Pincas Jawetz, author of The Promptbook on Sustainability presented by the U.N. Reform Center to the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, founder of www.SustainabiliTank.info and U.N. Correspondent for Culture Change.

The Petrocollapse Conference, “Petrocollapse, Social Isolation or Solidarity?”, 40 East 35th Street, New York, NY 10016, October 5, 2005.

The use of renewable sources to answer our needs for energy implies the use of the energy available from the sun. The carriers are different and include mainly direct solar energy, wind energy, sea wave energy, and energy stored in biomass. Further related sources can be seen in hydropower and geothermal energy. Even though, initially, this energy is made available by the sun, its conversion does not come free and we must see to it that we reduce our total dependence on energy by changing our lifestyles to the point that we live healthier and happier lives while using less energy. The remaining need for energy is then supplied by our use of these renewable sources.

The recent Katrita events (the Katrina and Rita hurricanes and predictable future similar high intensity occurrences) should have finally opened our eyes to the danger of leading lifestyles that earth cannot sustain. But this was not yet the case. I would like thus to mention here recent statements by Professor David Begg, director of the Centre for Transport Policy at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, and former chairman (1998 until March 2004) of the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) of the UK.

Professor Begg said, as reported by Jenifer Johnston in the Sunday Herald, September 18, 2005, “When I was advising the government I didn’t focus as much as I should have on climate change, and I regret that”. He said that the government failed to meet its objectives set in a 1998 White Paper on transport. He mentioned that while the Executive aimed at freezing car use it continued road-building plans — “We have to wean people off their cars, not supply them with more ways to use them. We are mobility junkies in the UK”.

“A key objective was to stop the need for car journeys - but instead we have seen the rise of centralized hospitals, centralized shopping, so people still need to travel by car”.

Looking at the fact that in the UK 67% of the total cost of fuel is tax, when in the wake of Katrina the prices rose, the government was pushed to reduce the tax, Professor Begg stated that he is concerned that relatively low-priced fuel is hastening global warming. “I feel like starting a protest because petrol is too cheap,” he said. “In real terms petrol has fallen in price. When things become expensive we start making more efficient use of them - that is not happening with car use”.

“My fear is that what we are seeing on TV is people grumping about the price of fuel, not that the hurricane and its repercussions are the result of global warming. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example - 14 of the most important cities in the world are on seaboards - they are disasters waiting to happen”.

“Fuel protesters need to learn that THE REAL COST OF FUEL IS CLIMATE CHANGE. Increasingly around the world lives and livelihoods are being lost BECAUSE OF OUR ADDICTION TO OIL”. We need to break this deadly addiction by demanding sustainable alternatives, not demanding cheaper oil”.

Following Professor Begg’s statements, a spokesman for the Scottish Executive said: “The Executive recognizes that climate change is the single most important long-term threat facing our planet and is committed to contributing to international efforts aimed at curbing harmful emissions of greenhouse gasses”. The Executive in Washington DC has yet to declare that it also recognizes this simple truth!

I decided to use Professor Begg’s statements as an introduction to this presentation in order to point out that PETROCOLLAPSE may start happening sooner then expected, and not because we will be short of oil - rather because we will finally understand that KATRITA and the melting ice-caps mean that we create the disasters, and that these disasters are not natural indeed. This is rather like smoking and the culprits will eventually end up in court. In this respect I feel paying homage to an unsuspecting personage - to Sheik Yamani - who already many years ago remarked that the stone age did not end because of the lack of stones and the oil age will not end because of the lack of oil.

Further, I just returned from a trip to Bhutan, a country whose King has coined years ago the term GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS in his effort to tell the world that this is a more desirable goal then chasing the figures of Gross National Product (GNP) which we in the west worship as lighthouses when sailing the economy through the straights of unsustainability. More on this will appear on www.SustainabiliTank.info — mentioned website is dedicated to the essence of the technologies to be used when answering our energy needs from renewable sources in a sustainable way. None of the renewable sources can be seen as a replacement to the foolish use of oil; rather, these sources can answer particular needs with well directed favored technologies. Here we will just give a few examples of such technologies.

My favored topic is the introduction of ethanol from biomass as an octane boosting additive to gasoline replacing the heavy metal compounds, such as tetraethyl lead, previously withdrawn for environmental reasons. In the late 70’s-early 80’s I testified about 20 times before US Congressional committees and other Washington fora. The US refiners wanted no part of this, but today ethanol is to be found in nearly every gas-tank. Now, this is a good example of a sustainable alternative. When mixing about 10% ethanol - 90% gasoline from the refinery, one enhances the octane number of the gasoline by 3 numbers. Ethanol was a winner, considering that all other potential additives, predictably, had negative side-effects, and the preferred way by the refiners - a secondary “reforming” process at the refinery - that would have changed the molecular structure to increase in marketed gasoline the percentage of carcinogenic aromatics, was also an energy intensive process that consumes further 6% crude. Ethanol has thus even a hidden financial advantage to the refiner, while at the same time, to the environmentalist reduces the need for oil.

A different example is the success of using wind-power as a source of electricity. The present offshore windmills are so successful that in the State of Ceara, in the Northeast of Brazil, they consider using the present incoming electrical lines in order to send back electricity to the interior of Brazil.

Considering global Greenhouse Gas emissions, according to Michael Grubb, the Chief Economist for UK Carbon Trust: Buildings, Appliances, the house amount to 36%; Industry, Manufacturing, Construction amount to 35%; and Transport amounts to 25%. Our reconsidering lifestyles will have thus to consider all those areas, not just transport, and the eventual application of Renewables will touch many further areas such as the use of natural materials in construction.