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permaculture - Re: [permaculture]Hydrogen, wood, peace, justice

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  • From: Marimike6@cs.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture]Hydrogen, wood, peace, justice
  • Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 16:54:21 EDT

In a message dated 6/19/2003 4:03:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, john@eco-living.net writes:

There is no equivalent "teach a man to fish" with hydrogen technology.
Hydrogen power and/or the means to produce and manage it can only be
*realistically* produced and distributed, in our existing cultural
patterns, by the existing corporate/industrial systems (and/or by smaller
entities they control).  It's a simple matter of resources - financial,
intellectual and physical.


John--

I like your idea of using wood as a renewable resource. It's great that you apparently have in your possession some trees. To the extent that land is a commodity and you possess some of it, wood works for you. if you had to pay a man to cut and carry it to you, you might find it more expensive than you really wanted to pay on a btu basis, though.

But there's no crossover between wood and hydrogen. Wood is primarily local, as it is a very heavy fuel to transport. Hydrogen is a specialty item, best suited to pipelining over long distances, where electric transmission would be inefficient and thus impractical. A good application for hydro would be in a car engine. Wood, I think, is not so good in a car engine (although I think that was tried, back in 1896). So they have no points for comparison.  It's like asking which you prefer, grapefruits or giraffes.

Another point-- hydrogen implies a very large infrastructure for reduction, distribution, sales, etc on a grand scale best suited to a large corporation. Wood doesn't work that way. You (and I) feel an affinity for it precisely because it is personal. Let's say I grow a stand of timber, tending it for years and culling out the bent trunks for firewood, the sawdust and slash for mulch, and tend my best trees for the furniture market. Part of my life involvement I get to invite a buyer over to bid on the wood, and decide who is to cut and haul it. It's a very satisfying life style.

Not so hydro. This is gas on the go, for someone who lives in town, has a job and has no time to cut trees down to put in his gas tank. All he wants, at 6:15 each morning, is some dependable transportation that'll get him where he's going.

Would you think that in the world of tomorrow there will be no people like him? Or do you think it's a market someone had better address on a more sustainable basis because if we don't, it'll be addressed on the usual wasteful and destructive basis. It's not that hydrogen is going to change anyone's "human behavioral patterns". It is precisely because people's patterns are going to stay predictably the same that we have a known market we (humankind) must meet with an acceptable product.

I'm trying to get a handle on your strenuous objection. If you can turn back the clock in your own life to a gentler time, excellent, go to it. I would suggest that most of us on this list would like to do something like that, or already are. But if you expect the rest of the world to want to do that-- or even if they did want it, to be able to all do it together, I think that's not going to happen. There just aren't enough trees.

I promise not to infringe on your right to burn wood in whatever equipment you can get wood to do work for you. Please anticipate that the rest of the world needs something easy to buy locally that will run their chain saws, motor bikes, dump trucks, clock radios and computers. And they want it cheap and plentiful. It's a market that someone is going to fill, with some portable, inexpensive fuel. Right now, that would be oil, coal and gas. I'm just being a realist.

Mike Elvin




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