Spending Lotsa Money, or Experimenting More with the Climate

A couple days ago, I used the Moon landing anniversary as an excuse to post a patriotic, hoorahrah, pom-pom-waving rallying cry for space-based solar power. Well, I think it was patriotic, anyway. Fifty-some years ago, we decided, as a nation, to spend a lot of time, money, and effort to accomplish what seemed like to us at the time a vital, if not dire, space-faring goal that could not have come about any other way (i.e.: without the full resources and commitment of the American people and the federal government).

I am asking that we do the same again, not for hundreds of billions this time (the cost of the Apollo program in today's dollars), but many trillions. I estimate the cost of satisfying all of America's power needs (not just electricity!) to be anywhere from $10-300 trillion. Yup, ten to three hundred trillion dollars.

Now, when you recover from collapsing onto the floor, let me give you some reasons why you still need to take space-based solar seriously, despite the sticker shock.

Firstly, climate change, unlike communism, truly threatens our civilization and maybe even our very existence. As bad as Stalin was, something tells me even had his flawed vision of running a nation or the world triumphed, we'd have been much worse off, but not teetering on the brink of self-destruction due to Marxist policies alone. So we need to do something again, this time for a true threat, and it needs to be impactful.

Secondly, we appear hell-bent on answering the final frontier's call. Are we doing this merely to impress any aliens we might meet? Or to benefit from the things space has to offer such as a virtually limitless, 24-7-365 power source?

And, lastly, conservative denier think tanks won't come right out and say it, but they are scheming to profit from a problem they won't admit exists. We are pretty sure dumping sulfur into the stratosphere would cool the planet, but we have no firm sense of what other effects it would have. We have no idea what the true costs of that action would be. And the worst part is it does nothing to reduce our emissions. It's a Band-Aid, not a cure, and a Band-Aid that could cause other sicknesses.

Nothing meaningful we do to combat climate change will be inexpensive. NOTHING. Cheap, quick fixes will most likely make things better in the short term, but worse in the long run, if for no other reason than they kick the can down the road, as with lacing the atmosphere with aerosols. Space-based solar, though monstrously expensive, is a real solution. We know the costs, what to expect, and that it will work as intended. It would reduce our emissions dramatically, and it has the added benefit of coinciding with our space-faring goals. And as launch costs decrease so will the jaw-dropping price tag.

Not Because They Are Easy, but Because They Are Hard

"And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

-John F. Kennedy

Top-down inspiration got us to the Moon before the USSR, proving to the world that we were the ones with the superior nuclear warhead delivery system. That was the true goal of the Apollo program, if you care to evaluate it dispassionately and logically, as Neil deGrasse Tyson does.

"Notwithstanding the sanitized memories so many of us have of the Apollo era, Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. We got to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could."

We were motivated predominantly by aspirations of becoming the greater global power; the ones demonstrating the superior economy, government, and technology. Now, you may have philosophical problems with such militaristic nationalism, and you may feel the "Red Threat" was a classic case of us chasing ghosts that led to more problems than benefits. America's paranoid, Cold War-era imperialism rearing its ugly head, and all that. I won't argue. All I ask is you consider that, at one time, we had the ability to recognize a threat, real or imaginary, come together as a nation, pool our energies into a successful, unifying effort, and triumph like no other country, kingdom, empire, etc., has ever triumphed before, despite the unknown dangers and daunting obstacles.

Only America, which created what is arguably the most influential secular legal document the world has ever produced, the US Constitution, with its codification of individual human rights, separation of powers, and of church and state, and so on, has sent humans to another world.

We are the only ones.

Think about that for a moment, because it should not be taken lightly. If I ever succumb to fleeting moments of foolish national pride, they are due to achievements like that. We have our problems, no doubt, but we can accomplish astounding and wonderful things when we set our minds collectively to the effort. And we have at least some right to be proud, because of these victories and despite our flaws.

OK, I'll set down the red, white, and blue pom-poms now, and explain why I picked them up and waved them about so frantically, if my injection of bold text into that famous Moon speech above didn't provide a large enough hint.

In stark contrast to JFK's enthusiastic call to charge blindly and eagerly into a challenging difficulty fraught with unknown perils and lacking any solutions, deniers offer us bottom-up despair. They do not even want public discourse regarding or mention of a problem unless proven fixes and technologies can be provided immediately.

"The purpose of our analysis and policy proposals is to create the political and economic conditions that foster the needed technologies. But there is no assurance that this will happen, and much time and money may be invested in futile and wasteful efforts...Our climate-change debates confuse more than they clarify...The central truth for public policy is: We have no solution."

There ya have it, folks. Deniers choose not to do things because they are hard. And they also apparently prefer those things don't get discussed. Just fucking swell that. Following such "reasoning," we can't contemplate or debate cancer, AIDS, poverty, hunger, etc., unless we have a cure ready to go, because we will only confuse matters. Ya got that?



But, fine, I'll play their silly little demanding game here for a moment, and offer my preferred solution which, unlike going to the Moon forty or fifty years ago, requires no new technology be invented: space-based solar power (SBSP).

Now, the reason I brought up JFK's speech (above and beyond the anniversary) is because I'm not interested in listening to bellyaching about the price tag or difficulty of doing it now (hence the bold text). Just not interested in changing denier diapers over something that can be nullified by determined national or international effort. That's whiny, defeatist crap which directly contradicts lessons we learned from the Apollo program, even in the face of SBSP numbers like anywhere from $3 billion/gigawatt to $100 billion/gigawatt (I added $80 billion to that higher launch estimate for material/R&D/labor and huge, kilometer-wide, ground-based receiver station construction costs). With total US power consumption (not just electricity!) in 2005 at 3.34 terawatts, that could mean a total SBSP bill of $10-300 trillion, which is a hefty sum considering our GDP, but, again, we are satisfying total US power needs, not just electricity. The electricity-only bill would be less, obviously. Also, in contrast, we presently pay $2 trillion each year for our current total energy needs, and the fossil fuel externalities that hardly ever get factored in. And, since those externalized fees shouldered by the American people instead of energy companies only consider health impacts, what are the additional annual costs of extreme weather events, rising seas, freshwater scarcity, and so on? And should a reasonable person expect those expenditures to go up or down in the coming years, hmmmm?

Just like with the Apollo program, we will certainly need to develop cost-cutting measures. Unlike Apollo, however, we will not be pulling as many rabbits out of our hats, or, perhaps more importantly, chasing ghosts. We know we are confronting a real environmental and security threat, not a contrived "Red Threat." So go cry somewhere else about the check we'll need to write and/or silly obstacles like opposition to microwave beaming, getting the ITU to agree to geosynchronous orbit, or what have you.

Every effort to reduce emissions by a significant amount while preserving our modern civilization will include some sticker shock and technical/political hurdles.

Every.

One.

And, unless I'm screwing up the math here, the carbon footprint of all those launches is arguably manageable, despite what you may think at first. At 30 tons CO2/launch, and assuming a head-spinning, worst-case maximum of approximately 150,000 launches to orbit ~3 terawatts worth of solar satellites, we still only get about 5Mt CO2 emitted. Not bad, because, remember, if all countries managed to put solar collectors up there, we will not only start dramatically reducing our energy production emissions, but, assuming much greater electric car usage as a consequence, our transportation GHGs as well. Eliminating 39% of 31Gt CO2/year is an annual reduction of 12Gt. The Earth would go from 31 to 19Gt CO2/yr. That's an accomplishment that would make Kennedy and Khrushchev proud. And, again, it would be marshaled in response to a more concrete and dangerous threat than those imagined on both sides during the Cold War. If spending hundreds of billions (in today's dollars) proving to the world you have better nuke-delivery tech than your perceived enemy is worth it, then a few trillion dollars spent confronting the greatest known existential threat to human civilization is more than worth it.

Besides, I've already mentioned that Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute is my copilot, and he often sticks his neck out defending SBSP, and you and I, mere mortals, are not allowed to disagree with Seth.

So there. :)