Related challenges and opportunities
ALL these topics are related.
Intricately.
◦ Education pays, not only in higher salaries but in lower unemployment rates. I knew that.
◦ But I didn’t know this. Just one load of hot-water laundry (using an electric washer and hot-water heater) uses 3 to 10 times more water at the power plant than inside the washer itself.
◦ Egg farms use about 120 gallons of water per egg. To make a loaf of bread takes about 150 gallons, a glass of milk 65 gallons.
◦ Car makers use 39,000 gallons of water per car.
Energy to Transportation and Housing
◦ Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel mined and smelted in Canada each year, ships the nickel to Wales for refining, then to China, where it’s manufactured into nickel foam, and then to Toyota’s battery plant in Japan.
◦ The materials in an average home contain 892 million Btu’s of embodied energy, used in their manufacture. That’s equal to 7,826 gallons of gasoline, or enough to drive an SUV 5½ times around the earth.
◦ It can take three to seven years to recoup the embodied energy of a solar panel.
Health to Energy and Transportation
◦ Soot from the nation’s ageing coal-fired power plants is causing tens of thousands of asthma attacks, cardiac problems and upper and lower respiratory problems each year.
◦ Students who live 400 meters from a freeway have an 89 percent higher risk of asthma than students living 1,600 meters away from the freeway.
Energy to Security and Governance
◦ The upheaval triggered by peak oil would create room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.
Our plans have a better shot at working when we understand how these Topics are Related. When we don’t, look out for unintended consequences like these.
