ECOLOGY AND ENERGY
The U.S.A. enjoys short-term riches but ignores the long-term destruction of the planet. There is no indication that we are changing course in time to save our environment or ourselves. Since mankind first appeared on earth we have tried to bend Nature to our will. Only since the 1960s has it been commonly understood that the earth’s natural systems are finite and that economic growth cannot increase forever. We can’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
By the first “Earth Day” in 1970, and certainly when the “Limits to Growth” study was released in 1972, most Americans knew that we had to drastically change the way we produce and consume things. But we didn’t follow through; we dropped the ball on an epic scale. Though the U.S. and other developed nations improved air and water quality, these gains in the U.S. are threatened by this administration’s hypocritical “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forest” initiatives and the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.
The “World Scientists Warning to Humanity” should have stimulated us into action when it appeared in 1992. Scientists speak very carefully; the text of the “World Scientists Warning to Humanity” is unequivocal. Signed by a majority of the world’s living Nobel Prize winners, it failed to make the front page of the newspapers. It stated:
"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about."
Fourteen years later we see no fundamental change even though in 2006 there is no disagreement among scientists that human activities cause the earth to warm. Glaciers are melting, storms increase in strength, the artic tundra is softening, sea level is rising, and the temperature continues to rise. The impending catastrophe that lies in store, when our human economy reaches the limits of our environment, hold hundreds of times more potential for the destruction of civilization than Osama bin Laden.
Climate is just one strand in the “web of life” that allows us to thrive. Topsoil is the basis upon which civilizations are built. Groups that failed to protect their topsoil (like the Mayans, Mesopotamians, and people of Easter Island) saw their societies disintegrate. It takes centuries for nature to make an inch of topsoil. About a third of the world’s cropland is already degrading; it is losing topsoil faster than it can regenerate. Each inch of lost topsoil reduces corn or wheat production by about 6%.
Forests are another key to life on earth. They create much of our oxygen through photosynthesis and “fix” carbon dioxide in their foliage, so it doesn’t become a “greenhouse gas” and cause global warming. Trees hold the soil in place, enrich it with organic matter, and provide rich habitat for living things. The earth has already lost between one third and half of its tree cover, and remaining forests are cut or burned at a rate of nearly1% per year. A vast range of diseases are stressing forests that remain.
The grasslands of our planet (twice the area of the prime land devoted to agriculture) feed expanding herds of livestock. They are being overgrazed to the point that half of the world’s rangelands are lightly, moderately, or severely degraded.
World fish catch has expanded 500% since 1950, but stopped increasing in 1997. More than half of the world’s fishing areas are in decline, but nonetheless governments subsidize fishing fleets which have the capacity to process twice the amount of fish that the ocean produces on a renewable basis. Any increase in fish production must come from fish farms, which create further pollution and demands on agriculture to produce fish food.
Water is essential to life; our bodies are 71% water and water covers 71% of the earth. Earth is a unique and amazing “water planet”, really one big ocean with some islands called continents. Our blood still holds the same percentage of salt as the sea water from which life on land first emerged. We are unlikely to discover substitutes for water or soil, so we must use them much more carefully.
Fresh water is what we depend on most, but this is only three percent of the water on earth and most of it is locked in the icecaps on Antarctica and Greenland or is held as ground water. Only a tenth of one percent of the earth’s water is available for all rainfall, lakes, rivers, and streams.
We are using our precious fresh water unsustainably. Many of the world’s great rivers, such as the Colorado River of the USA and China’s Yellow River, no longer reach the sea. The Nile is only a trickle when it gets to its delta. Water tables are rapidly dropping and underground aquifers are being pumped for irrigation far faster than they can replenish. In India, Pakistan, China, and the American Southwest water tables are dropping between 3 and 7 feet per year. When they run dry, food production will fall.
We are demolishing not only our own support systems, we are sweeping away the other plants and animals that share the “web of life” with us. Humans are creating the sixth great extinction in earth’s history, a huge evolutionary setback unequaled since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. Twelve percent of birds, a quarter of all mammals, and thirty percent of fish species are now vulnerable or endangered. The major causes are habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change. Chris Bright of the Worldwatch Institute has noted “Nature has no reset buttons”.
We have now created a “bubble economy” in terms of the carrying capacity of the earth’s systems. The food bubble is created by unsustainable pumping of water and the degradation of land.
A study published by the US Academy of Sciences in 2002 estimated that 1980 was the year when the demands of human beings passed the earth’s capacity to regenerate. By 2003 “Plan B” by Lester Brown estimated that we were exceeding earth’s capacity by 20%.
The figures don’t need to be precise for the point to be made. If the earth’s economic output continues to grow at around 3% annually, doubling every few decades, it is hard to imagine how this planet can survive as our hospitable oasis.
Some economists believe that the Earth’s ecology is a subset of the economy – rather than recognizing that the economy is constantly dependent on the services of the environment. An economist would be able to understand that if the earth were viewed as a bank account, humanity could enjoy robust longevity if we support ourselves and invest using the interest on our account (the capacity of the earth to regenerate). If we continue to consume our principal, as in a bubble economy, the value of our account will fall and our standard of living will ultimately take a dive.
It seems fundamentally bizarre that there are so few resources allocated to solving the major problems of sustainability. We seem to not care about our future. It may be impossible for our species to make basic cultural changes in response to a long term threat. Scientist Paul Ehrlich points out that millions of years of evolution have trained us to react instantly to stimuli such as a snap of a twig in the forest, which may signal an oncoming predator. Nothing in our evolution has prepared us to adequately respond to a terminal threat that may take decades to develop. We may be programmed to react like the frog which is put into a pot of water on the stove. If you heat the water slowly enough, the frog will not react to what is happening until it is poached.
Much good thinking about sustainability has been done and great progress could be made using current technologies. Can you imagine the progress we might have made if the money spent in Iraq had gone into alternative energy research? Shouldn’t we be willing to spend money and effort to save our civilization? Our earth is like a ship steaming toward an iceberg, yet the powerful people in control are too busy making money and pushing “morality” to change the ship’s direction. The Bush administration spends a tiny token on alternative energy research, while lavishing billions in tax breaks on campaign contributors in the oil and coal industries. Right after his “addicted to oil” State of the Union address, Bush cut funds for weatherizing poor peoples homes and the “Energy Star” program that promotes energy efficient products. All funds were cut from a program that would have developed more energy efficient building codes for new homes and commercial buildings. Could this really be less important than tax cuts for the rich?
Many Americans take refuge in the “rapture” or go into denial. Authors can make money by twisting science and damning the eco-crisis as a hoax. Some people escape into drugs or suffer mental or physical illness; many people think some new invention will save us; most people simply hope that they will die before the consequences of the eco-disaster we have created become clear to our next generations. I doubt future generations will think well of us.
The strange thing is that with a little planning, creativity and just a smidge of sacrifice the rich and powerful interests could stay that way far into the future. They could invest in the changes that a new economy would require to move confidently into the future. The vast “retooling” of the economic system that would be required to make it sustainable would also provide millions of new jobs in an atmosphere of healthy economic revival. There are millions of potential jobs in the alternative energy field, in recycling, weatherproofing buildings, environmental restoration, and many fields that haven’t been invented yet.
In the words of early environmentalist Aldo Leopold we need a completely new attitude, a new relationship with the earth:
"We must recognize the earth’s limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes."
This new “green” attitude is emerging only on the fringes of our economy and in the rhetoric of the powerful, but our basic economic juggernaut only increases its size and rapaciousness.
No “invisible hand” will save us from self destruction. The market will not somehow make sustainable processes cheaper than pollution and waste. Government regulation must play a huge role if our economy is to survive, but it must use the mechanism of the marketplace to most efficiently satisfy peoples’ needs. Government can exert influence through its own priorities and purchasing decisions, by cleaning up its own messes, and by enforcing environmental standards as a precondition for world trade. Without government regulation, no business can compete with one which is not held responsible for its long-term consequences to the earth. The USA must lead the world in the enforcement of environmental standards at home and with our trading partners. Michigan must lead in providing the new science and technologies that will make industrial transformation happen.
There is no realistic hope for healthy economic growth or long term survival unless governments transform fiscal policies to force a transformation of all of our economic processes to move in the direction of sustainability. The key is to use taxes and subsidies to make prices in the marketplace tell the ecological truth. The price of lumber acquired by clearcutting would have to include the costs of repairing the damage from the flooding that often follows clearcutting. The use of fossil fuels would include the cost of climate disruption. The cost of gasoline would include such things as the armed force that we deploy to protect foreign sources of oil and the cleanup of the incredible pollution caused by gasoline refining.
The amount of taxation may stay the same, but the sources must be changed. Income is something we want to encourage, so we should cut income taxes. We want to discourage practices that destroy the environment, so we should get most tax revenue by taxing practices that we don’t like. This is called “tax shifting”, and is supported by at least 70% of voters on both sides of the Atlantic. People are far ahead of governments in terms of flexible thinking. Short term special interests keep a choke hold on most governments, preventing serious long term planning.
Destructive activities begging for serious taxation are “carbon emissions, (from the use of fossil fuels), the generation of toxic waste, the use of virgin raw materials, the use of non-refillable beverage containers, mercury emissions (from coal use), the generation of garbage, the use of pesticides and the use of throwaway products”. (“Eco-Economy”, Brown, 2001). Many European countries have begun this tax shift; China is considering a consumption tax on goods that negatively impact the environment.
Even the prestigious and conservative Economist magazine recognizes the need to first “level the playing field” by making the energy market include ecological costs in its prices, and then allowing the market mechanism to operate. “That means, for example, dismantling the many subsidies that prop up coal and other fossil fuels. It also means introducing a carbon tax or similar mechanism to insure that prices for fossil fuels reflect the harm they do to human health and to the environment”. Such a tax would encourage the changeover to wind energy, solar cells, geothermal, and plant based sources of fuel.
Amazingly, governments now vastly subsidize activities which endanger our long term survival. Nations around the world provide tax dollars to encourage greater water use, burning of fossil fuel, pesticide use, fishing, mining, logging, and automobile driving. A study from the Earth Council titled “Subsidizing Unsustainable Development” (1997) found $700 billion dollars annually in environmentally destructive subsidies. It could make a big difference if that $700 billion was removed and spent each year on alternative energy, family planning, tree planting, and the education of young women.
We need to quickly make renewable energy and economic transformation the central motivation for a massive human effort. After Pearl Harbor the American economy was transformed in short order; it is again time to create a sense of urgency and a dedication of resources that is adequate for the mission at hand.
The technology is available for us to make our electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal sources. Wind farms could produce electricity during the daytime hours of peak demand and at night power hydrogen generators to produce fuel for vehicles. Cars can run on electricity and plant-based ethanol until clean burning hydrogen-fueled cars can be made cheaply. Hydrogen can replace oil as our dominant fuel, as oil replaced coal and coal replaced wood. Electricity and hydrogen can provide energy in all the forms that we will need to power a modern economy (Brown L., 2001. Eco-Economy,117). We need this transformation immediately, since we actually need a 60 to 80 percent drop in greenhouse gasses to stabilize world climate, not the 5% proposed in the Kyoto Accords. (estimate of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations,cited in Ayres, E. 1999. God’s Last Offer.).
These technological changes would have to be combined with a fundamental change in our relationship with the earth - respecting it as the living web of nature that nurtures us, rather than as a source of raw materials that we should dominate and subdue. We have to greatly increase energy efficiency. As a guide for our own sustainability we might copy strategies that we observe in nature . Spiders spin flexible material stronger that steel, small birds fly 5000 miles on a teaspoon of fat, and nature produces little waste.
So how does all this relate to the Michigan 7th District campaign of 2006?
In the longer term Michigan’s economic future will depend on how well we respond to the challenge of energy transformation and making our economy sustainable. Michigan could be the center of a new industrial revolution aimed at putting human civilization on a sustainable footing. With good leadership and investment combined with inventive genius, Michigan can be the leader in non-polluting transportation technology and alternative energy research, just as we led the world in fossil fuel technology. Michigan must remain a major world center of transportation research and manufacturing. We have a well educated and dedicated work force ready and able to do the job.
With more of the short-sighted fumbling we have seen from both corporate executives and the federal government, we are going to see the death of manufacturing in America and no real effort to form a future of energy independence and sustainability. We can continue to have growth and good quality jobs if we step firmly away from the path of collision with nature. We must democratically mandate that our culture function in harmony with nature, so we can live happily in the long term on this wondrous planet.
E-mail me at chuckreamforcongress@yahoo.com
