Intermediate Hydrogen Economy

To Hasten the Green Transition, Temporarily Fuel Existing Internal Combustion Engines with Sustainably-Generated Hydrogen, Transported via Reversable Oil Hydrogenation. 1. Introduction.
1A. Transport and electricity generation use Internal Combustion (IC) engines for power. These IC engines typically burn Fossil Fuels (FF), and emit Greenhouse Gases (GG), which trap heat in our atmosphere, worsening our climate crisis.
1B. To elaborate: Trucks and automobiles burn diesel and gasoline; Stationary power plants and little portable electricity generators burn gaseous fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel; airplanes burn kerosene; and large ships burn bunker fuel (a thick, economical fossil fuel). Burning these fuels produces the GGs carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and others, worsening our climate crisis. For perspective: GG% by source: Transport:17%; Electricity/Heat Generation: 32%.(1)
1C. But IC engines burning methane (within gaseous fuels) deplete one GG, while releasing another, far less potent GG; carbon dioxide. Also, IC engines may emit aerosols which can reduce atmospheric heating.
1D. Electric vehicles (EVs) are replacing some IC-powered vehicles, but mineral resources constrain future EV production.(2) Thus EVs can not replace all FF vehicles, given existing and even feasible future mining technologies, and Earth’s finite resources. Furthermore, mineral ore mining rate constraints curtail EV adoptation in the next decade.
1F. Fueling existing IC engines with Sustainably-Generated Hydrogen (SGH) might allow completion of, and speed, the green transition.
2. Vehicular Combustion of SGH.
2A. A recent revelation in freight truck onboard hydrogen fuel storage, bodes well for other SGH IC engine conversion.(3) Scientists, considering the hydrgenation and dehydrogenation of oils; a hydrogen storage method, realized that IC engine exhaust could supply needed heat for on-truck dehydrogenation reactions to supply hydrogen fuel.
2B. This combination (of 1. internal combustion engine exhaust heat and 2. dehydrogenation of hydrognated oils), can help sustainably fuel other vehicular and stationary IC engines, in these ways:
2B1. Diesel engines can run partially on gaseous fuels, like SGH, with 15% diesel for ignition, when gaseous fuel carburators supply mixed air and fuel into a normal diesel engine intake manifold.
2B2. Spark-ignited IC engines can run on SGH, when gaseous fuel carburators replace liquid fuel carburators, or when existing carburators are adapted to burn gaseous fuels like SGH. Both of these have been done.
3. Stationary Combustion of SGH.
3A. Perhaps SGH can take over the existing gaseous fossil fuel ‘Natural Gas’ pipeline network, replacing fossil fuel with SGH within the pipe network, accompanied by conversion of all appliances to burn SGH.
3B. Alternately, or beforehand, if SGH is added in moderate percentages to existing gaseous ‘Natural Gas’ fuel supplies, partial sustainablity could be achieved with little conversion needed.
3C. Stationary electricity generation plants can run on on SGH: Diesel plants can run predominently on SGH, while turbines fueled by gaseous fossil fuel can burn SGH.
4. Alternate Diesel Ignition Fuel Possibility.
4A. Alternately, diesel IC engines predominently burning SGH might ignite that SGH by injecting a fraction of the hydrogenated oil, instead of injecting diesel fuel.
5. SGH use in IC engines – Pro and Con:
5A. Pro: Uses much existing IC infrastructure, thus speeding green transition and reducing its cost. Burning SGH within an IC engine emits mostly water, and no carbon dioxide.
5B. Con: IC engines are still constrainted by the Carnot limit,(4) even when SGH-fueled; unlike fuel-cell-powered EVs. Hence fuel cell power will probably replace IC engines over time. Also, dehydrogenation units small enough to supply hydrogen to automobiles might be difficult to design or construct.
7. Increasing SGH Supply.
7A. William Heronemus proposed an offshore array of floating wind-powered electricity generators, the output of which hydrolyzed water at the extreme pressures of the deep ocean, yielding pressurized hydrogen and oxygen. These would supply our industries by being piped to shore through economical thin tubing, made feasible by the deep ocean pressure.(5)
7B. Excess solar or wind electrical power can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, when renewable energy supply exceeds demand.
7C. Ashore, generated hydrogen could be stored via oil hydrogenation. In the deep ocean, hydrogen might be stored within economical thin film bags made feasible by the pressure of the deep ocean. Other hydrogen storage methods include 1. Compression at sea level, and 2. Adsorption onto metal or activated carbon particles, 3. Liquification via compression and cooling.
8. Summary
8A. SGH might rapidly begin to power transport and electricity generation through:
8A1. Quickly building massive arrays of floating wind turbine generators, powering at-sea water electrolyzers, linked to pipe electrolyzed SGH to shore.
8A2. On-vehicle dehydrogenation of oil hydrogenated with SGH, releasing hydrogen.
8A3. Incorporation of SGH into 'Natural Gas' networks.
End.
Footnotes:
1. https://www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions?breakBy=sector&chartType=percentage&end_year=2016§ors=agriculture%2Cindustrial-processes%2Cland-use-change-and-forestry%2Cwaste%2Cbuilding%2Cfugitive-emissions%2Cmanufacturing-construction%2Cother-fuel-combustion%2Ctransportation&source=Climate%20Watch&start_year=1990
2. https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf
3. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.3c01919
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics
5. http://theheronemusproject.com/THP/library/WEH.2001%20Presentation.pdf
http://theheronemusproject.com/THP/library/Patent7075189.pdf

Outdoor Oven Progress Shots

Dr. Jill Stein Tops Kamala Harris, 45% to 28%, in Recent Poll of Arab-American US Citizens.

Five USA Presidential Candidates' Important Positions Charted

Cook while making biochar with merely a shovel? - Dakota fire hole modified to make biochar cleanly - progress so far.

Dakota fire holes are easy to build/dig, burn cleanly and clean up well. For more on these one can see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_pit#Dakota_fire_pit
Here I attempt to extend one to resemble a TLUD biochar stove. TLUD stands for Top Lit Up Draft, and is an arrangement of chambers and air flows that forms charcoal while cleanly burning the smoke produced. For more on these one can see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-lit_updraft_gasifier
I dug a Dakota fire hole, then dug below one of the holes to form a char-making chamber.

It differed from this drawing in that there was no primary air supply. I guess it is actually not a TLUD, but a 'TLND' (Top Lit No Draft). Then I loaded the chamber with dry wood, spread kindling and tinder above, but still way below ground level. Then I lit a fire atop the fuel. It burnt pretty cleanly, but released a little smoke. I'd like to improve this and will try to figure out how. Below are some photos of the resulting char in the hole. To enlarge a photo fragment below, to see the entire image, click on each fragment.

Downhill for All Involved

Downhill for All Involved 

Global underwriters and insurers now risk vast losses from the climate crisis.(1)

 “Recent research from Cambridge University…warns that if climate change is left unchecked, catastrophic losses on property investments from disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding will triple over the next 30 years… the resulting losses to the insurance industry could cause a global financial crisis.”(2 Forbes 2019-5-22) 

Can we protect our global economy by fixing our damaged climate? Who has means and motive? Are there lessons within history? 

HISTORY: In the 1750s, Benjamin Franklin and others founded a house fire insurer in Philadelphia, which raised rates on more hazardous homes, and refused to insure the riskiest.(3) In 1777, Anthony Hill swept Philadelphia chimneys for this ‘Philadelphia Contributorship’.(4) This chimney sweeping exemplifies a significant step, by fledgling American insurers, beyond merely avoiding or pooling risk, to risk reduction. 

In 1893, William H. Merrill midwifed the safety-troubled electrical industry into the behemoth we know today, after the young engineer started working for insurance underwriters. They hired him to inspect electrical set-ups at the Chicago World’s Fair grounds for the Fair’s opening. Merrill, just graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), proposed Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to test and certify fire safety for the insurance underwriting industry. Rejected at first, he later succeeded in convincing underwriters to start this.(5) 

So ended an era of deadly, catastrophic fires that scarred USA’s young cities. For example, The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed about 275 people and caused $222 million dollars of damage, equivalent to $4.6 billion 2018 dollars.(6) It accompanied three other fires that week, in Peshtigo, MI, Port Huron, MI, and Urbana, IL which killed more than 2,200.(7) Today we again suffer the devastating effects of fire - not from burning houses, but from burning fossil fuels. The resulting carbon dioxide ruins the climate that our food system depends on, and for which our buildings were designed. 

WHAT CAN BE DONE? The Stern Review of 2006 (8) estimates annual climate crisis containment costs to be 2% of World Gross Domestic Product (WGDP),(9) with damages thus avoided at 5% of WGDP.  In 2019, WGDP totaled about $87 trillion,(10) hence annual climate crisis containment costs would near $1.74 trillion a year. 

The Drawdown Review of 2020 forecasts the cost and benefits of climate preservation in two scenarios.(11) The first scenario forecasts $22.5 trillion in initial investments stopping 994 gigatons of CO2 or equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, with lifetime costs running to -$95.1 trillion and lifetime profits of $15.6 trillion. Note: Lifetime costs are negative – beyond just the direct profit to investors, more than four times the investment value would be returned to society. These reviews describe how it could be cheaper to fix rather than suffer a ruined climate; indeed, so much cheaper that, in the Drawdown analysis, it’s actually profitable. 

APPROACH: Many have struggled to contain Earth’s climate crisis. But who has both the motive of understanding this climate crisis, and the means to contain it? We at risk are numerous; many have the motive which understanding provides. However most of us lack the means to preserve our climate; within the few with the means, there are fewer still understanding this climate risk and their ability to contain it. 

With about $27 trillion dollars in assets,(12) do the world’s underwriters and insurers have the means to control the climate crisis? If four decades of climate crisis containment were invested in at once, at a cost of $69.6 trillion, according to the Stern Review, underwriters and insurers would need to borrow $42.6 trillion, but stand to gain from the $174 trillion in climate damage costs avoided over those forty years. And the insurance industry now has enough for the Drawdown’s first scenario’s investments. 

How might this occur? A global underwriter consortium might set standards that would identify carbon-neutral or -negative provision of goods or services. Policies might then specify that to receive insurance, underwriter’s insurers and customers must only use carbon-neutral or -negative goods and services that meet that standard; while also specifying direct investment into climate protection, and out of climate destruction, by underwriters, insurers and customers. This first part mimics Underwriters Laboratories’ success, the second could adhere to Stern and Drawdown Reviews’ prescriptions. 

Much can be done affordably; it costs more to suffer climate crisis than to avoid it; and the insurance industry has both means and motive to protect our climate. A corollary of ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ might be: ‘With all your eggs in one basket, protect that basket.’ 

1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/05/22/the-global-insurance-industrys-6-billion-existential-threat-coal-power,  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/21/climate-change-could-make-insurance-too-expensive-for-ordinary-people-report 

2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/05/22/the-global-insurance-industrys-6-billion-existential-threat-coal-power/ citing https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/business-action/sustainable-finance/climatewise/news/investors-and-lenders-need-better-tools-to-manage-climate-risk-to-homes-mortgages-and-assets-finds-new-research. 

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Contributionship 9/14/20 

4 http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/contributionship/timeline.cfm 10/11/20 

5 https://www.ul.com/sites/g/files/qbfpbp251/files/2019-05/EngineeringProgress.pdf 

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire 9/13/20 

7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_and_city_fires 9/13/20 

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review 9/13/20 

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review 9/13/20 

10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal 

11 https://www.drawdown.org/drawdown-framework/drawdown-review-2020 page 88.

12 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=INSIND

Andro Linklater quote

"At one period in my life, I believed passionately in...egaltarian ideals, and lived for longer than was sensible on communes in the United States and Europe, farming unproductive steeply sloping fields locked away in the mountains unwanted by their original owner. The experience offered a salutory lesson in understanding how ownership of the earth shapes the way society is organized. The most attractive qualities of a primitive commune, sharing the labor and the rewards, turned out to be its most destructive. It was not the group, but the individual who actually plowed the field, dug the ditch, milked the goats, and made the granola. Over time, it became obvious that some performed these tasks better, or more slowly, or more lazily, than others, and so the tasks either had to be organized with rigid efficiency to spread the burden fairly, or... dissensions... boiled up and tore the community apart.... Far from being able to dispense with government, equal ownership entailed a surprising intensity of organization and policing of personal foibles." Andro Linklater, 2014, Owning the Earth: the Transforming History of Landownership. London, Verso.

The Presuppositions of Policy - Daly and Farley continue EE Chapter 3 - Ends, Means and Policy

The Presuppositions of Policy Ecological economics is committed to policy relevance. It is not just a logical game for autistic academicians. Because of our commitments to policy, we must ask: What are the necessary presuppositions for policy to make sense, to be worth discussing? We see two. First, we must believe that there are real alternatives to choose from. If there are no alternatives, if everything is predetermined, than it hardly makes sense to discuss policy – what will be, will be. If there are no options, then there is no responsibility, no need to think. Second, even if these are real altenatives, policy diologue would still be make no sense unless there were a real criterion of value to use for choosing between the alternatives. Unless we can distingish better from worse states of the world, it makes no sense to try to acheive one state of the world irather than another. If there is no value criterion, then these is no responsibility, no need to think. In sum, serious policy must presuppose (1) non-determinism – that the world is not totally determined, that there is an element of freedom that offers us real alternatives; and (2) non-nihilism – that there is a real criterion of value to guide our choices, however vaguely we may perceive it. The fact that many people engaged in discussing and making policy reject one or both of these presuppositions is, in A. N. Whitehead’s term. “the lurking inconsistency,” a contradiction at the basis of the modern worldview that enfeebles thought and renders action halfhearted. If we even halfway believe that purpose is an illusion foisted on us by our genes to somehow make us more efficient at procreation,(17) or that one state of the world is as good as another, then it is hard to get serious about real issues. And ecological economics must be serious about real issues. As Whitehead noted, “scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”(18) Determinism and Relativism The preceding section may seem pretty obvious and consistent with common sense. What is the point in stating the obvious? The point is that many members of the intelligentsia deny non-determinism or non-nihilism, yet they want to engage in a policy dialogue. It is not just that we disagree about exactly what our alternatives are in a particular instance or about what our criterion implies for a concrete case – that’s part of thee reasonable policy dialogue. The point is that determinists who deny the effective existence of alternatives, and nihilists or relativists who deny the existence of a value criterion beyond the level of subjective personal tastes, have no logical basis for engaging in policy dialogue – and yet they do! We cordially and respectfully invite them to remember and reflect deeply upon their option of remaining silent – at least about policy.(19) One may well agree with the logic of our position – that policy rules out determinism and nihilism – but argue that there are so few real determinists and nihilists around that in effect we are kicking at an open door or attacking a straw man. We hope this is true. However, one leading biologist, Paul R. Ehlich, who has contributed much to ecological economics, recently wrote a book with this stated purpose.(20) “to give an evolutionist’s antidote to the extreme hereditary determinism that infests much of the current discussion of human behavior – the idea that we are somehow simply captives of tiny, self-copying entities called genes” (p.x). In other words, Ehrlcih felt that the influence of the hard-line determinists is sufficiently toxic to require a 500-page antidote, even if a rather mild and general one. A stronger and more specific antidote was thought necessary by Wendell Berry, who took particular aim at the influential writings of Edward O. Wilson, especially his recent book Consilience. Berry deserves to be quoted at some length.(21) "A theoretical materialism as strictly principled as Mr. Wilson’s is inescapably deterministic. We and our works and acts, he holds, are determined by our genes, which are determined by the laws of biology, which are determined ultimately by the laws of physics. He sees that this directly contradicts the idea of free will, which even as a scientist he seems unwilling to give up, and which as a conservationist he cannot afford to give up. He deals with this dilemma oddly and inconsistently. First, he says that we have, and need, “the illusion of free will”, which he says further, is “biologically adaptive”. I have read his sentences several times, hoping to find that I have misunderstood them, but I am afraid that I understand them. He is saying that there is an evolutionary advantage in illusion. The proposition that our ancestors survived because they were foolish enough to believe an illusion is certainly optimistic, but it does not seem very probable. And what are we to think of a materialism that can be used to validate an illusion? Mr. Wilson nevertheless insists upon his point; in another place he speaks of “self-deception” as granting to our species the ”adaptive edge”. Later, in discussing the need for conservation, Mr Wilson affirms the Enlightenment belief that we can “choose wisely”. How a wise choice can be made on the basis of an illusory freedom of the will is impossible to conceive, and Mr. Wilson wisely chooses not to try to conceive it.(p.26)" We have learned from personal conversation with Wilson that he considers the question of how one squares scientific determinism with purposeful policy to be the “mother of all questions.” Mutual humility in the face of mystery and paradox is more easily expressed, and understood, in friendly conversation over wine and dinner than in dry academic print. No one can, in practice, live by the creeds of determinism or nihilism. In this sense, no one takes these creed seriously, not even the advocates themselves. So we tend to discount any effect on policy of these doctrines. However, may open-minded citizens halfway suspect that the learned scholars who publicly proclaim these views might know something that they do not. Maybe I really am just a robot controlled by my selfish genes; maybe purpose really is just an epiphenomenal illusion; maybe better and worse really are just meaningless terms for lending undue authority to subjective personal preferences to class-based, gender-based, or race-based interests. The fact that determinist or nihilist views cannot consistently be lived out in practice by individuals does not mean that their existence, lurking in the back of the collective mind, is not capable of disabling policy. In the introduction, we referred briefly to the difficulty some ecologists have in dealing with policy, the messy world of human affairs. To the extent that the ecologist , like some biologists, is a determinist, policy of any kind kind would be silly. Such an ecologist would necessarily be more laissez-faire that the most extreme free market economist. Hence our view that ecological economics is not simply a matter of bringing the light of ecology to dispel the darkness of economics. There is that to be sure, but the is also some darkness within ecology that economists do not need to import. Perhaps we should take some cues from modern physics, just as traditional economics takes cues from nineteenth-century mechanical physics. Quantum indeterminacy and chaos theory have upset the “scientific “ foundations of determinacy. And many of our greatest modern physicists, those who have best come to understand the physical matter underlying the scientific materialism paradigm, increasingly question its ability to provide any ultimate truths. For example, Einstein points out that scientific knowledge “of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.” He goes on the ask, “What should be the goal of our human aspirations? The ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source.”(22) In Schrodinger’s words, “The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts our experience in a magnificently consistent order, bu it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near our heart, that really matters to us – we do not belong to the material world the science constructs for us.”(23) Policy students, including the economists, implicitly assume that the world offers more than one possibility to choose from and that some choices really are better than others. This is also true of course, for ecological economists, who, while continuing to take biology and ecology seriously, must not fall into the traps of determinism or nihilism that seem to have ensnared some in those disciplines. To be sure, not every conceivable alternative is a real alternative. Many things really are impossible. But the number of viable possibilities permitted by physical law and past history is seldom reduced to only one. Through our choices, value and purpose lure the physical world in one direction rather than the other. Purpose is independently causative in the world. Sidebox 3-1: Determinism in the History of Philosophy Materialism, determinism and mechanism are closely related metaphyical doctrines about the basic nature of reality. If you study the history of philosophy, you will see that they go back to Epicurus, Democritus and Lucretius, over 2,000 years ago, and these doctrines are still very much with us today. It would be arrogant for two economists to think that they can resolve this ancient puzzle but also naive to think that we can sidestep it, since economics is unavoidably about choice. If choice is an illusion, what does that say about economics? Because humans are part of reality, it follows that if matter in motion is all there is to reality, then that is all there is to humans as well. Since the motions of matter are determined by mechanical laws, it follows that the same laws ultimately determine human action. This ‘Determinism’ rules out free will – it means that our purposes are not independently causative in the world. Only mechanical motion of matter is causative. Purposes, intentions, values, choices are all dreams or subjective hallucinations. They are effects, not causes. ‘Nihilism’, the rejection of all moral values, is the ethical consequence of of the materialist, determinist cosmology. Things are what they are, and you can do nothing about it because your will and purpose have no power to change things. You can have no responsibility for what cannot be otherwise. For Epicurus this was a great relief – much better than worrying about the gods anger and retribution, about responsibility and guilt and punishment. Relax, don’t worry, do your best to enjoy life. Nothing can really hurt you, because when you are dead, that’s the end of you no longer suffer. This view is still very much alive in the modern secular world, although it has a long history of conflict with Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as other philosophies that reject materialism as an adequate view of reality. They insist that good and evil are as real in our experience as matter and that humans have at least some capacity for choice between them. To ignore our direct experience of good, evil and freedom is considered anti-empirical and against the deeper spirit of science. It is not our intent to convert you either to or from Epicurism, Christianity, or any other position. Maybe you do not yet have any position on this question. But logic does have its demands, and no doctrine is exempt from them. Even the early materialists recognized the contradictions involved in a doctrine that ruled out freedom, novelty and choice. Epicurus tried to restore a modicum of freedom in an ad hoc manner by introducing the notion of the ‘clinamen’ – the idea that atoms swerved from their determined motions for unexplained reasons and that this was the source of novelty, and perhaps some degree of freedom. Our advice is to be skeptical of any easy answer to a problem that has been around for 2500 years and also to be humble in the face of any logical contradictions that you cannot resolve. The Ends-Means Spectrum: Ultimate means and the ultimate ends are two extremes of an ‘ends-means spectrum’ in the middle of which economic value is determined. In everyday life, it is our mid-range ends and means that interact, not their ultimate origins in the realms of the spirit or the electron. We wi9ll discuss this intermediate, mid-spectrum interaction in our consideration of the function of markets and relative prices (see Chapter 8). But for now it is useful to think of the entire ends-means spectrum depicted in Figure 3.1. The economic choices that exist in the mid-range of the spectrum are not illusory. They are not totally determined by material causes from below, nor are they rendered meaningless by an absence of final cause from above or the presence of a predestining final cause. As we shall discuss later, prices, relative values, are determined by supply and demand. But supply reflects alternative conditions of relative possibility, of the reality of ultimate means, while demand reflects independent conditions of relative desirability, rooted in perceptions of the ultimate end. In it’s largest sense, humanity’s ultimate economic problem is to use ultimate means efficiently and wisely in the service of the ultimate end. Stated in this way, the problem is overwhelming in its inclusiveness. Therefore, it’s not hard to understand why in practice it has been broken up into a series of sub-problems, each dealt with by a different discipline, as indicated on the right side of the ends-means spectrum [diagram]. At the top of the spectrum, we have the ultimate end, studied by religion and philosophy. It is that which is intrinsically good and does not derive its goodness from any other instrumental relation to some other or higher derivative. Needless to say, it is not well-defined. As noted earlier, there are unacceptable consequences from denying its existence, but the dimness of our vision of the ultimate end is part of the human condition and requires a great deal of mutual tolerance. Th error of treating as ultimate that which is not is, in theological terms, idolatry. At the bottom of the spectrum is ultimate means, the useful stuff of the world – low-entropy matter-energy, which we can only use up and cannot create or replenish, and whose net production cannot possibly be the end result of any human activity. The ultimate end is much harder to define than the ultimate means our current approximation to the ultimate end, unfortunately, seems to be economic growth, and part of the critique of economic growth is that our devotion to it has become idolatrous, worshiping a false god, so to speak, because it is not really ultimate. But it is not easy to formulate a central organizing principle of society that does not border of idolatry. To reiterate, since we are forced by scarcity to choose which of our many intermediate ends will be satisfied and which will be sacrificed, we must rank our intermediate ends. Ranking means establishing priority. Priority means that something goes in first place. That holder of first place is our operational estimate of the ultimate end. It provides the ordering criterion for ranking other intermediate ends. Second place goes to whatever is nearest to or best serves first place, and so on. This ranking of intermediate ends relative to our vision of the ultimate end is the problem of ethics. Economists traditionally take the solution to the ethical problem as given and start their analysis with a given ranking of intermediate ends, or with the assumption that one person’s ranking is as good as another’s, so that ethics is indistinguishable from personal tastes. At the bottom of the spectrum, physics studies ultimate means, and technics studies the problem of turning ultimate means into artifacts specifically designed to satisfy each of our intermediate ends. Economists also habitually assume the technical problem to have been solved; that is, technology is taken as given. Thus, the remaining segment of the spectrum is the middle one of allocating given intermediate means to the service of a given hierarchy of intermediate ends. This is the significant and important economic problem, or rather political economic problem, quite distinct from the ethical or technical problems. The middle-range nature of the problem of political economy is significant. It means that, form the perspective of the entire spectrum, economics is, in a sense, both too materialistic and not materialistic enough. In abstracting from the ethical and religious problem it is too materialistic, and in abstracting from the technical and biophysical problem it is not materialistic enough. Economic value has both physical and moral roots. Neither can be ignored. Yet many thinkers are attracted to a monistic philosophy that focuses only on the biophysical or only on the psychic root of value. Ecological economics adopts a kind of practical dualism. Dualism is not as simple as monism, and it entails the mysterious problem of how the material and the spiritual interact. That is indeed a large and enduring mystery. But on the positive side, dualism is more radically empirical than either monism, refusing to deny or ride roughshod over the inconvenient facts just to avoid confronting a mystery.(24)