Environmental discourse and the paradox of the open society

Those who regard themselves as environmentalists generally take pride in their openness to new information and to dialogue. After all, that is how they learned about the ecological predicament we currently face. And so, it is a paradox that those who may be the strongest advocates of an open society are now challenged to protect it by not being open to people who would try to destroy it with disinformation and intimidation.

Given the increasing weight of the evidence on such issues as global warming, energy depletion, industrial agriculture, fisheries destruction, and water supply and quality, the natural course for an open society would be to discuss ways to minimize the risks of possible adverse developments. Instead, with the emerging exception of global warming, the discussion continues to be whether any of these concerns rate as real problems. This discussion, of course, isn't taking place in a vacuum. Vast sums are being spent on public relations by large corporate interests in an effort to convince the powerful and the not-so-powerful that the problems we face are either not problems at all or at worst, are easily managed by the very corporations complicit in creating them.

The main tactic, of course, is to cast doubt on the scientific findings. Either the findings are portrayed as unreliable or simply too preliminary to take seriously. "We need more study," is the hue and cry of the corporate interests. Often, when the scientific evidence is overwhelming, the PR men (and women) will continue to claim (by digging up a few well-compensated PhDs) that there is considerable disagreement among scientists--something that can only be classified as a lie when it comes to global warming.

What the public relations masters are doing is relying on a false notion that many people swallow without reflection, namely, that we make decisions based on certainty. It is a tenant of the open society that no one has a corner on the truth; rather, truth emerges, however imperfectly, from the interplay and discourse of many voices trying out various avenues of inquiry. In this way the open society tracks closely with science.

A modicum of reflection reveals that we almost never make decisions in our daily life based on certainty. We are constantly judging the probabilities of danger and advantage, of loss and gain, of failure and success, and acting with imperfect knowledge. The corporate public relations masters are fond of telling the public such nonsense as, "We can't be sure," and "All the evidence isn't in yet" in order to convince them that public policy is always made under certainty rather than risk. Yet, the very companies that fund these shills are constantly making decisions about new products, new advertising campaigns, and new marketing strategies, all under a cloud of uncertainty.

Another tactic used by the hired skeptics is to say that any attempt to address critical environmental problems will involve economic hardship and government intrusion into our daily lives in a way that curbs our individual liberty. It ought to be obvious that individual liberty will be meaningless if climate change undermines the food and water supply and if oil production abruptly declines without a suitable substitute or a plan to adapt to a lower energy world. In such a world we will be at liberty to be hungry, thirsty, unemployed and cold. Nevertheless, the individual liberty argument remains a very potent one, not least because fossil fuels have given us the illusion of autonomy. We never have to deal with or even think about most of the people whose efforts provide us with our food, water, clothing, electricity, heat and gasoline. We just pay the bill and imagine ourselves to be self-sufficient.

Finally, when all else fails, attack the messenger. When Al Gore returned to Capitol Hill to testify about global warming last week, critics could do little to refute his message. So, the right-wing pundits and corporate-funded think tanks began a smear campaign. If you can't win the argument, move on to another argument.

So, the question arises, How does one fight back without destroying the very principles of openness that make it possible to draw on the talents of all while safeguarding freedom of expression? The first response I think is to point out that there is no necessary connection between individual liberty and the freedom of corporations to do whatever they wish. In fact, a good libertarian ought to be suspicious of the concentration of power in the hands of both government and corporations. Such a concentration actually works to curtail individual liberty as both entities come to run larger and larger parts of our lives. Such a concentration often leads to cronyism, special treatment and widespread corruption. And, such a concentration of power is frequently associated not with freedom, but with fascist governments which Mussolini said are characterized by an alliance between big business and government.

Second, the political philosophies behind the denial of science have two things in common: narrow self-interest and the defense of privilege. I was reminded of this recently when I attended a talk on global warming. Well into the question and answer period, a young male college student began spouting the discredited mantras of the corporate-funded climate skeptics. His main tactic was to hog the floor by pretending to engage in a conversation in which members of the audience tried to convince him that he was mistaken.

He admitted that the globe is warming, but denied that humans have had anything to do with it. (This is the latest tactic of the corporate-sponsored critics since the evidence is now so overwhelming that warming is, in fact, occurring.) I asked him, "If we accept your premise, does that mean that we should do nothing about global warming given all that we can surmise about its future effects?"

His response was that there was really nothing any of us could do but look out for number one and cut our losses. I suggested that this implied that he believed he had absolutely no responsibility to his fellow citizens or to future generations. He tried to change the subject by spouting more disinformation. I retorted that now that we understood his position quite clearly, the group would probably like to hear from other audience members. Shortly after this he got up and left.

It may not seem like it, but I take no pleasure in confronting such people. Nevertheless, I do think it is important to make explicit their assumptions so that listeners can evaluate those assumptions. And, I do think that disruptive behavior, no matter how cleverly cloaked as innocent dialogue, needs to be challenged. The aim of this student was the same as the aim of the PR master, disrupt our dialogue, in this case, by monopolizing the floor and effectively shutting us down. I think that is the opposite of the open society.

Regarding the personal attacks on prominent figures in the environmental movement, I myself advise against responding to them. This is precisely the conversation that the corporate-funded skeptics want to have since it prevents the public from focusing on the real issues and because it simply turns people off.

A final response involves reorienting people to the idea of risk. Even if the uncertainties about, for example, climate change, were greater than they are, we would be well-advised to begin addressing the risks. That is because climate change has the potential to destroy the very civilization we have built and kill hundreds of millions if not billions of people over the next century. What the members of the public don't realize is that when the severity of a low probability event is high, they can be strictly pragmatic. House fires are not all that common. But the results can be catastrophic. And so most of us have multiple levels of protection including fire extinguishers in key places, smoke alarms and finally, insurance to cover both our lives and our possessions if the first two levels fail.

Would that the public could start thinking about multiple levels of protection when in comes to climate change. I believe they would if they understood the gravity of the situation, that is, if they understood that climate change is no longer a low probability event; it's here!

It is often said that the solution to free speech is more free speech. We ought to challenge those corporate shills and mischievous ideologues who try to dominate the conversation because they have a lot of money or because they take advantage of the comity of people of goodwill. The difficulty lies in challenging such tactics in a way that doesn't destroy genuine, good faith exchanges and thereby protects the kind of open society we want and will need to make the transition to a sustainable civilization.

An uneasy alliance

Those concerned with climate change are quick to cite the impressive body of scientific knowledge already amassed by the world's researchers which leaves little doubt that global warming is real, that its main driver is human activity, and that its consequences will be profound.

Other scientific research continues to point to converging ecological catastrophes in the coming decades including soil degradation and erosion; water, mineral, energy, and fisheries depletion; and increasing pollution of all types, chemical, radiological and genetic.

But there is a flip side to this seemingly eco-friendly onslaught of scientific findings; it is the nature of science itself. We like to imagine that science is a method for the unbiased pursuit of knowledge about the natural world. In fact, the science we practice has a particular aim summarized most economically by philosopher Francis Bacon as follows: "Knowledge is power."

To be fair to Bacon the empirical approach which he advocated has become the bedrock of modern science. And, it is this approach which has allowed scientists to understand what human civilization is doing to the biosphere. But the bulk of scientific research remains focused on manipulating and dominating the natural world rather than finding ways to live sustainably in it.

This focus accounts for such schemes as giant mirrors in space to alleviate global warming, so-called vertical farming to enhance the local production of food, roving self-powered fish ranches to address overfishing, and even Martian terraforming to give us a new planet after we've wrecked this one.

In each area of the biosphere where human activity threatens to undermine the basic needs of civilization, there are technological schemes put forward which are alleged to allow us to go about our lives pretty much as usual. Ethanol and hydrogen are touted as liquid fuel replacements for petroleum. There are schemes for growing perennial crops to lessen the burden on arable land and then converting their cellulose into syrups to be used as a basis for synthetic foods. There are, of course, numerous schemes for sequestering carbon, especially from coal burning. Unfortunately, none of the above schemes are designed to account for how little we still know about natural systems and their interactions.

All of this illustrates why those who advocate for drastic changes in behavior by citing the available and compelling scientific evidence frequently meet a wall of resistance. Other science can be used to explain how we will get out of this mess we've made with little or no sacrifice. Even many people who style themselves as serious environmentalists imagine a bright green future of sustainable technological marvels. Of course, we will need to make changes, they say, but we won't be deprived of any of the comforts and conveniences we now enjoy.

There are, of course, many scientists who are toiling to create a new kind of science, one aimed at learning how to live within the limits of the natural world and based on humility rather than hubris. But this new approach to science is in its infancy and finds only modest support among government agencies and foundations. This new science, however, is paving the way for a closer relationship between sustainability and scientific endeavor. In doing so, it is helping us move beyond an uneasy alliance which continues to prove troublesome to those committed to a sustainable world.

Ticking time bombs and last-minute escapes

Walk into any of America's cineplexes--they used to be called movie theaters--and you will find narratives playing on multiple screens that offer one or another variation of the ticking time bomb and the last-minute escape. Of course, those plot devices are used to create urgency and tension in the minds of moviegoers in order to involve them in the story.

But so pervasive have these themes become in American film and literature that much of the public has up until recently unreflectively embraced the idea that all emergencies will be met with unparalleled heroism that leads to the right solution--no matter how hastily and tardily conceived. Perhaps the purest example of this (and maybe the most ridiculous) is the long-defunct television show "MacGyver." For those who weren't watching television closely in the late 1980s, MacGyver (played by Richard Dean Anderson) was a secret agent who didn't carry a gun. Instead, he was amazingly resourceful in crafting weapons out of materials on hand--always, of course, in the nick of time.

Despite Americans' traditional optimism there is now a rising fear that America may have run out of MacGyvers. The popular drama "24" suggests to its viewers that this time--just maybe--we won't escape the worst. Unfortunately, "24" focuses the public's anxiety on terrorism rather than the much more potent threats of resource depletion, climate change, and habitat destruction. The anxiety is there, but it is being redirected toward something that only requires us to continue to believe steadfastly that we are always in the right and that we therefore need only continue our battle with the bad guys. This is not to suggest that terrorism is no threat. But there is almost a straight line from our dependence on finite petroleum resources to our imperial adventures in the Middle East and then to the blowback we are reaping from Arab resentment over our role there.

Nor does the public understand that it has been America's great good fortune (and curse) to have been endowed with enormous fossil fuel resources--resources upon which the fantasy of last-minute escapes largely depends. With enough energy resources one can overcome many seemingly intractable problems.

Likewise the decline in America's energy fortunes--sliding oil production for more than 35 years and now a plateau in natural gas production--has completely eluded public understanding. And, yet the public senses that something is seriously wrong, and it longs for a last-minute escape that will make everything all right again.

So at this point in our story, the tension in the American psyche is imitating art. Can we overcome the vague, menacing and unseen dangers which threaten American life? Will the hero show up in time? In the form of a new president? In the form of a cheap substitute for oil that will allow the American suburban dream to continue? In the form of a military victory in the Middle East instead of an endless, debilitating stalemate?

We wait. And, yet none of these outcomes seems in the offing. Surely this time it can't be different?

And, that's where we are in the narrative that we've come to expect--approaching the moment of maximum tension at which we hope for (even count on) a miraculous and positive resolution. But America's greatest living psychologist, James Hillman, has labeled hope a debilitating condition. Hope leaves us suspended. Hope fills our fantasies (or allows Hollywood to fill them for us). Hope can be the enemy of action.

It is not hope that we now need, but faith. Faith that as we face up to our ecological predicament, we can take steps each day that move us away from calamity and toward sustainability. Petroleum has been the father of last-minute escape fantasies. If the believers in a nearby peak in world oil production, followed by a peak in natural gas production, and then in all probability by myriad other ecological and resource catastrophes are correct, there will be no last minute escapes--only the hard work of remaking the world into something livable and just if we have to will to do so.

A question of scale

Are the organizations which fight for a more sustainable society properly scaled? This is a vexing question for those who are involved with nonprofits working on sustainability issues. In general sustainability experts agree that the more local the approach, the more sustainable the outcome.

The global scale of industrial operations and logistics is heavily dependent of finite fossil fuels. And, the current system has become an engine for successively destroying the sustainability of each locale as that system draws needed resources--water, food, fuel, minerals--from places that still have them to places that have depleted them or have more need of them than they can supply locally or even nationally.

So it follows that the way back to sustainability is to break the stranglehold of the globalized economy on our local economies. Herein lies the problem of scale for organizations seeking to act as midwives in this process. In the United States and probably many other countries serious regulatory and legal obstacles can get in the way of any relocalization project. State and federal rules may frustrate and even prevent wise sustainability practices and rules.

In my state the genetically engineered seed companies quietly pushed through a law prohibiting local ordinances concerning genetically modified crops. The organic food and farming group on whose board I sit was practically powerless to oppose it though many valiant efforts were made to talk with legislators and the governor's office. The legislature also passed a law that exempted concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) from local regulation, essentially leaving them unregulated until the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in to challenge the water runoff management from such sites as contrary to EPA regulations.

To attempt to block, influence or even comment on such regulation and legislation implies a level of organization that is capable of engaging state and federal legislatures and regulatory agencies. But those groups most devoted to relocalization are by their very structure not prepared to do this. In fact, organizing to pressure legislators and government agencies at the state and federal level may be contrary to the very essence of organizing for local sustainability.

There are reasons to fear that such high-level lobbying efforts would sidetrack local sustainability work by focusing effort on a system that often requires professional lobbying expertise and great sums of money for success. It is also a system premised on continued economic expansion and resource drawdown. How could cavorting with people caught in such a system be a good use of time for someone committed to transformation at the local level?

There is no quick answer to this question. In part the answer depends on whether one believes that the rapid decline of central government authority is imminent due to world peak oil production or perhaps even a catastrophic financial breakdown in the world economy. Author and peak oil Jeremiah, James Howard Kunstler, is fond of telling his audiences that he doesn't fear "Big Brother" because "the Federal government will be lucky if they can answer the phones five years from now, let alone regulate anybody's life."

Under Kunstler's scenario it would pointless to worry about any federal or state regulation because the likelihood of it being enforced would over time become vanishingly small. The imperative would be for local preparedness; the correct attitude would be more or less, "Let them try to stop us. We don't think they [the federal and state governments] will be able to do anything."

But if you believe a major crisis is 10 or 15 years away or that the decline, whenever it comes, will be gradual, then it might be worthwhile to organize and engage higher levels of government in the meantime on carefully selected issues that impinge most on local sustainability.

This strategy presents a difficult balancing act. For many it will not seem worthwhile. But the relocalization efforts of sustainability-oriented groups could easily be put in great peril by corporate interests seeking to squeeze out the last possible profits before the inevitable decline. The misanthropy of such corporate blackguards could do much to stall the urgently needed transition to a sustainable society.

For that reason, none of us who care about a sustainable future can afford to ignore them and their power in the higher circles of government.

Richard Branson's curious contest

It is a sign of just how desperate things have become that several of those who know the most about global warming should be parties to a contest offering $25 million to someone who can invent a way to remove existing carbon dioxide from the air. Famed British entrepreneur Richard Branson announced the contest earlier this month with Al Gore at his side. Other luminaries who will act as judges for the contest include the ultra-pessimistic James Lovelock, a world famous scientist and author of The Revenge of Gaia; NASA scientist James Hanson who is perhaps the most knowledgeable and respected climate researcher in the world; scientist Tim Flannery, author of the best-selling account of global warming, The Weather Makers; and Sir Crispin Tickell, one of the first scientists to write a major account of the consequences of climate change back in 1977.

No longer are drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions enough, this contest seems to say. We must also endeavor to undo the damage already done to the climate. To Branson's credit, he says that a practical method for removing CO2 from the air may never be found and that even if it is, we will still need to push ahead with emission reductions.

Now, for the really hard part. It's difficult to imagine how such a technology would not be extremely energy intensive. The current method for extracting useful gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and argon from the air involve what is called cryogenic fractional distillation. As one might glean from the name, the process starts with liquifying atmospheric gases at extremely low temperatures and then--since each gas has a different boiling point--boiling them off in succession.

Obviously, this method is not cost-effective for the large-scale extraction of CO2; otherwise, it would already have been proposed. But that just highlights my point. No one has been able to think of a non-energy intensive way to pull gases out of the air. Perhaps some better, more efficient technology will be found. But given the quantities which we seek to extract from the atmosphere--we added more than 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2002 alone--that technology would probably have to be many orders of magnitude more efficient than current methods.

The second problem will be powering the newfound technology. More than 85 percent of the world's energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Of course, we could try to run such carbon dioxide extracting plants on wind and solar power. But, shouldn't we really be trying to run everything on non-carbon sources of energy? If we keep powering most of the economy using fossil fuels, then building such extraction plants would probably do little good.

Beyond this, the eventual (if not imminent) peaking of world oil production to be followed by the peaking of world natural gas production means that society will be relying more and more on alternative energy sources. Those sources may not be able to supply anything approaching our projected needs, let alone support an energy-intensive project to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Of course, global warming solutions might come in another form. The seeding of the ocean with iron has already been tried. The idea is that some areas of the ocean are so poor in iron that they don't support algae very well. Add iron and the algae thrive. After they die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean. If enough of them are buried before they decay, then the carbon in them gets sequestered. But there are serious questions about how much iron would be required, whether trying to engineer a system as large as the ocean would work or even be safe, and whether the algae would, in fact, fall to the bottom.

One possible problem with offering a highly visible prize to encourage such research is that it will provide false hope that technology alone can solve the global warming problem. Certainly, that is not Branson's aim, but it might be the result.

Perhaps those who are giving their good names to Branson's contest believe that we need a miracle technology to save us from the worst of global warming. But the kind of miracle we need most is one that will change the attitude of people worldwide about what each of them needs to do to prevent global warming from destroying the very civilization that has given us so much faith in technology.

Why the precautionary principle doesn't cut both ways

The precautionary principle is usually associated with strident environmentalists who believe that those seeking to introduce a new technology or new chemical should be forced to show that it is safe before doing so. Corporate sponsors of those new technologies and chemicals almost always take the opposite view; until something is proven to be dangerous, it should be allowed. (There is, of course, never any discussion by these corporate sponsors of who should spend money to do the after-the-fact testing. The unspoken assumption is that the entire human population is to be engaged in an uncontrolled experiment to determine the dangers.)

So, it is noteworthy that oil giant Exxon Mobil--so often against any precautions at all when it comes to the oil business and its petrochemical offspring--should embrace its own version of the precautionary principle. (Of course, the company would never call it that.) CEO Rex Tillerson told an oil industry gathering that while global warming is a reality and needs to be addressed, regulation should not be implemented too hastily lest it unduly impinge on economic growth. Naturally, he wasn't concerned about oil company profits or CEO bonuses, but rather "our ability to progress [on] other global priorities such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health."

Tillerson's plea is one that is heard daily in industry circles when any kind of regulation is discussed, especially any that are labelled "environmental." The argument amounts to an economic precautionary principle. We are told that we must not allow any regulation to proceed if it could harm economic activity. After all, what will happen to the poor, corporate leaders say, if we cannot lift them up with economic growth? (There is, of course, no discussion about lifting them up through the redistribution of wealth, say, via public services; naturally, that kind of discussion is considered a breach of etiquette among the world's CEOs.)

But, we should question such arguments not because they come from corporate CEOs though that may give us cause for suspicion. A keen observer might suspect that the problem with the arguments is that apples are indeed being compared to oranges. These arguments assume that two things--the economy and the environment--are contained in some greater whole and that prefering one over the other is a zero-sum game. Only a little more thinking should yield the true situation, namely, that the economy is merely part of a whole called the environment. You might call this the fallacy of confusing the whole for a part. But simple observation will reveal to anyone that the economy is contained within the environment. Disrupting or destabilizing the environment risks crashing the economy altogether since the economy relies utterly on the natural world for its very functioning.

While the captains of industry will find this fact discomfitting, it may be even more perplexing to another group--those proposing that the right technology can give us a bright green future, one in which there is no need to change human behavior except in the direction of using green technology.

It is precisely because we have failed to see the consequences of our technology that we are now ensnared in a perilous ecological predicament. To assume that more technology will solve our problems is to live out Benjamin Franklin's well-known definition of insanity. Environmental education giant, David Orr, is fond of saying that as our knowledge grows, so does our ignorance. His favorite example is our relatively recent knowledge of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which seemed so handy as refrigerants when they were discovered in the 1930s. Over time our ignorance of the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer expanded alongside increasing uses for the substances. The result was a hole in the ozone, a development which, had it not been addressed, would have imperilled all of human civilization and plant and animal life as well.

It should be obvious then that applying the precautionary principle to the economy misses the point. Environmental regulation may indeed retard economic activity. But that damage, if it occurs, is different in kind from the damage our technology and numbers inflict on the biosphere every day. One may lead to a transient loss of wealth; the other may lead to a colossal loss of human life and of the very civilization we have built.

This is not a story about tradeoffs. It is a (pre)cautionary tale about gruesome and unforgivable destruction which we may yet avoid. But a positive outcome depends on casting off the notion that our economy as it currently functions will provide "benefits" that are sustainable with only a few changes here and there. Nothing short of a complete reordering of our priorities will makes us friends with the biosphere again. That is the true meaning of the precautionary principle and the reason why so few have actually embraced it.

Coin in the fuse box

It used to be that frustrated homeowners who were sick of frequently blown fuses would sometimes play tricks on their electrical system by shoving a coin into the socket where a fuse goes. Of course, pennies were actually made of copper back then; they conducted electricity just fine while not melting the way that pesky and fragile fuses were designed to.

By doing this coin trick these homeowners were, of course, obliterating a very important feedback mechanism that protected their houses. Feedback systems are found virtually everywhere in modern society and are designed to warn about dangers, help us steer a safer course, and to tell us when to call for help. The weather forecasting system is an obvious example. We can adjust our day or travel plans for safety reasons. The addition of a strong, foul-smelling substance to natural gas which would otherwise be colorless and odorless is another example. The odor allows us to detect a gas leak with nothing more than our noses. The feedback system of every personal computer tells us whether what we are doing is working or whether we have done something in error.

On a larger social scale the media provides a mechanism for people in open societies to judge the policies and practices of governments, corporations, nonprofits and other groups. But it is in the media especially that some special interest groups have succeeded at subverting this important feedback mechanism by putting a coin in the fuse box so to speak.

Perhaps the most famous of all subverters are the tobacco companies which withheld reports on the dangers of smoking and which planted false information in the media to confuse people about the link between smoking and illness. So effective was this campaign that it took decades before the tobacco companies were made to stop lying. In the end, they were even made to pay for some of the damage they caused to smokers as well as some of the expenses they foisted on government which had to pay for the medical treatment of many with smoking-related illnesses.

On the issue of global warming large sums have passed from fossil fuel giants such as Peabody Energy and ExxonMobil into the coffers of groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which runs the so-called Cooler Heads Project, The National Center for Public Policy Research, the Greening Earth Society and the American Enterprise Institute. The purpose has been to finance a public relations campaign designed to make the public think that there is genuine scientific controversy about global warming.

A similar, but to date more feeble, coin-in-the-fuse-box campaign has begun with regard to world peak oil production. Cambridge Energy Research Associates which has many wealthy patrons in the oil business has launched a few broadsides against the peak oil movement including this recent, but rather weakly argued piece. Part of the reason for the lackluster campaign is the continuing low profile of the peak oil issue. Since peak oil is not yet much in the public mind, there is little need for the oil companies to spend much money or time rebutting it.

In addition, the fossil fuel industry is not unanimous in its views. Most notably Chevron with its Will you join us? campaign has broken with the oil industry to discuss the problem of future oil supplies. And, the coal companies are absolutely giddy about the prospect of taking a larger and larger share of the energy pie.

All of this means that policy makers and the public are not getting the feedback they need in order to make informed judgements about such issues as peak oil and global warming (though the global warming issue finally appears to be close to steamrolling the deniers because the scientific evidence is so ironclad.) The deniers' agenda isn't so much to convince people that their own views are correct; rather, they seek to confuse the public into inaction in the same way that a coin in the fuse box confuses an electrical system into continuing to run higher than advisable amperages.

The trouble is people who put coins in the fuse box tend to get a rather nasty side effect: Their houses eventually burn down. By subverting the feedback we need concerning global warming, peak oil and a host of other environmental problems, those engaged in this public relations game of confusion risk letting the equivalent of a house fire occur in the biosphere. But, unlike a burning house from which one can conceivably escape, there will be no escape from the biosphere if it becomes uninhabitable--not even for the clever people at public relations firms and think tanks who stalled any action until it was too late to prevent the worst.

The best method of carbon sequestration

Now that the Bush administration has admitted something every thinking person already knows--that the world is warming--and now that the administration is fully behind the search for alternative fuels, we can expect more talk about the benefits of carbon sequestration.

For some people carbon sequestration offers the best of all possible futures. Presumably, we could continue to burn plentiful coal supplies long after oil and natural gas production declines. With the proper technology we could then capture the resulting carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) before is it released into the atmosphere. This would supposedly give us the necessary breathing room to make a gradual transition to a renewable energy economy with a minimum of disruption.

The initial schemes for sequestering carbon such as placing it in caverns underground sound easy enough. But several concerns arise. Can leaks be avoided, not just immediately, but over a period that might last many thousands of years? Will the carbon dioxide react with the surfaces of the cavern opening up pathways to the air above? Such reactions have been noted, but whether they would ultimately result in substantial leaks remains unknown. Can all the existing drill holes into such a cavern be found, adequately sealed and monitored for an indefinite period of time? In other words, who will be babysitting these sites 100, 200, even 500 years from now?

One sequestration scheme already in use stores carbon dioxide in an aging oil field. The injected CO₂ is used to force out the remaining hard-to-get oil. As clever as this seems, it's worth asking whether any net reduction in greenhouse gasses occurs since the recovered oil is ultimately burned.

Yet another land-based method involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground saline aquifers which will presumably never be used for human consumption. The supposed advantage of this method is that saline aquifers are widespread whereas suitable caverns and old oil fields are not nearly as widely or conveniently located. No one really knows whether this would result in permanent storage or whether the drill holes used to reach the aquifers or other holes intentionally or inadvertently drilled in the past or the future can be adequately monitored. Even the extent of an aquifer and its communication with other aquifers and with the surface are difficult to ascertain.

Another often touted method is to use the mineral serpentinite which will combine with CO₂ from power plant flues to form a stable magnesium compound. Energy costs and storage problems could be substantial. And, while serpentinite is relatively abundant, it's not clear whether there would be enough of it with sufficient concentrations of magnesium to handle the projected need.

The open sea apparently offers even greater possibilities including pumping carbon dioxide to the bottom of the ocean. At great depths the pressure and low temperature would maintain the CO₂ in liquid form which is heavier than water. Presumably the liquid carbon dioxide would simply hang out for millennia. The financial and energy costs of gathering and transporting the CO₂, perhaps in liquid form using an elaborate pipeline system, seems to be the major hurdle. In addition, what we know about the bottom of the oceans is probably less than what we know about the nearest star. Can we really be sure that the CO₂ will stay where we put it?

As I said above, all of this effort is focused on allowing us to use coal for the foreseeable future. The coal infrastructure is already in place, and it works to produce more than half the electricity in the United States. What is not considered is the use of coal to make liquid fuels which would replace those now provided by oil. Coal-to-liquids, as it is called, is a very carbon intensive process. Even if the carbon emitted from the coal-to-liquids refineries were captured and sequestered, there is currently no practical way to capture and sequester carbon from a moving vehicle. This is no small matter. In the United States vehicles create 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Given the uncertainties, the costs and the alternatives available to us--conservation, efficiency, wind and solar--does it make sense to build a hugely expensive sequestration infrastructure that will essentially be a giant subsidy for the coal industry? Can we even be sure that exponentially increasing rates of coal production could be sustained? In other words, would we not be bringing forward a peak in coal production, perhaps by the middle of this century and then face all the same questions about a transition to a non-fossil fuel economy? Finally, given that we cannot guarantee the successful long-term sequestration of CO₂, would it be moral to commit future generations to such a risky path?

When you think all this through, there is one method of carbon sequestration that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Leave the carbon in the ground to the greatest extent possible and get on with the project of creating a genuinely sustainable society.

The unknown unknowns

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

                         --Donald Rumsfeld
                           Former U. S. Secretary of Defense

It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

                         --Mark Twain

We are frequently assailed with the notion that knowledge is doubling every n-years and that the interval between doublings is shrinking with each doubling. We are even told that knowledge will someday be increasing at a rate that is so fast it will represent a distinct break in human history. After this turning point, often referred to as the singularity, machines will be smarter than humans and launch human society into an unprecedented orgy of invention and progress.

An antidote to this kind of thinking is David Orr's, Ecological Literacy, a compilation of essays that remain as fresh and profound today as they were when they were published in 1992. While Orr would not deny the proliferation of knowledge, he posits an equal and opposite reaction. With each doubling of knowledge, we get a doubling of ignorance.

What does he mean? The example he cites is the discovery of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s. These substances turned out to be marvelous as refrigerants and spray-can propellants. They are nontoxic, noncorrosive, nonflammable and odorless. As we learned more about them, we found new uses in manufacturing and as cleaning solvents. Our knowledge was increasing. Also increasing was our ignorance of the consequences of using CFCs. Only in the early 1970s did researchers discover that CFCs, once discharged into the air, make their way into the upper atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. In fact, a large hole opened in the ozone layer in the mid-1980s giving dramatic testimony to the effects of CFCs.

But the discovery of the mechanism behind the ozone hole might very well have come too late had it not been for a lone scientist who wondered what happened to CFCs after they entered the atmosphere. It is a only matter of great good fortune that F. Sherwood Rowland obtained a grant in 1973 to find the answer. There was, in fact, no systematic search underway into the side effects of CFCs, and those side effects could have easily eluded our notice. Our growing ignorance came very close to imperilling all plant and animal life on the planet.

Similarly, our ignorance about the dangers and intractable problems of nuclear waste grew up in tandem with our expanding knowledge and application of nuclear power. The problem of what to do with the waste remains unsolved.

Our understanding of species loss comes in at a trickle as species are annihilated by the thousands every year. In a conversation the other day with a friend who counts birds at our local nature center, he made a moral argument for biodiversity. Don't the other organisms on the Earth have a right to exist as much as we do?

Forget the moral argument, I responded. All you need to do is ask yourself (and others) whether it is wise to wipe out species at the current colossal rate when we haven't even discovered some of the species we are wiping out and when we don't know the effect of such a bloodbath on the future viability of the human race? What if, without knowing it, we are wiping out species that are essential to our very survival? Is it worth the risk to continue as we have?

Also discussed in Ecological Literacy is a rather revolting scheme proposed by researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture that would ostensibly increase the carrying capacity and sustainability of farmland through the use of perennials. Orr describes the plan as follows:

Farms would no longer grow wheat, tomatoes, or corn, but rather cellulose from perennials having the attributes of 'tulip poplar, kenaf and a nitrogen fixing symbiont.' Cellulose would then be converted into syrups and transported by tank car or slurry line to food factories near population centers where they would be reconstituted into steaks, french fries, and zucchini with 'aesthetically necessary secondary metabolites, e.g., flavor compounds and pigments' added. Yum.

Orr doubts that such a system could actually be sustainable. And if it did fail for technological, political or ecological reasons, who would be left who knows how to grow actual food? Our knowledge about food and farming would be declining as our knowledge about how to grow cellulosic substitutes expanded, all without any assurance that the new system could be maintained indefinitely.

For most of us it is an article of faith that knowledge is expanding very rapidly. And many of us know for sure that this is always and in every way a good thing. David Orr has his doubts:

The belief that we are currently undergoing an explosion of knowledge is a piece of highly misleading and self-serving hype. The fact is that some kinds of knowledge are growing while others are in decline. Among the losses are vast amounts of genetic information from the wanton destruction of biological diversity, due in no small part to knowledge put to destructive purposes. We are losing, as David Ehrenfeld has observed, whole sections of the university curriculum in areas such as taxonomy, systematics, and natural history. We are also losing the intimate and productive knowledge of our landscape....On balance, I think, we are becoming more ignorant because we are losing knowledge about how to inhabit our places on the planet sustainably....

Wisdom, Orr writes, is in part knowing the limits of our knowledge. Wisdom implies a level of humility which the human race has thus far failed to demonstrate. Wisdom means accepting that there will always be unknown unknowns and acting accordingly.

Deluded

It's hard to imagine a week more filled with delusion about Iraq than the one just concluded. But, Iraq never ceases to surprise, so one must hold out the possibility that the delusion could grow even grander.

First, there was the notion that a soon-to-be-adopted Iraqi law designed to open the country's oilfields to foreign companies will somehow lead to a flood of foreign investment. A more measured evaluation of the prospects for such investment was published in The Independent. In fact, it's hard to see how anyone could currently operate an oil exploration program inside Iraq safely.

Even after the Iraq civil war ends--and it will end someday though that day is probably many years away--the government which controls Iraq may not be the one now in charge or may, in fact, turn out to be three governments controlling a partitioned Iraq. Even if a unified Iraq survives, what would prevent it from changing the laws governing oil production, revoking existing contracts or simply renationalizing the oil industry? An Iraq at peace may find itself capable of doing any of these with the broad support of its people. Certainly, some will say that a continued U. S. military presence in Iraq would cow the country into honoring any agreements made under the law. But who now believes, given emerging political and ongoing fiscal realities in the United States, that the U. S. military will remain in Iraq to the conclusion of the civil war and for many years after that?

To top it off there is the specious claim that Iraq has 115 billion barrels of oil waiting to be drained from the ground. Only a few people have bothered to look beneath the surface of this claim to find the reality. In the 1980s OPEC, of which Iraq was a member, was contemplating linking production quotas to reserves. Some OPEC members reported miraculous reserve increases without any equally miraculous exploration efforts. Between 1987 and 1988 Iraq's reserves jumped from 47 billion barrels to 100 billion barrels. Such reserves are now euphemistically referred to as "political reserves."

The second delusion of the week was that President Bush's plan to add 20,000 U. S. soldiers to forces already in Iraq would somehow bring stability to the country. Not many people were buying this delusion including many U. S. senators of both parties. When then army chief Gen. Eric Shinseki predicted before the war that several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed to pacify Iraq, he was pilloried by the Bush Administration. But, that number is probably closer to what it would take to do the job. Even if the American public and the Congress had the stomach for such a huge new deployment, as a practical matter it is impossible. The U. S. military is having trouble maintaining the force levels it has already deployed.

The third delusion of the week comes in the form of an article in the January 15 edition of The New Yorker about Democratic presidential candidates and their foreign policy positions. The word "oil" appears exactly once and that's inside a quote from the mouth of former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards talking about our addiction to oil.

The varied views of Democratic frontrunners--Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--on America's national security are detailed in the piece with discussion of Iraq and Iran featured prominently. But, the author, Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be an intelligent and well-connected reporter, never once mentions oil while analyzing the U. S. relationship with either country. Perhaps none of the people he interviewed except Edwards mentioned the issue. But, one would think that Goldberg would have asked about oil, especially if the candidates appeared to be avoiding the issue and especially since Iraq and Iran are such large oil exporters.

Understanding the delusions under which America's leaders and media suffer allows us to see why the most obvious solution to America's predicament in Iraq goes unmentioned, namely, a vast crash program to free America from fossil fuels, especially oil, in favor of renewable, low-carbon sources of energy. This should be combined with an emergency effort in energy conservation and efficiency.

As long as Americans and their leaders believe that there is plenty of oil to be had; that getting access to it is really only a matter of applying military force and market principles; and that national security isn't inextricably bound up with the way we think about and use energy, the country will fall further and further behind in making an energy transition that is being forced upon us by the limits of fossil fuels themselves.