? The '60's civil rights movement was wonderful and incredibly gutsy but ultimately it failed; Bush et. al. are in "power" (frontmen/figureheads) now.

As Walt Lippman said in 1927, the ruling elite need (and have in place) Neccessary Illusions to keep you compliant (= "dumb and happy"). We ge the same treatment here and after all, FOX (fair and balanced!) is owned by an ex Australian (oh the shame...).

While people like Noam Chomsky are still alive we have some small glimmer of hope
(exposure to some home truths revealed through quality independent research) but by 2010 -2015 the global energy crisis (which has only just started, b.t.w) will be biting hard, your economy will collapse down the yawning chasm of your foreign debt and the poor will be both even poorer and well on their way to being dead (failed public health system).

Of course by then China and India will be running full throttle (e.g. in manufacturing/I.T./callcenter outsourcing) and out competing you guys for control of the worlds strategic oil reserves (what's left of them, anyways ;-).

Your military will be in real trouble because the people who actually do the fighting will be burned out and new recruits will be very hard to find.
Conscription, anyone?

There will of course be viscious wars, perhaps some limited nuclear exchange.
But that won't solve the problem, just accelerate the whole thing. BIG TIME...

They'll probably end up growing corn and wheat in Canada to help feed you guys but you are gonna get COLD in winter (canadians need gas to keep warm too!) and real hot in summer. The weather system is gonna go nuts and you may be up to asses in tornados and hurricanes, drowning in floodwater.

Perhaps by 2050 with the old economy crumbled away and things in tatters
(petrol at $25/gal:- oh, HELL, how am I gonna get to work in L.A. 40 miles away now? will be replaced with "Job? What Job? Food? What food?) things will have settled down for the survivors. But somehow I don't think so. By then who will even CARE if you have a degree in economics or you are a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer?

Of course those of us who have savings will be okay while we can spend our money surviving (won't be saving anymore) so long as the banking system doesn't "bug out".

I was impressed by the long doco "End of Suburbia" but even that is actually way too optimistic.

I am exagerating a bit (not that much). Maybe I am wrong. If it turns out different
drop me a line in 2015.

Of course, down here we won't be much better off.

All the best for the future , all.

Don from Down Under

[don wallace]

Erata:

I should have said about $10 to $15/gal for the petrol price in 2015, not $25. Even so...

I really think that there will be some dramatic war (probably "just" an expansion of the current economic one) between China and the U.S. by 2015.

Just my humble opinion but IF the current
administration loses it's influence AND
nuclear power and sequestered co2 coal fired power can come online in a big way by 2015 then maybe things won't go catastrophic (economy-wise)
but the Dems over there seem as stalled as Labour party is over here. That is a really interesting twist in the party politics of the "democracy" as implemented. I see no way for ordinary people to break our political systems out of this functional deadlock.

It is scary to note that China and Iran
(free market-Dictatorship and "mad" Thoecracy resp.) do not suffer from this limitation. Of course they have other problems.

It is interesting to see that the hydrogen car furfey along with other distractions e.g. solar and wind power are still going strong. Very effective tactics to confuse the general population.

Of course non fast breeder reactors run on
U235 fuel of which the world has enough to last only another 30 years or so tops.
Unless the global political scene can become stabilized the western world is going to be very nervous about running up P238 (?) based fast breeders, which would allow maybe 200 years of power at current levels.

I note that some scientists are reporting that we could have fusion within 15 years.
Is this real or just a cover story like the hydrogen car?...

Ultimately we may all (the poorer survivors anyway) end up living like Cubans, living close to our work places (whether we want to or not). Is this really possible?

As transport and food production costs spiral (all fertilizers are petrochemical based), at what point does the resultant real unemployment rate (due to failing small business, the real economic engine and other dislocating effects) cause the economy to really crack? And they say that the poor don't matter... ;-) They don't, not yet...

Anyone want to predict the price of petrol in 2010? Really intereted in THAT one.

All the best,

Don W