Summer season is approaching and Memorial Day is around the corner. In the Tahoe area, as in many other northern regions of the United States, this means we're enter the the season of road maintenance and water/sewer pipe upkeep.
Anyone who has traveled to or around the Lake in the Summer has almost certainly seen some highway or local street maintenance. Some of that may be actual road repairs; some may be repairs or replacements of underground water or sewage pipes. Without well maintained roads and reliable water and sewer pipes, life in the Tahoe area would be almost impossible. At least it would be impossible for the great majority of "modern" people who now live here, as well as any visitors.
All of these repairs require powerful gasoline or diesel powered equipment. Road repairs sometimes apply new asphalt or concrete, materials that require fossil fuels to manufacture and transport.
So, what's the problem with fixing our roads and keeping our piping system working? There's no problem except that these activities require substantial amounts of fossil fuels, and unless we're prepared instead to employ lots of strong men and women with shovels and have the jobs take far longer, there's no alternative right now. So what's the problem with that; why can't we just keep repairing roads and pipes the way we've been doing it for the last 50 years?
The short answer is that the concentration of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere just recently crossed 400 PPM, a level not seen for at least 4 million years. If we continue burning fossil fuels at current rates of consumption (and countries like China and India are increasing their consumption), we'll cross 450 PPM by 2037. That's the absolute maximum upper limit that climate scientists tell us we can go to still keep the earth's average temperature at not more than 2 degrees C (3.8 degrees F) above historical averages. 2 degrees C isn't safe: It's merely a value that scientists think the human population can tolerate. There will still be major climate changes: fiercer storms, a rising ocean, melting glaciers, decrease in arable lands, less snowfall, more drought in drier areas.
So what's that got to do with road and pipe maintenance in the Tahoe area? We can't be the only ones causing global warming, can we? Of course we aren't. Burning fossil fuels, especially coal, is bad wherever it happens. But unless the United States and China begin quickly reducing their consumption of oil and coal, we'll stay on the track we are on. And this track leads to blowing by 450 PPM and into the realm of climate disaster... into the realm of making earth a planet that is much less able to support human life.
But we can't stop maintaining our roads and pipes, can we? We don't really have to do this, do we? Right now there is little choice. If we want the Tahoe area to be inhabitable by modern humans, then we need roads and water and sewer infrastructure. Can the maintenance be done without using fossil fuels? Right now, it appears not. The available heavy equipment that does the digging and related tasks is all powered by gasoline or diesel fuel. There's no alternative, though it may be possible to develop equipment that uses fuel cells or other technologies that are what's called "carbon neutral" - meaning they don't add new CO2 to the atmosphere.
We have a long way to go before we can maintain our local infrastructure in ways that do not destroy the earth's climate. And we don't have much time to find out how. So it's vital that we support research and development into projects that can provide affordable, sustainable energy supplies to our homes, business, transportation and life support systems.... and that means roads and water/sewer pipes.
If we can't provide clean water and functional sewage systems, and low pollution ways for people to live and travel in the Tahoe area, then most humans will simply pack up and leave. And if we do nothing, the earth's climate will make it increasingly difficult to live anywhere, including at the Lake.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
The Death of Snow Plows
It's now May in the Tahoe area. Rains are falling and temperatures are in the 40s - 50s. So why am I thinking about snow plows? Because for at least six months of the year, snowfall is a frequent presence, and without plows to clear the roads, motorized travel can be impossible. Anything over a few inches of fresh snow can make driving, even for those with four wheel drive vehicles, too difficult to attempt. Without reliable snow plows, we can rule out delivery of food, medical supplies, gasoline, hardware store items. In less than a week, store shelves would be empty of items critical to survival.
Do we really have anything to worry about? Aren't we guaranteed that country and state governments will keep the roads clear... forever? No such guarantee exists. Global oil production has been essentially flat since 2005.
Why does that matter in the Tahoe area, or anywhere else, for that matter? It matters because it indicates that we have reached a peak, a somewhat flat peak for now, but that at some point in the relatively near future (probably within a decade or two), global oil production will start its irreversible trend downward. When that happens, oil prices, and thus gasoline and diesel prices, will rise. Well, so what, can't the country just pay more for gasoline to keep the snow plows running? Yes, of course it can, but only in the short term. As the years go by and oil prices continue to rise, the use of the personal motor car wil decline and less people will travel to Tahoe as a vacation getaway. That means less highway taxes for governments and less of a motivation to plow every road currently attended to.
At some point, governments will be forced to ask: What are the most critical roads, because those are the only one we can afford to plow? That leads to even less people being able to spend some of their winter months in the Tahoe area... which puts less cars on the roads, and provides the governments with even less of an incentive to use snow plows. Sooner or later - unless residents of snowy areas like Tahoe find ways to pay more money for snow plowing - the road conditions could become undrivable after snow storms. [The other wild card, besides oil prices, is global climate change. We'll probably see less total snow, and lighter amounts, but still quite enough to seriously clog the roads for the likely future.]
I'm not predicting that "the death of snow plows" will happen any time soon. But as energy prices rise, and the overall economy contracts, it becomes more and more difficult for governments to provide services. Priorities will have to be reestablished. Can we count on snow plows clearing the Tahoe roads indefinitely? Look at the struggles to repair public schools, provide medical care for those without insurance, care for the elderly, fight foreign wars, keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alive. It's not hard to see that in an era of contracting economies, many regional government officials may not see snow plows as a top priority.
So what can we do? It's time to talk about what are the vital streets, how to keep them clear of winter snow as revenues decline, and what backup plans we will need when these streets cannot always be plowed. If we don't address this issue, then many parts of the Lake Tahoe community become uninhabitable during winter months.... just as was the case a century and a half ago. Is this what we want?
Do we really have anything to worry about? Aren't we guaranteed that country and state governments will keep the roads clear... forever? No such guarantee exists. Global oil production has been essentially flat since 2005.
Why does that matter in the Tahoe area, or anywhere else, for that matter? It matters because it indicates that we have reached a peak, a somewhat flat peak for now, but that at some point in the relatively near future (probably within a decade or two), global oil production will start its irreversible trend downward. When that happens, oil prices, and thus gasoline and diesel prices, will rise. Well, so what, can't the country just pay more for gasoline to keep the snow plows running? Yes, of course it can, but only in the short term. As the years go by and oil prices continue to rise, the use of the personal motor car wil decline and less people will travel to Tahoe as a vacation getaway. That means less highway taxes for governments and less of a motivation to plow every road currently attended to.
At some point, governments will be forced to ask: What are the most critical roads, because those are the only one we can afford to plow? That leads to even less people being able to spend some of their winter months in the Tahoe area... which puts less cars on the roads, and provides the governments with even less of an incentive to use snow plows. Sooner or later - unless residents of snowy areas like Tahoe find ways to pay more money for snow plowing - the road conditions could become undrivable after snow storms. [The other wild card, besides oil prices, is global climate change. We'll probably see less total snow, and lighter amounts, but still quite enough to seriously clog the roads for the likely future.]
I'm not predicting that "the death of snow plows" will happen any time soon. But as energy prices rise, and the overall economy contracts, it becomes more and more difficult for governments to provide services. Priorities will have to be reestablished. Can we count on snow plows clearing the Tahoe roads indefinitely? Look at the struggles to repair public schools, provide medical care for those without insurance, care for the elderly, fight foreign wars, keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alive. It's not hard to see that in an era of contracting economies, many regional government officials may not see snow plows as a top priority.
So what can we do? It's time to talk about what are the vital streets, how to keep them clear of winter snow as revenues decline, and what backup plans we will need when these streets cannot always be plowed. If we don't address this issue, then many parts of the Lake Tahoe community become uninhabitable during winter months.... just as was the case a century and a half ago. Is this what we want?
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