American Petroleum Institute point of view

Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute spoke to Energy & Environment reporter Monica Trauzzi.  The full interview is here

Gerard said, ". . . the president's own economists will tell him that 30 years from now, over 50 percent of our energy will still be oil and natural gas."

Memo to President Obama:  DON'T LISTEN TO THOSE ECONOMISTS!

If we continue to pump CO2 into the air for the next 30 years, as Bill McKibben's "Do the Math" tour demonstrates, we will be toast.  (see www.350.org)

Gerard called on President Obama to stay true to his promise for an "all of the above strategy," which he claims is supported "with over 73 percent of [U.S. Americans] supporting expanded production of oil and natural gas."   I think that 73% figure is probably true.  However, about 70% also recognize that global warming is real and and is a serious problem.  The explanation for this contradiction is that most people do not realize how much we have to cut fossil fuel use by to actually stop the increase in CO2 that is causing global warming.  As I have argued, the earth can only absorb about 7 billion tons of CO2 per year.  We have 7 billion people on the planet, which means we each get 1 ton per year per person.  With current U.S. per capita CO2 at 18 tons per person, we have to cut CO2 by 95% to be sustainable.  This means we need 100% electric cars running on 100% renewable energy.  And we need serious energy efficiency and conservation efforts to minimize natural gas. 

Similarly Gerard argued, "Today, the support for Keystone Pipeline exceeds 68 percent of the American public."  Again, most people don't understand that we have to not only stop expanding oil drilling, such as the tar sands, we have to actually cut back using the oil that is already available.  I think the fact that 32% of the people don't support the Keystone Pipeline is a great base to build on.  We need the President to take a firm stand against the pipeline.

He also argues, "over 90 percent understand that production of oil and natural gas equals jobs, good paying jobs."  This is a key point.  For example, the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA does, in fact, offer good paying jobs.  Chevron spent $4 million in the latest city council elections in Richmond to make sure that people sympathetic to Chevron were elected.  My feeling is that people in Richmond do support the jobs, but they don't support the pollution.  At this point in time, I think the best strategy is to oppose expansion of Chevron in their attempts to process dirty tar sands and shale oil.  I think this is more politically feasible than calling for a shutting of the plant entirely.  At the same time we need to be planning for the day, perhaps a decade or two away, when climate disruption will be so severe that the need to cut back existing refineries will be evident to all (with the exception of the oil companies, who will no doubt fight to the bitter end.)

Finally, Gerard stated, "We contribute over $86 million a day and pay an effective tax rate of 44 percent. Now that's contrasted to other industries who pay an average of 26 percent. So if you want to know who's paying their fair share, it's the oil and gas industry."  I don't have the facts to argue with this, but my impression is that the oil and gas industry is highly subsidized through various loopholes.  And with the incredible billions in profits they are raking in, I can't feel too sorry for them being burdened with taxes.  And it would be nice if they paid for all the damages that global warming is causing.  I would welcome anyone with a good analysis of these figures.

Texas Drought

Below is a letter I sent today to the Oakland Tribune:

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your front page article about the Texas drought on August 22.  What's missing from the article is any reference to global warming.  Isn't it worth mentioning that most climate change models predict more and more of this type of weather for the region?  And can it be a coincidence that the "record breaking heat" continues as well as the "most severe one-year drought on record in Texas."  Climate change due to CO2 was predicted in 1897, detected in 1988, and is now wreaking havoc around the world.  We have to stop ignoring this global catastrophe now in progress.

Jack Lucero Fleck

seriously, now. . .

In my last blog I pointed out that the chances that global warming is NOT real are less than 1 in 200 billion.

Now you could say, "See, there IS a chance that the hot weather in the past two decades is purely coincidental", and do nothing about it.  Unfortunately, the consequences of doing nothing are quite a bit greater than arguing about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. 

  

The international scientific consensus, ratified in Copenhagen in December, 2009, is that temperatures must not be allowed to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius (about 3 1/2  degrees F) to “stave off the worst effects of climate change.” (Source:  press release from the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen: )  These "worst effects" are truly horrible--droughts across much of the world, floods, storms, heat waves, millions if not billions of deaths.  I think it is no exaggeration to say that failure to take action to stop global warming is suicidal. 

So that got me to thinking about the tragedy of hundreds of people who have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to commit suicide.  Now, as fate would have it, according to Yahoo Answers, about 2% of these people live to tell about it.  So the chances of surviving a leap off the Golden Gate Bridge are a billion times higher than the chance that global warming is not real. 

Now, putting these thoughts together, I would argue that the politicians who are denying global warming are essentially asking us all to leap off the Golden Gate Bridge.  That includes Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, and the whole Tea Party. 

And given the direction of the thermometer, we could easily be at 2 degrees by 2050, so we are talking about this happening during our own lifetimes for most of us, let alone our children and grandchildren.

Seriously, we need a plan and a commitment to convert to renewable energy and electric cars as quickly as humanly possible!

What happened?

The April, 2001 issue of Time magazine focussed on global warming (see front cover below).  The coverage was uncompromising: 

• "the trend toward a warmer world has unquestionably begun"


• "scientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact that humans are at least partly responsible"


• "the increase in temperatures is happening at a pace that outstrips anything the earth has seen in the past 100 million years."

Time's 2001 report points out that:

• "the 1990s were the hottest decade on record",


• "glaciers . . . are disappearing"


• "coral reefs are dying off"


• "the Arctic permafrost is starting to melt"


• "migration patterns. . . are being disrupted"


• "drought is the norm in parts of Asia and Africa"

Now after 10 years of all these trends intensifying, and even hotter weather, more extreme storms, and many disasters, you would think that the press would be howling for change.  But no.  Floods, hurricanes, droughts, wild fires, Snowmageddon last winter, and record heatwaves this summer are all just part of the "crazy weather" we've been having lately.

What happened??!!

IMHO, Time had not really thought through the consequences of their coverage.  If fossil fuels are causing all this destruction, the solution has to be to virtually eliminate fossil fuels.  Perhaps Time  thought that a modest reduction, such as proposed at Kyoto, would be enough to stave off global warming.  But that's not the case.  We need to reduce CO2 from 20 tons per person per year in the U.S. to 1 ton per person to really stop global warming.  And that's a problem.  The oil, gas, and coal companies are the most powerful companies in the world.  And in a society where dollars buy votes, and also where dollars buy advertising in media, it is no surprise that elected officials and media depending on advertising are not willing to call for the elimination of the companies that feed them.  So what was obvious in 2001, and is even more obvious today--namely that global warming is real, and is a terrible threat to humanity--is just not a proper subject for the media to dwell on or for Congress to take action on.

Now I may be a bit too harsh.  California's Democratic controlled legislature found the courage to pass some pretty good laws.  And many cities around the country are taking actions to build a sustainable future.  But the U.S. government is completely stymied by Koch Industries funded deniers, and the media is still pretending that there is an honest debate about global warming being real and being caused by CO2.

The good news is that the cost of wind and solar and batteries for electric cars have all plumeted in the past decade, so the alternatives to fossil fuels are much more affordable than they were in 2001.  Of course, it would have been nice if government had really promoted these technologies during that time instead of continuing subsidies to fossil fuels, but the time we have lost only makes our present efforts all the more urgent.