Oil talk on ted.com

Amory Lovins talks about oil on ted.com. He makes a good point concerning climate protection. Its always cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel. Its actually a common sense approach to the problem.

He then proceeds to what happened to oil’s predecessor, Whale oil. Whale oil simply ran out of customers before they ran out of whales. Coal and oil simply pulled the rug from under the feet of whale oilers. 

A few posts ago I wrote about John Doerr’s learnings from trying to save the world and make money through greentech.   Amory Lovins has basically the same view, invest heavily in alternatives, let business lead the change and support it heavily with legislation. Looking at Lovins’ thoughts through the lens of Doerr we can safely say that we can combat the rising price of oil. The world will not grind to a halt when we stop using oil. Lovins speaks of the whalers which is an interesting fact. Oil might someday go the way of blubber.

Lovins also gets into what he considers as the main problem, vehicular design. Vehicles consume a sizeable amount of oil during their operation. They also waste a lot of energy from the fuel as heat, noise or vibration. Lovins wants the vehicle designers to use newer engineering techniques to make the car more fuel efficient and safe. There is no dearth out there for new techniques to make cars lighter and better. There is just a refusal on the part of the companies (mostly American car manufacturers) to make use of these technologies. 

In the Philippines we encounter a similar problem. The Philippines is a car loving nation. The main idea of Philippine streets is to create spaces for vehicles to run through. Sidewalks are mere afterthoughts in Philippine transport planning. The mass transit system in Manila is dismal at best. One light rail line also relies heavily on government subsidy to operate at current prices. 

Those who can afford vehicles in the Philippines like to use them a lot in the face of the rising cost of fuel. With such a deficient mass transit system who can blame them? Government needs to intervene and invest heavily in rapid mass transit systems in and around Manila in order to combat the pollution and traffic problem. 

Policy is also an issue. Actually, it is more of policy enforcement that is an issue. The laws are poorly applied and can be easily circumvented. Government support of alternative fuels or renewable energy is minimal. Sure the Philippines has a lot of geothermal power plants but I think that more could be done to wean the Philippines away from oil. 

Big businesses also like to keep the lights on at night. The costs of lighting and airconditioning when totalled for all the call centers in Manila is rather high. Some companies aren’t too keen in investing in solar panels just yet because of the weight and cost of acquiring these. 

Talks such as these highlight the fact that though we think we’re doing something we can still do more. As for the Philippines I hope that we really do more and follow through with it.