A Musing Environment

Johan’s second suggestion as to why some oppose nuclear power discusses a trait many here in the US pride ourselves on: anti-authoritarianism (read his entire comment). In an interest group where I ask people where they get information, what information they see as reliable, one person listed alternative sources, as if alternative were a badge of correctness.

We live in a society where many on the right attack scientists as immoral because they believe in evolution. Many from both the right and the left attack scientists because the body of scientists (though exceptions can be found and are frequently cited) have chosen the “wrong problem”, or chosen the “wrong solution”. We have created a society that will not find solutions to climate change and other pressing problems, because it is scientists who alert us to the problems, it is scientists who alert us to some of the solutions.

We absolutely must question what we hear, until we understand what is true and what is not, what is important and what is not. Questions are needed for us to clarify our understanding, for others to clarify their explanations. The value of skepticism is to enhance understanding.

The New York Times is running a series on Intelligent Design. “For the institute’s president, Bruce K. Chapman… intelligent design appealed to his contrarian, futuristic sensibilities… More student of politics than science geek, Mr. Chapman embraced the evolution controversy as the institute’s signature issue precisely because of its unpopularity in the establishment.” Individualism at its worst.

An aside

Promoters of Intelligent Design, the most popular version of creationism today, agree that the universe is 13.6 billion years old. According to the ID people, God devoted time and consideration to improving? advancing? lower species, as well as leading most to extinction, many hundreds of millions of years before He brought forth man. According to ID, God devoted considerably more time to several non-human species than He has spent with us. It’s surprising that this is compatible with creationism.

I’m interested in seeing good analysis, please send recommendations.

Remember, the goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 70% worldwide in the next 20 – 25 years, to reduce by more than 90% each in the US. This will cut carbon emissions to the amount the oceans can absorb, and keep atmospheric carbon levels below 400 parts per million. Afterwards, we need to cut carbon emissions further in order to protect the oceans.

Some costs will be negative, that is, more efficient air conditioners and light bulbs cost more initially, but soon more than make up for it in energy savings. Some pundits make this appear the only way to go, but at some point, it costs a lot of money to save a very little money.

All analysis shows that there is absolutely no way to address energy costs or carbon emissions without major improvements in efficiency; progress will require both research money and legislation. When I last looked, the difference in price between the most expensive and the cheapest model of refrigerators was made up in a year or so of use, so why is the cheapest model even manufactured?

Additional energy can be saved by simple behavior changes, such as turning off lights and air conditioner in unused rooms. In one interest group, someone said this isn’t rocket science, but personal choices often follow paths that don’t help the person making them. So we may need techniques that go beyond clear rational explanations to see changed behavior.

Other changes require some thinking just because the ideas may be new: paying upfront for improved building or industrial construction, such as insulation, light colored roofs where air conditioning costs are high, better layout. Better construction usually costs immediately and saves later, often, not much later. Unfortunately, the costs of the building are too frequently handled as a separate consideration, and buildings that will stand for decades or more than a century are not constructed with an adequate consideration of the costs of maintenance and operation.

As energy is saved by these methods, the most expensive methods of reducing carbon emissions can be discarded or delayed, and the average price of energy will be substantially lower. We save by buying less energy, we also save because the price is lower. (To lower gasoline prices: buy half as much gasoline in the US through a combination of improved mileage and fewer miles, and gasoline prices will drop.)

The costs of limiting atmospheric carbon levels to 400 ppm will be high, the costs to failing to address our behavior will likely be much higher, and could be horrendous: the costs to us, to future generations, to peoples who haven’t contributed to the problems and who aren’t able to pay for the solutions.

After we make the simple changes, the cost of addressing climate change will depend on other behavioral decisions. The more we find and use methods of reducing energy use, the cheaper it will be for us to accomplish this goal.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Thanks to Johan, who responded to requests for reasons why people oppose nuclear power. I will be addressing his second point in a future post.

I would appreciate any insights as to why people oppose nuclear power.

Some say they are concerned about nuclear waste.

Since Three Mile Island, some two million Americans have died from fossil fuel waste, just the particulates. Many more have suffered from heart, and respiratory diseases, and cancer. Fossil fuel waste has other problems, and ozone in particular will become increasingly a problem as temperatures rise, and more of it is created.

Ozone causes breathing problems for people with asthma. It causes pulmonary edema and pulmonary fibrosis. Ozone is responsible for 10% to 20% of respiratory emergency summer hospital admissions in the Northeast. Even low levels of ozone can reduce lung function in healthy adults 15% to 20%, and can weaken plants. It rarely kills directly, but rather weakens both animals and plants so that another illness/pest/stress causes death. Ozone costs the U.S. 1 to 2 billion dollars annually in crop losses. The effect on forests and other ecosystems is commensurate; ozone is particularly harmful to long-lived species (trees).

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) contribute to the formation of ozone. NOx cause cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease, but can harm other parts of the body as well. They, along with sulfur dioxide, are a major cause of acid rain (15% to 25%). NOx harm the soil, with great cost to both agriculture and forests.

Sulfur oxides (SOx) are the major cause of acid rain. Distilled water has a pH of 7 (neither acid nor base). Normal rain is somewhat acidic with a pH of 5.6 or higher, between milk and tomato juice. The average rain on the East Coast has a pH of 4.5, and can be as acid as vinegar or lemon juice. Acid rain kills fish in the lakes (fish don’t reproduce if the pH is below 5.4). Acid rain appears to be responsible for the 20% to 30% decrease in growth rate for several species of trees on the East Coast. In Germany, where average rain pH is 3.4, about 70% of trees are damaged. Significant damage to metal and stone is blamed on acid rain, which harms cars, houses, monuments, and Mayan artifacts.

Other problems with fossil fuels include health problems from carbon monoxide from transportation fuels, and heavy metal poisoning of people and the environment.

A typical coal plant produces 100 times the radioactivity of a nuclear power plant, but that’s too far down the list of coal’s sins for anyone to worry about.

Then there’s the carbon. Climate change on our current trajectory is expected to cause problems everywhere on Earth, and possibly accelerated, runaway, or abrupt climate change.

So people who oppose nuclear power did not get there from comparing the relative dangers of nuclear waste and fossil fuel waste.

Some will say that we can get there by improvements in efficiency and the use of solar and wind. I have not seen any analysis that indicates that we can reduce carbon emissions substantially, let alone 70% worldwide in the next few decades, even with nuclear power, without widespread population decreases in the first world or/and behavioral change on a large scale.

Some oppose nuclear power because they see a connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons/proliferation. This is the argument as I’ve heard it: if the US models giving up nuclear power, and the rest of the world gives up nuclear power, then when a country engages in ambiguous behavior, we would all know they were trying to get nuclear weapons, presumably because no one would try to sneak nuclear power by the world, and then we could possibly do something, not sure what that is.

There are the traditional answers that pretty much all of the countries with nuclear weapons acquired them previous to or/and independent of nuclear power. That the only reason that we can inspect Iran and other signatories to the non-proliferation treaty is that we’re trading nuclear power technology for that right. That other countries are not going to give up nuclear power because we do, and that indeed, many countries are increasing their use of nuclear power.

BTW, I am completely comfortable, as is much of the world, in assuming that all ambiguous behavior implies an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons.

A F/friend answers that a better symbolic step from the US, one more likely to appeal to countries worried about their security, would be to rapidly reduce our nuclear arsenal (ditto for Russia and even some of the minor nuclear arsenals such as Britain, etc), and open the remaining weapons to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections. Also good is to cut back on gratuitous threats to countries like Iran, so they don’t feel a security need to have nuclear weapons.

She is unclear why Iran and North Korea would cease making nuclear weapons because the US and other countries forego nuclear power. (Lots of us don’t get this point.)

Healthy disagreement allows us to test our understanding. It is vital to academic advancement. Many of the disagreements the public has with scientists (with scientific bodies, not with such practices as individual scientists testing medicines and failing to report bad results) do not appear to be attempts to test our understanding.

These disagreements appear to some extent to be a way of establishing identity. Group identity is important; if nothing else, it gives us a practical method of getting through overly long ballots. But it can have down sides. Jared Diamond emphasizes the effect of group identity on decision-making in his magnificent book, Collapse. Not only did group identity in Greenland and Australia facilitate decision-making, it led to ultimately poor decision-making, because “people like us do such-and-such” is not always a good reason.

Currently many on the right attack scientists as immoral because they believe in evolution. Many on the left attack scientists because they (the scientific bodies, not individual scientists) have chosen “the wrong” problems or “the wrong” solutions. We are attacking the people warning us of incredible, and possibly unsolvable, problems, we are attacking the only group that can provide us with the technical solutions. We as a society are not going to be able to find our way to solutions under these conditions.

Recommended references on nuclear power:

David Bodanksy’s the 2nd Edition of Nuclear Energy: Principles, Practices, and Prospects

Nuclear waste: National Academies Press, written by the National Research Council Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel: The Continuing Societal and Technical Challenges (2001).

And because I suspect that much of the opposition to nuclear power comes from a lack of awareness that people who are pro-nuclear power tend to be anti-nuclear weapons, some of the groups addressing proliferation issues:

Arms Control Association

Program on Science and Global Security They also publish a journal: Science & Security

Center for International Security and Cooperation

Institute for Science and International Security

Managing the Atom program (Harvard)

There has been considerable discussion in recent months on peak oil. Nine of us visiting Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s office to discuss climate change learned that she had been hearing about oil.

Much of the recent publicity comes from Richard Heinberg, author and founder of Post Carbon Institute, local groups that plan to address the coming peak (2007!) with recycled solutions from Y2k. There are a tiny number of geologists who also predict early oil peaks; more commonly, predictions range from next decade to the 2030s, some into the 2040s. The underlying principle is that when oil from a field is 50-60% gone (variations depend on characteristics of the oil field), both the cost and difficulty of extracting oil increase. (This will have an impact on climate change — currently 0.1 gallon oil required to deliver a gallon of oil to you, and 20% more carbon emissions are produced. This will increase.) Yet the scientific community is much less interested in this problem than in climate change. Why?

The short answer is that the urgency and problems from climate change are much greater than the problems from early oil peaks, in part because fossil fuel based alternatives to oil exist.

Estimates on when oil production will peak worldwide are the matter of much debate, and estimates range from 2007 to four decades from now. Uncertainties include A) the amount of Middle Eastern oil — the official energy groups believe that OPEC countries overstate their reserves in order to be allowed to sell more oil, B) the state of oil wells — how much damage are some countries doing to their infrastructure? C) much uncertainty about how much oil there is any particular well — some well reserves (estimates of easily extractable oil at current prices) remain the same even as oil is extracted over a period of decades.

Cheap fossil based alternatives exist. Both natural gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids (synfuels) promise decades of fuels at comparable or slightly increased prices to the consumer. While the costs of manufacture are considerably more than the costs of drilling Middle East oil (all estimates are below $10/barrel), the costs are less than the current price of oil.

Scientists are much more concerned that we will continue to burn oil as if it will never run out, meaning that A) we will emit an immorally high amount of carbon from oil, B) become invested in gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids infrastructure and be unwilling to give up this investment to switch to biofuels and hydrogen, and C) emit even more carbon per gallon with these alternatives.

See previous post for why 400 ppm has been picked as a cap for atmospheric carbon levels. We are on track to reach that level in 2015.

Climatologists and people in energy policy and people in all the -ologies dealing with plants and animals and people that will suffer from climate change are considerably more concerned about dramatic, rapid decreases in greenhouse gas emissions, than the fact that many decades from now, we will run out of fairly cheap fossil fuels at the pump.

Someone I know had suggestions for the current strong interest in peak oil (note that when he talks about big problems occurring 50 – 100 years from now, they may be inevitable a decade from now):

“I think there are some pretty straightforward reasons for this. One is the time frame… The ability to worry 50 or 100 years out is limited to small fraction of the privileged world who, to be frank, don’t have anything more pressing to worry about. Not that we shouldn’t be worrying about it, but that most people have bigger problems (or at least feel that they do).

“Another big one is the nature of human experience. We know what it is like for things to run out, or to not have enough of something. Those of us who grew up in more modest circumstances (especially at the international level, but even here in the US) know what it is like to worry about not having enough. It seems that scarcity is a fundamental human experience, certainly not on the same level as something like love or anger, but pretty close. Thus, when you say “oil is going to run out” you have an instant reaction that is guttural and real. It pans out, for most people, to “I won’t be able to feed my kids.” Can’t get more real than that.

On the other hand, climate change is pretty darn abstract, of a huge scale, and based on science that is not always intuitive… there is not a potent metaphor that captures what is going on, at least not as potent as an empty pantry or an overdrawn bank account. Whether or not one is a bigger threat than the other is immaterial: people don’t understand it like they do scarcity, so there is, in essence, “no story.””

It may be human nature to pay attention to upcoming scarcities, but it more important to pay attention to the high level of carbon emissions in the US and worldwide. By 2015, the Earth is expected to reach an atmospheric carbon level of 400 ppm. To stabilize atmospheric carbon levels, at whatever level they are stabilized, and hopefully it’s 400 ppm or less, we need to reduce carbon emissions worldwide by 70%, to the amount that the oceans are currently able to absorb. If everyone in the world is allowed to emit an equal amount of carbon (about 0.3 tonnes with today’s population), this means that we in the US will need to reduce carbon emissions by more than 90% per person. To protect the oceans, we need to slash carbon emissions even further.

Daniel Yergin wrote in the Washington Post, “There will be a large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years. Between 2004 and 2010, capacity to produce oil (not actual production) could grow by 16 million barrels a day — from 85 million barrels per day to 101 million barrels a day — a 20 percent increase.” and “The oil industry is governed by a “law of long lead times.” Much of the new capacity that will become available between now and 2010 is under development. Many of the projects that embody this new capacity were approved in the 2001-03 period, based on price expectations much lower than current prices.”

Why the worry about Heniberg’s message? Many will hear from Heinberg that we have to cut back on oil, along with coal. Others will react when 2008 comes and go without a dramatic increase in the price of oil that those scientists — and Heinberg is not a scientist — and their disaster predictions, they got it wrong again, I can’t trust them. Those who get the first message simply have reinforced climate change concern, but the second group could slow down awareness of environmental problems even further.

Re biofuels and hydrogen, neither is carbon free. The last I read, biofuels produce something like 1/4 the carbon emissions of gasoline, and pollute as badly as gasoline — but don’t quote me on the carbon emissions numbers. High mileage cars are seen by people in energy policy as the best alternative in the short run, plus switching away from driving and flying. The hybrid label no longer assures high mileage, so check the mileage.

We are 6.5 billion people emitting somewhat over 7.1 billion tonnes carbon, about 1.1 tonne per person. In the US, we emit about 5 3/4 tonnes per person.

The oceans are currently absorbing about 2 billion tonnes of carbon a year; the amount oceans can absorb will go down (slowly).

At the point that we want no more carbon to accumulate in the atmosphere, say 400 ppm, we must reduce carbon emissions to 2 billion tonnes total. With today’s population, that is 0.3 tonnes per person. If the population increases (duh), per capita emissions would need to be less. If our goal is 400 ppm, which we are on track to reach in about 10 years, then we need to limit the total amount of carbon above the 2 tonnes/year to about 50 billion tonnes. We can do that in ten years, or spread it out over a longer period of time. If we want to limit atmospheric carbon at a higher level, we will obviously have longer to achieve this goal. All plans that say we have decades to gradually adopt technology (and behavior change) assume that we will reach much higher levels of carbon. But in order to plateau, we must limit carbon (and other greenhouse gas) emissions to 2 billion tonnes carbon equivalent. (Of course, if we trigger accelerated climate change, eg, if the tundra begins to release its store of carbon which could dwarf our contribution, this analysis does not apply.)

Afterwards. carbon emissions would need to be slashed further to protect the oceans, because acidification is harming the oceans and will cause even greater harm. We are reducing the amount of food and protection (eg from tsunamis) that oceans can provide. See Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Royal Academy report.

A lot can be done with technology. A rapid shift to automobiles that get double today’s mileage, switching most light bulbs to compact fluorescent, increasing efficiency of air conditioners, massive subsidies of and use of solar power, possibly rapid addition of wind power (depending on what further studies show about wind power and climate change), tripling nuclear power or more, all this will help. In addition, the US and other rich countries can subsidize poorer countries in bypassing fossil fuels and going straight to solar, etc. If we pay the price of keeping other people’s emissions below their share, then that carbon is available to us.

Even with all of these technology changes, I suspect that behavioral changes will be needed above and beyond good insulation, Energy Star purchases, and buying very high mileage cars.

Someone wrote me, “when I read, ” the goal among scientists is…” I start counting my spoons. It sounds so priestly, so authoritative. “Scientists believe…” Which scientists, and why do they believe it?”

When I say scientists, I refer to consensus reports, eg, IPCC, or national academy reports, or what pretty much everyone says in every article on the subject in Science. Individuals may believe otherwise, but there is a pretty well developed system for the minority to get their ideas out and heard or rejected.

In order to know why scientists believe it, you may wish to look at IPCC reports.

The 400 ppm goal for atmospheric carbon comes from Meeting the Climate Challenge (google it and you’ll be able to get the pdf).

From a letter two of us wrote to Ministry and Oversight in Berkeley Friends Meeting, asking them to look at how Friends can begin to address environmental change:

The best understanding of the overwhelming number of those studying climatology and related subjects is that global warming is well underway because of human activity. We are creating too great a risk of abrupt changes in precipitation and temperature that will affect human life adversely. According to a report from the international climate change taskforce, exceeding a global average increase of more than 2 degrees Centigrade (2 C) will increase “the risks to human societies and ecosystems …significantly. It is likely, for example, that average temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. (Such an) increase …could also imperil a very high proportion of the world’s coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest…The risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase,” threatening, for example, “the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea levels more than ten meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet’s forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon.” (Meeting the Climate Challenge: Recommendations of the International Climate Change Taskforce)

Basically, at 2 C there is too great a chance of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change, and at 400 ppm, we have a 20% chance of passing 2 C. If my house were facing these odds of burning down, I’d probably do something. And my house burning down only affects my current possessions, not my access to food and water in the future.

We have lots of reasons to see scientists’ messages to us as being unrealistic. As someone who could benefit from a little weight loss, I can meet every reason you give, and go you one better. Alternatively, we can listen, and we can find ways to respond, both minor and major, both individually and collectively.

What do we tell all of the remaining generations of mankind — that scientists were unrealistic in their goals of reducing carbon so rapidly and sharply?

I just took the train from California to DC. There were others taking the train from coast to coast, though not so many of us. Of course, more people boarded in small towns, or where airplanes cost a lot.

I asked fellow passengers why they travel by train, except those obviously taking the kids on a visit of the US. The most common response was worry about airplanes. Second was a desire for a vacation, to relax into a vacation rather than going from a hectic life to a hectic vacation with a hectic airplane flight in between. Some mentioned costs, last minute trips by plane can be costly.

I wanted to see how I would do with a few days of travel, because I noted that so many around me seem to be tied to cell phones and busy schedules. I was busy enough for long enough before leaving that sitting down in the train and looking at the view was a joy. Normally I like to walk several miles a day, and just sitting isn’t restful. (There now are several smoke stops, where people frantically pile out of the train to puff away. I could walk short distances during these stops. Are heavy smokers forced to drive in today’s culture?)

Several people have told me recently that they prefer trains and buses because one can actually meet real people, on planes we don’t talk to one another.

One of the difficulties we face in giving up our current way of living, which is very carbon intensive, is the resentment of time getting there and time returning home. Yet I remember reading somewhere that if we think of dishes as a task to finish before we get to our real life, we miss the joy of doing the dishes.

I don’t know what I learned about my own ability to schedule more time for travel, more time for contemplation and meeting strangers. Before this trip, I mostly took Greyhound for trips of less than 24 hours, and flew for longer trips. Perhaps I can survive the longer time untethered from either my home or my “destination”. Perhaps living more slowly can be part of my destination.

Sundays before Quaker Meeting for Worship I read from Kathleen Norris’ Amazing Grace. Today’s homily was on good and evil.

It begins with the example of people who know they are good: my own favorite example comes from a statistic I saw somewhere, that more Americans (80%) believe in heaven than any other peoples, and 98% of the believers are headed that way.

It can be dangerous to believe one is good (and sometimes inaccurate, and often a not very interesting message for the listener). The danger is a willingness to vilify others. It comes as well in a lesser ability to listen. The frequent averral today that evolution didn’t happen sounds this way to me; skeptics may sound devout to themselves, but making belief in evolution into a moral issue seems to some of us like going to war against people who crack the wrong end of the egg – a poor justification for war.

It is difficult for me to listen to ideology, even where I basically agree, to hear the messages that may be there for me. It is also hard for me to look at that side of my personality. Oh I can see it in the younger more confused self, but not in my older self. The truth is that I have worked hard to dislodge ideology from my thinking and my heart, but in truth, it is still here.

Norris cites the Roman poet Terence: “I am human; I do not think of any human thing as foreign to me.”

After 9/11, we heard from the best of us. Scholars provided intellectual background and gave us context, and others shared messages both in writing and aloud that vocalized our horror, yet made us psychologically safer. Next to my library branch, a group provided a place for us to stand together nightly with our candles, and string from which to hang messages of loss and grief.

As I grappled with the horror, some of what we heard made me feel less safe, more anxious: “Don’t blame me, I voted Green” and “heathen Moslems” Thich Nhat Hanh helped me with an old poem:

Please Call Me by My True Names

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow–
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope,
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
My heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

This poem helped me especially to understand the pain I felt when others reacted out of their own pain, to understand that pain, including the desire to not be the kind of person who could do this, the kind of person who creates a world where such as this might happen.

Norris discusses as well religion’s ability to restore some sick people to health. I hear a clash between those who wrestle with our demons via religion and those who wrestle in the offices of psychologists. I’ve heard some religious people who feel that psychology is too me-oriented, not realizing that some go to psychologists to do unto others a little better. I’ve heard people pray for an A or a new sweater. I’ve read people who pray to God to be better spouses, surely a topic for the psychologist’s couch, but their prayers and work are answered. I’ve heard people pray not to be happy, but to be happy with who they are. We all benefit from methods that speak in the language of our childhood, or that avoid the language of our childhood. But the language matters less to me than the quality of the questions asked, and the quality of the answers received.

There is a major disconnect between the attitudes of scientists on climate change (reduce carbon emissions everywhere, reduce US per capita yearly emissions from 5.7 metric tonnes carbon to a quarter tonne — in the next 15 – 40 years would be good, a few decades ago would have been better) and the attitudes of much of the US public.

Many lay people are very concerned about environmental problems like climate change; they work at different levels of activism and witness. Others have wide-ranging beliefs that overlap less well with what those who study the environment have found: climate change is a fabrication of liberal scientists; it’s an issue that the government or industry should address (but not the individual) or that individuals should address but not government; it’s readily solvable, all we need to do is A and B and a little C; it’s important, but not really crucial like …

Scientists worry about keeping atmospheric carbon levels low enough to prevent catastrophes, but the public fights psychologically comfortable battles over judges and social security.

According to the International Climate Change Taskforce in Meeting the Climate Challenge, “Beyond the 2°C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly. It is likely, for example, that average temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. Exceeding a global average increase of more than 2°C could also imperil a very high proportion of the world’s coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest.

“Above the 2°C level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea levels more than ten meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet’s forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon.”

For most Americans, a drought is an increase in food prices. For much of the world, a drought means choosing which child dies, or having no choice over how many children die.

This post addresses a few reasons why we who formed our opinions at an early age, and scientists, who are continually challenged to update their understanding, have conflicting pictures of the universe.

We grew up with different images of pollution. For some, pollution is the pipe from industry into a pond. For others, particularly younger people, pollution is the SUV filling up. Scientists’ understanding is more aligned with the picture of the SUV as polluter.

We have different images of how to solve problems: joining the government, protesting the government. Cooperating internationally or going it alone, or through non-governmental organizations. Centralized or decentralized decision-making. Scientists’ understanding of the need to implement policy changes coincides better with the understanding of older people, particularly those whose world view was shaped in part by World War 2 and the aftermath, the United Nations. Small groups of people (including cities, smaller utilities, etc) cannot attain the expertise needed to understand and stay current with technologically challenging field. This is not paternalism, but rather a realistic assessment of how much time and interest people have in studying the details of wind vs nuclear vs natural gas power. After all, one of the big objections to privatizing social security is that most of us don’t want to put in the time.

We have different histories. Older people remember Louis Strauss, not a scientist though head of the Atomic Energy Commission, making a statement that no one in the field agreed with, that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter (Strauss was one of very few people ever rejected for a cabinet position, apparently it wasn’t only physicists who disagreed with him). Older people may remember arrests for failing to participate in silly bomb shelter exercises. My images are of scientists unsuccessfully trying to get the feds to address climate change. Of the feds imposing some smart growth solutions on recalcitrant California cities and counties, but not enough (California has a weak central government that is not protecting our water.) In other words, a more mixed picture of when the federal government is more reluctant or more enthusiastic to embrace good ideas.

Some know that physicists invented the bomb without knowing that after WW2, physicists became passionate about disarmament and other public concerns. Some know that chemists invented DDT without knowing that as a result, they shifted their thinking about public responsibility. The genome project is typical in that 1% of the funding is dedicated to considering the ethics, a new style of ethics consideration.

We have different images of government recommendations, and indeed, different presidencies produce reports of varying qualities. Most people in energy policy approved the recommendations in the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), 1997, report. If people in the field hadn’t like it, they would have criticized it heavily in scientific and policy publications. This government publication differs from the Cheney energy task force. While there are likely some areas of overlap, both Cheney’s methods and results were widely criticized in scientific and policy publications. Not all, not necessarily the same ones that environmentalists attacked, but generally, much of the Cheney results do not reflect the current thinking of people in science and energy policy. In the absence of traditional governmental procedures, asking PCAST for their energy recommendations, a non-governmental group, the National Commission on Energy Policy, has formed to fill this role.

Many people feel renewables are natural and natural is good. Natural doesn’t pollute, etc. This A) is impossible, and B) helps sets up in some people’s mind a false security about solutions. Some renewables are impractical or/and heavily polluting. Others are a critical energy source for today and the future. The word “renewable” is not alone sufficient to tell us which. Renewables such as solar and wind do a little bit of good, and a little bit of harm, and we need to compare these quantities.

My next post will look at some of other emotional and spiritual factors that block people from listening to what scientists are saying.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Thanks to the people who wrote in about their experience of Peter Trier. His memorial was last Sunday, and many people, especially in the disabled community, talked of Peter’s importance in their lives.

I spent quite a bit of time composing a “look at the issues rationally” blog on the difference between how experts and non-experts look at risk (experts consider higher expected death rate to be higher risk, while non-experts use other forms of reasoning to deem nuclear power as high risk. I asked several anti-nuclear power folks, and sure enough, they assume there is a low death rate yearly). See Paul Slovic’s Perception of Risk.

But then I reacted power out of my childhood worldview to several people’s reasons for opposing nuclear.

I heard worries about nuclear waste, and no trust in scientists to supply correct information, but no idea where information should come from. These people have not read the scientists they don’t trust. No numbers are offered to justify the sense that nuclear power is dangerous, either from nuclear waste or nuclear accidents or etc. That it should not be a dichotomy, nuclear vs coal.

My lower class origins raised their ugly roots. Visions of old British laws come into my head: paying starvation wages or going through 10% of your workforce yearly because of working conditions? No problem. But hang the pickpockets.

Since Three Mile Island, perhaps a million Americans have died from coal power, mostly from cancer and heart disease from particulates, but this number includes between 50,000 and 100,000 coal miners. This does not include health and environmental effects (all very serious) of ozone, mercury and other heavy metals, or the carbon. Coal causes acid rain, unhealthy for plants and animals, not to mention agriculture.

In approximately a decade, we will reach a level of atmospheric carbon somewhat arbitrarily called dangerous– at that point, it is thought, there is a 20% chance of triggering abrupt climate change (am not sure about the 20%, it’s how I read the explanation in Meeting the Challenge). Our per capita carbon emissions from coal are approximately the same as the total per capita carbon emissions of countries such as Portugal and France. US per capita carbon emissions are almost 6 tonnes of carbon; without nuclear power, this would go up perhaps another 3/4 tonne. To stabilize atmospheric carbon levels at a low level, we need to reduce per capita emissions below a quarter tonne or so rapidly, and then zero it out from there.

Climate change, even without abrupt climate change, is affecting patterns of rainfall and drought. In some areas of the world, a drought means choosing which child dies. It may mean having no control over the number of children who die.

Yes, the thinking of the people in energy policy is dichotomous: pretty much everything vs coal. Should coal ever be eliminated as a fuel, then the thinking will be pretty much everything vs natural gas (if there is any natural gas left).

For the first year or two or three of my interest in the environment, effects on people were my major focus, along with the increased chances of war because of environmental changes. I only became interested in the environment itself later.

Coal kills. It kills tens of thousands annually in the US, it kills hundreds of thousands annually all over the world. And more people will die from the carbon.

As someone who grew up lower class, I am acutely aware of how rarely members of the middle and upper class mention coal miner deaths, and the deaths due to pollution that disproportionately harm the lower class. A million Americans have died from coal power since TMI.

I will return in future posts to dispassionate explanations of the issues. I will hide my lower class origins.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Mary Ann raises two interesting points in her comments on Peak Oil. One is the situation described in the first chapter of Jared Diamond’s Collapse, that we all see different sides of the elephant, and so agreement is difficult. A wider perspective can bring us a more complete solution, or it can just lead to status quo or compromise as we cant agree how to move forward.

It is necessary to drive up the cost of using fossil fuels in order to discourage its use. The hoped-for consequence is that individuals will use less, businesses will use less, and businesses and business practices that depend on fossil fuels will be replaced by other businesses and business practices. Someone sent me a cartoon once: when a door closes, another opens, but the hallway is a bitch.

Mary Ann’s second point is on the difficulty of weighing choices, and on the importance of buying local over buying organic. An article on the subject discusses a report I haven’t read in the journal Food Policy: organic food is not better for the environment if you transport it more than 12 miles. Much more important is buying local food. The journal suggests that buying organic is approximately as important as whether you drive to the store; perhaps in Britain, more walk or take the bus to the store than do here in the US. There are other issues about organic food, such as how large meat production must be to totally grow large quantitites of organic food, but that distracts from the point of the article.

We need to find ways to make it through that hallway together.

The Climate Change Commitment

The latest Science magazine has two articles on the inertia in both temperature increases and sea level increase. Just as noon and June 20 are not the warmest part of the day/year, just as water set in the sun takes a while to warm and expand as it warms, the temperature and sea level will continue to rise from carbon already added. This has been known since the beginning of the discussion. This week however, Wigley from the National Center for Atmospheric Research made a new prediction as to how much warming commitment and sea level rise commitment has been made. These estimates, assuming no further changes in our atmosphere after 2000, represent the extreme lower end of predictions on climate change.

As the Earth warms, it radiates more infrared. It will take some time before this balances out, and then the Earth will be 0.7 C warmer than today (defined as 2000), for a total increase of 1.5 C from pre-industrial times. This assumes the continued cooling effect of pollutants, atmospheric aerosols (small suspended solid or liquid particles). By 2100, the increase would be a little less. The inertia in the warming ocean is greater: approximately 10 cm (4 inch) increase per century for several centuries. Additionally, there will be sea level increase of some 40 cm due to the melting of ice on land, not counting Greenland or Antarctica. All numbers include great uncertainties.

Meehl, et al, also from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also address in a different model How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise? At any given point in time, even if concentrations are stabilized, there is a commitment to future climate changes that will be greater than those we have already observed.

Many (most? all?) climatologists would like to see atmospheric carbon levels fall below current levels. This could happen in the near term if the amount of carbon we added yearly fell below the amount the ocean absorbs (due to increases in atmospheric carbon, the ocean absorbs a greater amount of carbon than in pre-industrial times) and increased land productivity. The ocean is a temporary repository of carbon, but may last long enough to get us through this hallway (can anyone tell me more?) Ocean life will continue to suffer more, because carbon dioxide is an acid.

I rarely hear people talk about the importance of addressing climate change. Yes, we hear it all the time, along with exhortations for this or that. For most people, yes the environment is important, yes I’m glad others are working on it, it’s just not my focus. You think maybe there are already too many people addressing this?

A good F/friend, Peter Trier, died unexpectedly last week.

Peter was a great mind and a great heart in a not particularly good body. He had some use of his hands and arms when I met him more than 22 years ago, but he had long since lost that.

Peter’s mother fought to get Peter out of schools for what we now call special ed students. Once he entered the regular school, he was kicked out of the classroom and into the library to do independent research. Eventually he earned a PhD in philosophy from UC, Berkeley, and taught philosophy at Fresno State.

From Peter I learned about nonviolence, as a way of life, the strength needed to live that way, the respect for others. He taught nonviolence, and he lived it. From Peter I learned much of what I know about Friends’ ways.

Peter was the Friend I went to when I first began reading about energy issues. Reading all those graphs, reading Friends’ testimonies (how our lives testify to our beliefs). We talked and talked and worked it out over a period of time: what is true, what is important, and what is ours as individuals and Friends to work on.

Peter left Friends feeling hurt. He tried to communicate to us that we ignore the needs of the disabled. Few listened. I never heard those who disagree explain why, though it is our way in seeking unity to move beyond agreement and disagreement to explain the whys and hows.

After Peter left Friends, we still saw each other almost weekly; he continued to teach me Friends’ ways.

Peter, I will miss you.

I’ve seen several articles debating when oil production will peak. For those of you who have missed them, oil prices rise due to scarcity (real or not) or increased production costs, and the latter become important sometime around when oil production peaks. Also, the time for us to go through the second half of the world’s oil will be considerably less than the history of oil use to date, and our transportation infrastructure in particular is heavily oil-based.

Among climate change scientists, there seems to be less worry about running out of oil, and considerably more worry about its use. Recent readings have given me some understanding.

David Greene, et al, from (pdf file) Running Out of and into Oil: Analyzing Global Oil Depletion and Transition Through 2050

“It is possible that the world could go partway down the path of developing unconventional oil resources and later reverse direction. But such a strategy would strand huge investments in the more capital-intensive production and refining of unconventional oil. If the transition to unconventional oil is gradual, there might be time to introduce low-carbon alternatives and a reversal might not be too costly. But if the transition to unconventional oil is sudden and massive, the world’s economies might quickly become locked into a high carbon future. Avoiding or even slowing the transition to unconventional fossil resources might improve the world’s chances of successfully dealing with global climate change.”

The unconventional oil sources referred to are coal to liquids (synfuel), for example, or natural gas to liquids (isn’t all natural gas needed for electricity and heating?) Both increase carbon emissions, in part because of the energy needed to convert them to liquid. Both are expensive because they require so much energy for the process.

Oil prices will rise if we hit a peak, but Europeans and others are already living with much higher gasoline prices.

Detour: A vote on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is expected soon. My understanding is that oil companies are not particularly interested in drilling there without some kind of guarantee (a large guarantee, but will that dissuade Congress?), as there is relatively little oil, and it’s relatively far from where it would be used. I’m not sure why anyone would vote for opening up the site to oil drilling, both for practical reasons and because it’s nice to imagine those few places in the world not crowded by us. What I hear is, “got you, you crummy environmentalists”, but perhaps our legislators have other reasons, poorly articulated to date. Certainly these reasons have little to do with oil security, even for the rare person who also votes to increase car mileage standards. That said, the overwhelming concern to the caribou is not the drilling, but the use of oil. Climate change alters the environment at high altitudes faster, and refuge status will not protect ANWR.

Return: From my reading, it is apparent that the rest of the world, as non-OPEC is generally referred to, is running out of oil much faster than is OPEC. Fareed Zakaria in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad points out that governments that finance themselves without taxes are not as accountable to citizens. Hence there is worldwide discomfort at financing these governments. But the discomfort is not great enough here in the United States to taxing oil in order to encourage us to change our behavior.

We would be much better off raising taxes on oil use today. Even a moderate tax, perhaps as little as $1/gallon, will begin to shift behavior, to help stretch out our current oil supply and allow the transitions away from fossil fuels, so that we don’t finance OPEC governments so heavily.

Oh, I’ve heard many, particularly poor people, say, but we can’t afford it. Perhaps more earned income credit, or some other mechanism, could help the poor in this transition, and let people choose whether to spend the extra money on a car or the bus. It isn’t right to ignore those who will be hurt in a transition. But we are wrong if we do not transition. Some talk about making the carbon tax revenue neutral, an idea I was more sympathetic to until the Bush deficits, and back when I thought roads and bridges are paid for by the current gasoline tax rather than out of general revenue.

We could do more regional planning of mass transit systems. We could use some of the gasoline tax to pay for the roads and mass transit that makes our roads less crowded. We could teach bicycling as a PE option, as those who learn to bicycle and signal correctly are less dangerous to themselves and others and are more likely to continue bicycling as adults. This would leave more oil for those of you who can’t or don’t want to bicycle. There’s lots we can do.

The cost of our transportation continues to increase. The obvious increases in price are accompanied by the continued power of corrupt governments, the costs to agriculture and water supplies and human settlements and peace from climate change. Let’s add some of these costs, or the desire to avoid these costs, to the price of gasoline. The costs will be paid, either as lower costs consciously assumed today or higher costs imposed tomorrow.

When I first began reading about energy issues almost a decade ago, I began with a prejudice against exclamation points. My local newspaper coverage of nuclear power and transgenic (genetically modified) crops rarely appeared without !!! Later its coverage of MTBE would say that this gasoline additive pollutes!!!! our water!!, leaving readers to fill in the blanks: my informal survey showed that MTBE as carcinogen was a more popular blank-filler than MTBE as a cause of birth defects. (In high enough concentrations, MTBE makes water unpalatable to the minority who can taste it. This is a good enough reason for regulating its use.)

So there I was reading, trying to get a sense of what the issues are and how important. I began by looking at coal and nuclear power, and with my sense of balance, began by assuming that coal power is as bad as nuclear power. On the one hand those opposed to nuclear power, state with !!! galore that nuclear power might kill people. Since the number of people who might be killed is not stated, the reader is left to make assumptions. Pretty much ignored were the tens of thousands of Americans who die yearly from fossil fuel particulates. And a couple thousand coal miners. On the other hand, scientists were using even more and larger ! to describe climate change; well those of us used to understatement can recognize all the !!!! in scientists writings on climate change and related topics. For them, the tens of thousands (some 70,000) Americans dying from fossil fuels are an add-on another benefit to addressing fossil fuels, besides the really large concern, climate change. I listened, but I also reacted to the use of !, so I had to listen longer before I really heard.

Our president talks about social security, and the mainstream media and bloggers follow suit. Most of us know that social security is a tiny issue, even if Congress decides to address it, compared to the great human, ecological, and financial costs of climate change. Yet all that seems to be happening is a few people shaking their heads before they return to covering whatever the President is talking about. Because social security is where the !!! are.

Find the !!! in the report issued by the International Climate Change Taskforce, Meeting the Climate Challenge. For the first time, a respected body has set a lower limit to dangerous levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide: 400 parts per million, a level we are likely to reach in about a decade.

From the report:

The vast majority of international scientists and peer-reviewed reports affirm that climate change is a serious and growing threat, leaving no country, however wealthy, immune from the extreme weather events and rising sea levels that scientists predict will occur, unless action is taken.

Climate change represents one of the most serious and far-reaching challenges facing humankind in the twenty-first Century.

The cost of failing to mobilise in the face of this threat is likely to be extremely high. The economic costs alone will be very large: as extreme weather events such as droughts and floods become more destructive and frequent; communities, cities, and island nations are damaged or inundated as sea level rises; and agricultural output is disrupted. The social and human costs are likely to be even greater, encompassing mass loss of life, the spread or exacerbation of diseases, dislocation of populations, geopolitical instability, and a pronounced decrease in the quality of life. Impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity are also likely to be devastating. Preventing dangerous climate change, therefore, must be seen as a precondition for prosperity and a public good, like national security and public health.

By contrast, the cost of taking smart, effective action to meet the challenge of climate change should be entirely manageable. Such action need not undermine standards of living. Furthermore, by taking action now and developing a long-term climate policy regime we can ensure that the benefits of climate protection are achieved at least cost.

On the basis of an extensive review of the relevant scientific literature, we propose a long-term objective of preventing average global surface temperature from rising by more than 2C (3.6F) above its pre-industrial level (taken as the level in 1750, when carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations first began to rise appreciably as a result of human activities).

Beyond the 2C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly. It is likely, for example, that average temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. Exceeding a global average increase of more than 2C could also imperil a very high proportion of the worlds coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest.

Above the 2C level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea levels more than ten meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planets forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon.

Climate science is not yet able to specify the trajectory of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases that corresponds precisely to any particular global temperature rise. Based on current knowledge, however, it appears that achieving a high probability of limiting global average temperature rise to 2C will require that the increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations as well as all the other warming and cooling influences on global climate in the year 2100, as compared with 1750, should add up to a net warming no greater than what would be associated with a CO2 concentration of about 400 parts per million (ppm).

Read the report. How should we react to valid warnings!!!!! of severe consequences if we continue on our path? One role we could play is requesting the media to focus on climate change and other topics, including this report. What else can we do?

The cooperation of hundreds of millions of people is needed if we are to address climate change and other major environmental worries. The destruction of the ozone layer, while no less serious, is easier to address, because there are a limited number of products contributing to the problems, and most have easy substitutes. Confronting climate change will require us to change how we live, change our expectations of what will give us pleasure. Confronting the problems of the environment requires us to make choices.

Much has been written about choice. Barry Schwartz based The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less on the Nobel Prize winning work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (collaborator who died first and did not share the prize), as well as that of Amartya Sen.

Most people dislike too little choice or too much choice. We’ve seen survey after survey where people extol choice, but when it comes to exercising choice, we are more reluctant. Often this appears as a refusal to opt for something: even when the company kicks in some money, or there’s a dollar off coupon, choice is hard. The more options on the table, the less likely that any choice will be made, and the less likely we will be happy with our choice. Several studies lead to these conclusions: a table in a store provides a $1 off coupon and displays either 6 or 24 types of jam. Thirty percent of the customers with fewer choices bought a jar of jam, but only three percent did when more choices were offered. Similarly, students offered 6 topics for an extra credit essay were more likely to write essays, and wrote better essays, than students offered 30 topics. Those selecting one out of either 6 or 30 gourmet chocolates gave higher ratings to the chocolate when it came from the sample of six.

(Given a choice between a sure $100 and a 50% chance for $200, most opt for the $100. The current social security system is preferred by those who dislike making choices and those who want a sure benefit. President Bush is rowing upstream.)

Many of today’s parents give their children a paralyzing number of choices, from what color candy (does it really matter?), which toy, which classes to take in school. Not only is precious energy devoted to solving the problem, but there is a burden: I might make the wrong choice. This burden appears even with unimportant choices, such as whether to accept $1.50 in cash or a $2 pen. Schwartz believes that citizens in societies that offer too few or two many choices have greater levels of depression.

We also find it difficult to opt out. Some enormous percentage of SUV owners go into debt to buy a car; they cannot afford the car + fuel + insurance. It is hard to opt out of what “everyone” is doing.

Studies of how change affects happiness show that the act of change often produces a blip in one direction or the other, but that even large changes such as losing a leg or gaining or losing a marriage produces a much smaller long-term effect than we expect. The consequences of buying that car are even less profound.

I haven’t read enough to know whether the various authors discuss the destructive effects of thinking choice helps. If we buy that car today, are we even less likely in the future to address what we really want? If we opt for a higher-paying job in lieu of time with our family and friends or in lieu of work that provides more non-monetary rewards, we lose twice: we lose what really matters, and we lose by thinking that money and things nurture us. (This does not apply to people whose income is low. But studies of reported happiness vs. income show that people do not report happiness increasing at an income less than American per capita income, and that it can even decrease as income level rises.)

One psychologist who worked with teenagers described what they needed: to have one person who loves you, and to accomplish something. (Does anyone remember his name?) For older people I would add a need to feel that I am contributing to my family and to my community: to feel connected.

When I ask people in one interest group what comes up for them when they think about changing their lives for the environment, adjectives such as dread and resentment head the list. Those who have begun changing their lives almost always talk of joy. This in part because of what Friends call simplicity, of living one’s life according to what is important (so as to be able to hear God’s voice). People who are consciously living with less have made choices about what they value. They are happier, happier with who they are.

People who live with less also have fewer choices, and this removes a burden. When my car broke in 1991, I told myself that I didn’t have money to replace it. It was an expensive luxury. Now I could buy a car without going into debt, but I find that by continuing to live without a car, I am less able to over schedule (I will never lose that ability totally). Almost as important is the pleasure of transporting myself through muscle power, the pleasure I receive at the time and the pleasure I receive when I can vacation with the help of muscle power. I don’t know if I would have made this change for the environment – it’s on the list of reasons, but not at the top.

We want choices in our lives, we thrive on choice. That said, I am pleased to have fewer options because I don’t have a car (except when the rains won’t end, or I need to transport something difficult, but in the latter case, there are options).

Many say that they can’t make choices about their lives because they live where there are fewer choices. How would you respond?

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Michael addresses this line in the previous post: “An older friend named a few of the problems of the 20th century: world wars, famines, genocides. Does concern about the environment really compete with such horrors?” “Yes.” he says, followed by some details.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus were part of a panel discussion at UC, Berkeley on changing the direction of the environmental movement.

They point out that groups that want to do things right spend time analyzing their process, and that environmentalists are woefully lacking compared to librarians in this regard. That most Americans care about the environment, just not very much.

Everyone on stage feels that climate change, biodiversity loss and related issues are the most important environmental issues ever to face mankind, and perhaps the most important issues facing mankind ever. So why is it so difficult to get the attention of the general public?

[An older friend named a few of the problems of the 20th century: world wars, famines, genocides. Does concern about the environment really compete with such horrors? Yes.]

There are a variety of reasons. The authors blame the approach of progressives in general and environmentalists in particular. One point on which I agree with the authors: people are not sitting on their duff re the environment only because they lack information about how serious the problems are, or because they lack a plan.

The authors cite many problems with the environmental movement. Here are some of their concerns mixed with my comments, yes, there are overgeneralizations:

• Solutions frequently are technical, rather than requiring us to examine our own behavior and prejudices. I have learned from people that if not much is asked of us, the problems can’t be all that bad.

Many of the solutions are technical. We need to improve current technical solutions, and find more. But of even more concern is how much of the solution must be more than technical.

• Environmentalists see large memberships as a sign of success. They often emphasize projects that generate membership and revenue. In particular, they overplay concern about nuclear power and transgenic (genetically modified) crops, feeding into worries that the government and scientists are out to poison us. They focus on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place to protect. Yes, subsidizing oil exploration there doesn’t make sense, but if one is really concerned about ANWR, it is better to focus on not burning the oil; climate change will make it toast. It was a shock to read that environmentalists traded opposition from the auto industry on ANWR drilling for neglect of car mileage standards. (ANWR is of interest to oil companies only if they are provided economic guarantees protecting them against loss.)

Of course, the UAW did not win either. It is not in the best interest of American autoworkers for American companies to continue their attachment to low mileage technologies. Nor does it do them any good if some of the core problems of the industry are not addressed, such as the high cost of health insurance.

• Because environmentalists are flush with money, they don’t need to make alliances with other movements. As a result, labor doesn’t see that there will be more jobs if we shift away from the use of fossil fuels, both because solar and wind power are more labor intensive, and because money wasted on energy costs is not available for other uses. OK, greater efficiency will accomplish the second, and wind and solar are more expensive, but will still produce a net gain for labor.

• The use of the word “environment” can be confusing. In my own process, I was initially concerned about what will happen to people this century and gradually began to understand the enormous consequences to the Earth. Tens of thousands of people died in Eurasia during the summer of 2003 from a heat wave that is considered an indication of climate change, far outside normal variability. Concerns about “the environment” are too often left unconnected to human behaviors with human consequences.

• Over the next 50 years, we need to reduce carbon emissions precipitously (figure some 90+% per capita in the US alone, less in countries with lower emissions), and then zero them out from there. This is not the same task as dealing with a small number of acid rain or ozone hole producing facilities. We need to get our act together and we need to help developing countries. Yet environmentalists will tout compact fluorescents and hybrid cars (they deserve to be touted) rather than a remake of society, in which compacts fluorescents and hybrid cars play vital roles.

• (My comment) We are so used to hearing unnecessary ! and !! in the speeches of environmentalists, we often ignore the !!!! emerging from the scientific community. Many justify ignoring the !!!!, after all, they are paying attention to the (trivial, but good for fundraising) !.

Michael Brower and Warren Leon emphasized in the excellent “Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: practical advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists” that we need to spend less time worrying about paper vs. plastic, and more on how we get to the store. The same should be true of all interested in the environment: focus on the big questions.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus call their article “The Death of Environmentalism.” I am pleased to see discussions beginning on how to make concern for the environment more effective.

I met an old friend yesterday who is finally about to retire from a job she’s worked almost three decades. She’s not simply retiring, she’s freeing herself to be a full-time artist rather than a part-timer, to throw her energy and talent into the universe and see what emerges. The job itself is less than perfect, which makes it easy to leave. Yet she finds herself unwilling to give up the project she was working on, her baby.

My cochlear implant was activated September 13. At the time of my implant, people spoke into a microphone that went to an amplifier and then a neckloop which I wore on the hearing aid itself, to get a stronger signal. I could talk with one person at a time. Immediately after the implant was activated, everyone pretty much sounded like Darth Vader’s rendition of a woman’s artificial voice speaking Xhosa. Most of the information was the harsh whoosh with everyone sounding high-pitched with hardly any sound content, and gobs of clicks. Except for Dan Rather, who sounded normal. Now two out of three people sound normal; unfortunately, I’m not one of them. The largest changes in my hearing have occurred, but my hearing will improve for years. Others with cochlear implants describe changes at three years that can only be caused by changes in the nerves themselves. More people’s voices will sound normal, because of nerve improvements, increasing ability to decode the information sent my brain, and a greater ability to override what I hear with what I know I’m hearing.

People with implants sleep less than those who depend on lip reading and straining to eke out messages from highly distorted sound signals received with or without the help of an amplifier. I’ve negated that benefit by putting myself in situations where I use my hearing more.

I find that I sleep more since the implant was activated. I am in transition from disabled to almost able (I will likely never hear normally, and only have the one ear). Almost every night, I dream of changing dwellings, and difficulties in transportation from the old to the new. Now those of you have done deaf and regained hearing know there is little to miss about the old situation. But no matter how miraculous, how life-giving, how desired, transition is difficult.

In one of my interest groups on the environment, I asked people to talk about the process of making big changes. Several told stories of once having made a decision, opting for a new situation with no downsides, it took years to follow through. I personally have always felt sympathy for Pharaoh and how many times he absolutely decided to let Moses and his people go before he was able to follow through.

Most of us want to be people who can be proud of how well and how quickly we responded to concerns about the environment. Yet most of us are ambivalent; perhaps we will live a diminished life if we live with less.

When we sum up our lives we will want to be able to say, we heard what was important, and we responded. If we do not find ways to have dialogues, local, national, and world, about our ambivalence, about the difficulties of making change, change will be all that much harder.

Each religion and secular morality has a translation for this message. Please tell me how you would phrase it.

“I never have enough time,” began the ministry of a Berkeley Friend (Quaker) many years ago. “But time is all I have.”

People frequently tell me that they don’t have time to learn about the environment, to ponder their behavior and the policies they support, to move the environment high up on a long to-do list.

Friends have a simplicity testimony (testimonies describe how we testify to our faith in our lives). “Simplicity is the right ordering of our lives, placing God at the center. When we shed possessions, activities, and behavior that distract us from that center, we can focus on what is important. Simplicity does not mean denying life’s pleasures, but being open to the promptings of the Spirit.” (from Pacific Yearly Meetings Faith and Practice) Focusing on what is important, being open to the promptings of the Spirit.

Time is all we have.

Thomas Kelly quotes Meister Eckhart on Holy Obedience: “There is a degree of holy and complete obedience and of joyful self-renunciation and of sensitive listening that is breathtaking. Difference of degree passes over into utter difference of kind, when one tries to follow Him the second half. Jesus put this pointedly when he said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:3), and Paul knew it: “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17).”

Not all of us are Christian, but we all know the joy that comes with walking in God’s path, living in a manner that we know is right.

Our task is not to do less, but to choose better what we do.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Michael Moore has a set of comments addressing evolution, reproduction, and a variety of other issues. Check him out on these topics.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Robert has added a comment to the first post, asking, in part, where we in the US have begun seeing changes due to climate change, where we will see change, and what portion of the solutions are technological.

We don’t always see what’s obvious.

One Friend (Quaker) in an interest group complained that the birds disappeared from the San Fernando Valley during her childhood, and no one in her parents’ generation noticed. In the last 50 years, the number of large fish declined by 90%, and the size of large fish declined, yet even many older fisherman did not notice or are only partially aware. Today, many fishermen describe fishing as “sustainable” which is intended to maintain today’s level. I put myself firmly in the category of people who have no clue how many birds lived in and passed through Berkeley a generation ago.

The temperature in Alaska increased about 3 F last century, most of it in 1977. Alaskans are already seeing large changes, as is expected of climates nearer the poles. Summer precipitation has decreased, but snowfall is up 60%, which has led to tree canopy breakage, which (along with higher temperatures) has led to the success of wood-boring insects which has lead to widespread death of trees: most spruce trees are dead in 3 million acres of a federal reserve. This has ecological and social consequences. Wildfires have increased. Mosquitoes have spread to Barrow. Melting of the permafrost has produced sagging roads, tilting signs, and houses out of plumb. The effect on infrastructure is costly, and will only grow over the next 100 years, as pipes, roads, and buildings must be replaced or moved. The number of days annually with gale force winds is double that of 5 decades ago. As permafrost and sea ice melt, towns are no longer shielded from the sea; villages face bills of hundreds of millions each, either to build sea walls or move the entire village. Many of these villages have no tax base, some are thousands of years old.

Arizona legislators express interest in climate change because Arizona’s decreased precipitation and increased wildfires fit climate model predictions. Water systems in the West are fed by snow pack lasting late into the winter, with peak runoff in March. The size of the snow pack has decreased, and the peak runoff is shifting earlier. For those who think food comes from the store, farmers and trees and such prefer some overlap between water supply and times of much sunshine.

In Virginia rising seas and erosion have almost destroyed Poplar’s Island; 13 islands have disappeared in Chesapeake Bay.

Glaciers are disappearing rapidly from Glacier Park, as elsewhere, and may be totally gone by 2030.

The evidence is there if we pay attention. Peoples of the Arctic regions and vulnerable island nations have seen changes and publicized them.

What changes can we expect to see in the future?

Contemplate where you live today, what kind of climate you have. It has average and extreme temperatures for each season, a length for each season, precipitation that comes in bursts or regularly through the year. How do the local flora and fauna depend on this combination of factors? How do farmers depend on it? The water district and utilities?

OK, you skipped over that paragraph, here’s another chance to consider the climate where we live.

Now ponder the climate some more. Add in how trees increase the amount of rain, how some local ecosystems are better at absorbing water during storms and helping prevent runoff, and the effect of habitat destruction on the destructiveness of storms in so many parts of the world. How our local flora and bacteria clean the air and water, so we don’t have to pay. Yes, bacteria are at risk from climate change, you thought they have an exemption? How important insects are to the plants. Which of the local fauna carry disease, and which diseases might immigrate along with foreign fauna to my area if the climate becomes a little warmer and dryer/more humid. (Will take suggestions on how to communicate these ideas better)

A temperature change of a few degrees may not sound like much, but the difference between the peak of the ice ages and now is only 5 – 9 C (about 9 – 16 F). It may be that the temperature increase by 2100 due to the addition of greenhouse gases and deforestation exceeds that change. This will have unpredictable changes – the continents were in somewhat different locations the last time the atmosphere had carbon concentrations of 400 ppm or more.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Working Group 2 examines Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Look at the summaries for policymakers (SPM) or technical summaries (TS). Choose one of their topics: hydrology and water resources; agriculture and food security; terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems; coastal zones and marine ecosystems; human health; human settlements, energy, and industry; insurance and other financial services. It will read differently to you if you read it at the source. Well, not the source, but the scientific consensus of all that was known in 2001 — the scientific community agreed with every sentence in the multi-thousand page reports.

What changes in technology will help, and what ?

Obviously, changing to energy sources that produce less carbon will help: nuclear power, hydroelectric power (a tad more), photovoltaics and other means of using solar power, wind power, and so on. I am not including biomass (plants) on this list because I suspect that all biomass will be needed for biofuels, to replace oil-based fuels such as gasoline and jet fuels, and because there are limits to how many acres we want to plant in order to save the local habitats from climate change. Carbon sequestration (injecting carbon back into the Earth for hopefully permanent storage, at least on the time frames that interest us) will allow us to continue using fossil fuels longer. Hybrid cars and possibly fuel cells (in the future) will reduce the use of oil; fuel cells may also come to be stored energy used in buildings. The National Commission on Energy Policy is the place to go for more information. Each of these technologies has a cost: solar power is expensive and requires substantial resources. Wind power also changes the climate. Fuel cells require energy to produce the hydrogen: they are a means of storing energy, not an energy source. Crucial on the technology to-do list is efficiency, decreasing the amount of energy needed by our vehicles, refrigerators, and light bulbs. Not only must appliances and cars become more efficient, we need to switch. Almost always, this will reduce our cost: we get back the extra costs in electricity or gasoline savings, and then some.

Reports by groups such as the National Commission on Energy Policy are meant to direct our national government; too often our presidents and legislators have other priorities. The public often does as well; we see more protests against nuclear power and wind power than against fossil fuel power. Yet many tens of coal power plants have been proposed.

In scientific analyses of how we can get to low carbon emissions, a sizeable percentage of the solution is described as “surprise”, either new technologies or proposed technologies working better than expected. Perhaps these surprise solutions exist, perhaps we need to change our behavior in case they don’t exist, or if the technology changes don’t work as well as we hoped, or if we don’t want huge amounts of land devoted to crops to power our transportation, and windmills in scenic areas.

We can’t take shortcuts. We will need to consider as individuals the changes to our lives, and the lives of others, before we begin to pressure ourselves, our legislators, family members, and neighbors. We need to educate ourselves, to ponder the science and human behavior. We need to work individually and in groups to see that we change, that society changes. Because the choices we make affect the choices others will be allowed to make, today and in the future.

Today Kyoto comes into effect, and we should celebrate.

Not because the Kyoto reductions will reduce carbon emissions significantly, but because if this tiny first step hadn’t been achieved, the likely success of future treaties would be even less.

It should have been a no-brainer: the richer countries most responsible for increased emissions since the industrial revolution make fairly cheap and minor reductions in their carbon emissions in order to start the process. The larger, more expensive steps will require significant international cooperation, both among the industrialized countries and with the developing world, to produce a reduction in emissions of 90% or more by 2050, and then zeroing out sometime later.

We can’t afford it, said the presidents of the United States and Australia. It will hurt our economy. Reducing carbon emissions will hurt key industries: coal (West Virginia is electorally important), oil, and SUV manufacturers. Reducing carbon emissions significantly will change our lives, but the tiny reductions specified in the Kyoto treaty would have a small effect, in part because Russia’s economic recession will be used in the accounting. The United States currently spends a fortune for energy because energy is so cheap: if the price of energy rose slightly, the total price of energy is expected to come down just because people would finally replace that light bulb with a compact fluorescent, turn off the heat and light in unused rooms, and buy more energy efficient appliances and cars.

Addressing climate change seriously costs money, and will limit our ability to fly out to see the family for the weekend. President Bush says we can’t afford it. Whenever I hear about the costs to us, the picture comes to mind of the Bengali woman trying to eke out a living on a piece of land near the ocean (National Geographic, September 2004, the global warming issue). As do the tens of thousands of Eurasians who died in the summer of 2003. Africans seeing their climate changed, and droughts increased, by the use of fossil fuel in the Western hemisphere.

In the absence of national decisions on carbon emissions, we will suffer a more chaotic implementation system. Utilities opting today for coal power will soon find themselves charged for that fourth pollutant, carbon dioxide; retrofits are expensive. Our current means of governing by fits and starts, even within an administration, and certainly between administrations, makes creating a rational system difficult. It makes all decisions expensive, but addressing climate change even more so: American opposition to phasing in carbon reductions will prove expensive.

The environment is not a priority in the United States. For some reason, we think this is an issue that will harm our grandchildren, not ourselves. Implicit in our unwillingness to act is that it is OK to harm our grandchildren. That like the Titanic, the turn can be made when needed. That solutions are simple, buy compact fluorescents and perhaps a hybrid. That consequences will be minor. That we can think about the environment when we have more time in our personal lives, after Iraq, after the social security distraction, once there are effective campaign finance laws, in the future. Later. Besides, my behavior is environmentally conscious because I…. and I resent that so and so gets to … while I am being asked to change. Some ideologues believe that scientists have an ideological background to their warnings on climate change and other environmental concerns.

There is more than a fierce battle with ourselves. Many in the developing world believe that concerns about climate change are a means of locking them into an underprivileged state. (People who live in countries where almost all have cars bemoan the Chinese shifting from bicycles to cars, and so we should. But the Chinese have TV, and know about our cars.) That concerns about climate change must rank behind more immediate concerns, such as low agricultural productivity (some of which is already being blamed on climate change and air pollution), disease, conflict, education.

To address climate change, we need to look at our own behavior, and at policies and politicians that impede reducing carbon emissions significantly. We need to find methods to reach out, to find common ground with other peoples in addressing how we change our lives in order to limit changes to the atmosphere.

Today Kyoto comes into effect, and we should celebrate. And get to work. Today, not later.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Michael Moore has made several more comments. In response to the post on carbon taxes, he opposes policies that hurt the majority.

Thomas Friedman laments again our No Mullah Left Behind policies. By refusing to phase in a gasoline tax of $1/gallon, mandate better gas mileage, and generally address our oil profligacy, we help distort the decision-making of Irani mullahs. Fareed Zakaria expands on this in The Future of Freedom: governments that don’t need to tax for their money don’t need to account for their policies.

US oil policy does more than support foreign governments. We distort American fiscal policy because our imports exceed our exports; our trade deficit for 2004 alone was $617.7 billion. Oil accounts for $164 billion of that; add in automobiles and we’re talking real money. Per American, we import more than $2,000 more than we export. Per American, we imported $550 in oil last year.

President Bush meanwhile focuses on social security. His biggest concern is privatization, which, Bush says, doesn’t address the problems he sees ahead. Ignored are larger financial concerns, such as health care and interminable deficits. Let us add to the few trillion here and there we’re avoiding environmental degradation, which will be paid for by younger people and those not yet born, simply because taxes on carbon are inconvenient to today’s adults.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays Michael Moore’s comment to the February 12 post includes, “To be sure, scientific consensus is imperfect. But the consensus is far more accurate than revelation to a few human beings which can no longer be altered nor updated.” A Quaker belief in continuing revelation.