Hemp – a good idea, but not a great one

I just read yet another article about how industrial hemp could be a replacement for crude oil.  If you read non-mainstream media enough you will run into such articles. The author touted hemp’s benefits as a replacement fiber for wood pulp, cotton, and petrochemical fibers. Fine. Our ancestors wrote on hemp paper and wore hemp clothes as they raised hemp sails with hemp ropes. The U.S. government promoted the domestic growth of hemp for rope fiber during WWII, when we lost our source of so-called Manila hemp in the Phillipines.

Then I read this paragraph:

"If all the diesel engines today were converted to use hemp biodiesel, you could wipe out world hunger while providing a natural balance to global warming" says Paul Stanford of the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, which has worked to end marijuana prohibition and restore industrial hemp.”

This kind of hyperbole drives me nuts. Here’s the blanket statement from the Minor Heretic on biofuels. If it involves…

• Growing something
• Converting that something to a fuel
• Pouring that fuel into a fleet of 230 million vehicles
• Each vehicle weighs over a ton and carries an average of 1.2 passengers at highway speeds for an average of 13,000 miles a year

…then it is not going to work. There is just not enough land, water, or nutrients to do the job. That’s not hyperbole; it is an acknowledgment of the limitations of natural systems.

Let’s just do the math on biodiesel from hemp seed. I am going to wave my magic wand and turn all 230 million registered vehicles in the U.S. into 40 mpg diesels, all converted to run on straight vegetable oil. That is a big wave of the wand, but I don’t want anyone claiming that I didn’t give hemp oil biodiesel every chance. I am also going to assume, as was suggested by one comment on the article, that the best variety of hemp will produce 8,000 pounds of seed an acre, a stunning 13 times the productivity of standard industrial hemp. According to that miracle-hemp comment this would translate into 300 gallons of hemp oil per acre.

At an average of about 13,000 miles per year, our fleet racks up 2,990,000,000,000 miles annually. That’s almost 3 trillion. At 40 mpg, that would require 74,750,000,000 gallons of hemp oil. At 300 gallons an acre, that would require 249, 166,666 acres of arable land. Call it an even 250 million acres.

There are 400 million acres of land under cultivation in the U.S. right now. Even under this bizarrely optimistic, “magic” scenario we would have to transfer over half of that to hemp fuel production. Either that, or we would have to find 250 million new acres of arable land when we are already growing crops on heavily irrigated semi-desert. Also consider that this is unrelenting cultivation, without fallowing or rotation, year after year. When one does the basic math, the ridiculous nature of biofuel-as-panacea claims becomes obvious.

By all means, let’s legalize and promote industrial hemp. It could be a much more benign fiber crop than cotton. (I like the feel of the cloth. It has great “hand”, as the tailors say.) It could even displace some petrochemical use. Give it a few years and the “petro” in petrochemicals could be launching past $140 a barrel, so I’d welcome a few alternatives.

Let us not, however, jolly ourselves into thinking we can continue driving behemoths as usual, except with bio-whatever in the tanks. I myself drive a vehicle that is converted to run on both petro-diesel and used vegetable oil. Nevertheless, I don’t con myself into thinking that it is a solution for the mass of Americans. I don’t even see it as a long-term niche solution.

The answer that will be forced upon us by the hard dictates of geology and physics is a life of limited mobility. What long distance mobility we will have will be slower, more expensive, and much less convenient than what we have today. We’ll do a lot of walking, bicycling, and just plain staying home. We need to stop fantasizing about some green magic bullet and start the long and difficult transition to life without the private automobile.

Outcomes

If you are at all interested in the health care debate, read the New Yorker article by Atul Gawande on health care costs. He examines McAllen, Texas, a community that has Medicare costs per person that average $15,000. This is twice the national average and three times some of the lowest cost areas. His core finding is that these costs don’t relate to the relative health of the community or quality of care, or even bad administration, fraud, or waste. It is all about how doctors are reimbursed and the culture of medical practice in that area.

In our system doctors generally are reimbursed by procedure. Do an MRI and the cash register rings. Blood test, ka-ching. Colonoscopy, ka-ching. Sit down with a patient for extra time and discuss their medical history in depth, no ka-ching. Get advice from a colleague without referring the patient for a procedure, no ka-ching.

Gawande found that the hospitals with the lowest cost per patient were ones that set up cooperative structures for the payment of their doctors, encouraging communication and mutual assistance and discouraging excessive procedures. Patient health outcomes were just as good or better than high spending institutions.

Well, here’s a thought: reimburse doctors according to patient outcomes. That’s what we actually want, right? Not a number of tests, but an actual improvement in the functionality of our bodies.

Modern medicine is a numbers game, after all. When we enter the medical system we get interviewed, tested, and our condition quantified. Depending on the affliction, medical personnel might establish dissolved oxygen in our blood, range of motion in a limb, our heart rate response to exercise, or the concentration of any number of chemicals in any number of tissues. This is then compared to what is considered normal for someone of the patient’s age, gender, and general condition. There are also more subjective tests of comfort and range of abilities.

When reimbursing a doctor we should consider the condition of the patient at intake and compare that to the condition of the patient over a time period relevant to the common recovery period for the particular injury or disease. Add a difficulty factor, as in Olympic diving. During a transitional period we should slowly reduce reimbursements for procedures and increase an outcome bonus. We should distribute that bonus among a group of doctors that work with the same hospital or in a limited geographic area. That would encourage doctors to collaborate and also to police their underperforming colleagues.

The exact formula for this kind of reimbursement is beyond the scope of this essay and, frankly, beyond the knowledge base of your Minor Heretic. But doesn’t it make sense to reward our health providers for making us healthy, rather than making us endure yet another procedure?

The Economics of Quality

I just read in a news report that if our economy keeps going the way it is now, the U.S. will post a 5.7% drop in GDP by the end of the year. This is, of course, considered dire. In contrast, the GDP of China is on course to grow by 6% this year, down from their usual 8-10%, but still firmly positive. The lucky bastards. Or are they?

GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, is the grand sum of all the goods and services bought and sold in the U.S. in a year. The measurement was formulated during the great depression of the 1930’s as a rough indicator of how well the economy was recovering.

It is not an original thought to point out that GDP is a speedometer, not a compass. When someone has a fender bender in a parking lot, that increases GDP, as do tornadoes, cancer, and a host of other undesirable events that cost people money. It doesn’t indicate anything about income distribution or the ability of ordinary people to pay their bills. Various other indicators of the well being of society have been proposed, but the mainstream media, politicians, and the general public remain fixated on GDP, often referred to simply as “the economy.” The economy speeds up and we cheer. It slows down, and everyone is worried.

It is also not an original act to point out that we live in a limited environment, with diminishing amounts of fossil fuels, minerals, forests, arable land, and fresh water. One would think that more people would make the connection that an eternally growing economy is a planetary impossibility. One would be wrong.

I’d like to point out a different direction for our economy, what might be called the Quality Economy. It involves focusing on the quality of production rather than mere quantity.

Our present system is focused on quantity. Great quantities of raw materials are shipped across oceans to Asia where they are transformed into mountains of mostly cheap, disposable goods. It is profitable for manufacturers to maximize the flow of goods. This is achieved through favorable trade laws and currency exchange rates, sweat labor, and planned obsolescence. But what does this really get us?

Some seriously underpaid, unskilled schmuck in Shanghai spends seven 12-hour days a week pulling injection molded plastic chairs out of a machine, while slowly dying of chemical poisoning, malnutrition, and overwork. The chairs get shipped in bunker-fueled cargo vessels to the U.S., where they end up getting stacked in a Wal-Mart by some other underpaid, unskilled schmuck. A third underpaid, unskilled schmuck whose father used to build furniture buys these ugly, flimsy chairs. They break within a year and he has to go buy more. Shanghai Plastic Chair Co. makes money, Shipping Inc. makes money, and Wal-Mart makes money, but everybody else loses.

Consider instead an economy where a skilled worker in Shanghai makes wooden chairs for people in Shanghai and a skilled worker in, let’s say, Des Moines Iowa, makes wooden chairs for people in Des Moines. Both workers can get paid a living wage for what they do. Being skilled, they have more unique economic value and therefore more economic power and control over their work environments. They will probably feel better about what they do. They will be able to afford the products of other local manufacturers. The chairs will last longer, reducing resource flow from the environment and pollutant flow to the environment. Shanghai Plastic Chair Co., Shipping Inc. and Wal-Mart lose out, but my heart does not bleed for them.

The end result is that GDP could stagnate while the lives of people here and abroad could improve. Granted, the chair example is simplistic, but the overall strategy is to go in the opposite direction of the standard economic wisdom. The trend in industry for the past two centuries has been to reduce the number and skill level of workers. The more recent trend has been to send manufacturing jobs to countries with the lowest wages, least worker rights, and lowest environmental standards. This has maximized the flow rates of materials and capital at great expense to humanity.

One objection to this concept is that it will lower productivity. We worship productivity, but what does it really mean? It is dollars of output divided by hours worked. Note that the variable we are supposed to increase is “dollars,” without any indication of the quality of what was done or its value to society. Today, greater productivity means that you work harder so that a shareholder somewhere else can make more money. Increases in productivity haven’t been matched by increased wages for workers in the U.S. for the past 30 years.

Another objection is that most people can’t afford quality. I would counter that none of us can afford quantity. In a recent essay I discussed how globalization and outsourcing is sinking this country in debt. Our vast consumption of cheap sweatshop goods is unsustainable in terms of economics, the diminishing supply of resources, and the environment. A generation or two ago, American factory workers manufactured goods that were sold to other American factory workers. We could do that again.

And don’t tell me, a la Thomas Friedman, that the world is “flat,” in terms of global trade. Last time I checked we were a sovereign nation, capable of deciding what can and cannot pass over our borders, and under what conditions. We don’t have to be part of NAFTA or GATT. The world can be as flat or as bumpy as we want it to be. It will take some significant political change to get Congress out of the pockets of Wal-Mart and Shipping Inc., but that has to be done anyway.

I’ll leave you with a photo of something I made a while back.

Your Minor Heretic started out as a blacksmith. I apprenticed to a master smith right out of high school, working for room and board. He taught me how to take fifty cents worth of steel and a few hours and make what he called “house jewelry.” The item above is a Suffolk style door latch, hammered out of a few inches of half-inch square stock. It isn’t the best thing I’ve ever done, but you could put that on a door and it would be there for your great grandchildren. It isn’t a massive amount of material, but it contains a great deal of labor and skill. It epitomizes what we need to do with our economy – apply a great deal of knowledge, skill, and labor to limited resources to produce things of lasting quality.

Judge Sotomayor, meet Dick Deadeye

(With apologies to legal scholars for my simplifications and thanks to my father for a tutorial on appellate procedure)

I have been following the news of the nomination and confirmation process of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The howling from the right wing politicos and punditry brings to mind a character from Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical H.M.S. Pinafore, namely Dick Deadeye. Here’s the explanatory passage from the libretto:

BOATSWAIN. Well, Dick, we wouldn't go for to hurt any fellow-creature's feelings, but you can't expect a chap with such a name as Dick Deadeye to be a popular character — now can you?
DICK DEADEYE No.
BOAT. It's asking too much, ain't it?
DICK. It is. From such a face and form as mine the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination. It is human nature — I am resigned.

The running gag is that Deadeye utters commonplace statements that reflect reality, whereupon the rest of the cast recoils from him in horror. My comparison is no comment on Judge Sotomayor’s actual face and form; her appointment by President Obama and her political position somewhere to the left of Newt Gingrich serve as her appearance to the conservatives. For some right wing-nuts her gender and ethnicity are strikes against her. She could express a fondness for the American flag and they would find an excuse to stick in their knives.

One of their key attack points was a conveniently edited tape of her saying that the courts are where policy is made. She was joking, of course, and the full tape (See below) exonerates her from the charge of advocating legislation from the bench. Nevertheless, she spoke a kind of truth, a truth that legal professionals would recognize.

The courts of appeal are the arbiters of the meaning of laws. Some laws are definitive, like speed limits, but others are complicated or vague enough to require interpretation. One of the basic tasks of an appellate court is to determine whether the law applied in a lower court case was actually appropriate to the evidence presented. The judges in these courts, as Sotomayor stated in her now-famous quote, have to think about the general application of the law as well as the case at hand. The higher courts also accept or reject laws based on constitutional precedent. An appeals court or Supreme Court judge cannot escape this interpretive duty. Some like to claim that they are originalists, sticking to the intent of the framers of the constitution. Aside from the historical mind reading problem, our forefathers used words such as “unreasonable,” “excessive,” and “cruel.” Somebody has to decide what those words mean today, and that alters the effect of a law in practice.

The right wing will continue to heap abuse upon Sotomayor for saying and doing what other judges have said and done. Her opponents don’t seem to have comprehended the near-instantaneous fact checking available online, along with the ability of her supporters to post full length quotations and video clips, both of her and of conservative judges caught in the act of saying the same sorts of things. Barring a black swan event, her nomination will go through, after some obligatory heel-digging by the Republicans. I predict that her credibility will increase as her opponents continue to make themselves look foolish.

DICK DEADEYE. Ah, it's a queer world!
RALPH RACKSTRAW. Dick Deadeye, I have no desire to press hardly on you, but such a revolutionary sentiment is enough to make an honest sailor shudder.

H.446 – The Vermont Energy Act of 2009

 I’d like to put in a plug for H.446 and a request to my Vermont readers to act. H.446 is a groundbreaking piece of legislation that will promote the development of renewable energy in Vermont.

The core of the bill is what is called a feed-in tariff or standard offer for renewable electricity. What this means is that utilities will be required to pay a fixed contract price for wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. The Public Service Board will set that price as follows:

“(II) The board shall include a rate of return not less than the highest rate of return received by a Vermont investor-owned retail electric service provider under its board-approved rates as of the date a standard offer goes into effect.

(III) The board shall include such adjustment as the board determines to be necessary to ensure that the price provides sufficient incentive for the rapid development and commissioning of plants and does not exceed the amount needed to provide such an incentive.”

In other words, whatever the cost of solar electricity from the panels on your roof, the price you get must ensure that you will make as good a return as the big boys with their coal and nuclear plants. The prices will start out fairly juicy and go down over time as the technology gets cheaper. This will motivate people to put in renewables sooner and lock in good prices. It puts renewable energy, especially solar and small wind, in the “stupid not to do it” category of investments.

Germany was the leader in this, enacting a feed-in tariff back in 1991, but only for wind and hydro. That was expanded to all renewable sources in 2000. The German government wanted to get 12% of the country’s electricity from renewables by 2010. They already have hit 15%. Germany has become the number one country in the world for green energy investment and has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industry.

And the cost to ratepayers? In Vermont it will add about 20 cents to a $100 electric bill. Not a bad price for weaning us off polluting and unsustainable energy sources and jump-starting a job creating industry. In addition to the feed-in tariff, the bill has a number of other useful measures. Quoting from Renewable Energy Vermont’s legislative page:

“Key items in the bill include:

• a standard offer for renewable energy
• clarification that thermal energy fits within the purview of the CEDF
• regulatory incentives ensuring utilities can recover permitting costs for renewable energy
• requirement that ANR reconsider its policy prohibiting wind on State lands
• improvements to residential- and commercial-building standards
• pilot downtown-community renewable-energy projects in Montpelier and Randolph
• clean energy assessment districts that would allow towns, cities, and incorporated villages to use municipal bonds to finance residential renewable-energy or energy-efficiency projects
• limitations on the power of municipalities and deeds to prohibit residential installation of renewable-energy and energy-efficiency devices, such as solar panels, residential wind turbines, and clothes lines”

Of course, Governor Doorstop, er, Douglas, is expected to veto the bill. It passed the Vermont House and Senate by reasonable, but not veto-proof majorities. It is time to make calls and send letters and emails. Send a brief, polite note to the Governor, asking him to sign H.446, although it will be a mere formality with Entergy’s man in Montpelier.

Here’s a link to Renewable Energy Vermont with links to your Rep and Senator’s vote on H.446 and how to contact them. Please do.

Update on Monday, June 1, 2009 at 10:03PM by Minor Heretic

Apparently Governor Douglas was expecting a veto override vote - he just let the veto deadline slip by. H.446 is law in Vermont. This is a big deal for the solar business in Vermont in the short term and the state's energy future in the mid to long term. Someday we are going to thank the legislators of 2009 for enabling the timely installation of the only affordable power sources we will have.