Why I ride, reason 1

Here is one of my main reasons for trying to get to the point where I can use a bicycle for all personal transport (within reason). The email below was copied from a web site (moralequivalentofwar.wordpress.com) that copied it from another web site (www.theoildrum.com) that copied it from the Shell oil site. I figure that if the head of an oil company starts talking about running out of oil, the idea probably should be taken seriously.

From: Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive
To: All Shell employees
Date: 22 January 2008

Subject: Shell Energy Scenarios

Dear Colleagues

In this letter, I'd like to share reflections about how we see the energy future, and our preferred route to meeting the world's energy needs. Industry, governments and energy users - that is, all of us - will face the twin challenge of more energy and less CO2.

This letter is based on a text I've written for publication in several newspapers in the coming weeks. You can use it in your communications externally. There will be more information about energy scenarios inthe months ahead.

By the year 2100, the world's energy system will be radically different from today's. Renewable energy like solar, wind, hydroelectricity and biofuels will make up a large share of the energy mix, and nuclear energy too will have a place.

Mankind will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies will have reduced the amount of energy needed to power buildings and vehicles.

Indeed, the distant future looks bright, but getting there will be an adventure. At Shell, we think the world will take one of two possible routes. The first, a scenario we call Scramble, resembles a race through a mountainous desert. Like an off-road rally, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of "more haste" will often be "less speed" and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario, called Blueprints, has some false starts and develops like a cautious ride on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technical innovation provides for excitement.

Regardless of which route we choose, the world's current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.

As a result, society has no choice but to add other sources of energy - renewables , yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.

In the Scramble scenario, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. The use of local coal and homegrown biofuels increases fast.

Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption - until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.

The other route to the future is less painful, even if the start is more disorderly. This Blueprints scenario sees numerous coalitions emerging to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation.

Much innovation occurs at the local level, as major cities develop links with industry to reduce local emissions. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles and transport fuels.

As calls for harmonization increase, policies converge across the globe. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that put a cost on industrial CO 2 emissions gain international acceptance. Rising CO2 prices accelerate innovation, spawning breakthroughs. A growing number of cars are powered by electricity and hydrogen, while industrial facilities are fitted with technology to capture CO 2 and store it underground.

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will only know in a few years whether December's Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the beginning of a global effort to counter it. Much will depend on how attitudes evolve in Beijing, Brussels, New Delhi and Washington.

Shell traditionally uses its scenarios to prepare for the future without expressing a preference for one over another. But, faced with the need to manage climate risk for our investors and our grandchildren, we believe the Blueprints outcomes provide the best balance between economy, energy and environment.

For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

The sobering reality is that the Blueprints scenario will only come to pass if policymakers agree a global approach to emissions trading and actively promote energy efficiency and new technology in four sectors: heat and power generation, industry, mobility and buildings. It will be hard work and there is little time.

For instance, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries in 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, there are none. Since CO2 capture and storage adds cost and brings no revenues , government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the very least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

Blueprints will not be easy. But it offers the world the best chance of reaching a sustainable energy future unscathed, so we should explore this route with the same ingenuity and persistence that put humans on the moon and created the digital age.

The world faces a long voyage before it reaches a low-carbon energy system. Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driving seat. And governments will determine whether we should prepare for a bitter competition or a true team effort.

That is the article, and how I see our challenges and opportunities. I look forward to hearing how you see the situation (please be concise).

Regards
Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive

Transmission maintenance

Everything is connected, especially in middle age. It seems you can't just ride a bicycle, like you can just walk. Or so it seemed last year when I was off the bike for three months with a sore knee.

It came on suddenly with no known event to cause it. The doctor offered no ideas about where it came from and gave me a month of prescription anti-inflammatory drugs plus a sheet of knee stretching and strengthening exercises. I followed the prescription, and the pain did go away, but still, a year later, the knee feels like it might want to "go out" in some way if I'm not careful. The pain is located below the kneecap on the inside. My Sister-in-law The Physical Therapist says that pain in that area can be related to tight hamstrings, and can be relieved by stretching the hamstrings.

So it appears that if one wants to lead a simpler life by driving less and getting around by bike more, one has to devote some time to the maintenance activities that make that possible for the long term. Those would be the exercise, proper diet, and so on.

That leads to the question of what is the best way to live. We get into our own habits, our own rhythms of life, and after a time think that they are perfectly fine and normal. We get up when the alarm clock goes off, we eat the same thing for breakfast, we drive to work, etc. But every one of those activities, and the whole daily routine, could be questioned as to whether or not it is the best or only way, and whether or not some other way might actually be better for us.

I'm questioning one of those "normal" activities by trying to get to the point where all my personal transportation (within reason) is done without a personal automobile. To support that quest, I have to make another change into a routine of regular maintenance of my physical self. I hope to accomlish that by two gradual habit changes. The first will be up to fifteen minutes of stretching as soon as I get home from work, while I am still warmed up. The second will be a fifteen-minute morning warmup using the exercises from a recently-purchased book called "Combat Conditioning."

The ruts carved and polished over the decades are hard to get out of. We will have to see how this goes.

Motivation

My efforts to reduce my environmental impact have to start with what I can easily do that will have the greatest result, and the obvious candidate for that is reducing driving. (We already have put in a more efficient furnace, insulated the walls of our small house, and sealed the attic bypasses.) Riding a bicycle six miles to work is not that big a deal, but switching from driving a car almost all the time and getting to work in 15 minutes to riding a bicycle in all weather and getting to work in 40 minutes does take some effort, and, especially, some on-going motivation.

Depending on who is asking, my stated reasons for biking to work can be for getting exercise, saving money, or making a political statement about the war in Iraq, but as the years have passed from when I started in 2001 to now in 2008, I find that I like the philosophy of it. I think that we should not live in such a way that going almost anywhere can be accomplished only with motorized assistance, which is the way it seems sometimes in the area where I live. I like the image of a simple village life where one can run a simple errand by hopping on a bicycle and going a short distance to do it. (I do prefer big city living to the small town, but that is another issue.)

So to keep my motivation up, I lurk around web sites that talk about the idea of more widespread bicycle use in daily life. Links to places I like are to the left under the heading of "Motivation." Especially fun are the videos "Cycling-friendly Cities" and "City of Cyclists." They show that the way we do things in the USA is not the way things have to be done. I would encourage everyone to watch them sevaral times and see if it doesn't change one's views a bit.

Who am I and why am I here?

Happy New Year 2008, and what is this "blogging" anyway? As I enter the downward side of middle age, I have decided to find out, lest I confine myself to the technological backwater of bloglessness.

Initially, when looking for a blogging theme, I thought of a place to store plans for my homemade bicycle headlight, a very limited theme. Then I thought I might as well expand that to commuting to work by bicycle, which I have started doing, and to utility cycling in general. But, since riding a bike to work is basically the same event repeated day after day, even that is not something that would tend to generate a wealth of ideas for blog posts.

Expanding, what am I really trying to accomplish by riding a bike to work? What does it represent? It represents an effort to simplify, a course change away from a life of heavy resource usage to one of less. So that suggested the theme, a chronicle of my attempts to use less, have less, do less, reduce my environmental impact, and not leave to my children a polluted world and a houseful of stuff they will have to shovel into a dumpster when I am gone. In short, to lighten ship.

But why write about it; who cares? That was my initial thought, but then the answer came to me. Human society is like an organism, and the people are the cells. Communication is the way the organism learns and evolves. As more people start talking about something, like reducing the carbon footprint, the concept rises to the general consciousness, becomes less foreign and more accepted, and gradually people might start to do it. So if I believe, for example, that we should use less oil, I should do it myself, be seen doing, and...talk about it to do my bit to bring the idea to the general consciousness, that is, to help the organism of human society learn and evolve. I can see that happening to me as I read web sites about peak oil, climate change. Ideas that I had never heard of became common knowledge, and behaviors that I once took for granted as normal came to seem bizarre and irrational.

So I begin with that lofty goal, but still with only the small first step of riding my bike to work.