Thoughts for July 3, 2022

Good afternoon, and happy Independence Day to Americans reading this. A long one today, with topics of BP’s energy statistics, energy efficiency, the problem of succession, autonomous weapons, abortion politics, and impermanence and death.

Energy Statistics

BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy came out a few days ago. Every June, BP releases their annual stats, and this report has become one of the premier sources for energy information. The annual release an event I look forward to. If you want to look at the data more casually, I recommend selecting “All data, 1965-2021” from the download page.

The report is the second to reflect the impact of COVID-19, and the 2021 figures show substantial recovery from the disruptions of the previous year. Primary energy consumption exceeds the previous high in 2019. CO2 emissions from energy have not set a new high (which was in 2018), but have recovered about 90% of what was lost from 2019 to 2020 and could very well set a high next year, given that there were still significant COVID disruptions in 2021. Of the six major categories of energy (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, other renewables), all except hydro increased from 2020 to 2021, and all except hydro and nuclear increased by at least 5 exajoules (world primary energy consumption is about 600 EJ now). The idea that COVID would catalyze a shift to non-fossil energy is looking ever more untenable.

Among specific energy sources, crude oil—which is essential for cars and aviation—is off-peak but has recovered more than half of what was disrupted from 2019-20. Natural gas has set a new record. Coal is at the highest level since the previous record in 2014, and it looks plausible that coal could set a new record next year. Nuclear power set a record in 2006 and has been relatively stable since then. Hydropower, bucking trends elsewhere, set a record in 2020. Solar and wind power continue to grow at strong paces and set record highs last year, though paces that are still inadequate to substitute for fossil fuels in the foreseeable future.

I am surprised at how much oil is still used for electricity. The peak in oil for electricity was set in 1990 (though the series only goes back to 1985) at 1365 terawatt-hours, and it is about 720 TWh in 2021, a significant increase over 2020. Unlike coal production in general, electricity from coal is at a record high, as is electricity from natural gas, something to keep in mind when someone enthusiastically tells you “electricity everything”.

Although mineral availability for clean energy production is a short term challenge, the report notes a 52 year and 191 year R/P ratio for cobalt and lithium respectively. These ratios are 298 years and 433 years for graphite and rare earths minerals respectively. Thus cobalt is the only of these commodities for which the report suggests supply concerns, and even there I wouldn’t be too worried.

Overall, the report doesn’t show any major surprises if you have been following this stuff for a while. There continues to be a significant gap between the rhetoric and reality around energy transition.

Energy Efficiency

This paper by Harry Saunders and other co-authors on energy efficiency is a good overview of the topic. They make a number of points, a few of which I’ll discuss here.

Here I think “energy efficiency” is considered to be deliberate policy to increase the energy efficiency of various outcomes, such as lumens for lighting, vehicle-miles traveled for cars, or GDP for an overall economy. The key is deliberate policy; they are not discussing so much natural improvements in energy efficiency that are driven by advancing technology and market forces.

They discuss the market failures that would justify efficiency. Generally speaking, if one advocates for an active government role in policy, there should be a market failure that the intervention is intended to correct. In the case of carbon pricing, for instance, the market failure is clear—unpriced externalities associated with fossil fuel combustion. In the case of efficiency, one can point to externalities of energy again, recognizing efficiency as a second-best substitute to economy-wide energy pricing schemes that are unlikely to occur. But there are other market failures as well, such as split incentives and imperfect information, which they cite as justification for efficiency even in the presence of energy pricing.

For most efficiency measures in the United States and Western Europe that save electricity specifically, they cite this paper that the cost is generally 1-6 cents per kWh of electricity saved, generally well below the cost of electricity.

A lot of course is going to depend on the specific measure we are discussing. Real life isn’t about efficiency in the abstract, but specific measures such as tighter CAFE standards. This paper makes me a little more open-minded about the merits of such measures.

Early Middle Ages and the Problem of Succession

I am continuing with Philip Daileader’s lecture series on The Great Courses on the early Middle Ages, now near the end, and I continue to find it very engaging.

One thing I have been struck by is how frequently the problem of succession has come up. Here I am referring to the problem of how to determine who should rule after a previous ruler dies. The series opens with the Crisis of the Third Century, where Rome was wracked by civil wars over imperial power, among other problems. The Tetrarchy was implemented to regularize succession, among other reasons, though with only limited success. A later lecture discusses the civil war that broke out in the Carolingian Empire among the sons of Louis the Pious in competition for the throne, an event which led to the decline and end of the Carolingian dynasty.

Of course, if one has even a passing familiarity with history, one has seen the problem of succession come up in many forms, and it was obviously a severe problem well before the Middle Ages and since them. I would consider the problem of succession to be a very basic principle, as fundamental to understanding the politics of a society as agriculture is to understanding the economy.

In the modern world, we have the concept of a democratic society, where legitimacy is conferred by winning elections under a well-defined constitutional process. New, unstable democracies might not survive, but there is the concept of democratic consolidation, where if a society has a stable democracy for an extended period of time, then the system is unlikely to change. In a time of heightened worry about democratic backsliding, I’m not sure how confident I would be in democratic consolidation, and in particular that the electoral process has tamed the problem of succession. For instance, in my adult lifetime consisting of six presidential elections in the United States, in all six cases were the results disputed by partisans of the losing side, and in the most recent did violence result. I fully expect the former to recur in 2024, and perhaps the latter as well.

Autonomous Weapons

Samuel Bendett had an article a few days ago about the use of autonomous weapons in the Russia/Ukraine war. Prior to the war, Russian military doctrine called for heavy use of autonomous weapons, and as Bendett documents, after a halting start, events have generally confirmed this doctrine. With sanctions and brain drain, though, it is not clear how long Russia can sustain a heavy use of robotics.

The war should confirm that autonomous weapons do indeed carry critical strategic value, and this value will only grow as robotic technology continues to advance and demographic pressures make it more difficult for countries to field a numerically large military.

Most activist organizations that have weighed in on the issue call for regulation or an outright ban on autonomous weapons. However, as I discussed a few months ago, this would be a very big mistake. Here is a good case why. This more technical article goes into some of the practical problems such such a ban.

Abortion Politics Redux

I linked a few articles last month when abortion was at the forefront of attention with the draft opinion repealing Roe v. Wade being leaked. Now that it’s official, the subject is back at the forefront of attention.

I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but I’ll highlight this article from Monica Synder of Secular Pro-Life, whose work I also highlighted last time. This article responds to 16 common pro-choice talking points. Some of these responses should be seen as correcting misinformation; others are a bit more subjective. One thing I like about Monica’s writing is that she makes a genuine effort at persuasion, something of a lost art in modern political discourse, particularly around the subject of abortion.

The Dobbs ruling will not eliminate abortion of course, but as one of Monica’s points highlights, there is reason to believe that the restrictions that some states have or will adopt will reduce the abortion rate. This article provides some evidence relating to Medicaid funding, and this one on restrictions in Texas a few years ago. If you are reading this 20 years in the future, there is a good chance that you know someone who would not be alive but for the Dobbs ruling, even if you or they don’t know who they are.

The pro-life movement faces severe problems with public opinion, with polls finding that a strong majority of Americans disagree with the ruling. Even without looking at the numbers, it is clear from my own Twitter activity that pro-choicers are angry about what happened, while pro-lifers are generally more circumspect and defensive. The structural problem is that the pro-life movement is inextricably tied to the conservative movement and the Christian right, which limits their ability to grow beyond the base. But they’ll have to if they want to move state policy in a way that is necessary to make further progress.

Impermanence and Death

Kyrgyzstan is a conservative Muslim country that forbids cremation, including the importation of cremated remains. Therefore, I put a fair amount of work into figuring out the logistics of bringing ashes to the country and transferring them to my wife’s family. In the process of doing so, I came across this volume, which, though not relevant to my immediate question, was quite interesting. I read only Chapter 4, “Atheist endings: imagining having been in contemporary Kyrgyzstan”. (Bringing and transferring the remains went fine, and as noted last week, they are now buried in Russia as intended.)

The chapter profiles some young (20s and 30s) atheists in Bishkek who, contrary to present law, wish to be cremated upon their deaths. There are a couple reasons highlighted for this. First, in what the chapter describes as “worldbuilding”, these atheists do not wish to have their bodies used in a way with religious connotations after death. Second, not just in Kyrgyzstan but around the world, cremation and scattering of ashes is important among atheists as symbolic of the dissolution of the self upon death and the fact that the self comes to a final end.

Of course, the people profiled realize that they cannot literally be helped or harmed in a tangible way through death practices. Modern Christians and Muslims put a premium on preservation of the body, as symbolic of preparation for resurrection at the End of Days, but they do not generally believe that this is literally necessary either (for example, modern Christians do not believe that the salvation of a plane crash victim, whose body is destroyed beyond recognition, is imperiled as a result).

I never discussed with Vika her wishes for her body, and so I was forced to guess. For that matter, although I know she was a non-practicing member of the Orthodox Church, I don’t know what she believed about the afterlife. In the weeks after her death, I received input from several family members and friends, and I had my best guesses as to her wishes, my own wishes, and logistical constraints imposed by distance and the war. It was impossible to satisfy all conditions simultaneously, so I made by best judgment. Under state law, I had the sole legal right to make decisions, and at least no one raised any objections to what I did.

For my own death, I hope that my body can be used to maximum value for organ donation and medical research. The latter is especially important because, since 2020, I owe my life to the advanced state of medical science and wish to pay it forward. Beyond that, I like the idea of cremation and scattering for reasons described above. But more-so than any of those things, I wish to see a maximum amount of time elapse before death.