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The energy crisis and a bad solution
In 1972, a study conducted by the Massachussetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), on growing consumer trends alerted
politicians and scientists all over the world. The research titled
“The limits of growth” was prepared by an international group
of scientists, researchers and industrialists – later to
be know as the Club of Rome – and became a classic for the analysis
of the relationship between production and environment.
Throughout the seventies and most of
the eighties, various theories and studies endeavoured to analyze
the problem of the limitations imposed by nature on the development
model. In 1990, forceful neo-liberal waves wiped out a considerable
part of those efforts and the idea of unlimited growth based on
technological progress overwhelmingly prevailed in political and
academic circles all over the world.
However now in the twenty-first century
it would seem that the energy issue is emerging as yet another
reminder of those old announcements which affirmed that in life
everything has a limit.
Energy sources and uses
Energy sources are divided into renewable
and non-renewable sources. Solar energy, wind energy, geothermic
energy (harnessing the heat inside the Earth), plant biomass and
hydraulic energy (from water) are virtually inextinguishable sources
of energy, some because of the enormous amount of energy they
contain and others because they can be regenerated by natural
means. Non-renewable energies, once totally consumed cannot
be replaced in the short or medium term, for instance as in the
case of fossil fuels (formed during millions of years by action
of heat inside the earth and the pressure of rocks and soil on
the remains of dead plants and animals) and nuclear fuels.
With industrialization coal appeared
on the scene and later on (at the end of the nineteenth century),
oil and gas. Most of the world energy consumption is based on
one of these non-renewable sources: oil, natural gas and coal,
adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Today, 80 per cent of
the oil consumed in the world comes from wells discovered during
the seventies and are now reaching their ceiling for daily extraction.
The consumption of oil rose from 2,753 million barrels in 1973
to 3,767 million barrels in 2004. The daily extraction of
oil amounts to some 75 million barrels and a 2 per cent annual
growth is expected over the next few years. By 2020 some 100 million
barrels a day will be needed. This in turn gives rise to
the urgent need for new prospecting and discovering of reserves
as the present ones can no longer increase their extractive capacity.
There are major differences in the use
of energy between rich and poor countries. Although consumption
of fossil energy in third world countries has risen at a faster
rate, their participation in world consumption has dropped. According
to the International Energy Agency, by 2025, 82 per cent of the
population of the planet will be consuming 45 per cent of the
energy, while in the industrialized countries, 14 per cent of
the population will be consuming 43 per cent (the remaining amount
corresponds to the so-called transition economies).
The percentage of energy consumed in
the United States is some 25% of world consumption for 4.6 per
cent of the world population, while in India consumption is 3.1
per cent for 16.6 per cent of the world population. In other
words, a US citizen consumes an average of fifty times more that
an inhabitant of India.
Disproportionate use of fossil fuels
has fed unsustainable economic growth. From the time “The limits
of growth” was published and today, increase in energy consumption
– and the need to increase supply – was sustained with the argument
of economic growth to overcome the poverty of the vast masses
of the population. Since then we have undergone an escalation
of continuous growth – except for a few years – where increased
energy consumption has not been accompanied by the same measure
of improvement in people’s living conditions.
Furthermore, the vision mechanically
associating growth of trade and consumption
of energy with “development” overlooks several key problems, among
them the fact that energy imports increase a country’s dependence;
energy exports have a strong impact on the balance of payments
but also make the producing country extremely vulnerable to changes
in importing economies; the use, exploitation and transformation
of energy always have environmental impacts left unaccounted in
the balance of payments.
Climate change as a result of
excessive fossil fuel use
The United Nations has warned that we
are going through the largest process of extinction of life on
the planet since the disappearance of dinosaurs 65 million years
ago. Climate change causing the abrupt increase in the mean temperature
of the earth’s surface has been identified as one of the main
causes of this process. Additionally, climate change is
directly related to an accelerated increase in carbon dioxide
emissions together with other greenhouse effect gases as a consequence
of the current development models – production and consumption
– encouraging an excessive use of fossil fuels and unsound land
uses (see WRM bulletin No. 76).
The international community’s response
to the threat of climate change has been given through the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in May
1992. Its declared objective is to stabilize atmospheric concentrations
of greenhouse gases resulting from human activities at a level
that will not involve risks for the climate system. In 1997
the Kyoto Protocol established obligations for reduction, basically
affecting industrialized countries which, so far, do not appear
to be willing to change their energy consumption model.
As a response to commitments to reduce
carbon emissions, the European Union and the United States are
seeking “solutions” that do not imply taking on the cost of radically
changing their unsustainable production, trade and consumption
patterns based on squandering energy. The way of life of
a small sector of the planet is threatening the whole of humanity
with a planetary crisis.
Within this context, biofuels enter
into the scene
Biofuels are any fuel that derives from
biomass — recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts.
Thus it could be oils from plants, manure from cows, wood from
trees and so on. We will focus --in this bulletin-- on biofuels
that are derived from crops and include biomass that is
burnt directly; biodiesel obtained from oil seeds and ethanol
produced from the fermentation of sugars found in plants.
Vegetable oil can be used as fuel either
pure or blended with gasoline. It can also be converted
to biodiesel through a process using alcohol and a strong alkali
to make a more volatile blend based on oil from a variety of plants.
The European Union and the United States
have adopted policies promoting rapid biofuel expansion. This
has led to the creation of an enormous market in the tropical
countries of the South which are converting millions of hectares
to bio-energy monocultures to feed European and US automobiles.
All this is done without stopping to study the impacts of this
expansion on the planet. Effects on the forests of Latin America
and Asia and on their people are already being felt.
Facing the present energy crisis or
the climate change crisis - the other side of the same coin-,
the politicians and technocrats have shown no willingness to adopt
strong measures to solve them. In this great vacuum and
paralysis largely supported by major corporate interests, false
and dangerous solutions are being promoted that urgently need
to be submitted to public scrutiny and debate, such as the growing
enthusiasm over biofuels which merely worsen existing socio-economic,
technical and environmental problems.
Article based on: “Energía en Sudamérica:
una interconexión que no integra”, Gerardo Honty, Ceuta, Nueva
Sociedad 204,
http://www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3369_1.pdf; “Biocombustibles
Renovables y sustentables”, Gerardo Honty, Peripecias Nº 18,
www.peripecias.com; “¿Es posible el desarrollo sostenible?”,
Guillermo Villegas Arenas, Mario Hernán López Becerra , Universidad
de Caldas,
http://lunazul.ucaldas.edu.co/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=180&Itemid=180);
“Which energy?”, 2006, ISS, Energy Report, Mae-Wan Ho, Peter Bunyard,
Peter Saunders, Elizabeth Bravo, Rhea Gala; “Biofuels: Renewable
Energy or Environmental Disaster in the Making?”, Almuth Ernsting,
Biofuelwatch,
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/background.php
