Giving Up Cannot Be An Option

Since my retirement nearly a decade ago, I have enjoyed the luxury of pontification without responsibility nor remorse. Clearly, if my goal was to help Planet Earth and Humanity, this hands off strategy is not working, for my advice is blithely ignored. That would be fine, were it not for the looming disaster almost surely to come. This current economic shortfall will pass and Hawaii will sufficiently recover. However, when oil shoots past 150/barrel, Hawaii's economy will enter into a long period of depression because tourism is our only real revenue source, and it would not surprise me if we then suffer from 25% unemployment. I hope I'm wrong to all this.

"While it is almost surely too late to diversify our economy or find viable next generation substitutes for jet fuel or the current jetliners, there are steps that can and should be taken now to minimize the long-term pain. GIVING UP CANNOT BE AN OPTION. It is with these thoughts that I responded yesterday to someone in the community seeking information (I will try to protect privacies with certain adjustments, but it becomes pretty clear at the end which organization asked):"

Dear [ ]:

Why bother searching for old studies which were mostly ignored. Times have changed. Back then there was no knowledge of global climate warming, nor any universal sense about Peak Oil. Develop your own scenarios, but don't be boxed in by past decisions. Show up for legislative hearings, but no one convinced any legislator about anything innovative at those sessions. Plus, they will not have any money to do anything over the next decade, at least. Select one monumental mission and do it! Don't bother with consensus.

To make a very long story reasonably short, in the mid-to-late seventies, I led a couple of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute studies with respect to Hawaii, which reported that renewable electricity someday would happen when the price of oil sufficiently rises, our ground transportation will be powered by biomethanol and the hydrogen jetliner will bring tourists to Hawaii. The methanol solution would take a couple of decades and any next generation airliner could easily take twice as long. Certainly, too, we were then too dependent of tourism, so we should diversify our economy as fast as possible, and the ocean offered the greatest hope. Forget high tech in the traditional sense. But, whatever, start now, for all these things will take a generation or two or more.

Thus, in 1979 I went to work for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga and assisted on drafting the first hydrogen, wind power (I was chairman of the American Solar Energy Society wind energy division in the mid-seventies) and ocean energy legislation. Hydrogen had no budget then, but last year got more Department of Energy money than solar energy (see #1 below). I think hydrogen is too long term and should for now be set aside, but Congress has apparently overturned Secretary Chu. Wind power, of course, is the only (with geothermal--I also was the reservoir engineer for the Hawaii Geothermal Project during those days) renewable electricity form competitive with fossil/nuclear.

So what happened after a third of a century? Well, we are beginning to move on sustainable electricity, but electricity from wind/solar is only about 1% today. The Farm Lobby dominated, and we got stuck with ethanol and biodiesel. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oh, that's one of our flaws. Congress. We need a benevolent dictatorship! The Department of Defense actually begun designing the National Aerospace Plane (hydrogen-powered), but this still remains a black program and is going nowhere.

The one key point I would like to underscore is that the price of oil will jump past 150/barrel in a decade, or sooner, and Hawaii will go into a lengthy depression because we won't be able to find a cost-effective replacement for jet fuel and the current jetliner when the crunch occurs (#2 below). We had to start in 1980. We didn't. IF [ ] HAS TO FOCUS ON ONE PROJECT, YOU SHOULD DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO MINIMIZE (THIS IS ABOUT ALL YOU CAN DO) THE LENGTH OF THIS DEPRESSION. Mind you, this will be mostly a local cataclysm, although the world will more and more suffer from a lowered lifestyle.

Forget electricity, as there is nothing much you can add to what others are already doing. Electric cars will lead our nation down a dead end, so read my HuffPo on this subject. Find a way to gain American patents for the direct methanol fuel cell (#3). If you want to get really futuristic, help Rinaldo Brutoco accelerate his Hawaiian Hydrogen Clipper. Then again, [ ] leading the Blue Revolution (#4). That has a nice ring! Maybe [ ] should expand his horizons and tackle something worthy to diversify Hawaii's economy.

Go to following four sites:

1. The politics of energy.

2. We need to work together, now.

3. Real solution for ground transport. (I communicated with [ ] about this, but, he does have his expensive toy, and I don't think he wanted to hear what I had to say.)

4. The Blue Revolution.

Aloha.

PatDaily Blog

- There are now three storms in the Atlantic. Hurricane Guillermo is now at 125 MPH, but all models show it passing north of Hawaii, but, more importantly, largely dissipating in around 5 days before impacting the local region.

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