Extraction...and Ultrarunning

Via Boing Boing, always a great read, we see this post about how natural gas will not be our salvation.

Over the past few years, I've heard several people in the natural gas industry estimate that the United States is sitting on 100 years worth of natural gas. Every time I've heard the 100-year estimate batted around, it's been presented as a positive thing, a shorthand way of saying, "We've got tons of home-grown energy, people! We don't need to worry about the future of energy at all!"

It's an interesting example of the fundamental disconnect between short-term and long-term thinkers.

All things considered, 100 years is not really a very long time.

All our extraction approaches sorta gloss over the fact that there is just a finite amount of xxxxx in the ground, and once it's gone, it's GONE.  

Petroleum is a wonderful case in point.  Since, say, 1900 or so, American infrastructure has worshipped at the throne of the internal combustion engine.  We've literally paved over a vast chunk of our land to support a mode of transport that is finite and probably doomed.

Even if we successfully move to electric vehicles, where do you think the electricity comes from?  Coal, anyone?  It burning coal really better for the environment than oil?  Oh, and someday the coal will run out, too.

Of course the only rational long-term solution is renewable energy such as solar, wind, tide, geothermal.  But I sure don't see the full court press--like the putting a man on the Moon mission of the1960s--that we need.

Better to kick the can down the road and let the kids and grandkids solve it.  Or not.

Another example--I've been watching Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel.  There's something arresting and compelling about these naive miners trying to strike it rich in Alaska.  Anyway, what really strikes me is how they literally have to excavate and wash TONS of gravel just to get a couple of flakes of gold.  The scale of rape-and-pillage-the-environment is absolutely stunning.

I've quite familiar with strip mining sites here in my home state of Pennsylvania, and it's awful.  What is happening in Alaska to extract gold is worse.

And the link to Ultrarunning?  Better enjoy the back country now, because when push comes to shove in a few years or decades, when wilderness is weighed against the precious minerals or oil or gas it contains, guess what'll  come out second best?

More Exit 29, Ultrarunning, and Wilderness

Here’s another Milepost 29 post on the heels of yesterday’s post.  As I drove up Interstate 81 as part of my daily 60-mile commute (today was my day to drive the carpool) I reflected that every single drop of gasoline that we use is based upon extraction technology and is a truly finite resource.  Now this is not a new fact, but today for some reason, I truly examined that fact and it really sank in for the first time.

Once we extract that last drop, it’s gone.  There’s no more.

That fact alone should make all of us and especially our leaders shudder.  Truth is, it’s kinda stupid to continue to base our entire infrastructure and economy on fossil fuels with no Plan B, but that indeed is what we are doing.  One would think that our leaders would be calling for a full-court press, like the concerted heroic effort that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s.  But one would be wrong.

I can’t solve the energy problem, but the finiteness of extractable fossil fuels contrasts starkly with the non-consumability (within reason) of wilderness. 

Wilderness (and I use the word loosely here to mean any backcountry in which we run), unlike fossil fuels, is non-consumable in the sense that whether 1 person or 1000 people view a waterfall, the waterfall is not diminished.  Within reason, given the constraints of physics and geology--erosion, soil type, etc.--most trails can tolerate few or many folks walking/running there.  In other words, wilderness persists without diminution. 

Wilderness is relative in the degree to which it contrasts to everyday life.  The beauty of ultrarunning is that it CAN be part of everyday life, thus inextricably tying us to wilderness.

Let’s let Aldo Leopold have the last word on wilderness:

Ability to see the cultural value of  wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.  The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.  It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.

 

The Rude Pundit and Obama's Oil Speech

Another non-ultra post: I must confess to the guilty pleasure of absolutely loving The Rude Pundit's blog.

He is extraordinarily profane and sacrilegious, so if you are easily offended, don’t read on, and don't click the link. But if you can tolerate the Pundit's usage of colorful language and sometimes crude sexual hyperbole to effectively make a point, and want to gain some insight, do read on, and do click here. Then scroll down to Tues 16 June (his separate posts do not have a unique URL), to the post called Obama's Oil Spill Speech: Us and Them.

I've cleaned it up a bit below, but you get the gist.

The President's big Oval Office speech was a bullsh*t pile of news updates, vague promises, and toothless threats. Look, we know that Obama wants the leak to stop. We know that the government is doing a lot of sh*t to make that happen, we know that the oil and tar and dead things need to be cleaned up, we know that BP is on the hook, we know that sh*t is effed up for fishing fleets and shrimpers. We know that he has limitations on what exactly he can do.

But the man said, "Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny." And he's right. So tell us what to do. Lead us. That's what we want; it's what we've wanted all along, not an especially skilled anchor informing us that oil spills are bad. "As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -– but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment," he said. So effing seize it.

Obama's cautious approach to governance made him speak in generalities with little vision for the future. He could have said he was wrong about further drilling. He could have laid out a path that said, "Here's where we are. Here's where we want to be. Here's how we get to this new place." And he could have called on all of us to help. Jesus Christ, how about one mention of conservation (beyond having "conservationists" on one of the endless stream of panels studying sh*t)? How about saying that it's time, once again, for American drivers to give up their big-ass SUVs? How about enlisting us in the fight, or making it into a fight for our survival? "It's wind energy or The Road, mf-ers. Which do you choose?"

Above is what I was hoping for--President Obama to use the disaster to seize the moment, to channel President Carter from 30+ years ago, and to challenge the United States of America to undertake a program analogous in scope and difficulty of putting a man on the moon.  The oil WILL run out.  We--and our children--need an all-out, full-court press to develop non-fossil fuel energy sources now while we can still be in proactive rather than reactive mode.

We just need a strong leader with vison to take us there.