The nonheroes of peak oil

We laud heroes who save us from dangers that are immediate and concrete. President Franklin Roosevelt lifted the spirits of an America weary from economic depression and later led that nation through a victorious war against the forces of fascism. We celebrate the brave police officers and firefighters of the New York Police Department who risked all to save the unfortunate victims of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. We also have lesser recognized heroes for the environment who helped to clean up our air and our water.

But, the most obscure of heroes are those who prevent bad things from happening. Perhaps the least known, but most notable hero in this regard is Norman Borlaug who is often called the father of the green revolution. Whatever one thinks of Borlaug's type of agriculture (chemical- and petroleum-intensive and biotechnology friendly), arguably his work helped to avert mass starvation among the rapidly growing populations of Asia and Latin America. As a result, Borlaug was the recipient of many awards including the Nobel Peace Prize. But, since there are apparently no newsworthy photos or videos of people not starving because of Borlaug's work, he is little known to the general public.

Let us now imagine the fate of a courageous, peak oil aware president of the United States who sets about making drastic changes in federal policy to help the nation prepare. This president decides to use all his (or her) power to persuade the U. S. Congress that peak oil is a reality, that it could come soon and that serious action must be taken. (I do not for a moment believe this is a realistic scenario; rather it is just a thought experiment to make a point.)

Luckily, this president has commanding majorities in both the House and the Senate and is able to push through his program. It includes an immediate rise of $1 a gallon in gasoline taxes, increasing to $3 after five years. The money raised is used to begin an ambitious plan to expand the national passenger rail network and run it primarily on electricity. Vast outlays are also made for expanding public transportation in cities. The operation of this transportation is heavily subsidized to encourage its use. Additional taxes are levied on other energy sources such as coal and natural gas to reduce all energy usage and encourage conservation. Tax incentives are given for the purchase of gas-electric hybrid vehicles and electric-only vehicles. Gas mileage standards are raised by 50 percent over five years. The plan calls for a vast increase in electrical generating capacity using wind and solar to keep up with the new demands that will be made on the electrical grid.

These are the broad outlines of the president's plan, and he does many other things as well related to efficiency and alternative energy development. By the time the president has finished passing his plan, he is wildly unpopular. The members of his party are swept from office in the next midterm election. The mandate of the new majority is to repeal the president's peak oil measures. But the president retains enough support in Congress to sustain vetoes, and he vetoes every attempt to change his plan.

After three years of difficult adjustment, the price of gasoline, even with the new taxes, is only somewhat higher than it had been when the president took office. New rail passenger service is becoming a favorite among the public, especially the high-speed corridors that were the focus of the initial efforts. Wind and solar electric capacity are now rising at such a steep rate that orders for new power plants using fossil fuels have leveled off. In general, energy remains quite a bit more expensive than it was because of taxes and the general rise in energy prices, but business, government and households have become far more efficient. Perhaps most important, world oil demand has declined and continues to decline. Along with it underlying crude prices have also declined. The president's opponents, of course, seize on this price decline as evidence that there was never any problem with oil in the first place.

The turnabout in U. S. energy policy encourages many other nations not already doing so to adopt high energy taxes and stringent efficiency standards. The vast increase in orders for wind and solar electric generation brings the price down considerably making it more affordable for countries both rich and poor.

As the presidential campaign begins at the end of his third year, the president appears not to have much chance of winning re-election. Members of his own party are running against him in the primary. Even though they plan to keep the "good" parts of the president's energy policy, they all pledge to repeal the gas taxes. Candidates from the other party want to keep some of the plan too, but repeal most of the tax increases.

The president doesn't even make it through his own party's primary, and the other party ultimately takes Congress and the presidency. Despite this new Congress and president, much of the former president's policy stays in place. By now there is a huge and powerful lobby for the wind and solar industry that successfully fights off any attempt to scale back incentives for wind and solar electric generation. The production of vehicles of all types, trucks, busses, and cars, using hybrid and electric technology is now the norm so nothing is done to repeal gas mileage standards. The Congress repeals some, but not all of the tax increase on gasoline because the government is now dependent on the revenue to keep the quickly expanding rail and public transportation network moving.

The former president, however, is a pariah in his own party and in his own country (except in train stations). He spends most of his time at a vacation home in Costa Rica. It is there that he dies two years later--from grief more than anything for having been so thoroughly reviled by the country he once served and saved from the worst effects of peak oil.

This, unfortunately, is a likely trajectory for any politician who grasps the nettle of peak oil and pursues it to its logical end even if that politician succeeds. (The fate of the last president to grapple seriously with energy issues, Jimmy Carter, is not lost on the current crop of American politicians.) The abstract and hypothetical nature of world peak oil production prevents it from having heroes in the usual sense of the word. Its heroes might be likened to a bureaucrat whose regulation saves thousands of babies from injuries that might otherwise occur. There is no celebrity for such a person, of course, since he or she cannot be photographed, for example, snatching a helpless baby from a crib and carrying it from a burning house to safety. In fact, when the regulation the bureaucrat proposes goes into effect, he will be roundly criticized by anti-regulatory groups as just another nanny for the nanny state. Of course, there is rarely any acknowledgement later that such a person was responsible for a fair number of healthy babies who grow up unharmed.

Certainly some who work to prevent future harms ultimately get credit. Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader come to mind. But in their cases the harm was already in evidence. For Carson it was the decline of songbirds and for Nader it was the horrific damage inflicted on people by automobile accidents. The invisibility of peak oil, however, makes it difficult to grasp. And, the harm resulting from it will not be in evidence until it arrives. Peak oil, unlike car accidents and the spraying of pesticides, is a one-time event.

So the heroes of peak oil awareness and preparedness are faced with describing the hypothetical harm from an abstract event in the future over which there is considerable disagreement as to the timing and ultimate effects. It is hard for them to illustrate that harm, and even more difficult to make the case for heroic action. And, yet heroic personalities are often critical to the advance of a movement.

It is a sad commentary that those who are now laboring so hard to prepare us for a world with declining oil may succeed only when the rest of us fail. Their heroic work may only be recognized as such after we have begun our slide down the other side of Hubbert's Curve, when it would have been so much better had we recognized them long ago and simply followed.

Peak oil conspiracies

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.
                 --Richard Hofstadter

Ancient peoples often imagined that any calamity natural or otherwise was the work of displeased gods. Today, we are more enlightened. When we suffer misfortunes such as rising energy prices, some of us immediately imagine small secretive groups in high places engaged in elaborate conspiracies.

In fact, it is a good thing to take a skeptical view of those in power. And, one does not have to invent motives of greed or a desire for domination in such people, but only read the headlines. However, it is a particular turn of mind that endows a tiny cabal with fantastical powers to control every major facet of world society. Historian Richard Hofstadter described this mind in his famous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. It is a style, he admits, which is found elsewhere and which stretches back far in time. It is not limited to those with disturbed minds, but rather expresses itself broadly, especially in societies under stress. And, it is not confined to those who lack intelligence for many very bright people succumb to it. It continually finds new venues for manifesting itself. And so, with oil prices rising in recent years and now reaching all-time highs, one of those new venues is peak oil. (It's worth noting that few were puzzling over such grand oil-related conspiracies when oil hit $10 a barrel in 1999.)


Peak oil conspiracies as outlined on the Internet range from the collaboration of greedy oil companies seeking to maximize their profits to a grand conspiracy of the secret illuminati to impoverish the common people and possibly solve the overpopulation problem by starving much of the world of food and fuel. It is not my purpose here to refute such theories point by point, but rather to show how they fit into the historical pattern outlined by Hofstadter.

One of the characteristics of the modern-day paranoid style is that it believes society has been seized from average folk who must now mount a campaign to take it back "to prevent the final destructive act of subversion" as Hofstadter puts it. (Hofstadter was thinking of the contemporary right of 1964 when the essay appeared, but believed the formula could be applied to any such group.) To quote from The Myth of Peak Oil already cited above:

Publicly available CFR [presumably the Council on Foreign Relations] and Club of Rome strategy manuals from 30 years ago say that a global government needs to control the world population through neo-feudalism by creating artificial scarcity. Now that the social architects have de-industrialized the United States, they are going to blame our economic disintegration on lack of energy supplies.

So we are counseled that unnamed "social architects" have first deindustrialized the United States and now intend to starve the excess population using peak oil as a cover. (It is a puzzle why "global government" would feel it necessary to starve people if the world is awash in resources since this would crash the very economy that gives them and their supporters wealth and power; it's also a puzzle why they would wait 30 years to start doing it if it were really that necessary to their plan--but I promised not to try to parse the logic of such screeds, didn't I?)

Here is a more mild version from Peak Oil is Snake Oil!:

The oil and gas market as currently construed and managed is a manipulated and propagandized marketplace that has enriched the oil companies beyond the wildest dreams of Croesus while the rest of the nation absorbs the ancillary costs and is left to deal with their impact on our society.

I do not here intend to defend the world's oil companies. They are guilty of many misdeeds, and there is credible evidence that they have on occasion tried to use their market power to manipulate prices, especially in the refining market. The point I want to make is that the paranoid style in this case seems to have reverted to an older style described by Hofstadter in which vague, shadowy villains lurk in the background. Here all oil companies are lumped together leaving out the important distinctions between the gargantuan government-owned enterprises that are mostly part of OPEC and therefore explicitly seek to manipulate prices, the publicly traded international oil companies, and the small independents. The authors of The Myth of Peak Oil also refer to "the elite" (who seem to be associated with the CFR or the Club of Rome) as well as "the oil industry," but never go further than this in detailing who is included in the peak oil conspiracy business.

A third characteristic made clear from the examples above is that the danger does not come from without so much as within. It is the product not of an attack, but of a betrayal. The villains are not invading our country; they are already in place.

A fourth element of the supposed conspiracy is that many agents for the conspirators are hard at work. In this case these agents are planting stories about peak oil to keep the public supine while their money or even their lives are taken. The agents include nonprofit organizations such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas and other peak oil groups; the International Monetary Fund; vague "establishment-run fake left activist groups;" and even Rolling Stone Magazine for an article it published by James Howard Kunstler adapted from his book, The Long Emergency.

A fifth element is what Hofstadter refers to as the renegade. These are people who have once been part of the conspiracy in some way but have now seen the light. A recent example is a piece entitled Confessions of an "ex" Peak Oil Believer. The author explains his turnabout as follows:

Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist.

Such revelations give supposed "inside" confirmation of the conspiracy to a skeptical world. And, the conversions themselves provide examples of a path to redemption, an essential feature of conspiracy narratives.

The sixth element is the paranoid style's obsessive concern for evidence. Hofstadter describes it as follows:

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates "evidence." The difference between this "evidence" and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it.

Perhaps not all who engage in this style do so without expecting to change many minds. But these advocates do often marshal considerable selective evidence which on its face can sound quite convincing. What could be more convincing that peak oil is a fraud than the notion that the Earth is filled with endless amounts of oil deep down (so-called abiotic oil), that Russian scientists have proved this, and that this is the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't want Russian oil companies to fall into Western hands. The West would have acquired technology and know-how that, if kept secret, will make Russia the world's pre-eminent oil power for a century to come.

I will add a seventh element of my own. The peak oil conspiracy theorists can only think in terms of the social world, not the natural world. In this regard they are cornucopians. Therefore, agency must come from the social world. Someone is responsible for what is happening, not something. It is simply not possible that the world is really nearing a peak in oil production. Someone is only making it appear so.

Hofstadter goes on to tell us:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization.

Perhaps some in the peak oil movement believe we are faced with something similarly apocalyptic. But this apocalypticism is derived not from fears about a giant conspiracy, but rather from the evidence of geological constraints.

I have yet to see a plan of action spelled out by the peak oil conspiracy theorists. Hofstadter sheds some light on why. Those caught up in the paranoid style tend to live outside the give and take of the political process. They regard themselves as having been excluded from it and therefore powerless. I would add that from their position outside the political struggle they conjure up a politics that is merely a forum for conspiracy at the top and delusion among the masses. Since the process itself cannot be trusted, there is no real way to bring one's grievances into the political arena and seek some kind of resolution.

This, however, may be a saving grace. For all the irritation that the peak oil conspiracy theorists may cause those in the peak oil movement, I do not believe the vast majority of these conspiracy theorists will ever leave behind their passivity and actually do something. But unfortunately, they add to the dead weight of inertia that keeps many others from taking the peak oil threat seriously.

My new column on Scitizen

I was recently asked to do a monthly column for the Paris-based science news site, Scitizen, for the Future Energies section. Scitizen is a general science site written by scientists and science writers and aimed at the lay public. My first column, "The Trouble with Predictions," has now been posted. Readers of this blog will notice that I touch on themes already discussed here. And, they will notice that the tone is a bit more formal and the writing more compressed since I am limited on length. But Scitizen provides me with an opportunity to introduce my way of thinking about energy and sustainability to a different audience. Take a look and see what you think.

Is peak oil a guy thing?

Whenever I am at gatherings involving peak oil, I am always struck by the imbalance between men and women. Three reasons for this come to mind:

• The peak oil movement draws many of its members from the oil industry which is dominated by men.

• Peak oil is a highly technical subject which attracts minds from the hard sciences, engineering, mathematics, and the high technology world, all of which continue to be dominated by males.

• These first two reasons result in many peak oil groups seeming like clubs for men.

While these explanations are undeniably true, there may also be another factor at work. One leader in a peak oil group with whom I spoke recently said that his group found itself split largely along gender lines on one very important issue: How confrontational should the peak oil movement be?

For the men the answer was as confrontational as necessary. By this they meant speaking directly and forcefully at public meetings and gatherings about the need for an urgent response to an approaching peak. It meant dispelling notions that 1) the fixes would be easy and 2) once these fixes were complete, we would be able to return to business as usual. These men feel that their families and community are in grave danger, and it is their responsibility to warn others and to take the steps necessary to protect those families and the community. How could one disagree with that?

But, for the women this approach seemed unnecessarily harsh. Shouldn't the group be emphasizing the positive results of necessary changes? Shouldn't it try to be inclusive and friendly rather than critical or confrontational? In other words, shouldn't the group be trying to put an optimistic face on a necessary transition to make it attractive to as many people as possible in the community?

Strangely, the rift was almost entirely about tactics rather than goals. That rift is exemplified, in part, by two prominent annual peak oil gatherings: The ASPO-USA World Oil Conference and the U. S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, both coming up in October. (Full disclosure: I am a member of both of the organizations behind these conferences.) Last year the ASPO-USA conference was dominated by men, both in the audience and onstage. But what is the mission of ASPO? It is to study and raise awareness of peak oil among policymakers and the public. In essence, it is the truth-telling or prophetic mission outlined by the men in the group I mentioned above. For some reason, many more men are attracted to this mission than women, at least in the peak oil movement.

At the Community Solutions conference last year the ratio of men to women was much more balanced. But as Pat Murphy, executive director of Community Service, Inc. which sponsors the event, explained during that conference, the organization was no longer trying to explain what peak oil is; it had moved on to the question of what concrete actions need to be taken. And so, the Community Solutions conference focused on concrete actions much more so than the ASPO conference. By contrast, ASPO sees itself as a forum for the discussion of peak oil rather than an advocate for specific responses.

So does this mean that men are talkers and women are doers? First, these examples tell us that there is probably a difference in the way most men and most women approach the peak oil issue. But women still show up at the ASPO conference, even onstage, and men show up at the Community Solutions conference in large numbers--still larger than women by my estimation. So, the differences in approach cannot be attributed entirely to gender. Second, talking is a form of doing. A successful post-peak oil transition means large numbers of people will have to be mobilized. That implies a fair amount of talking. But, it is hard to imagine the peak oil message breaking through the everyday cultural hubbub without some stridency. After all, that message is not about an optional lifestyle that one might choose to adopt. It is about necessity. Beyond this, if peak oil is imminent (and by that I mean within the next decade), it would seem almost irresponsible not to insist on the urgency of such a transition.

So, my answer to the question which is the title of this piece is no. By no means is peak oil a guy thing. Nor can it be. Yes, initially the movement appears to have attracted more men than women. But no serious person involved in the movement believes that it can or should stay that way. As the crisis deepens, those focused on spreading the word (whether in a "confrontational" manner or not) and those focused on inclusiveness and the implementation of responses will find that they need each other as much as the world needs to hear and see what both groups have to offer.

Unprepared

Not too long ago I was marooned for an entire day at Chicago O'Hare airport. While there, I got the impression that the standard uniform for airline passengers is now a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Surprisingly, this uniform is worn not only by children, but also by mothers and fathers with families headed for vacations, most college students, many middle-aged businessmen, and even some senior citizens. Whatever one thinks of the aesthetics of such apparel--and on many people the aesthetics are none too pleasing--I wondered if this attire could be used as an index of how modern, jet-faring people in America think about preparedness. (This has implications for how we Americans think about long-term threats such as climate change and resource depletion. But, I'll come back to that later.)

How hard is it to imagine running through O'Hare airport to make connections? And, yet I saw some people who had to remove their flip-flops in order to do so. Had it not occurred to them that flip-flops might not be the best choice for footwear given the exigencies of air travel? Perhaps they'd never had to run in an airport. Perhaps they'd never stubbed their toes. But, surely they should have known that they would be obliged to take their flip-flops off during the security check. They would then have to tramp through the metal detector area where thousands of other bare feet from around the world (including those from tropical zones where, I imagined, exotic fungal diseases thrive) had tramped before. Now, I agree that socks may be a less than the optimum public health measure while walking through such an area, but I told myself that at least they provide a barrier between my feet and those of thousands of others.

And, where did these T-shirt-clad denizens of the air put the myriad pieces of paper one collects while making such a trip: boarding passes, itinerary, baggage claim ticket, parking ticket and so on? They had no pockets in their shirts. I admit they could have crammed these things into the pockets of their shorts; but then this only applies to those wearing shorts with pockets rather than the athletic ones which were so often on display. And, where exactly were their wallets? Some, inadvisably, had put their wallets in the back pockets of their shorts making themselves easy targets for even an amateur pickpocket. For others their wallets were nowhere in evidence. Perhaps these unseen wallets were in carry-on bags or daypacks, that is, for those who actually had them.

And, did it occur to these travelers that they might have to go outdoors at some point? That sometimes it rains as it was doing that very day? Did they bring a windbreaker or a compact umbrella, just in case? I suppose some might have, but I didn't see any evidence of this either.

Few of the T-shirt crowd, however, failed to produce a cellphone upon which they were constantly nattering. It was the only thing one might call preparedness, and on this day cancelled flights and rebookings were the topics of many conversations. But I have found that under other circumstances, calls are usually filled with a very boring play-by-play of each caller's trip or simply idle chatter intended to draw down unused monthly minutes before they expire.

For these travelers--and they were a large portion (maybe half?) of the airline passengers I encountered--it appeared that sunny day follows on sunny day, that a day at the airport is more or less the equivalent of a day at the beach. Of course, these passengers were trying to be comfortable while traveling. I understand that. But, it seemed that comfort was their only thought. Contingency planning did not appear to be on the menu.

I admit that the shops and restaurants lining the concourses of our major airports provide much of what even the most absent-minded traveler might need, so long as he or she has ready cash. Why plan when someone else will provide what you need, where you need it, the moment you finally realize you need it? This just-in-time mentality has infected nearly every part of American life, and it has made us poor contingency planners, unable to imagine a world in which our every need isn't met right here, right now without any foresight on our part.

For all my carping, I got my comeuppance when the electricity went out at my home a couple evenings after my transit through O'Hare. Because I live in a city, these rare outages, when they do occur, usually last for only two or three hours at most. But the sudden, horrific storm which caused this outage left me and much of the city without electricity for 24 hours. I found a flashlight and candles. But, I did not have the correct size of batteries for my radio. With the phones out as well, I could get no information whatsoever. I was unprepared.

The next morning I went by car out beyond the city into the suburbs where the electricity still flowed. Many eager city residents like myself were lining up for food, drink and ice at the remaining open grocery stores. The lines weren't really that long considering what had happened. Yet, tempers flared when checkout clerks failed to move the lines along as quickly as some of the antsy shoppers desired. And, it was here in the store that I realized that I had made certain mental preparations. When the lights went out and didn't come back on within the expected time, I told myself that someday I might actually have to live with intermittent power. While standing in line at the store, I told myself that someday I might live under circumstances where long lines are the rule rather than the exception. Someday I might feel lucky to have anything resembling refrigeration. Someday a store such as this one might be considered a luxury shop filled with items far too expensive for most people. And, thinking back to my day at O'Hare, I imagined that someday, perhaps in my lifetime, O'Hare might become an empty shell rather than a swarming hive of activity.

How many Americans have thought about even one of these possibilities? As long as every necessity is being offered up to the vast majority cheaply and conveniently, how many will have the heart to tackle such long-term problems as climate change and resource depletion? How many will even understand that these problems threaten the very civilization that conveniently delivers cheap goods of every kind to them?

Part of the preparation for the challenges we face is to exercise the imagination, both to imagine what we might have to do without, and how we might (happily, if possible) do without it or improvise another way to obtain what we need. But how do we spark that imagination before the onset of catastrophe? That is a critical question for all those concerned about building a sustainable society.

Can ecologists save the ecosphere?

We can be grateful for the painstaking and detailed work done by those scientists calling themselves ecologists who have alerted us to the grave dangers facing the human race. Those dangers, it turns out, are largely the result of the colossal impact of human activities on the climate, the forests, the oceans, the soil, and the water resources of the planet and on the myriad species supported by these systems.

It would seem to follow then that whenever ecologists gather, they would be screaming at the top of their lungs (or at least doing what passes for this in academic circles) about the imminent peril in which we humans find ourselves. But at a recent annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), those figurative screams could only be rated as somewhere between muffled and nonexistent. The program naturally included many technically oriented sessions. That was to be expected. But only two of the dozens of presentations appeared to sound the alarm. I attended one of them as a panelist, and that session focused on sustainability planning for municipalities. I asked my fellow panelists later, "Where is the alarm in the rest of the conference? Don't these scientists read their own research? They must know the awful predicament in which humanity has placed itself?"

These panelists explained the seeming lack of alarm this way: It's not that ecological scientists fail to understand the situation. But they are first and foremost scientists. Many see their work as a craft. They want to be regarded as the best at what they do. Why stir up a hornet's nest making policy prescriptions that are bound to be controversial even among other ecologists? Why not stick to producing the finest research possible which, after all, will help build one's reputation and thus pave the way for future research funding?

All of this seemed perfectly logical. But, still I asked, why aren't these same scientists speaking up publicly, at least in general terms, about the dangers we face? Some are, came the answer. But many others fear for their funding. Since the vast majority of funding for ecological research comes from government, most scientists shy away from policy pronouncements. Why antagonize lawmakers who appropriate the funds or government employees who disburse them? That might lead to a loss of funding, and then one's research is over. And, even when no funds are at stake, many ecologists do not want to be grouped with environmental activists or at least not with ones viewed as extremists. Such an association might consign them to fringe status (even in their own profession) and exclude them from policy debates altogether. It's an understandable reaction, and one that anyone who writes or speaks publicly about environmental issues can comprehend.

But there is a third reason, they continued. Most ecologists don't concern themselves very much with the effects of human societies on ecosystems. (Some readers may need to pause here for a moment, as I did, to absorb this wholly unexpected revelation.) The majority of ecologists regard themselves as purists who want to unlock the secrets of undisturbed ecosystems. But, what ecosystems can now truly be called undisturbed? I asked. In response my fellow panelists simply shrugged their shoulders as if to say, yes, we know, but this is how the game is played.

In fairness I should point out that the ESA is aware of the disconnect between the work of their member scientists and the public at large. The organization is making a serious attempt to increase its public education efforts. I attended a session on expanding ecological literacy in which written and oral feedback was solicited from all the participants, many of them nonscientists like myself. And, all members of the ESA have apparently already been asked to fill out surveys about public education and make suggestions.

Still, I couldn't help thinking that this effort seemed like too little, too late when the increasing tempo of climate change and resource depletion seems to be bringing us rapidly to the brink. By contrast, the leisurely pace at which organizations move and professional cultures change could mean a long gestation period before any substantial increase in public education efforts takes place. But as I reflect about this, it seems unfair to make these scientists responsible for doing everything. In truth, ecological scientists have already heavily influenced school and college curricula. And, they have inspired many popularizers of their work including teachers, writers and activists who are furiously trying to educate the public about basic ecological concepts and about the results of ongoing ecological research.

So here's my answer to the question which is the title of this piece: No, ecologists cannot save the ecosphere, not by themselves. They are going to need a lot of help from those of us who are able to translate their work into something the public and policymakers can digest. And, they are going to need even more help to put into practice our evolving ecological understanding in a way that can provide a sustainable home for us, for our descendants, and for the many species whose fate now lies in our hands.

Note to readers

The post below will be my only post in August. I am taking a temporary hiatus from posting new articles until September. I will be in California for much of the time between now and then. From August 4 through August 10 I will be attending the Ecological Society of America annual conference in San Jose where I will spend my first day as a panelist for a workshop entitled "Ecosystems as templates for sustainable communities." If you are a reader and attending the conference, I'd love to meet you. Please look me up. From August 11 through August 16 I will be in Willits, California looking at the Willits Economic Localization (WELL) project firsthand. If you are a reader in the Willits area and involved in this project or other projects relating to sustainability, I would like to speak with you. You can call the WELL office which will be helping me to coordinate meetings with local residents at (707) 459-7076.

Have a pleasant August!

The seductive message of "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

The documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is an excellent murder mystery filled with dislikable corporate and government villains. It also features heroic engineers, salespeople and average citizens as well as a sprinkling of good-looking actors and actresses who play, well, themselves. As I watched the film recently for the first time, I found myself doing something that I don't normally do: cheering for Hollywood celebrities and their cars.

In this case the cars were the slick electric ones produced by General Motors and dubbed EV1. They were marketed in California in the late 1990s in anticipation of having to meet a zero-emissions requirement for a small portion of GM cars sold in the state. For those who don't recall what happened, the auto companies sued California to get the state to rescind the requirement, and they succeeded. The EV1s which had been leased, but never sold, were recalled and literally sent to the crusher despite the valiant efforts of those who leased them including prominent celebrities.

The complex tale of how this all came about is the substance of "Who Killed the Electric Car?", and it is a compelling story of greed and skullduggery. The film is an excellent piece of entertainment and journalism as far as it goes. But the subtext of the documentary is a message that has made the film as popular as it is misleading. The implied message of "Who Killed the Electric Car?", whether intended or not, is that but for the nasty auto and oil company executives and their collaborators in government, we could all just drive off into the future in electric cars while solving energy depletion and global warming. In short, technology will save us if only the corporations will let it.

Having said this, I am a strong advocate of electrifying our transportation system. One of electricity's virtues is that it can come from many different sources, but most importantly from renewable ones such as wind and solar. Another virtue is that we have an existing electrical infrastructure. There would be no need, for example, for expensive new hydrogen filling stations to service new hydrogen-powered cars. But it seems highly doubtful to me that as fossil fuel supplies decline, the world will be able to provide an electric car to everyone who wants one. Electricity, after all, is produced largely by burning coal and natural gas. Even oil is still used to produce electricity in many countries. If governments decide as a matter of policy to encourage the purchase of personal automobiles powered by electricity, the most likely source of that electricity will be coal. Hundreds of millions of electric cars on Chinese and Indian roadways would probably be better than ones powered by petroleum, but not by much when it comes to global warming and air pollution.

In addition, there are costs than cannot be measured in gallons or degrees of global warming. The automobile and its attendant infrastructure have been responsible in large part for the hollowing out of American cities, costly sprawl development, millions of roadway deaths and injuries, and a harried way of life that emphasizes speed above all else.

And therefore, the kind of electrification of transport I favor is the electrification and broad expansion of public transportation. Given the energy constraints we face, only electrified public transportation could provide us with widely available transport using renewably generated electricity. There are, of course, proposals to use wind power in combination with plug-in hybrid cars; but this is only a partial step. The simple truth is that the scale of renewable electric generation required to power private automobiles would be so vast that it seems doubtful it could be built within any timeframe that would meet the near-term challenges of fossil fuel depletion. If we had 30 years, perhaps we could do it. But, increasingly it is looking like we will have very much less time than that.

For those who must use private automobile transportation all or some of the time, owning an all-electric or hybrid vehicle may be a wise choice. But buyers of hybrids especially should know that half of all the energy a car will ever use has already been used by the time you buy it. The energy was used to mine and refine the metals, to extract and refine the petroleum used for the plastics and the rubber, to stamp out the myriad parts, to ship them to an assembly plant, to assemble the car, to ship it to a dealer and to house it at the dealership, all while housing, feeding and providing transportation for all the people who do these things.

The energy and materials required to replace our current fleet of autos with more efficient hybrid or all-electric ones, to build the necessary capacity in wind and solar, and to feed and house all those engaged in this project may not come very easily in the energy-starved world we are about to enter. As Dmitry Podborits explains, "[T]o implement renewable energy solution[s] on such a scale that would make a difference, you need to have an energy-rich economy to begin with. You also need to have a clear focus and understanding of the scope of the problem, as well as the political will and the grass-root support to go through a war-like economic development effort that will strain every economic muscle in such a society." Perhaps we will gain such a focus someday. But, will we gain it while we still have an energy-rich economy?

So my advice is to go see "Who Killed the Electric Car?" if you haven't already. And if you want to, hiss at all the greedy executives and malign government regulators. In retrospect they look more pitiful than sinister as we watch the Japanese automakers run away with the hybrid and soon-to-be plug-in hybrid auto market. Cheer the good celebrities and the common folk who valiantly try to do their part to bring a presumably better technology into American life.

But don't get carried away with the unspoken message that technology will save us. Technology may be one of the many solutions we need to move toward sustainability. But, I find it very doubtful that we will all be able to sit behind the wheel our electric cars and wait for a green techno-utopia to emerge.

Upside down economics

In his collection of essays entitled Earth In Mind David Orr introduces us to one William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who has been puzzling over the economics of climate change. The question Orr asks is whether Nordhaus is puzzling over the right things and in the right way. Orr is clearly interested in Nordhaus's views because those views very much represent the way most (but certainly not all) economists think about the natural world.

Back in 1990 in a one-line preface to an article by Nordhaus in The Economist entitled Greenhouse Economics: Count Before You Leap, the magazine's editors summarized Nordhaus's overall point as follows: "Careful cost-benefit analysis, not panicky eco-action, is the right answer to the risk of global warming." It's a statement that few would disagree with. Where the disagreement comes is how to tote up the costs and the benefits.

Of special interest are Nordhaus's views concerning which sectors of the economy are likely to be hit hardest by global warming and what effect that will have on society at large. In the 1990 Economist article he wrote:

Studies of the impact of global warming on the United States and other developed regions find that the most vulnerable areas are those dependent on unmanaged ecosystems – on naturally occurring rainfall, run-off and temperatures, and the extremes of these variables. Agriculture, forestry and coastal activities fall into this category.

Most economic activity in industrialized countries, however, depends very little on the climate. Intensive-care units of hospitals, underground mining, science laboratories, communications, heavy manufacturing and microelectronics are among the sectors likely to be unaffected by climatic change.

His views since then seem to have changed little as this excerpt from his new paper (July 24, 2007) on global warming and economic modeling indicates:

Economic studies suggest that those parts of the economy that are insulated from climate, such as air-conditioned houses or most manufacturing operations, will be little affected directly by climatic change over the next century or so.

However, those human and natural systems that are unmanaged, such as rain-fed agriculture, seasonal snow packs and river runoffs, and most natural ecosystems, may be significantly affected. While economic studies in this area are subject to large uncertainties, the best guess in this study is that economic damages from climate change with no interventions will be in the order of 2½ percent of world output per year by the end of the 21st century.

That's actually a significant dent in the world economy, but is it reasonable to believe that the harm to the economy will be limited to this amount if global warming goes unchecked?

Of course, there is just plain uncertainty about the trajectory of global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides scenarios which range from 1.8 to 4.0 degrees C of warming by the end of this century. James Lovelock, who believes global warming is now on a path to destroy world civilization, predicts 8 degrees C of warming in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.

But the question at hand is whether the relatively minor importance which Nordhaus assigns to natural systems is warranted. The answer is probably not quantitative, but conceptual. Orr does an excellent job challenging Nordhaus in the essay mentioned above. Here I only wish to add something visual as a way to think about this problem.

The two charts below (which you can click on to get a better view) use identical data to summarize the sizes of various industries in the U. S. economy as of 2005. (The data for the charts comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U. S. Department of Commerce.) The first chart is a conventional pie chart. Someone viewing it might be forgiven for sharing Nordhaus's conclusion that agriculture and forestry are only minor parts of the economy and therefore even large effects on them due to global warming need not concern us much.


The second chart is how I conceive a properly informed ecological economist might depict the same data. The entire economy stands on the shoulders, as it were, of agriculture, forestry, and mining (especially the extraction of oil, gas, coal and uranium) and on the utilities that deliver the energy mined in usable form.


This method for depicting the economy was suggested to me by two things. First, Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that an organism's growth is limited by the amount of the least available essential nutrient. In the case of world society that nutrient would be food, though many would argue that fossil fuels are the essential nutrient since so much food production depends on the use of fossil fuels and their derivatives including fertilizers and pesticides. Second, a piece by Dmitry Podborits argues that it is nonsense to say that the U. S. economy is less vulnerable to oil supply disruptions today than in 1970s because it produces twice as much GDP per barrel of oil. Instead, Podborits suggests, we are more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions because we have so much more GDP balanced on each barrel of oil. The same argument might be made with respect to agriculture which in the United States in 1930 employed 21.5 percent of the workforce and made up 7.7 percent of GDP. In 2000 the numbers were 1.9 percent of the workforce and 0.7 percent of GDP. We are balancing an ever larger total economy on an agricultural economy that on a relative basis is shrinking. Certainly, we are getting more efficient, but are we becoming more vulnerable?

Of course, the United States could import food if the size of its agricultural sector declined without a corresponding increase in productivity. But such a strategy wouldn't work if every country pursued a conscious policy of shrinking its agriculture or if worldwide food production plunged abruptly because of poor harvests. (My charts might have been more illustrative had I constructed them for the world economy instead of just the U. S. economy; but, I was unable to find any suitable data. In principle, however, the same critique of Nordhaus would be even more applicable with regard to the world economy.)

Now look at the charts again and ask yourself which one more accurately depicts the importance of natural systems to the economy.

No warranty express or implied

Perhaps opinions on global warming and other critical ecological issues from such environmental savants as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fred Singer, Sean Hannity and the George C. Marshall Institute ought to bear a label explaining that these opinions come with no warranty express or implied. Such a label was suggested to me by a piece in David Orr's collection of essays entitled Earth in Mind.

About Rush Limbaugh Orr writes: "[I]f his view is wrong but acted on nonetheless, the consequences will be serious, and Mr. Limbaugh provides no warranty for buyers of his opinions that subsequently turn out to be defective." To this I would add that we ought to include a list of warnings and contraindications such as those which are now included in television commercials for prescription drugs--which warnings and contraindications usually make you think you'd be far better off not using the drug being advertised.

If such a label were to be included with broadcasts or in the introductions to printed pieces, naive television viewers, radio listeners and readers would be forced to evaluate whether their health and lives and that of their children, grandchildren, and all future spawn ought to be risked on a kind of ecological roulette offered by this group of environmental grandees.

I use the roulette analogy because science can only deal in probabilities. Likewise, their can be no certainty from these apologists for business-as-usual. So we are left with what the preponderance of evidence tells us, and it tells us in no uncertain terms that the vital signs of the Earth are in the danger zone and are moving further into that zone at a high rate of speed.

Of course, in a free society we do not want to impose a warranty or warning label on free speech, but we can respond to free speech that is designed to be intentionally confusing and misleading with clarity and where appropriate, a little ridicule. In this context, I offer (facetiously, in case anybody wasn't sure) the following proposed labeling for all environmental pronouncements including, to be fair and balanced, those that warn of ecological dangers ahead. The statement below might be used for television or radio, but could easily be adapted for written work:

Statement of Warranty

Definitions

"We" and "our" refers to the conglomerated corporate media enterprises that currently maintain a virtual stranglehold on the airwaves. "You" and "your" refers to the hapless viewer or listener who has no control over such media and who relies at his or her peril on the information (or lack of information) provided by said media.

No Warranty Express or Implied

No warranty express or implied is made for any opinions provided to you concerning global warming, resource depletion, species extinction, pollution or any other environmental topic. No refunds, replacements, or compensation will be offered to those killed or injured or who experience loss of property (including household pets) or livelihood (including farming and ranching) as a result of any of the following:

1. Rising sea levels.


2. Violent storms.


3. Food, fuel, mineral or fertilizer shortages.


4. Water shortages.


5. Drought.


6. Deforestation.


7. Disease resulting from toxic pollution or from the movement of tropical diseases to formerly temperate areas.


8. Costs associated with loss of eco-services to human or animal populations whether known or unknown at the time of the utterance.


9. Any other outcomes that can be linked to the diminished habitability of the biosphere.

Warnings

1. We bear no responsibility for the harm that may come to you or your heirs or assigns or to the biosphere at large even if our hosts or guests denied the existence of any such dangers or stated or implied that such dangers would be inconsequential.


2. You are advised that our hosts or guests may receive compensation or sponsorship in the form of cash, gifts, free meals at expensive sushi bars and other restaurants, rides on corporate jets, luxury vacations disguised as seminars and fact-finding trips, and speaking fees as well as myriad other items from the fossil fuel, nuclear, automotive, electric utility, chemical and other industries. Some of our guests may also have received lucrative appointments requiring little work from nonprofit organizations supported by the industries above and/or that have a stake in pretending that human activities are neither a threat to the stability of the biosphere nor to the human societies that rely on that stability.


3. You are further advised that our hosts or guests may have no recognized expertise or if they do have expertise, it is most likely in an area irrelevant to the matters being discussed.


4. Disjointed, inconsistent, and intentionally deceptive arguments may be used by our hosts or guests and will result in no liability whatsoever for said hosts or guests or for our programs, our producers or staff, our network, or our affiliated stations. Such arguments are designed to make it appear that we are "practicing journalism."

Contraindications

Advice flowing from opinions that downplay present and future ecological dangers for humanity may be contraindicated when:

1. You have children.


2. You are planning to have children.


3. You know any children.


4. You are a child.


5. You care about whether some (possibly more modest) form of modern, technical human culture can continue into the future.

Additional warnings

Conversely, if you follow any advice from hosts or guests that in any way helps create a more sustainable world, you are warned that you must take full responsibility for such results as:

1. An increase in biodiversity.


2. An increase in soil fertility.


3. A decrease in toxic pollution.


4. A decrease greenhouse gases.


5. A more equitable distribution of wealth.


6. Stronger local communities.


7. Any development that leads to greater sustainability that results from your actions.

We cannot take any responsibility for such results though we'd like to if you turn out to be right about the need to move toward sustainability.

Further additional warnings

Neither we, nor our producers or staff, nor our affiliates, nor our parent company, nor the shareholders of our parent company, nor the regulators of our network or our parent company have ever or will ever take responsibility for anything said about the above mentioned environmental topics or any other environmental topic.

Consent to This Statement of Warranty

By viewing or listening to our programs you agree to all the terms of this Statement of Warranty. In the event that you do not agree with this Statement of Warranty, you are advised to turn off your television, radio, Internet connection to our server, or other method of viewing or listening to our programs and seek other outlets for information.

Questions or comments

If you have any questions or comments about this Statement of Warranty, Warnings, Contraindications, Additional Warnings or Further Additional Warnings, fuhgeddaboutit.