Water

The Economist wrote another excellent article this week about how water is used across the world. It makes the case very clear that water management is a vital issue which is not getting nearly enough attention, and water reclamation strategies and other methods to maintain our global water supply are needed.

There are numerous ways we can fight water waste. The first thing I think we can do right now is price water appropriately. There are the concerns of spiking water bills which could hurt poor people (if we do it wrong), and there is merit to such concerns. I personally see this as like other important environmental issues, like how to manage global warming, and figuring out how to manage our resources best. When water is too cheap people have fewer incentives to save water, which means we deplete our aquifers faster than we should. People are less likely to fix breaks in their line when it is less expensive, and will take longer to fix the problem. People are also less likely to purchase low-water use toilets. Not having these policies in place creates waste and depletes our aquifers. The EPA has excellent information on water conservation and how to save money at home. The increase in price can easily be offset and more through a universal basic income to raise people out of poverty and the combination of these policies will make it so people can make better decisions about how we consume resources.

The second way we can reduce waste stems from the increased price of my first point. Having water be more expensive will force heavy water users, in the agriculture and electric power industries, to implement methods to reduce their consumption. Catching runoff from farms is an efficient method to preserve our water supply. This will help our aquifers last in the long run.

Third, reducing our use of coal powered plants and other dirty fuels will help reduce water consumption. 41.5% of American water consumption is currently for such uses. There is literally no reason to keep using coal plants in the United States. They are destroying our air quality, heating our planet, and squandering our water supplies. We can fight both global warming and preserve waterat the same time by shutting these plants down. We need to switch to a fully renewable economy as soon as possible.

Fourth, we currently waste a gigantic amount of water by letting our sewage run off into the ocean. Sewage can be recycled to the point where it is safe to drink by people again. The water after being sanitized is as safe as coming from an aquifer and creates a more closed loop to reduce water consumption. New York alone dumps 1.3 billion gallons of treated wastewater into the ocean per day. (Finding a total amount for the entire US or even the world is challenging.) This should be reused to maintain our aquifers.

Fifth, catching rainwater in cities (I live in Seattle, so this is a huge amount for us) and recycling it into our pipes is an efficient way to gather water which does not deplete our aquifer. Houses can do this as well, using the water from the rain to fill their hot water tanks, further reducing demand on aquifers. For people who live in the country where water is from private wells this is a significant amount.

The last big way I can think of reducing water consumption is at home. Homes use 8.5% of water taken from aquifers, the third largest source after agriculture and fossil fuel power plants. First of all, heating homes can be done more efficiently through heated floors which are more comfortable and keep houses at a constant temperature throughout the day. Heated Floors which are heated from wastewater from sinks and tubs. It will be a closed system which keeps using the same water until some is used for toilets. Toilet water will be from the water which is used from the heated floors. Water would leave the system at the toilet. Such a system would drastically reduce water consumption.

The United States has made an incredible amount of progress over the last 50 years with treating sewage before dumping it into the ocean, and this must be recognized. There is however still a lot of work to do in order to protect our environment. Fighting the consumption of fossil fuels is of course a top priority, but reducing consumption of water is also extremely important. With good policy and public pressure on our governments from the city to federal level, and across the world, we can preserve our water use for future generations and keep our planet habitable.

Future of Flight

Flying is often seen by environmental activists as a major cause for Global Warming. Many environmentalists get anxious about flying because of the visibility of the greenhouse gases coming out of the plane, and also because it is not something most people do very often. This is why I believe we need to invest in renewable energy for flying to alleviate these fears.

First, some statistics:

The average distance of flights in the United States is currently about 1100 km (700 miles) or about the distance from New York to Chicago.

Out of the most traveled routes in the world, most of them are under 1000 km. The United States is the country with the most passenger miles with 798 million passenger miles flown in 2015. The majority of the passenger miles of these flights were located east of the Mississippi river, like most of the population. A flight with a range of 1000 km would cover most of these routes. A flight with a range of 2000 km would cover every east coast flight.

China has the second largest amount of passenger miles in the world. The Beijing-Shanghai route is the longest and would require a plane with a range of 1500 km to safely make it.  Beijing - Hong Kong is 2000 km which would be sufficient to cover almost every flight in China.

The United Kingdom and Germany are next on the list. 2000 km would be more than sufficient for the vast majority of flights flying from these countries to other European countries and themselves.

Japan’s flights are dominated between its major cities. 1060 km between Sapporo and Osaka is the longest distance between two major cities, so a 1200 km renewable energy airplane would cover almost every domestic flight in Japan.

Brazil’s flights are dominated in the southeast where most of its major cities are. A 2000 km distance would cover most Brazilian domestic routes.

In the United States, transportation was the second leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions (second to electricity generation) composing 26% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation emissions are dominated by light duty passenger vehicles, generating 60% of transportation emissions for around 15% of total emissions. Aircraft generated 8% of transportation emissions, for a total of 2% of total US greenhouse gas emissions. While airplanes are incredibly visible, the biggest causes of emissions in the US are from our cars and electricity generation.

I believe we need to invest in renewable energy for flying, and this would make a proportionally small dent in our total carbon emissions. But stopping flying alone will not do enough. We need to divest from coal now, and invest in clean renewable energy for electricity generation to knock out over a third of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is the most effective use of our time, which is increasingly limited. We need to have the Federal government stop issuing permits for coal and gas powered power plants immediately and invest heavily into solarizing every other roof in the United States. We need to build geothermal plants and nuclear across the country to reduce our carbon footprint.

We need to invest in fuel cell and electric cars immediately to eliminate another 26% of our greenhouse gas emissions and build the infrastructure we need to develop this technology as soon as possible. We need to push and make it so that there is a date by which we will ban the sale of gasoline in the United States as soon as we feasibly can. Combined between these two tactics will eliminate over 50% of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. Another 21% can be eliminated by focusing on American industry and reducing the emissions from our factories. Using renewable energy to power our factories instead of the way we do it today. This three pronged approach will eliminate 78% of America’s greenhouse gas emissions as opposed to 2% by not flying.

We don't have a choice if we are serious about combating Global Warming. We must divest from coal now.

References:

http://www.amadeus.com/web/amadeus/en_1A-corporate/Amadeus-Home/Newsroom/Archive/2013_04_17_300-world-super-routes-attract/1319658626891-Page-AMAD_DetailPpal?assetid=1319526516400&assettype=PressRelease_C

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/multimodal_transportation_indicators/july_2004/html/domestic_flight_availability_and_distance.html

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100ONBL.pdf

We need to fix global warming now

We are currently witnessing the hottest year on record in the history of man. 1 This is so apparent since we are witnessing heat waves in South Asia right now as I write this and the Pacific Northwest is receiving heat wave warnings, like I received earlier today. I have never received a heat wave warning before in my life here in the Great State of Washington on the West side. We received no snow last winter, which was extremely unusual and I am personally scared of a drought in the near future. We get most of our water from groundwater here which has never been a problem before, but this would become a problem in the future if we continue to see lower levels of snow.

There is no time to waste, and the longer we wait the worse it is going to become. All of the predictions say so. According to skepticalscience.com we can still fix global warming, and research has demonstrated this is possible.

I also do not see the connection between how this would shut down innovation to go to a more sustainable economy. The economy has not always been structured the way it is today and there is no reason to assume it will remain so in the future. With the development of electric cars by Tesla motors and other car companies it is clear to me that we can develop sustainable technologies, and with recycling significantly reduce our impact on global warming. The real danger to our economy is if we do not address climate change. The reduction in labor and deaths of millions will definitely cause a reduction in GDP and GDP per capita growth at that point is irrelevant because people are dying right now in the massive heat waves in South Asia.

Whether it is reversible is right now a big question which is not clearly answered. It is clear that to reverse global warming will take more than just shutting off our consumption of carbon (which is essential if we are to survive) 2 but what this study left out is if we pursued policies to actively reverse global warming and deacidify the oceans.

A little good news is that we have seen reductions in carbon emissions since 2000. This has been due mostly to moving from coal to natural gas for electricity production. 3 and 4 we see switching onto natural gas as well as a reduction in demand for oil as the major contributing factors to reduce ourcarbon emissions. Every state but Iowa has seen a decrease in per capita carbon emissions. We have seen a 8.3% decline in total carbon emissions nationwide, which translates to a 16.9% total carbon emissions per capita decline from 2000 to 2011. (the latest year for which I find data) This is a very important trend, and we need to make it continue into the future.

When designing policies, we need to work alongside market forces in order to maximize our potential gain. Working against supply and demand create unintended consequences which reduce the effectiveness of policies.

There are big actions we can do right now  as a society to stop global warming. Individual actions are helpful, and if you can afford a Tesla and have something to charge it with, that is a wonderful thing to do, but small actions alone will not be enough to reverse global warming. The question of whether we can is currently hotly debated in the scientific community, but there are a few major things we can do as a planet to stop global warming.

1. Tax Carbon. This is the best way to fight global warming right now. It will increase the cost on utility companies which get their power from non-renewables (which is the single largest contributor to global warming in the United States) 5 and make it more expensive to use gasoline to get between places, giving electric cars an advantage. Carbon taxes are more effective than cap and trade policies at reducing emissions because they tax the entire amount of carbon emitted, not just part of it.
2. Increase grants for research which connects to energy use. One of the most important fields today which needs investment is battery power. With our devices today almost everything has become smaller and more efficient, but batteries are relatively primitive. Increasing their efficiency will reduce the demand for electricity which will help reduce carbon emissions in areas which get their power from fossil fuels. We need to continue research into solar panels as well.
3. Increase subsidies for renewable energy and efficiency. We already have a substantial amount of money going towards renewable energy and efficiency 6 but we can still invest more money.
4. Increase the amount of money going towards science education. In order to face the challenges of global warming and have the engineers and scientists to analyze these issues, be it from my perspective as a young political economist or as an engineer, we need to have more people with the education and the tool sets to fully combat the problems we have today. Without that human capital we won't get the ingenuity we need to save our world. We need to work with teachers in developing effective teaching methods for all sciences (mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences) so that as many students as possible can grow to love and understand these fields so they can go on to have excellent careers healing our world. The rest of my points will not happen without a large number of people who have the tool sets to fix these problems.

The overall plan is to increase the cost of using carbon intensive ways of transportation and electricity generation and at the same time reduce the cost of renewables to a point where they are the economically viable option. We have seen significant decreases in the cost of solar over the last few years, and with the right policies and innovation both public and private we can push the price down even further. Then we will see a massive increase in renewable energy as soon as they are less expensive than carbon emitting technologies. This is the ticket to building a sustainable world, and do it faster than alternative ways.

There will be airplanes in 100 years, and they will be carbon neutral.

On my current trip to Europe one thing that I have been thinking about is the future of flight, and how sustainable it will be in the future. I have been pretty convinced that hydrogen will be the choice in the long-term future, and understand there are large hurdles to creating a global hydrogen structure. There are a few points I wish to make.

1. Natural gas is currently used here in Georgia and across Europe for transportation and it is as safe as gasoline. It also is as efficient, and people use it here with SUVs that get about 30 MPG, which with modern technology is impossible to achieve with gasoline. Natural gas however is not carbon neutral, and there is a finite supply of it, so even though it might last my generation, it won't be useful in the extreme long term, like oil. The world currently consumes 93 million barrels (or 14.786 billion liters, I use metric, the math is easier and has fewer rounding errors) per day (which will increase with the rise of China and eventual development of Africa) and our current proven natural gas supply is 22,000,000 million liters, which means (assuming the rate of consumption stays constant, which is unreasonable) that we have enough natural gas to last 648 years assuming there is no massive increase in demand. The problem however is that natural gas is not carbon neutral, which will mean that global warming will continue. It could be used as a small step as hydrogen is being improved, but the storage and nature of natural gas is not that different from hydrogen. The issue is that natural gas is not available in every country, which means it won't be a local resource for everybody. Natural gas production by country This means that if a cartel like OPEC was formed between Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, and Qatar they would control over half of the world's natural gas supply. This is not acceptable.
2. The other alternative I see having potential is hydrogen. I am a big fan of hydrogen and the major advantage is that hydrogen is the most ubiquitous element in the universe. It is one component of water, which is one of the most ubiquitous molecules on Earth, and since fuel cell cars emit water vapor there won't be a major effect on the climate. The largest hurdle is making sure there enough energy to break the hydrogen bonds in the water molecule, which will mean we need to harness more renewable energy which has been underway for a long time. There are two large advantages to hydrogen over natural gas. The first is it won't cause negative effects to our environment, which is why I prefer it to natural gas. The second is that hydrogen is also found in water, which makes it available across the world, while natural gas is available in only certain places, a large number, but not everywhere. This prevents the formation of a cartel that could effectively control the price of hydrogen, which is good for the global economy. From an economical or environmental perspective this is the answer.
3. Electric cars take too long to charge to be a truly viable and likable alternative, and I think there is a much more likely return on investment on hydrogen than electric cars.
4. The reason that oil won't last is because we will get into a really desperate situation in 60 years when oil will be gone if we stay the course. 1,500,000 million barrels of oil available divided by 93 million barrels a day yields 44 years left until oil runs out if consumption stays constant and there isn't a random discovery of a trillion barrels of oil which I am not anticipating. There will be no oil left in 2070, and I plan on being alive at that point. With China, India, and Africa developing 30 years would be a more reasonable estimate for when we will run out. I am optimistic, because I see that we can do this. We have to do this.

The largest complaint I have seen about changing things, whether it is making the world freer or moving towards better economic systems is that it takes so long to get things done. Our politicians who should be leading us to a better world get trapped in the pattern of whining "it's so hard" so nothing ever gets done. Yes, making a new economy is not going to be easy, no, it is not going to be a 5 second download onto your computer. It is not going to be a 2 minute transfer of money across the world, or a email zipping to your antipode in 10 seconds. It will take time, like anything good, but like college, kids, friendships, a flight to visit someone, or freedom it will be worth every second of the hard work and sometimes waiting when it is complete.

Sources:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-03/nasa-alternative-fuels-aviation which inspired the post, along with years of research and thinking about the sustainability of my current trip. This talks directly about hydrogen in flight and how hydrogen is extremely efficient compared to the alternatives.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/columnists/jamesmay/8338090/Cracking-the-problem-of-hydrogen-fuel-future.html which has an excellent conclusion I completely agree with.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4182524/breakthrough-hydrogen-fuel-production-researchers-extract-gas-from-plants is a recent breakthrough. Hydrogen currently is seeing a lot of breakthroughs over the past ten years, and this is just one of them.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2060304 outlines issues on a new hydrogen economy.

www.newenergy.is is about the current hydrogen economy being developed in Iceland and is proof that it can be done.

*19 June Correction: I made an error and said that water is an element, I have fixed my elementary mistake.