Towards a Rational Energy Policy

Towards a Rational Energy Policy

by Pam Green, © 2008

The era of cheap oil is over. It's gone forever. World demand is going to continue to increase because other nations, especially China and India, are emerging to claim their share of the dwindling global supply.

Many "fixes" are being proposed. Some of them are at best temporary band aids that won't make a dent in prices and/ or won't last very long and/or that cause other problems that may be even worse than the one they pretend to solve. For any serious improvements , we have to break the American addiction to gas guzzling vehicles and to energy guzzling houses. In the longer term, all solutions will be futile unless we also reduce human population numbers, with emphasis on reducing them most quickly and immediately in the "developed" countries that have the highest energy consumption per person. The USA is of course at the top of that list of energy guzzling nations..

"solutions" that won't work (won't work well for very long).

Drilling won't work : the rewards will be tiny and far in the future.

The proposed solution of opening up environmentally sensitive areas to oil drilling will not bring back bountiful supplies and low prices.

Offshore oil exploration is slow and costly as well as presenting environmental dangers. The Energy Information Administration estimates that opening the coasts to offshore drilling would have no significant impact on oil prices before 2030. By that time, increased demand will have vastly swamped out the small added production.

Reopening those platforms and wells that have been shut down , however, might make some sense. That would make sense only if you think that continuing the addiction to oil by slightly decreasing the price is a good idea. It would ease the current suffering slightly, but it would decrease the incentive that pain causes people to make their next car purchase one that emphasizes high MPG and the immediate incentive to drive less and the pain that causes people to insulate their homes and to install photovoltic generators.

Update 2015 : You might have heard of the BP oil spill from an off-shore well in the Gulf. Massive financial costs and massive ecological costs.

The EIA also estimates that opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would reduce the cost of gas by only a few pennies per gallon, and not until 2027.

(Note : as of the later part of summer 2008, the gas and diesel prices that had increased by over a dollar a gallon in the prior year have now dropped part-way back. I think this has happened only because the oil companies saw that most Americans had significantly cut back on driving and thus on purchases and that guzzler cars were not longer selling and only the more fuel efficient cars still enjoyed good new car sales. In other words the oil companies saw the beginnings of some addicts starting to break their addiction. So they cut back on prices hoping to keep the addicts "hooked." I've no doubt that dealiers in heroin and cocaine would do the same if they saw a similar threat of drop in sales.)

Update 2015 : The 2008 price drops didn't last very long and soon gas and diesel prices were higher than ever. Sales of guzzler vehicles went back to normal.
As of 2015, this past year we are again in a temporary period of less horribly high fuel prices, and again sales have increased for guzzler vehicles and decreased for the more fuel efficient vehicles, hybrids, and electric vehicles. And people are driving more freely, ie more miles.

Corn into ethanol won't work : the real costs are too high.

Corn is an enormously water intensive crop and most productive areas don't have extra water to spare. It's also a very fertilizer demanding crop. It also requires a lot of tractor miles and tractor fuel (diesel) to cultivate. High quality land for growing corn is also in ever shorter supply as farmland keeps getting converted to housing tracts for our increasing population. It's questionable whether the cost of producing ethanol from edible corn will really be any lower than the cost of fossil fuel.

Update 2015 : in the agricultural areas of California, we are now in 4th year of severe drought. There's really no water to waste. So the issue of diverting water from food production to car-fuel production is more relevant than ever. California is the producer of a very substantial percent of total USA food production.

Diverting land from food production to corn ethanol production would inevitably raise the price of food. Diverting corn already being grown from use as food to use as fuel would do the same. The morality of making food ever more expensive for ordinary and poor people in order to enable more affluent people to more cheaply drive their gluttonous SUVs and other fuel-inefficient prestige cars is more than a bit ethically questionable. Indeed some might say it is obscene.

Now to whatever extent agricultural waste product, such as corn cob, corn stalk, and other stubble might be converted to ethanol, that might make perfectly good sense. One would have to carefully consider whether diverting such leftovers from being plowed back into the soil would reduce future food production or require increased use of fertilizers and increased tractor diesel to apply those fertilizers. And there may be some other crops , such as canola that might be more feasible for ethanol or oily biofuel.

I understand that ethanol CAN be made from that portion of canola seed (aka rape seed --- not a name that would endear itself to 53% of the population) that is not used for food or oil production. If so, that could make very good sense. This is at least worth further research.

(One might of course argue that most Americans suffer from eating way too much food, especially too much high fat content food, resulting in our current epidemic of obesity (and diseases promoted by obesity, such as Type II Diabetes). So perhaps if raising corn prices were to make corn feeding of cattle and hogs diminish or cease, causing such meats to be much less available to consumers or simply causing beef and pork to be produced with lower fat content, perhaps there would be health benefits to many. Perhaps only the very afflueent could continue to kill themselves by over-eating. This is speculative at best.)

Update 2015 : (in the USA) human obesity (and canine obesity) are still at epidemic levels, higher than in 2008, accompanied by Type II diabetes rates in humans. The high incidence of "high frutose corn syrup" in almost all prepared foods is a contributing cause. Probably corn syrup is a bigger contributor than corn-fed pork and beef and chicken. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan has a long discussion of the role of corn in agriculture, food, etc.

Used cooking oil won't work unless you have a private source.

If you just happen to own a fast food franchise or have other access to throwaway used cooking oils and you can afford several thousand dollars to convert your diesel engine to burn it, then this will work for you.

But for the rest of us, this used oil will remain cheap only so long as very few cars are able to use it. But so long as only a few cars are using it, there will be no commercial stations selling it. When enough cars are able to use it, the stations will sell it, but it won't be cheap any longer. It will probably then be priced at only a bit less than gasoline and diesel. (Note : diesel used to be much cheaper than gas back when few cars used it, but at that same time very few stations sold it. As more and more cars used diesel, the availability increased but the price increased even more. Diesel is now priced higher than gasoline even though it is less expensive to produce.)

Accepting the need to break the addiction.

In reality our goal must be to have gotten the majoritiy of private transportation and private home heating and cooling totally OFF oil by 2027. If not totally OFF oil, then at least as greatly reduced as possible.

The only way to free ourselves from expensive oil is to get off oil to the greatest extent possible.

This needs an attack on multiple fronts.

Increase mass transit to decrease use of private cars.

We need to increase public mass transit (bus, light rail, trains, etc) in its availability , in frequency of scheduling, in expanding routes, and in decreasing fares to the rider. We need to make public transit a more attractive choice than private cars in as many urban areas as possible. To do this requires considerable investment.

Some of the money to fund this could come from Windfall Profits tax on oil companies. Some could come from an annual Energy Hog tax on cars that fail to meet minimum MPG standards. Some of it could come from raising the tax on gasoline and diesel -- a very unpopular solution but very effective in convincing people to drive as little as possible. We need to make use of cars less attractive.

We urgently need to raise the minimum standards for MPG for ALL private vehicles, whether designated as an automobile, truck, SUV , or whatever new nonsense name the auto industry may invent. These standards should set a minimum for EVERY vehicle, NOT simply a "fleet average". There needs to be an end to the production and sale of gas guzzler cars and trucks.

For those guzzlers already on the road, there should be an ANNUAL TAX -- yes that dreaded word TAX -- on vehicles that do not meet the minimum MPG standard. Call it an Energy Hog Tax or something similar. Make the tax higher and higher as the car's rating is more and more below the standard applicable in the year it was manufactured and sold. Have some lesser "grandfather" Hog tax for those that might have met the standard when sold but which no longer meet the current higher standard. If an owner has to pay many hundreds of dollars every year at renewal time to keep driving his guzzler, there will be a great incentive to retire the monster. The Guzzler taxes should go up year by year.

Perhaps at some point cars could be issued either Energy Star or Energy Hog licenses. Then the Hog cars could be charged higher tolls on toll bridges and toll roads. Perhaps at a later date they barred from the roads during commute hours. Eventually Hog cars would be barred from public roads period.

(Note : if we barred all large vehicles, including trucks , SUVs, 18-wheelers, from the roads (or at least highways, freeways) during commute hours (2 hours in morning and 2 hours in evening), we'd get two good benefits. One is that the roads would then be much safer for people driving high MPG commuter mini-cars and that traffic would be much less congested. Two would be that the drivers of the 18-wheelers would be forced to use these commute periods as rest time, thus getting enough rest to drive more safely.)

Naturally every penny of the amounts raised by Guzzler taxes should be devoted 100% to creating more public transit and/or subsidizing fares on public transit.

update 2015 : guzzler car taxes and higher fuel taxes could be made more acceptable to drivers if the revenues were dedicated 50% to public transit and 50% to repairing / maintaining roads and bridges (and tunnels). Most drivers know that roads etc are in bad shape from delayed repairs, and many drivers would appreciate better public transit so they were less helplessly dependant on cars. Everyone hates paying taxes of course, but it's less unpalatable when those taxes go to support something the payer needs and wants and sees as benefitting himself.

There might have to be some kind of exemption for people with legitimate disabilities that requre the use of a power wheelchair.

School buses and vans and public transit vehicles would have their own standards for mpg..

Some trailer hauling, boat hauling, or off-road vehicles might still be permitted as rentals, to be rented for short periods only (not leased for long term) so that people could still have them available for use on vacations, etc. They should NOT however be available as long term leases, which would only be a "dodge" for the more affluent.

Private ownership of those super gas guzzling RVs should be phased out too. Perhaps each owner could be allowed to buy a two week permit twice a year, which would let people use these monsters for vacations. I'd also allow some kind of exemption for those for whom the RV is the ONLY home they own and who normally only move it a few times a year, eg migrating from winter location to summer location and back. I really can't imagine that anyone but the very wealthy can afford to continue to drive these monsters for very many miles a year for very much longer. They get something like 4 or 5 mpg.

There should NOT be any exemption for large families who "need" larger vehicles to haul their offspring around. Let's get real : large families are part of the problem. If no one had had more than two children for the past hundred years, we'd have a much smaller stable population size and far fewer cars on the road. Cars don't drive themselves ; they are only on the road because people are driving them. Expanded population has also resulted in sprawled out housing and longer commutes from home to work. So while the past 30 years has seem modest improvements in average MPG for passenger cars (NOT for SUVs), these savings have been totally swamped out by larger and larger numbers of cars being driven for longer and longer commutes.

We could take measures to reduce number of drivers a bit. Raising the driving age to 21 would help a bit, or giving those under 21 a license limited to going to school and job and back home would help. Limiting driver's licenses to those who have graduated high school and passed the national high school equivalency exam would delay some from driving and would create a powerful incentive to complete this level of education. Taking away the licenses of those convicted of DUI for several years the very first time (assuming no one is injured) and for life if someone is injured or for a second offense would also help a bit, but the real reason for doing this would be for moral and safety reasons rather than merely to reduce number of cars on road.

update 2015 : there's been a lot of ballyhoo about "self-driving cars", but these are not "human-less" cars, as someone who knows how to drive must still be in the control seat ready to take over at a moment's notice when the car's computer says "help, I can't deal with this situattion".
I'm not sure that there'd be much of a market for a true "no human needed" car anyway. What would be the purpose ? To send it to the grocery to pick up one's order ? Maybe to allow someone who lacks a driver's license to still have "wheels" at their command, not need to have someone else drive them. This would be a blessing to persons who are unableto drive themselves safely because of visual impairment or seizure disorder. This would add mildly to the number of cars and miles driven
(There does exist a shorter trip and slower speed form of transportation that can work for a less capable driver. That's the horse and carriage, assuming one drives a familiar route and the particular horse is a very level headed one. This is not going to replace cars however.)

What about car-pooling ? Wasn't car-pooling supposed to create great savings ? Well car - pooling only creates substantial savings if all the people in the pool have departure points fairly close together and have destination points fairly close together. If the pool vehicle has to drive many miles to pick up its members or to distribute them at the other end, the savings can vanish. Remember that the pool vehicle is going to be larger than a minimum size commuter vehicle would need to be. Now we could issue special car pool license plates for car pool vehicles where the pool members all work in the same work complex and all have homes within a very few miles of one another or where they meet at a common point, and where there is just one car-pool vehicle that is shared, rather than each member owning their own multi-passenger guzzler. That would be hard to police and enforce.

What about bicycles and motor scooters ? Bicycle use no fuel except human energy and their use provides healthy exercise (something many Americans are short on). With a cargo cart behind the bicycle , one can transport one or two children or a pet or some groceries or other cargo. Over relatively short distances, a bicycle with a fairly fit rider makes as good speed as a car does in urban speed limits. Bicycles and pedicabs have worked well for some European and Asian cities. Bicycle use is certainly worth encouraging.

There are a few towns in the US that have really promoted bicycles, including setting aside the bicycle lanes that are essential for safe bicyling on streets where cars are present.

I live in a town, Davis, that used to be a serious bicycle town, back when it was pretty much a university town with only 25,000 population and a relatively small distance from end to end. A lot of people really did use their bikes when the weather was not too hot, too cold, too windy, or raining. Today with population more than doubled to over 60,000 and urban sprawl having expanded the linear distances by fourfold, and with many residents using Davis as a bedroom community for jobs in other towns (too far away for bicycle commute), the actual percentage of people using bicycles has dropped greatly. It's no longer really much of a true bicycle town.

But for small towns willing to put in really good bicycle paths (perferably separate from streets open to cars ?) or willing to shut their main streets to motor traffic for the main part of the day , bicycles might work. Motor scooter permits need to be avialable for those with disabilities.

update 2015 : notice that China , which used to have various forms of bicycle as the common transportation of much of the population, has become more and more shifted to private cars as more and more of the population can afford this luxury. I think that sheds some light on the probability of convincing most people to give up cars in favor of bicycles as primary transportation.

But most of all we need to promote other sources of energy, as well as conservation and more efficent utilization measures.

Photovoltic for cars

The Chinese have been making very thin photovoltic tiles. In addition to using these for house roofs, we could develop an all electric car that has all its upward surfaces covered with this kind of material. The goal would be a self powered photovoltic car that only rarely needed to be plugged in to the "long tail-pipe" of more conventionally (more pollutingly) generated electricity. Now this kind of vehicle might not be able to go at high speeds, might not have the accelleration of a "muscle" car, might not be much more than a "glorified golf cart" holding 2 or 3 people plus a bit of cargo. But they'd be perfect commuter cars and perfect run errands in town cars. Might not be what you'd want for a two week take the family to see America first type vacation; but for that the family could rent the less efficent and more comfortable high luggage room van that is simply too inefficient and too expensive to drive for everyday use.

Photovoltic for homes, insulation for homes.

We could pass legislation demanding all new construction housing have better insulation, thus reducing energy requirements. We could likewise demand that all new construction houseing in that vast portion of the US where sunlight is ample to have enough photovoltic panels on its roof or otherwise on the property to generate enough electricity for basic needs. The requirements for new construction could be more demanding for homes above a certain size (eg perhaps above 2000 square feet, which is ample for a couple with one or two children and a home office) and/or homes above a certain asking price (eg above median price for the community, above median for homes within 50 miles ?) Now this might mean that to keep the price within what normal people are willing and able to pay, the home builder would have to leave out some of the glossy but functionally inessential frou frou like fancy kitchen counters or super duper bath fixtures in order to afford the less "sexy" but functionally important energy features. We could also require that all new housing have appropriate shade trees planted and enough yard space that those trees can thrive. (See below for discussion of shade trees).

We could likewise require retrofitting with insulation and/or photovoltic generators for resale houses whose asking price is above local median or whose square footage is above some defined amount (perhaps above 2000 square feet ?) or whose asking price is more than 10% over the price paid by current owner to purchase the house. Which criteria for resale houses would be best is subject to study and debate, but some resale requirement is needed at some future time.

For the present, we might do well to require that all foreclosed and bank owned houses must have some degree of energy retrofit and/or photovoltic before they can be offered for sale. That would make mortgage holders more willing to negotiate with struggling owners.

Photovoltic of course works best where there is plenty of sunshine enough days of the year. For the US that might only be half of the continental US plus Hawaii. And any photovoltic system needs either storeage batteries or some other input source for times when the sun is not shining, especially at night. But as photovoltic gets cheaper and cheaper and as the panels and tiles and films get more and more lightweight and attachable to more and more surfaces and devices, it becomes a more and more important source of energy. The sun will be shining for many years after all the fossil fuel (oil and coal) is long gone.

Update 2015 : Good news is that home based photovoltic costs have dropped enormously, plus there are various companies that offer plans that don't require the homeowner to pay installation costs up-front. Bad news is that some big tax incentives are due to run out at the end of 2015
Good news is that photovoltic is sufficiently effective to be worthwhile in a much larger percentage of continental USA (plus obviously Hawaii) than I'd assumed. More like 3/4 than just 1/2. Good news is that development of better storeage batteries has been going on, largely fueled by the quest for better batteries for hybrid and all electric cars. Stoerage batteries for homes is easier in that weight and size are not terribly relevant, whereas they are essential factors for cars. Meanwhile electric prices from the power companies continue to increase. And a photovoltic system for the home is "scaleable", meaning you can start with a smaller system and later add more panels.

minimize use of air conditioning wherever possible

Air conditioning is a huge guzzler of electric power. Worst of all an air conditioner produces cold air out its front side, but produces equal or greater amounts of hot air out its backside. While you are cooling your own indoor space, you are heating up the outdoors even further and dumping that heat into your neighbor's outdoors, causing your neighbor to turn up his air conditioning to compensate, thus dumping heat at you , and so on.

For all the lower humidity sections of the country there is a better way. The evaporative cooler, sometimes called "swamp cooler" produces nearly as much cool air as the air conditioner but does not produce any heat on its "backside" and it uses only a quarter as much electricity as the air conditioner uses for the same amount of cooling air. Now it only works well in moderate to low humidity, so that let's out quite a lot of the US where humidity is high during the hot months. But it would work great in the dryer SouthWest, maybe a third of the area of the continental US. For window units, the evaporative cooler does cost more to purchase than the equivalent air conditioner, but you'd get that back in savings within a couple of months. Evaporative coolers do require a bit of maintainence, but that is well within the abilities of the average person.

Air conditioning is often over-used, over-chilling the area. In many stores, the air conditioning is turned on so cold that one feels the need of a sweater. Grocery stores seem to be especially prone to this, for reasons I cannot imagine. I've complained to store managers that making the store too cold must surely tend to make customers want to leave quickly and that this is costing the store potential sales. Some cities have passed laws suposedly mandating against over-chilling in stores, but that seems to make no difference.

update 2015 : that pesky California drought again. Evap coolers require water to work, use up water by evaporation. So currently evap coolers are not such a good answer. Might be better to put up a few photovoltic panels and run AC off them in only those few rooms you really really need to keep cool. And get used to thinking of 75 C or 80C as acceptably "cool" , as I do living where summer outdoor temps are over 90C and sometimes over 100C in a house that doesn't have AC at all.

Plant lots of shade trees around homes and other one and two story buildings

Trees do several wonderful things and they do it very cheaply. Trees make shade, which is your absolutely cheapest form of building cooling. Tree shade prevents the building from heating up as much as it otherwise would, thus reducing the need to spend energy cooling the building. Trees take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, thus taking away something we'd like to reduce and giving out something we'd often like more of. If you pick trees that are native to your particular locale , climate, and ecosystem, they may well not need much in the way of irrigation. They do need pruning at times. If you don't already have trees, get some professional advice on what to put in and how to locate it relative to your house. Get advice on tree care. You want to keep your trees healthy so they will go on serving you, and you want to remove any dead branches so they don't fall off and fall on something that would be harmed.

I've lived in the same old farmhouse for 30 years in Cental Valley of California, where summers are really really hot. When I first moved here, we had only a few trees giving us shade. As the years have gone by and the old trees have grown larger and their offspring have come up, the house has been better and better shaded and the summers have been more and more comfortable. I don't have any air conditioning, but at times I have had a small swamp cooler. The trees do most of the work.

In Sacramento, SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District, has a program of providing appropriate shade trees to homeowners to plant. SMUD also has a program of putting photovoltic on roofs of schools, churches, and some other buildings. ( SMUD is customer owned, which may be why it has such a good attitude.)

As an added bonus, trees make your yard a much more pleasant place to spend time in for yourself and for your dogs. Of course if you have a lot of shade in your yard, you will be planting shade loving plants rather than sun loving plants. Tree limbs are also a good way to hang potted plants so they are out of reach of your dogs , especially male dogs. Trees tend to encourage birds as well.

Trees also take in CO2 and give out O2. Do I need to discuss why removing some carbon dioxide is a good thing ? Or why oxygen is good ?

We need to fund those research projects that have already shown some promise.

Funding research is always a gamble for any one particular project, but for research as a whole package of projects, it's certain to turn up enough winners to pay for itself many times over. Basic research pays enormous dividends in the long run and applied research pays good dividends in a shorter run. A tiny crumb of the obscene amounts that the US has wasted on warfare these past eight years could have funded enough energy research to turn up any number of winning projects.

For example , there has been some success with a benchtop model of a fusion generator that would NOT produce any kind of radioactive "spent" fuel whose disposal would be a problem for the future. At the moment it is too soon to know for sure whether or not these generators would be sufficiently safe to put into use, ie safe enough that even if there is some opperator errors (as there surely will be, because humans do make such errors) they will still be acceptably safe. This research is currently stalled by lack of continued funding. One day's Iraq war funding could go a long way to fund this project.

This is the Bussard fusion design, also known as inertial electrostatic confinement or Polywell fusion, which is radically different from the multibillion-dollar mainstream approach to the fusion challenge. The inventor physicist Bussard is unfortunately deceased, but the work is being carried on by Richard Nebel, leader of the research team at EMC2 Fusion in New Mexico. For more information on this project see http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/28/1301440.aspx

For another example, there is research going on to develop conversion of solar power (from photovoltic cells) into hydrogen cells for portable power, to be used for vehicles or other uses. The cells or tanks for hydrogen need to be a bit stronger or less porous than those for propane or butane (commonly used as heating fuel in rural areas), but should be otherwise equal in safety. This project ( at China Lake Naval Base, I think ???) has also been stalled by lack of funding.

2015 : I don't have updates on these projects.

Reduce population to reduce an underlying source of all energy problems (also underlying every other ecosystem problem)

We also need to reduce the number of automobile drivers and number (and size) of houses by reducing US and world population. We need to removed all incentives for people to have more than a single child per woman or per couple and we need to put in disincentives for having more than that single child and much much stronger disincentives (punishments?) for having more than two children. For example we might give a more generous tax deduction for a first child, but zero added deduction for a second one, and remove even that first deduction if a third child is produced. We might provide free schooling only for single child families and make parents pay tuition for second children, and revoke the free tuition if a third child is produced. We might also offer free college tuition at state and community colleges for single children who qualify academically, but require all others to pay tuition. We might have a luxury tax on diapers and baby food.

(Note : I'd retain or increase incentives for adoption of children from within the US, giving higher incentives to those who adopt children older than one or two years old. The US has a huge number of children , especially those older than babyhood, who are languishing in the foster care system. I'd limit any incentives to adoption of native born children because importing babies from abroad has the bad effects of further marginalizing those older children languishing in foster care and of encouraging the child exporting nations to continue to ignore or deny the need to provide adequate birth control to their populations.)

We need at minimum to make contraceptive knowledge available to every person in the US (and abroad to all who receive US aid of any kind) and to make contraceptive drugs and devices universally available , as cheaply as possible, including available to minors (who are less prepared than their elders to actually raise a child).

We need to fully restore the original provisions of Roe v Wade declaring the unimpeded right of a woman to choose abortion during first trimester and minimally impeded during second trimester. In my view Roe should be expanded to declare that the only legitimate regulation of a woman's right to choose to abort is that absolute minimum needed to keep the various methods reasonably safe and persons performing procedures reasonably qualified to do so.

If we just remove the pronatal incentives and add some single child incentives and make birth control genuinely available to all, then we might not have to add punishments for excessive reproduction or make coercive measures to limit reproduction. Given that half of all US pregnancies are unplanned, just letting people avoid those unplanned pregnancies might be enough to start population reduction, especially if all incentives and subsidies for second and later children were eliminated.

(note : the incentives and disincentives would also apply to all immigrants and the already born offspring they bring with them, and likewise apply to any other non-citizen residents. If we gave preferential eligibility for work visas, student visas, and legal immigration to those who are childless or have only a single child, that too would help .)

• Funding Repair of Roads and Bridges , based on a letter to California's Governor, Jerry Brown , in response to his proposal in late 2015 to fund this with a car tax. I have some modifications and alterrnatives that would raise funds while also promoting fuel efficiency in vehicles. (written in late 2015)


• "The Weather Conditioned House", by Conklin and Duncan : many ideas on making houses easier to heat in cold climates or easier to cool in hot ones.


• Can We Stop Burning Fossil Fuels ?. (spoiler alert : we can reduce but can't totally stop.)