Sustainable Energy Draft Overview

In reviewing the current world situation we see imposing challenges that must be overcome if fair development is to be realized. The end of cheap fossil fuels appears to be less than four decades away. Evidence of catastrophic climate change due to green-house gasses is mounting, and economic disparity between rich and poor is growing nationally and internationally. US policies in the last decades have led to historical trade deficits, international debts, and hundreds of thousands of lives lost in wars. While other nations have been developing strategies to deal with the challenges, the US has lagged behind. Below we examine the steps we can take, together with other nations, to help address these challenges. We seek policies that simultaneously address economic, social, technical and geopolitical issues, looking for solutions that nations, states, cities and indigenous cultures can implement.

World scientists have concluded that we must not only cease adding CO2 to the atmosphere, we must also reverse the climate changing gasses by sequestering CO2 that has already been released. A number of strategies seek to earn carbon credits (the economic incentives introduced by signers of the Kyoto protocols) to reduce global warming. In Tanzania (Borchart), the Philippines (Pagnier), and US forest lands and parks (Bosiljevac) we look at combining reforestation with carbon credits and economic development for local rural populations. This tree planting and sustainable harvesting will potentially sequester years of CO2 emissions and restore deforested lands while helping to pull rural communities out of poverty. In the US Indigenous tribes linked with the US Park and Forest services can have a major role. Included in the reforesting studies will be analysis of sustainable bio fuel and agricultural crops.

One of the major bio fuels already in production is sugar cane, extensively developed in Brazil. The industry in Brazil will be described and compared with the US current approaches (Burke, Lundberg, Ferrera). Trade relations with Brazil will be reviewed, comparison with corn bio fuel, balance of land use for food and/or fuel will define the optimum policy and the political and economic factors involved. Overall world production potential of sugar cane, palm oil, and jatropa will be linked to the projected fall of fossil fuel supply and rise in energy prices. World efforts to solve the problems will be illustrated by a web-based video presentation.

For both national and international applications, solar and wind energy is a large part of the future, with hydro electric and possibly atomic energy. The latest improvements in these technologies will be described together with a comparison of international competitiveness and trade (Hsu, Paulus, Ramachandran). Argentina (Wickless) and Norway (Johnson) will be analyzed as examples.

In the US, the concept of green sustainable cities is just this year gaining importance, spurred on mainly by dramatically rising fuel prices. Initiatives of cities are reviewed and evaluated. The political social and economic factors combine to form a coherent program that can be implemented on the city level, bridging where possible to international concerns and inducements. Strategies will include more efficient autos and public transportation, wind and solar installations, green belts and support of carbon credits, and of course promotion of public policy for sustainability (Miner, Borchart, Ferrera). A particular study will look at rural communities financed by Latin America to earn carbon credits and market trade products (Rodriquez).

Finally on the international level, we will review the policies of the oil-rich nations, what they are doing, or could be doing to use the earnings from scarcity pricing of fossil fuels to support the transition to a sustainable, and fair trade world. Particular emphasis will be included on Russia (Burke) and Saudi Arabia (Dunn).