By Dr. Larry Kinney
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Larry Kinney is easily one among a handful of the world's top leading experts on building science, energy conservation and efficiency. Larry is presently conducting research and development of several unique and significatly important building systems including advanced daylighting mechanisms and exterior insulating shutters. The insulating shutters that Larry is developing, in my opinion, are probably going to be a revolutionary advancement in building performance. In addtion to information about his company, Larry has a superb primer on energy auditing on his website: www.SynertechSystemsCorp.com. Beyond his amazing breadth and depth of knowledge, Larry is also an inspiring teacher and amazing friend. I owe no small part of the direction I am headed to his influence. -RH]
As film critic, Roger Ebert, urged—for the first time in his 37-year career—“Go see this movie.” It’s a powerful message powerfully delivered by a man who should have been President of our fragile republic. However, I was disappointed that the message was virtually all about global warming.
When I became impassioned about energy and environmental matters 35 years ago, “global warming” was not part of public parlance. Nonetheless, the authors of The Limits to Growth and such visionaries as Fritz Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered) and the University of Colorado’s own tireless Professor of Physics, Al Bartlett, had already sounded a clarion call about the ravages of exponential growth in the consumption of finite resources and runaway increases in population. This caused some of us to devote our lives to figuring out how to minimize the increasingly wasteful use of fossil fuels.
A quad is a very large unit of energy, a million billion British thermal units. A million Btu is roughly the energy equivalent of a person year of labor, so a quad is a billion of those. In 1970, when I first came to grips with exponential growth, the US had used an amount of energy in the previous 18 years that equaled the amount of energy our nation had used over its entire prior history. In 1970, the world used 207 quads.
This year, the world will consume over 400 quads and the US alone—with less than 5 percent of the world’s population—will use over 100 quads, about a quarter of the world’s total. The US Department of Energy predicts that in 2020, the world will use well over 600 quads—600 billion person-years of labor energy equivalent—a tripling in 50 years.
US Energy Use in 2002 (97 Quads)
Presently, the phenomenon of global warming is quite clear to all but the lunatic fringe, and its effects are admirably documented in Al Gore’s impressive slide show. Most reputable scientists also acknowledge the fact that oil production peaked in this country around 1971, and many believe that world oil production has also peaked. We can view both of these developments as predictable consequences of the phenomenon of unchecked growth in the use of non-renewable energy. However, it is possible to believe in any of these three powerful forces independently of the others and reach the same conclusion—we are in deep trouble and must change our wasteful ways now.
Confronted with the enormity of these global phenomena—effectively dramatized by the breaking off of massive portions of polar ice caps—it is only natural to wring our hands in despair and perhaps even kneel in prayer. I hope we will quickly replace hand wringing with the rolling up of sleeves. There’s lots of important work to be done. We must launch a vigorous war on waste and integrate it with shifting to renewable resources. In addition, concerted global efforts in education are necessary to reverse population growth before calamitous events accomplish this end in tragic ways.
In short, in the memorable words of An Inconvenient Truth, let our prayers be accompanied by the movement of feet.
if the subject isnt about overpopulation not worth talking about all stems from overpopulation. we are in overshoot . all the rest is bs. why dont you address the only subject.
Overpopulation is important, but it’s NOT the only subject. There are two factors determining whether the human population lives within the limits of its resources; the size of the population and the rate of resource consumption per capita. Dr. Kinney is right to point to overconsumption.
On the other hand, I disagree with his objection that “An Inconvenient Truth” focuses too narrowly on global warming. I think that focus is the reason this movie was so effective. If Gore had gone much beyond that subject, the message would have been too dissipated to be interesting, much less to sink in.
A major weakness of scientists trying to make policy arguments to the public is that we don’t realize how very boring all of our connections and caveats and nuances are to people who do other things for a living.