Continuum

I’ve written quite a bit in the last few weeks about waning resources, changing values, and current and potential problems. The common threads among many of these discussions have been ethics, economy, and environment. I see these lines of inquiry as inseparable.
Having devoted much effort to challenges and questions, I’d like to focus briefly on solutions and answers. I believe that the only solution that will address ethics, economy, and environment with due weight is that of sustainability. For readers who are unfamiliar with this concept, sustainability seeks to create systems that can continue ostensibly forever. Such systems find a balance between inputs and outputs, resources and waste. These systems often rely on efficiency and repurposing waste products. This idea is not new; many human cultures have lived in sustainable equilibrium with their surroundings, making use of their environment without disrupting it. Many modern avenues of sustainability advocate lifeways that are far more similar to what you and I understand than to traditional sustainable lifeways.
I should qualify this by making it clear that I see sustainability as an ideal that people should approach through continuous improvement. Anyone, regardless of the magnitude of their ecological footprint, regardless of convictions about ethics or the economy, can move toward a more sustainable lifeway. For many people, such changes will save time and money.
One could write a book on sustainability (and many have), but there are some core concepts that have some hope of fitting in this space. To achieve a sustainable world, I see the central shifts in thinking and practice as awareness, an evolution of values, the realization of common wealth, and mass-localization/community development. There are plenty of outcomes and caveats that are worthy of discussion, but this is a place to start:

Awareness: The first and possibly the most important step is for the public to understand our economy, our lifeway, and how these bear upon the natural world. This does not mean that everyone needs to drop what they’re doing and go earn a PhD in ecology or natural resource economics. Instead, we need to follow in a grand human tradition of genuinely understanding how we make a living, and teaching this knowledge to our children.
The initial pieces of this puzzle, as I see them, are to understand where your food and energy come from; “the grocery store” and “the light switch” are insufficient answers to these questions.
It’s very important to understand your household’s relationship with water. How much do you consume? Where does it come from? Where does it go when it goes down the drain, or runs down the end of the driveway? Who else and what else uses it?
Likewise, it’s important to understand what happens when you throw something away. Where does it go? What happens to it physically?
These pathways of understanding lead to the critical question, “Is there a better way?”

Evolution of values: We must realize the inherent worth of the other members of our human family. We all need to take steps to eliminate poverty and injustice. It is commendable to volunteer one’s time and resources for such causes, but it would be better still if we obviated the need for such reactions by adopting a lifeway that mitigates or eliminates them.
We must also recognize the value of nonhuman species and natural systems. If we choose not to honor these with innate worth, we must at least recognize that they are of enduring value to humans. Natural systems provide water to drink and the air that supports us and the crops we need for food, clothing, shelter, and energy. Disrupting these systems is short-sighted. Similarly, we have no idea what plants and animals may one day be of practical use to us. Preserving biodiversity is a tangible investment in our own future.
Recent research has again demonstrated that money does not buy happiness. Having enough to live comfortably, having friends, family, a community, and a purpose bring happiness.

Realization of common wealth: Many countries (and other political divisions, like states, parishes, provinces, prefectures, counties, cantons, cities, &c.) own useful resources, like forests, minerals, and waterways. These publicly held resources belong to the citizens of those various places, and their use should directly benefit the citizenry. For instance, if a corporation wants to cut timber in a state forest, rather than the process existing as a giveaway of public resources to the timber company, the company would have to compensate the citizens for the right to log. This money could be distributed to the citizens in a model similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, or could be held in trust and provided to citizens as money for healthcare expenses, college tuition, and other broadly useful endeavors.
With some level of organization, globally held resources, like the atmosphere, or Antarctica’s existing and future resources could provide benefit to some universal human fund. This would realize a democratic stream of wealth for everyone and recognize each person’s ownership of public goods.

Mass-localization and community development: We need to produce energy and goods more efficiently. Rather than mining coal in Ohio, shipping it to a power plant in Maryland, burning it to create heat to generate electricity, transmitting that electricity over miles of cable back in the same direction the coal traveled from, and using that electricity to heat a coil in a hot water heater, we need to focus on generating and managing energy in situ. Energy is used in mining and transporting the coal. Energy is wasted in converting the chemical energy in the coal into heat, into mechanical energy, into electrical energy, and back into heat. Instead we could generate both electricity and heat for hot water on our own roofs. Likewise, office buildings and shopping centers could be covered in photovoltaic cells and produce electricity for a profit. Why shouldn’t a sprawling shopping mall be covered in wind mills?
We must strive to save resources by growing more of our own food, by shopping in local businesses, and using commonly held resources, like libraries and parks.
We need to invest our time and interest in the institutions of community. Participating in local government, engaging in neighborhood and local school/college events, and actively joining a community of faith cultivate values and strengthen your community.

A sustainable lifeway may be a long way off, perhaps generations. Or maybe we can realize such a vision in our own lifetimes. Either way, each person has the potential and the power to begin moving in this direction.

Blog-o-mat: Continuing continuing service

To the reader,
I'm pleased and impressed by the responses I've read to previous questions. I'm glad to see such heart-felt and articulate comments. Since I'm still up to my eyeballs in journal articles and CRS reports, I'll throw out a few more questions on ethics and environment:

Do we have any responsibility for the well-being of future generations of humans? Is such a responsibility dependent upon whether or not we have children of our own? Do we have any responsibility for the well-being of non-human species? Does the aesthetic quality of nature have any tangible value? Does the spiritual or metaphysical quality of nature have such value? Who or what should get to determine what those values are?

Blog-o-mat: Continuing service

Another series of questions to the reader:

Does religion (or a particular religion, perhaps your own) mandate service to other people? How about people outside the faith? Does protecting or improving the natural environment honor such an ethic? Does knowingly harming the environment violate that ethic?

Isolated

One hundred-five years ago today, Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the element radium. Their Nobel Prize-winning research and that of many others would pave the way for all manner of applications of nuclear science, from weapons, to medicine, to energy.
As we grapple with the accelerating human demand for energy, we must do so with an open mind. Burning things long-buried carries a host of problems. So too do wind, solar, nuclear, biomass, and any other method of generating energy. Each has advantages and disadvantages that may suit it to one application, but make it unacceptable for another. For this reason, environmentalists and industrialists cannot afford to indulge in mindless dogmatism.
Conservation remains a curiously under-used strategy. The consumer can, through simple choices, choose to use less energy without detracting from his or her quality of life. Using compact fluorescent light bulbs, reducing the amount of meat consumed each week, and combining local trips are painless.
The mass-localization of power generation also holds great potential. In many parts of the world, natural conditions support residential electric power generation. In some places this means photovoltaic shingles on the roof, in others this means a few windmills in the back pasture. This puts an important source of capital in the hands of the property-owner, and obviates the need for many long distance power lines, in which large amounts of energy are wasted in transmission.
We must also recognize that there are demands for power that cannot presently be met with the combination of efficient use and mass-localization. Many industrial and transportation power users legitimately need very large amounts of power on an uninterrupted basis. Given increasing concerns over atmospheric carbon and climate, fossil fuels seem a poor solution.
Nuclear energy offers a strong alternative for many applications. Like fossil fuels, like solar power, like wind, like biomass, it is an imperfect solution. For every complex problem, there exists a huge spectrum of solutions, many entirely bad, few (if any) entirely good. The expansion of nuclear energy is, however, worth serious consideration.
Nuclear energy offers a number of compelling advantages. It does not directly produce carbon pollution. Estimates of usable nuclear material suggest that nuclear fuel could last for thousands, if not millions of years. Moreover, the distribution of usable fuels offers the promise of energy independence for many countries.
While efficient use and mass localization remain critically important, we must recognize that there is no magic bullet. Each need for energy is a discrete problem that may require a discrete solution. We must remain creative, open-minded, and we must keep talking.

I'm bringing stupid back

My regular readers know that I am not given to flogging the current administration. Partisan Politics will be riding the jackass and the elephant, alongside Pestilence and Famine, at the apocalypse. However, the EPA's recent statement on greenhouse gases borders on farce. The EPA press release accompanying their Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports reads in part:

"The Bush Administration's unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

The release glosses-over the fact that carbon emissions increased during the period in question. "It's a sad state of affairs when global warming emissions go up, yet the Bush administration tries to spin it as a victory," responded Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Watch.
This administration refused to put into practice the Kyoto Protocol, because it "would have wrecked our economy". Bush claimed that ratifying the agreement would cost America jobs. I must ask the question again: How many American jobs has purchasing foreign oil produced? In truth, the answer is many: Haliburton, Bechtel, and Kellogg, Brown, & Root have all boasted growth, fighting a war for oil. Has pouring money into war been good for the US economy?
Perhaps my reader believes humans are warming the climate, and perhaps the reader does not. Regardless of your feelings on this point or your personal politics, the Bush administration’s spin is simply insulting.

Happy one-hundred-and-three, creator of the truffula tree

(For those readers who have navigated to this page in search of the Lorax image, I also invite you to read and share your opinion at Blue Island Almanack.

One hundred-three years ago today, Theodor Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991), known and beloved by so many children as Dr. Seuss, was born. Many of his books strove to teach something important, while translating the confusing world of adults into something infinitely identifiable to children. For many, Horton the elephant and Yertle the turtle might as well be real childhood friends, and “Sam-I-am” is repeated like so much half-remembered scripture.
One of Dr. Seuss’ most important works was not the same commercial success as his other books, and has the dubious distinction of having been banned by a number of school systems. (This in my view is ordinarily reason enough to read a book; school systems don’t go to the trouble of banning a book that is just plain bad.) Though, this work remains an evergreen favorite of environmentalists, and is once again relevant to raging public debate.
The Lorax, published some 35 years ago, is a children’s book about industry and the environment, introducing little ones (and many parents) to such arcane concepts as externalities, the legal standing of nonhuman species, and reclamation. What’s perhaps most compelling about the book is that these ideas, the subject of research and discussion by economists, ecologists, and industrialists, are reduced to an ethical problem understandable to children.
The questions raised by this book are again at the forefront of international debate. Does it make sense to use non-renewable resources until they are exhausted? If common resources are owned by all, why do only a few benefit from their commercialization? And, why do so many pay for the damage done?
If we do not answer these questions and respond, then who will? Today and this weekend, I urge my readers to address these questions in how they live their lives. This doesn’t mean I’m asking you to go out and chain yourself to a redwood, or to start a movement. Instead, think about ways you can improve your life and your world by using resources responsibly. Buy some compact fluorescent light bulbs. Eat local produce. Try walking or taking public transportation instead of driving. Read to your kids from The Lorax. You can help to solve the resource conundrum with simple choices any day.

Lights... camera... Think globally, act locally

On Thursday, the DC Environmental Film Festival announced its 2007 line-up for screenings and discussions. This year, the guest list will include Canadian naturalist and honorary hipster, David Suzuki.
Among Suzuki's claims to fame are the bylines on more books than most people read in 2 years, and the perennially popular documentary series, The Nature of Things. He also inspired at least one pedantic blogger to take an interest in sciences other than physics.
Films will be screened at the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, American U., GWU, the National Geographic Society, and many of the major DC museums.
Notably among the films this year are An Inconvenient Truth and the world premier of the documentary Ribbon of Sand. The 10-day festival will be the US-premier for 9 other environmental films. Organizers are also showing a number of green films geared toward kids. A (sizeable) PDF of the schedule is available, but readers might find this one a little more user-friendly.
If you are local to the DC area, this event is always interesting. If, alas, you can't be here in person, many of the films are screened in other venues, or are available on DVD. Ask your local library or bohemian coffee-house about hosting a screening.

Priorities

The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report that raises concerns over US resources for observing and predicting weather and climate. NASA has suffered a loss of some half a billion dollars with respect to its programs that observe the Earth, while NOAA is suffering through cost and schedule overruns on some of its own critical Earth observation programs. These are critically important programs that require adequate funding.
In his State of the Union speech, the President called for Congress to “control spending in Washington”. Given the push to balance the budget without raising taxes, gutting the civilian government would be necessary, since there is apparently no effort to control spending in Baghdad.
It's too late to spend the cost of facilitating civil war on the kinds of science that forewarn of a Katrina or put the climate change debate to bed. Any more words spent on "could've, would've, and should've" are wasted energy.
The President paid lip-service to the development and use of biofuels. The public should applaud him for his about-face on this topic. The implementation of biodiesel, instead of a plan to supplant fossil fuels by funding research into a horizon technology* like fuel cells, is a sound decision. However, the ponderous “diversification” of energy sources to yield a 20% reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years, as the President suggests, is inadequate. Government is not the solution. Like so many environmental problems, the answer lies with entrepreneurs.
Given the enormity of the US agricultural sector, why is it that biodiesel isn't available from every filling station in the country? New businesses require demand. As long as we accept only what we are offered, businesses have little impetus to change.
Clearly, the government’s values and long-term plans are flawed. We have collectively chosen to spend money fighting a war for oil, rather than investing in energy independence and in our environment. Demand more and be part of the solution.

*It is not the author's intent to disparage fuel cell technology, nor to question its technical feasibility. It is characterized here as a horizon technology because of the difficulty in commercializing it.