The Coyote Under the Apple Tree
October 1, 2008
As I passed by the kitchen window today a brownish object was where it shouldn’t be in the orchard below the house. I looked more closely and realized that a young coyote was lying on a patch of grass between two trees, chewing merrily on an apple.
Of course I stopped to watch. The critter’s enjoyment of the apples was obvious, as were its poor table manners. I guess a coyote pretty well has to chew with her mouth open, but she certainly shows a lot of teeth while eating fruit. The apple finished, she got up, moved over two trees, selected a wind-fall and returned to the same spot. This one is no beauty: she has a scraggly tail with a slight bend in it, matted fur, and the generally dissipated expression of someone who has seen the evil in the world — and approved of most of it.
Ever alert, she alternated sharp looks in all directions with great and messy enjoyment of her meal. Her head rolled back and forth in pleasure as she chewed. A coyote’s ears react to even the slightest sound, so I tried chatting to her through the insulated windows. Every word I said registered on her ears, which turned like radar domes to track the sounds, though I don’t think the rest of the coyote paid much attention to me.
The banquet continued, with many little forays to different trees for seconds, and then a return to her bed to eat. She doesn’t seem to like pears, but adores empires. She passed up a large, shiny winter apple in favour of those under the same tree I had whacked with the mower two days previously.
This went on for some time. Once again I found myself marveling at the appetite of the eastern coyote. I remember last summer watching a pair consume an astounding number of mice on a trip across a field. This one must have eaten all or parts of a dozen apples before she eventually ducked behind a hedge and disappeared.
We’re glad to have her around the house at this time of year because the mice will soon mount their annual invasion, and we can use all the help we can get.
The IPM a year later
September 29, 2008
An event the size of the International Plowing Match inevitably changes everything and everyone it touches. After a year the landscape around Young’s Hill has returned to normal, but it’s a different normal than before. The fields are tilled with pride. The fencerows and buildings around Forfar are tidier. The improvement cut and new trails in the woodlot have given it a park-like aspect. I notice that no one has bothered to close the gaps in the fences opened for the match.
Bob Chant and I were talking a few weeks ago about how little damage occurred as a result of the traffic in our fields. It turns out we would both be delighted to have the match back again another time.
Rob and Connie Prosser, Jan Bonhomme, and the huge crew of volunteers deserve our respect for the way they selflessly contributed their time, money and equipment to make IPM 2007 the greatest event ever held in Leeds County.
From The Walnut Diary, September 24, 2007
Credit for the best one-liner I’ve heard over the past week goes to my friend Kate Stutzman, who drove up from Reading, Pennsylvania with husband Tom to attend the event. After seven hours on the road they rounded the turn at Crosby and gaped at the enormous IPM Site. Kate turned to Tom and said, “The world has come to Rod.”
It looks as though IPM 2007 has been a smashing success. Certainly the woodlot and the conservation areas received a lot of attention, with 1764 visitors registered for the tours. We had expected 200.
Neil Thomas and I noticed that visitors to his walnut-cracking display seemed increasingly well informed and interested in growing and using edible nuts. Canadians spend $20 million on imported nuts every year and virtually none on the domestic product. Neil plans to change that by making the black walnut the home-grown gourmet nut meat of choice. The many visitors who sampled his product seemed to agree that this could work.
Leeds Stewardship Coordinator Martin Streit and Eastern Ontario Model Forest Certification Coordinator Scott Davis did the lion’s share of the tour-conducting in the woodlot. Martin was the first there and the last to leave on each of the five days – on top of a two-hour drive to Cornwall, morning and night. Garnet Baker endured blazing sun and dust on the gate all week until he had to take Saturday off for a religious holiday – opening day of duck season. Except for an hour trapped in a traffic jam outside Elgin, Jane Topping held the fort with Garnet all week in the heat, organizing woodlot tours and keeping order at the departure gate. George Sheffield and Dwayne Struthers did everything schedule-organizer Rhonda Elliot asked. This usually meant driving the tractor for the wagon tour, but when the crowds grew too heavy they easily slipped into the role of tour guide, delivering lectures to groups on walking tours.
As she had been for the two years of the project, Donna O’Connor was everywhere all week, doing the heaviest of the work, cajoling and inspiring to move things along. The only time I’ve ever seen her baulk was when the starter on my old Massey refused to work and she had to crank the engine in front of a wagon load of visitors. Once was enough, so Lloyd Stone replaced the antique tractor with a quiet member of his fleet.
Lloyd probably got less sleep than anyone in the Forfar area over the week. Nursing fifty teams of draft horses and their owners by night and early morning, then driving the tour wagon and fixing and storing equipment must have left him a little ragged by Saturday evening. But he got it done.
Today Rhonda Eliot was still in full work-mode, with son Daniel and daughter Becca in tow. Signs came down and straw was hauled away in a frenzy of activity.
The Croskery Woodlot display was a project of the Leeds Stewardship Council. Its success shows the depth of commitment of this group to the good of the community and the environment.
Something interesting about walnut logs
September 25, 2008
This week I have skidded a number of smaller black walnut logs out of the woodlot as I found them during the walnut harvest. They had sat where they fell for two summers after the improvement cut of the winter of 2006-2007. When I unloaded them off the trailer the bark peeled easily and thus the moderate scuffing on one end from dragging behind the loader did not amount to a problem for George Sheffield and his band mill.
The surprise was when we cut the first slabs. Generally a walnut log shows a distressing band of bright white sapwood on the first cut, and it seems to go half-way through the log. Not so with these specimens which had sat for two summers. The sapwood was barely detectable. George speculated that the pigments must blend or else the white pigment fades over time if the logs aren’t sawn immediately.
The logs sawed very easily and produced fine, straight boards and planks. It’s not hard to see why cabinetmakers regard walnut as the king of the cabinet woods. My immediate objective was to get some material from which to build a bannister for the stone house. We cut three 2 1/4″ planks from one log which should fill the bill, though I don’t know if Bet will wait three years for them to dry or if I’ll have to bang out a temporary railing out of pine.
Trade Pact with EU?
September 25, 2008
Peak Oil News, an online forum, posted a Globe and Mail article from September 18, 2008 which treated as a fait accompli plans to join the EU at a meeting in Quebec City three days after the Federal Election. All provinical premiers are onside, according to the article. Why have we heard nothing about this during the election campaign? Don’t Canadians have a right to input on something this fundamental to our nation?
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic45453.html
The Globe and Mail
September 18, 2008 at 2:00 AM EDT
LONDON — Canadian and European officials say they plan to begin negotiating a massive agreement to integrate Canada’s economy with the 27 nations of the European Union, with preliminary talks to be launched at an Oct. 17 summit in Montreal three days after the federal election.
Trade Minister Michael Fortier and his staff have been engaged for the past two months with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and the representatives of European governments in an effort to begin what a senior EU official involved in the talks described in an interview yesterday as “deep economic integration negotiations.”
If successful, Canada would be the first developed nation to have open trade relations with the EU, which has completely open borders between its members but imposes steep trade and investment barriers on outsiders.
The proposed pact would far exceed the scope of older agreements such as NAFTA by encompassing not only unrestricted trade in goods, services and investment and the removal of tariffs, but also the free movement of skilled people and an open market in government services and procurement – which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services.
Previous efforts to reach a trade pact with Europe have failed, most recently in 2005 with the collapse of the proposed Trade and Investment Enhancement Agreement.
But with the breakdown of World Trade Organization talks in July, European officials have become much more interested in opening a bilateral trade and economic integration deal with North America.
A pact with the United States would be politically impossible in Europe, senior European Commission officials said.
A newly completed study of the proposed deal, which European officials said Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided not to release until after the election, concludes that the pact would increase bilateral trade and investment by at least $40-billion a year, mainly in trade in services.
Ottawa officials say they have overcome what they see as their biggest hurdle: the resistance of provincial governments to an agreement that would force them to allow European corporations to provide their government services, if their bids are the lowest.
Although Ottawa’s current list of foreign-policy priorities does not include European issues, European and Canadian officials say Mr. Harper has been heavily engaged with the proposed trade pact.
The two governments have completed a detailed study of the proposed agreement that will be unveiled shortly after the election, should the Conservatives win.
Both Ottawa and Brussels have had staff work on a draft text for a deal they had hoped would be introduced at a Canada-EU summit, to be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Mr. Harper in Montreal on Oct. 17. France currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, and Mr. Sarkozy has said that he hopes to make economic integration with Canada one of his accomplishments.
Last Wednesday, a top Ottawa trade official wrote to Mr. Mandelson to propose “the launch of comprehensive negotiations toward a closer economic partnership at the Canada-EU Leaders Summit, to be held on October 17,” and stressed that all 13 provincial and territorial governments had agreed to the proposed pact at a July 18 meeting in Quebec City.
Because of the election, Mr. Harper appears to have decided not to unveil a full text of the proposed agreement, but instead to use the summit to inaugurate the trade talks with the launch of a “scoping exercise” that will quickly set the goals of the pact and lead to formal “comprehensive trade and investment negotiations” to begin in “early 2009,” according to communications between senior Canadian and European officials examined by The Globe and Mail.
Proponents, including all of Canada’s major business-lobby organizations, are in favour of the deal because it would open Canadian exporters to a market of 500 million people and allow the world’s largest pool of investment capital into Canadian companies without restrictions.
Because Canada’s fractious provinces have killed attempts at a trade pact in the past, Europe is demanding that Canada accept a more far-reaching agreement than Canada and Europe had attempted before, in an effort to win a stronger commitment, EU officials said.
Major “deal-breaker” conditions, officials said, include full agreement by all 10 provinces, especially on the issue of European companies providing government services, and what are known as “geographic indicators,” which forbid products such as champagne and feta cheese to be produced under those names outside their nations of origin. Controversially for Canada, this may soon be extended so only English producers can use the name cheddar on their cheese.
However, both sides agree that there is far more political will to negotiate a major deal, on both sides than there ever has been.
“I am far more optimistic this time than I’ve ever been in the past. … I feel very confident that we will be able to launch something on Oct. 17 that will give us a better chance than we’ve ever had before to get a full deal in place,” said Roy MacLaren, head of the Canada-Europe Round Table, a pro-trade business organization that has been heavily involved in the negotiations.
As a trade minister in the Jean Chretien government and later as a diplomat, Mr. MacLaren was involved in several previous attempts at a Canada-EU pact.
Picking walnuts
September 17, 2008
Just in from another serene two-hour session picking walnuts. Third day in a row. I like it as well as fishing. It’s harmless, good exercise, non-capital-intensive*, and it’s fun as long as I don’t think about the laughable dollar value of the crop. Maybe the Canadian way will be to get a grant to do the actual paying <grin>.
Update: October 15, 2008
I’m still picking walnuts. After taking a trailer-load to Neil for hulling I planned to get on with other work, but I keep drifting back to the woodlot, and before long another oil drum is full. The fitness aspect cannot be ignored: I can now fill an oil drum with nuts picked from the ground as easily as I could a tub when the season began. It’s nice back there in the woods, and the work is anything but stressful.
This morning I spent a couple of hours developing a new process for separating the shells from cracked nuts. I’ll write more on this after I’ve consulted my stakeholders, but I’m quite pleased with myself at the moment.
*Update: October 1, 2008
I may have spoken too soon about the lack of capital intensity required for walnut picking. Somehow in the last few days I have obtained a new Polaris Ranger TM, presumably the better to enable me to haul walnuts back to the house.
Update: Sept 28th, 2008
I must be getting into better condition. I picked an oil drum full of nuts today without undue strain.
Production was helped by a series of heavy drops from four isolated trees. The only thing the trees had in common was a pool of guano underneath the heavily-bearing branch on each. I guess Zeke the red tailed hawk hasn’t gotten any better at his landings: he’s shaking the nuts off the trees when he stops. There are no, repeat no, squirrels in evidence. Zeke’s rule is law.
Toads and tree frogs abound on the forest floor.
With about three oil-drums of nuts ready for hulling, it’s really time to think about finding a market for the product. There will be lots of seed walnuts ready for December planting from this harvest.
I also have a couple of bushel of last year’s nuts all ready for cracking, and will consider offers for the whole nuts from gourmet cooks and pastry chefs. Black walnuts impart an exquisite flavour to cookies and other baked goods.
Update: Sept 18th, 2008
For the second day I have run across a good walnut log felled by the crew who did the improvement cut in the winter of 2007. This makes two clear logs over 16′ which I have found in remote parts of the stand. Neither is very large at the top, maybe 9″ versus 12″ at the butt, but I should be able to get enough material to build a good bannister for the stone house out of them. It actually only takes one long two by four, but I’m confident I’ll want many oversized pieces from which to make my selection on something as central as a bannister. The Massey Harris 35 doesn’t usually get treated as roughly as this, but I muscled it over a few logs and brush piles, then dragged the logs backwards up a slight rise by lifting the butt end by a chain attached to the hook on the loader. At the worst possible location today the transmission locked in reverse, but it wiggled into first without much trouble.
The logging costs nothing but time and wear on the old Massey Ferguson, but it produces valuable lumber. Of course I wouldn’t have found the logs without going into the grove looking for walnuts, so perhaps I should revise my position on the uneconomic nature of the nut harvest. The incidental catch of lumber is quite good.
The Allegory of Sarah the Squirrel
September 11, 2008
She burst into our consciousness a week ago when she chased my wife out of the garage. This splendid, feisty gray squirrel announced that she had taken over our garage, and that was it. The cottage roof slopes down close to the heads of passers-by, and there Sarah would perch, just out of reach, chattering her personal brand of trash talk at anyone who came near.
My wife was flat-out afraid of her. The first time Sarah chattered in her ear I heard this high-pitched “ERK!” from Bet and the sound of scurrying feet. Bet’s, not the squirrel’s.
Janice, our neighbour, chimed in. “You guys must have really done something to make a squirrel that mad at you!”
As long as one was in a safe place, Sarah was a lot of fun to watch. She’d patrol the ridgepole of the garage, scolding merrily, then either duck down into the hedge at the front or launch herself in a grand leap to a branch of the ash tree nearby. Then away she’d go, only to reappear from somewhere else a couple of minutes later.
My wife declared war, so I brought a box trap from the farm, along with a half-dozen fresh walnuts for bait. Five minutes later I heard a “snap” in the garage, so I opened up to find no squirrel, just five remaining walnuts and a sprung Have-a-Hart. As I was coming out of the garage after resetting it, Sarah lit into me with the worst tongue-lashing I have ever received. She seemed almost to be gloating about how easy it had been to fool me as she crouched there on the edge of the roof, just out of arm’s reach, daring me to just try it, Buster.
In defeat, but rather admiring my opponent, I retreated to the house for the evening.
In the morning I checked the trap. Three walnuts remained and the trap was sprung again. Sarah heard me and soon leaped from the hedge to her pulpit on the roof and started in anew. Gritting my teeth, I reset the thing and placed a plastic gas can at one end to complicate things.
Nothing happened for the rest of the day, but every time I stuck my head in through the side door of the garage I’d see Sarah ducking out through the slight gap between the overhead door and the concrete. I think she was trying to figure out how the gas can was part of the trap.
This morning when I checked, the gas can had been shoved aside, the nuts were all gone, and a disgusted Sarah was in the trap. I guess she had moved the can and carefully hauled the walnuts away, but then couldn’t stand thinking there might be another she had missed, so she went back and looked under that funny trapdoor in the middle.
Last week Roz had brought me a book entitled Outwitting Squirrels, by Bill Adler Jr. He suggests treating squirrels like chickens. “There’s no chicken recipe which won’t work for squirrel.” Yeah, but… This is a really pretty squirrel, and she’s as funny as all get out, as long as she doesn’t get into a position where she can do real damage. I put a blanket over the cage and loaded her into the back of my truck for a trip to the farm. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but I kinda liked her, okay?
When I removed the blanket in the woodlot and opened the cage door, Sarah went out of there and up a maple tree in one continuous motion. She hid behind the tree for a few seconds, but then, true to form, she popped around and scolded me again.
But the vast canopy beckoned, and the last I saw of Sarah she was doing a Tarzan across the tops of the maples, striking a beeline for the grove of walnuts I thought I’d avoid by taking her to the northwestern corner of the woodlot. Yeah, right. I’ll keep an eye out for her when I’m hunting: “Don’t shoot the one that comes down the tree and yells at you.” You’ve gotta admire her spirit, but I’m glad she’s no longer in control of our garage.
UPDATE Sept 13: And now she’s brought her family into this. One of her half-grown kits (?) has just joined Sarah in the woodlot by way of the Have-A-Hart. Her name is Bristol. I must be nuts!
Michael Palin for President
September 9, 2008
O.K. I’m leaping into the U.S. Presidential race because sitting majestically north of the border did no good, and what’s more, no one noticed. My reasons for helping this film go viral are twofold: it’s very funny, even though I have never really been a Monty Python fan; and if I have to choose a flavour of kook, I’ll certainly go with Michael, rather than Sarah. She’s just too scary.
http://www.michaelpalinforpresident.com/
UPDATE:
I see Darby Conley, author of the syndicated strip Get Fuzzy, has jumped aboard with his September 12, 2008 strip.
http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/
I don’t know how Darby Conley does it. I wrote “The Allegory of Sarah the Squirrel” (above this article) to poke fun at Sarah Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, but no one seems to have gotten the point. Images of one hand clapping and trees falling in deserted forests come to mind. Is it an allegory if nobody gets it?
The Beast
September 7, 2008
We all make compromises as we go through life. Some things which seemed important turn out less crucial when we weigh their cost, but occasionally there remains a glimmer, a spark, of what might have been.
It started the day I drove my first Volkswagen and it never went away, the fantastical dream, someday, to own a Porsche. Every bump I lurched over in my old Beetle, every corner terrifyingly cut by the back axles tucking under the car – I forgave it because, beneath the rust and flaking paint, it was at heart a Porsche.
My first new car, of course, was a VW Beetle. I had gazed longingly at the green 911 beside it, but it cost ten times what the Beetle did, and the only way I’d ever be able to afford one would be to spend three years in law school, and I just didn’t think it was worth it.
Nevertheless I deferred the decision while I taught for a couple of years. Two weeks of jury duty sickened me on the legal system, so I reconciled myself to a life of VW’s and the teaching career for which I had conceived a sneaky affection. If it was a Porsche and the court room or a VW and a class full of eager kids, then I’d take the Volkswagen and like it because from the beginning I derived an inordinate kick out of messing with teenage minds.
Then I got old and bought my first Toyota, the vehicle for those who don’t like to think about automobiles. My car nerve went numb. This was not without its compensations: I was happier, less stressed, and I gained all of my demerit points back. Police officers smiled at me occasionally. Waves from pedestrians often involved more than one finger. Gas mileage improved dramatically, and Toyotas run very well, even if their steering is, to put it kindly, a bit vague.
And of course, for real driving excitement all I had to do was try to bush-hog the horse pasture with its cadre of sunken boulders waiting beneath the hay, or manoeuvre a load of logs out a convoluted trail in the woods.
The golf cart became my favourite car. I had willingly descended into geezerhood, and then this week, like a bolt of lightning, my car nerve came alive again.
Our son Charlie drove into the yard with a 1988 Porsche 944s. Argh! All those temptations I had let drift away into that fond, vague field of remembrance – they came roaring back with a vengeance and I HAD TO DRIVE THIS CAR! Oh, I was cool about it. I looked it over, nodding at little details, chatting small talk. But it called to me and before long I was sitting in the driver’s seat. The leather bolsters enfolded my spine and muttered in my ear, “Let’s start up and go somewhere far away!”
From the passenger seat Charlie slid the key into the ignition. Well, o.k. What can it hurt? I hit the starter and the beast roared to life. Keeping up the disinterested façade, I asked: “What’s the clutch like?” I didn’t listen to the answer. I knew what it would be like, so I fed fire to the beast and out the lane we moved, smoothly, stalking, hiding beneath the veneer of civility. “Nice car, good air conditioning, no rattles, good ride.” But silently the beast was gripping my spine and saying, “Let’s see what we can do!”
I behaved myself on the way in the Chaffey’s Locks Road, and did my best to impersonate a geezer taking his kid’s new car for a drive. But then I saw a couple of s-turns without any traffic and the beast cut loose. Man, can that car go! It’s not the straight-line acceleration: pretty well any modern car can do that. But the thing corners like, well, like a Porsche. Steering is right there. No vagueness at all. The gearshift is actually a bit tricky if driven moderately. Slam it through a corner at high rev’s though, and it works just right.
It’s been a long time since I have pulled any g’s with a car, but this Porsche left me feeling like that guy with the restored Mustang in the A&W commercial where he takes his wife out for a burger. All the forgotten lusts came rushing back.
I turned the car back to our son, who fortunately doesn’t seem to have inherited his father’s wild streak.
For him the car seems to be a mechanical puzzle to be analyzed and savoured. First thing he did was download the 350 page factory manual onto his laptop. The second was to make friends with a Porsche mechanic. The third was to clean the car.
The rest of the afternoon it sat on jack stands while Charlie inspected the underside for loose fittings and corrosion, spraying with oil as he went.
He no doubt likes the beast: his new Audi continues to sit in our yard while he drives the old one. I know he’s a much better driver than I and I hope he’ll have the sense to keep safe – and hide the Porsche keys from his dad.
Harper, Dion, and The End of Oil
September 1, 2008
“In 1990 Ontario premier David Peterson decided to call a snap election less than three years into his mandate. This proved to be his greatest mistake. Many voters saw the early election as a mark of arrogance, and a sign that Peterson’s Liberals had become detached from the electorate. There was no defining issue behind the campaign, and many believed that Peterson was simply trying to win re-election before the economic downturn reached its worst phase.” (Wikipedia)
From the sound of things Canadians are headed into a fall election and if there is a defining issue in the campaign other than Harper’s desire to hang onto the keys to 24 Sussex for a few more years, it will have to be Stephan Dion’s Green Shift Plan. Harper has dismissed it as “crazy” and a “tax grab,” and he will no doubt continue to do so if only to disguise how out of position the Federal Conservative Party is in the run-up to this election.
For centuries historians have accused the Quebecois of trying to be more French than the French. I fear the same applies to the pro-Republican Harper government. While Karl Rove wannabe John Baird attacks his opponents incessantly, Harper can’t fail to notice that even the most adamant of the American governing party are quietly softening their stand on the environment. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the Democratic house majority to enact carbon dioxide controls in 2006. John McCain is the new presidential nominee, and in 2003 he narrowly failed to get a carbon tax plan of his own through the U.S. Senate. Bush and Cheney may stay away from the Republican Convention in order to allow the Party some distance from their disastrous record. Cancelled by Ronald Regan in 1988, CAFÉ regulations are coming back to end the slide of auto makers into high profit, fuel-wasting vehicles. The trend is toward conservation and cleaner air and Harper’s taking Canada in the wrong direction using arguments already repudiated by his mentors to the south.
This week I read The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts. In the book he lays bare why the United States was unable to enter the Kyoto Accord, even when faced with strong pressure from its allies. The answer lies in 900 elderly coal-fired generating stations which produce much of the base power on which the U.S. economy relies. 44% of the grid is fed by stations exempt from pollution controls. Only 6% of U.S. electrical power comes from cleaner coal-gas facilities. Those old generating stations are exempt from air quality standards and the coal they use is dirt cheap. Every hour of every day they crank out electricity at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. The cleaner plants need a price of 6.5 cents per KWH to be financially viable, so unless laws are passed, there is no business incentive to use them. Bush won his second term with the support of the coal-producing states, big oil and the Detroit auto makers, so no such laws made it past the lobbyists, but it now seems as if the logjam of vested interests and inertia may be breaking up.
The utilities executives expect legislation to control carbon emissions. They are ready for the laws, but can’t act until they know the standard. With the Republicans jumping for shore, Harper looks to be the only one left on the ice floe.
Even worse, in 2004 Roberts painted the Alberta Tar Sands project as a worst-case scenario for oil extraction because of the enormous cost to the environment of this form of oil. In the last month some American mayors have spoken up, planning to ban oil-sands fuel from their cities because of the global damage it causes. Harper’s fate may well be tied to that of a few hundred ducks found poisoned in an Alberta pond.
“The argument that taxes on oil or carbon emissions would ruin an economy is fundamentally false. First of all, I don’t think such a step is going to have that much of an impact on the economy overall. Second of all, if you don’t do it, you can be sure that the economy will go down the drain in the next 30 years.” Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve
Stephan Dion’s Green Shift plan simply reflects changes which have already occurred in Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Belgium. Harper’s reactionary position leaves him so much in jeopardy that his only alternative is to get an election over before Bush and Cheney leave office.
Review: The End of Oil
August 26, 2008
I have just finished reading The End of Oil, the eye-opener by Paul Roberts. While the book’s 2004 publication date leaves it rather dated in its assumptions that oil prices could rise as high as forty dollars per barrel and that bio-fuels can help, Roberts provides an interesting context for the U.S.’s current resistance to climate change legislation.
The Kingston Steam Plant in Oakridge, Tennessee, was built by the TVA in 1955. It is one of nine hundred coal-fired power plants in the United States which with minimal pollution controls produce over 44% of the nation’s electricity (268).
The problem is that the older plants are paid for, produce very cheap electricity, and new plants fall under the federal Clean Air Act which requires expensive pollution controls. The old plants are exempt. What’s more, Roberts explains that the TVA has done a $400 million stealth renovation on the Kingston plant, doubling capacity, but not improving air quality, so it continues to emit a hundred thousand tons of sulfur and nearly four million tons of carbon every year (261).
It’s a simple question of costs. Coal is dirt cheap and the Kingston plant can produce power for about 2 cents per KWH. A new gas-fired plant would be clean and not too expensive to build, but natural gas costs three times as much as coal, and the price of the electricity would be more than the market would bear. A new coal gasification plant could operate efficiently, and even sequester the carbon dioxide produced, but the cost would rise to a prohibitive 6.5 cents per KWH.
In the energy world of the United States there is no economic reason to reduce carbon outputs, and every reason to devote millions of dollars and votes to fight climate policy. Herein lies the resistance to the Kyoto Accord and other climate-change initiatives. George Bush Jr. won the presidency with the support of the coal-producing states and a war chest made rich by contributions from oil companies and auto manufacturers.
There is at present no economic disadvantage to emitting CO2. Putting out a ton of carbon doesn’t make you or your company less competitive or less profitable – whereas cutting CO2 emissions almost always will, in terms of additional technology costs and lost productivity (273).
Roberts explains why automobiles in North America have worse fuel efficiency than they did in 1988. Following the OPEC crisis in the mid seventies, Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency legislation stipulated a steadily-rising standard for vehicles sold in the United States. Ronald Regan cancelled it “and terminated a decade of dramatic improvements in fuel efficiency” (262).
Roberts likens the social costs of gasoline consumption to those of cigarette smoking, and explains how the tax on tobacco by government is primarily a means to internalize the costs. He suggests that a similar tax on carbon is increasingly in use around the world to offset the costs of oil consumption which extend well beyond the pump price.
This idea is not new. In the United States, coal-fired power plants already pay a penalty for each ton of sulfur dioxide they emit – a requirement that has dramatically reduced sulfur emissions and the acid rain they cause. A similar system for carbon would be even more transformative. As carbon began to represent a cost to be avoided, so consumers, companies, and entire industries would shift their business strategies, investment patterns, and technology programs to minimize carbon consumption and emissions. A carbon tax would rectify the myriad perverse incentives that today not only encourage wasteful building, driving, and other inefficiencies, but give hydrocarbons an advantage over other energy technologies, such as hydrogen or renewables. Consumption patterns would shift dramatically: as the price of gasoline or coal-fired power rose to reflect carbon capture, consumers and businesses would move toward more efficient cars and appliances (276).
It remains to be seen, however, whether such an idea can cross the Atlantic and overcome the American disdain for paying for pollution, something that has been free for centuries (279).
“The utilities will never admit this in public,” says one climate analyst who has worked closely with the power sector, “but if you talk one on one to senior guys from the power industry and you ask them whether they think that at some point in the next five to ten years there will be a significant limit on carbon, they will all say yes. They know this is coming, and they are investing in little clean technology things on the margins. But until they see what the limit will be, what the carbon market actually is, they can’t move. (280)”
Paul Roberts saved a surprise for his last few pages. Stephen Harper’s trying to dismiss Stephan Dion’s proposed carbon tax in Canada as “crazy” but in 2003 a similar program narrowly missed passage in the U.S. Senate after a late rally by the Republicans. Its champions? John McCain, the current Republican presidential nominee, and Democrat Joe Lieberman (p. 331).
Roberts, P. The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 2004.
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