Switchgrass and Human Consumption
The October, 2007 issue of Wired magazine dismisses hydrogen, solar, wind, and corn-produced ethanol as viable energy sources, mainly as dramatic introduction to their cover story about the future of switchgrass.
Switchgrass has its promises, no doubt. However, given the tough molecular design of cellulose we have not as yet found a way yet to competitively produce ethanol from it. The technical optimist, with great justification, will assure us we just have to wait until oil prices rise enough. Same argument made by the oil shale enthusiasts, BTW, who argued for decades that oil would have to reach $50 a barrel. Oil is almost double that, but little shale oil on the market.
Still, yes, switchgrass is the darling of the technological optimists. Wired’s primary objection to corn-processed ethanol is that it is rather inefficient at producing energy. “…it generates at best 30 percent more energy that is required to grow and process the corn—hardly worth the trouble.” Nothing, of course about the morality of using what could be food to instead fuel one’s drive to the video store. And there certainly isn’t any consideration at a more evolved, world-centric level of consciousness about growing vast tracts of one crop to fuel our profligacy at the expense of what would otherwise be a bio-web composed of thousands of species.
Okay, so let’s keep the debate to what is best for Americans. That is, afterall, the focus of the Wired article… Switchgrass produces more energy than corn--80% more energy that is required to grow it. Which means for every acre of switchgrass that goes into a car, you have to grow another 1.2 acres of switchgrass as production energy. How many more acres of mono crop do we need to supply our 35 billion gallon a year habit? Not just 35 billion gallons, nor the 77 billion gallons to account for the production of the ethanol. Since alcohol produces about 70% of the heat value of oil, we’d need enough switchgrass to produce 110 billion gallons. Switchgrass would probably be able to produce at best 120 gallons of useable energy per acre, which comes out to nearly a billion acres of switchgrass.
This a little less than the total land allotted to all farming, pasture and rangeland in the U.S. So, to produce switchgrass ethanol for even a small percent of American oil use will require turning the entire non-forest, non-urban portion of the United States into a vast alcohol farm. And once we plant the U.S. with switchgrass for U.S. car consumption, what of the rest of the world. How much of the planet do we plant in switchgrass to fulfill our desires?
Part 2.
When we speak of oil, we tend to speak in the language of a paradigm that will soon die. Whether oil production can maintain 85 or 100 million barrels a day, or whether peak oil is now or ten years from now, or whether oil companies are swindling us—these are all small-scale thinking. On the scales of even generations, much less the lifetimes of nations and civilizations, oil is a precious fuel with a very limited lifespan.
Demographers tell us we will have another 2.5 billion people and economists predict a 10-fold increase in production/consumption by 2100. Meanwhile climatologists, oceanographers, and biologists warn us that, by every measure, already the earth can no longer absorb our wastes and sustainably provide our resources. Yet, we assume the economic and social forces will continue as they have, unabated, just with a different fuel, a better car, a kinder government, a more responsible corporate environment...
We concern ourselves with which light bulb is most efficient, whether a car gets 25 miles to the gallon or 27.5, whether a politician supports the Kyoto Protocol, and all the other little details. And, sure, each piece is important to the overall picture… Meanwhile Rome burns. We (the human family) know, for the most part, what we need to do. We know what actions, technology and policies should be implemented. And yet every indicator of environmental destruction has gotten worse every year.
We don't really know, because knowledge is not wisdom. We are clever enough to figure out what needs to be done, but we (the human family) are not wise enough to do those things we must. By 2050, demographers tell us we will have 2.5 billion more people, and economists tell us we will be consuming 4 times more. The planet can probably not absorb as much damage as was wrought between 1950 and 2000, and yet we are on the road to do even more in the next half-century. All ideas that we can continue as we have, tinkering here and putting this light there, and live on as we have merrily, merrily are highly problematic given the enormity of the problem.
However, on any time scale except those in which we individually experience, it doesn't matter what the price of gasoline is at the pump, or how efficacious capitalism is at producing wealth, or who the bad guys are.
Now, the earth is big and we are small and therefore it is difficult to know what information is significant--however, all signals from the earth clearly show that our big picture is not working. It's not that we need to make little adjustments to a faulty but basically working model. The whole model needs rethinking. It begins with the individual, internally. It begins not with knowledge--there's plenty of that and much of it contradicts--but with wisdom. And if we don't have wisdom, we need to listen carefully to those whom we have all through history agreed are wise.
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We concern ourselves with which light bulb is most efficient, whether a car gets 25 miles to the gallon or 27.5, whether a politician supports the Kyoto Protocol, and all the other little details. And, sure, each piece is important to the overall picture… Meanwhile Rome burns. We (the human family) know, for the most part, what we need to do. We know what actions, technology and policies should be implemented. And yet every indicator of environmental destruction has gotten worse every year.
We don't really know, because knowledge is not wisdom. We are clever enough to figure out what needs to be done, but we (the human family) are not wise enough to do those things we must. By 2050, demographers tell us we will have 2.5 billion more people, and economists tell us we will be consuming 4 times more. The planet can probably not absorb as much damage as was wrought between 1950 and 2000, and yet we are on the road to do even more in the next half-century. All ideas that we can continue as we have, tinkering here and putting this light there, and live on as we have merrily, merrily are highly problematic given the enormity of the problem.
Electricity is produced in power plants that use fossil fuels as a principle fuel. Until wind power (or some integration of sustainable energy sources) becomes the major source of electricity, powering cars by hooking them to the grid is no solution. It’s the same problem we have with hydrogen fuel.
We are still locked into the present economic/political paradigm, looking for technological and policy fixes so that we can continue living our principally suburban, auto-rich, high consumption lifestyles. However, all indications suggest that the destruction to earth’s life support systems are far greater in extent and occurring far more rapidly than we are yet ready to accept. A more likely solution, going deeper than merely substituting one energy source for another, involves a major paradigm shift, one which includes a significant reduction in per capita consumption. In a world of simpler lifestyles and minimal consumption, technology will certainly present us with many surprises.
Once we plant the west with switchgrass for U.S. car consumption, what of the rest of the world. How much of the planet do we plant in switchgrass to fulfill our desires? Already, we are consuming a significant portion of the earth's biological productivity for our ends.
How much of the earth’s resources are humans consuming? The earth is big and we’re small, and from an individual’s perspective any reasonable attempt to answer this would be daunting. So, some have narrowed the measure of our impact to only the plant matter that we consume. This is called the net primary production (NPP). According to numerous articles in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals (Vitousek et al, 1986, BioScience; Rostaczer et al, 2001, Science; Imhoff et al in a 2004; Nature, Haberl et al, 2007, PNAS) we consume about a third of the earth’s plant matter. We make up 0.5% (that is, one-half of 1% of the mass of all animals) and yet we consume about 33% of the earth’s land plant biomass.
Not included in these measurements were land lost to desertification and urban settlements, roads, etc. The true human impact may be closer to 50% (which was within the margin of error in the 2001 study). Also absent from these calculations were our use of freshwater, our consumption of fossil fuels, or the appropriation of the NPP from freshwater and marine ecosystems.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, about 50% of the earth’s land surface has been converted to cultivated crops and grazed land, and more than half of the earth’s forests have been lost in the process.
We have taken over much of life’s energy and yet even this is not enough. The human population is supposed to increase by another third by 2050 and consumption is projected to quintuple. We certainly cannot take 5-fold more from the earth. We are in the absurd position of the yeast in a wine vat, its population exploding in the abundance of sugar, not aware that the sugar is finite and that it will soon suffocate in its own waste. We are waking up. Knowledge is the first step, but only the first in a yet long journey.
Sustainable, by definition, means that one's behavior can be sustained indefinitely. If there were only four million people on the earth, they could probably cut down as many trees, clear as much land as they wished, use as many resources and produce as much waste as they desired. This is, of course, ignoring the moral argument. The immediate vicinity would be eventually destroyed, and humans would move on to another spot, behaving similarly. Meanwhile, thedestroyed area would recuperate and become vibrant again. This would be sustainable behavior, and it is basically what Paleolithic and early Neolithic (early farmers) did. From our individual perspective, the earth is big and could likely sustain this sort of lifestyle indefinitely.
However, with 1000 times that number, soon to be 2000 times, such Neolithic conduct is not sustainable. Every indicator--deforestation, overfishing, oceanic acidity, biodiversity loss, desertification, water drawdown, fossil fuel resources, global warming, etc--suggests that the earth's recuperative powers have already been overtaxed. And no matter how fast we move, it will get worse for quite a while before it gets better.
Many solutions are proposed, and many of them are thoughtful, informed, and likely to be part of future sustainable societies. They are unlikely to be part of any large movement in the near future, however. Reading trend lines (albeit in a linear way), the destruction to earth's life support systems is accelerating far faster than our behaviors are changing. Water, land and energy (in a easily usable form, namely oil) are diminishing so rapidly--so unsustainably--that a crash is imminent. Global warming has deservingly gotten a lot of attention, as has peak oil, mainly because the world's wealthy billion people do not want to give up their high consumption lifestyles. However, as big a threat to humanity--at least in the timespans of decades--is the desertification/water scarcity issue. Numerous articles in the peer-reviewed journals, such as Science and BioScience have been documentinga disaster-in-the-making, leading to a Malthusian dieback of humanity. It is this event, perhaps more than any other, that will propel humanity into true sustainable action.
Given the bifurcation of the human family into two entrenched groups--rich and poor--the poor of the world will feel the brunt of a likely dieback.
