Stop Calling it Energy Independence
About the Author
Professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University
Robert M. Entman is J.B. and M.C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. He earned a Ph.D. in political science as a National Science Foundation Fellow at Yale, and an M.P.P. in Public Policy Analysis from the University of California (Berkeley). He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Duke, where he earned his A.B. in political science. Prior to joining GW, Dr. Entman served on the faculties at Duke, Northwestern and North Carolina State.
His most recent books include Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (University of Chicago, 2004); Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge, 2001, edited with Lance Bennett), which was published in Chinese translation by Tsinghua University Press in 2006; and The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (University of Chicago, 2000, with A. Rojecki), which won Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize, the Lane Award from the American Political Science Association, and other awards. For his work on media framing, he won the 2005 Woolbert Research Prize from the National Communication Association. Other books include Democracy Without Citizens (Oxford, 1989) and Media Power Politics (Free Press, 1981, with D.L. Paletz). He has also published dozens of journal articles, reports, and book chapters in such fields as political communication, public opinion, race relations and public policy.
Dr. Entman is currently writing a book called Media Bias Scandals and with Clay Steinman is editing an anthology called Key Works in Communication Studies for Blackwell Publishers. He also edits the book series Communication, Society and Politics (with Lance Bennett) for the Cambridge University Press. Dr. Entman lectures frequently at universities in the U.S. and abroad and served as the Lombard Visiting Professor at Harvard in 1997 and a visiting professor of communication at the University of Rome in 2005. In 2006 Entman was awarded the APSA Political Communication Division's Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Achievement Award.
About This Video
Media coverage of "energy independence" misleads public because there's no such thing; energy policy and policy toward global warming are inextricably intertwined and American leaders and the public need to understand this--and to using misleading terms like "energy independence."
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2 comments for "Stop Calling it Energy Independence".
1. Interdependence, even within the USA
I agree with concerns about global warming, but the media is indeed not looking into how we might respond to this in adequate depth. There needs to be a higher level of discussion about how this should be dealt with. There are some alarming errors getting into the planning. When these are fully understood, it will be quite embarrassing where actions are based on such misinfomation.
Switching from gasoline to electric methods of propelling cars has a benefit of reducing USA dependence on foreign oil. Emissions are quite another matter. First, the "Zero emission" claim is offensive. No person should be allowed to graduate from high school who believes this nonsense. It had some historical validity when the "zero" meant that there were no local emissions, but even then it just meant someone else got to deal with them, and maybe if diluted it was ok. But now that we know CO2 to be a problem, the "zero emission" claim is idiotic beyond belief.
As far as CO2 goes, the only possible redemption for electric cars is if they use a lot less energy. Tesla has a very low frontal area so it works ok in that regard. However, the high performance is not without cost. Sure they get some of their energy back with regenerative braking. (But try to find out what the battery charging and discharging efficiency is.) Correction, the original little Tesla had that low frontal area - - not so low with the recent big one. Fisker Karma is worse yet, having no redeeming efficiency in its vehicle form.
Now to address the never ending claims that somehow coal will not be the fuel source used to respond to additional load of each EV. Even if we in California switch to more natural gas, the effect of using that natural gas, under basic economic rules, would be to increase the market price of natural gas. The rest of the USA will have none of that, so they will buy less of that natural gas, and of course, they will buy and use more coal. Thus, the intended accomplishment in California is a myth. Every electric vehicle will result in added use of coal somewhere until all coal power plants are salvaged.
The problem is that there is no real way to change this without greatly penalizing coal. That might happen with "cap and trade" or simpler taxation; if and when it does the marginal (response to incremental increase in use) fuel will shift to natural gas. Watch out for the price of natural gas under that scenario.
Now look at the NRDC-EPRI study (widely quoted as proof that plug-ins are great) which is linked from http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/8409 (Look at comments for references to the NRDC-EPRI and further discussion.) It will become clear that for natural gas based electricity, there could be some reduction in CO2 emitted by making a Prius into a plug-in, but not a lot; but for coal which is the more probable source, the plug-in substantially degrades the production Prius and CO2 emissons increase.
Now think about a Hummer converted into a hybrid and then into a plug-in hybrid. (Yes that could happen. Look at what Andy Grove says at http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/energy/an-electric-plan-for-energ... ) For those who think converting the Hummer to a hybrid Hummer will be a big efficiency gain, yes there will be some gain, but we can be assured, it will not begin to perform like the Prius. Now make that Hummer hybrid into a plug-in and see what will happen. By comparison with the Prius plug-in we should expect the plug-in Hummer to be worse than the hybrid Hummer for coal based electric power; probably the CO2 will be worse than the original gasoline guzzler Hummer. For natural gas based electric power some time in the future there will be a slight gain in CO2 as a result of making conventional cars into plug-ins.
If you think I am being alarmist about the Hummer, check out how GM planned to proceed about a year ago. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/PDF/presentation-sm.pdf Watch for the bait and switch when they pretend to be developing fuel efficient vehicles in response to government demands.
And wait to see how the games start when we get to CAFE mileage standards. We already have our national laboratory, Argonne, willing to fake the calculation of electric "miles per gallon equivalent" by pretending the heat needed to produce electricity is the same as the heat that can be produced with that electricity. Maybe someone with this level of ignorance could be allowed to pass out of high school, but they certainly should not have passed freshman physics in college. But Argonne and even SAE fails on this!! The published SAE standard on equivalent mileage of electric vehicles carries forward this error as well.
Not only do they promulgate erroneous calculation methodology, Argonne seems to be biased in promoting plug-in vehicles. To see this bias look at http://www.miastrada.com/references for the Argonne paper on testing the Hymotion Prius where they accidentally let out that the production Prius engine efficiency for UDDS cycle driving is 38% but the plug-in modification degrades it down to 33%.
While having some plug-in Prius cars operating will not be particularly harmful, in the end we will have continued production of large, inefficient vehicles, and a public believing that something significant was accomplished. For global warming mitigation, that will be a disaster because it will be the ruination of any future efforts that could have real merit.
In depth discussions of these issues are urgently needed.
2. Energy Independence
I hope Professor Entman watches and hopefully contributes to ...
http://www.theoildrum.com/