Why We Just Need 306,000 People to Say Thanks, But No Thanks, To Offshore Drilling

Written on 10/01 at 06:46 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment

Just because Congress has allowed the ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf to expire doesn’t mean we need to throw our hands in the air and watch idly as the oil companies swoop in and make a profit.  In fact, we don’t even need to allow all this petty, ridiculous talk about “Drill Here, Drill Now” to distract us from the larger challenge of lowering energy prices, getting off foreign oil and addressing climate change.  Despite the fact that our leaders have already said ‘yes’ to offshore drilling, it isn’t too late to change that answer to ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ All we need is for 306,000 people willing to show our leaders how eager Americans are, as Thomas Friedman likes to say, to do nation building here at home.

Let’s first, as many have already done, put the whole offshore drilling debate in perspective.  The U.S. currently imports 630 million gallon of oil a day.  According the Department of Energy, additional offshore drilling would bring online an additional 153 million gallons of oil A YEAR by 2017, reaching a maximum of roughly 300 million gallons by 2030.

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How About A $700 Billion Bailout for the Climate?

Written on 09/23 at 11:47 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here.

There are a lot of similarities between the current financial crisis and the climate crisis, except for the urgency with which the two are being addressed.  On the one hand, the present state of the financial markets hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930’s; on the other, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in on pace to reach levels not seen in the last 500,000 years.  There is a near consensus among economists that something needs to be done to stabilize financial markets, with the only debate being about how best to do that.  Likewise, there is a near consensus among scientists that climate change is happening, is man-made and must be addressed, with the only debate centering around the cost of mitigation and adaptation, as well as the implication of various scenarios (e.g., how much sea level rise at a given CO2 level).

In response to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and other storied financial institutions, both Democrats and Republicans have set aside their traditional core “beliefs” (not that it’s hard for them to set those beliefs aside), with Republicans temporarily forgetting about their hatred of government regulation, and the Democrats doing away with their dislike of giving a government official unlimited powers-in this case the Treasury Secretary (I know, they did the same with Bush after 9/11; I’ll get to that in a moment).  And despite the fact that there has recently been some opposition from both sides to the current proposal for a $700 billion bailout plan, in all likelihood the plan will pass, albeit with some minor changes.

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Fossil Fuels Are the Bottled Water of Energy

Written on 08/31 at 08:09 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment Renewable Energy

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here.

We already know the numerous reasons why bottled water is bad, including the energy and water it takes to manufacture, ship and discard the product, as well as the fact that tap water must meet more stringent water quality standards.  But here’s the interesting thing: fossil fuels are essentially bottled energy.  And just as the green alternative to bottled water is tap water, the logical alternative to fossil fuels is renewable energy.  Why?  Well, here are just a few reasons (hint: both depend on current flows and are locally available):

1) Like bottled water, fossil fuels are mined from countries around the world, processed, shipped and then, finally, consumed.  This process is wasteful and contributes to environmental degradation, to be sure, but perhaps the greatest downside of a global energy supply chain is that it makes for unstable geopolitics. This may sound like an argument against globalization, but it is nothing of the kind; rather, it is an argument against the globalization of energy. Think about it this way: Thomas Friedman has argued that no two countries that have a McDonalds--that is, two countries that have opened themselves up to global markets--will go to war with one another, because they stand to lose more than they gain.  That theory more or less holds up as long as we are talking about consumer products, fast food chains, and the like, but it falls apart when we start talking about natural resources.  Simply put, energy and water are not Barbie dolls and McDonalds; nations cannot do without them, and therefore the countries rich in fossil fuels hold too much sway on the global stage.

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Dealing With The Variability of Renewable Energy Forces Us To be Smart

Written on 08/24 at 08:24 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment Renewable Energy

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here

The thing about fossil fuels is that they enable utilities, planners and policy-makers to, in effect, be dumb.  Because fossil fuel is essentially stored solar energy, the fuel can simply be pulled out of the ground, transported to a large power plant and burned.  No attention needs to be paid to wind speeds, cloud cover or tides.  Of course, we know that the entire supply chain of conventional energy--from extraction, to processing, to transportation and on to burning the fossil fuel--lead to social, political and environmental degradation, the costs of which are getting higher and higher. 

Moving to renewable energy sources helps mitigate those costs, yet it also forces societies to be smart about energy.  To put it simply, that’s because renewable energy sources are variable, and different regions can posses vastly different renewable resources.  This variability can be a problem for utilities, because they need to constantly supply enough power to meet demand.  According to a recent study by the Rocky Mountain Insitute (RMI), “In the past, utilities believed that they had to compensate for this variability by installing more traditional, fossil-fueled power plants. The more wind or solar power on the grid, the thinking went, the greater the need for backup generating facilities to be there when the wind or sun wasn’t.”

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Two Models for Financing the Energy Revolution

Written on 08/17 at 12:45 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment Renewable Energy

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be read in its original context here

We Don’t Need Better Panels but Rather Better Politicians and Bankers
One of the key aspects of Gore’s challenge to produce 100% of America’s energy from renewable sources within a decade is his belief that we already have the requisite technology to do so.  And in fact, most experts will tell you that while meeting his challenge will require a lot of innovation, (we need to develop better grid control and energy storage systems, for instance) the main challenge is not technological but rather political and financial.  In other words, we’ve got the engineers and designers, but we lack the right kind of politicians and bankers.

The political challenge is best exemplified by the fact that the Congress left for its summer recess without having extended crucial tax credits for wind, solar and energy efficiency.  As Thomas Friedman pointed out, “both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits—which expire in December—to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas.” As a result of political infighting, dozens of renewable energy projects slated to begin next year have been put on hold.

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Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

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A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

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Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

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