ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE INDIGNANT DESERT BIRDS OF WILLFUL SELF-DESTRUCTION

(This article originally appeared on Blog Action Day, October 15, 2009, as part of a global initiative to promote climate change awareness. Of the 33,000 articles posted – which included submissions by PM Gordon Brown of the UK, the PM of Spain, The White House, The Economist, and Greenpeace, as examples – this article was named ‘best’ by the event sponsors. Although news of the Gulf oil spill has dominated prime time, let us not forget the larger issue of clean and sustainable energy.)

The enemy of realism is hubris.

- Reinhold Niebuhr -

It takes a special humility to understand our place in the natural world. Yet our mythology places us on a pedestal and speaks of human beings as having dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over cattle and every creature that creeps upon the earth, even over earth itself.

In our American history texts, we read of Manifest Destiny and the relentless expansion from sea to shining sea in search of territory, resources, and prosperity ... where our sense of freedom is predicated on abundance.

Notions of freedom and abundance turned the gears of the Industrial Revolution, which relied upon the labor of immigrants who arrived in waves to partake of the American Dream.  For them, dreams of freedom and abundance outweighed all deprivations including bigotry by race, religion, ethnicity, and class.

World War II turned America into an economic superpower. After the war, America possessed almost two-thirds of the world's gold reserves, more than half of the world’s manufacturing capacity, and exported two-thirds of the world’s goods. The relationship between freedom and abundance was no longer the privilege of the few but had become the birthright of the many.

It is ironic to note how rapidly fortunes change ... and how the sudden scarcity of a once abundant resource leads to economic decline.  By 1970, as the demand for oil outpaced domestic production, America turned into a net importer and, within a generation, the largest creditor nation in the world turned into the largest debtor nation.  Today, our nation has 5% of the world's population yet consumes 25% of the world's oil and emits 40% of the world's pollutants.  With proven petroleum reserves of 21,317 million barrels, the Unites States has a 3 to 5 year supply beyond which our nation will be totally dependant on imports (source).

Of course, there are critics, pundits, and politicians who rally around the flag with chants of 'drill, baby, drill!'  Drill off the coasts, they say.  Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. More opinionated than informed, what they do not know is that ANWR contains less than a year's supply of oil at current consumption rates … and production is more than a decade away.  There are others who want to strip mine the Bekken oil sands of North Dakota and the oil shale slopes of our Rocky Mountain States. At least 30 or more years of oil, they claim, but what they do not know is that less than 3% is recoverable … resulting in colossal environmental damage for negligible gain.

Grow our way out of the energy crisis, still others say. Distill ethanol from corn and switchgrass; but what these advocates have not considered is the enormous spike in food prices as agricultural land is diverted from food to energy production ... and the BTU deficit that requires far more energy to be invested than can be taken out. Furthermore, a 70% increase in food production will be needed just to keep pace with projected worldwide population growth. Ethanol offers no solution beyond a good stiff drink.

Even our friends at Google have joined the ranks of Internet punditry with this expression:


What it means is 'renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.'  It is a statement about energy economics but little else. It tells us that any hypothetical alternative energy source must compete with coal - the cheapest commodity available - to be economically viable.  It says nothing about why non-combustible sources (such as nuclear, solar, wind, and geo-thermal) must be considered within the context of global climate change.


We cannot separate the energy crisis from the climate change crisis. In economic and environmental terms, these are two sides of the same coin. From the Industrial Revolution to the present, energy consumption has lead to a substantial rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Levels of carbon dioxide, which account for 62% of all greenhouses gases, have nearly doubled since 1750.  Methane, which accounts for 20% all greenhouse gases, has risen 155% during the same period. Most disturbing of all, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a 52% rise in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - a mere 20 years away (source).

We approach global climate change as just another problem to be solved with good old American ingenuity. We cite the Manhattan project, the national highway system, and the space race as shining examples of past glory. However, global climate change is more than merely a technical or structural problem. It has deep historical and cultural roots and a system of unspoken values instilled from the beginning of civilization and passed from generation to generation.


“America is addicted to oil,” declared former President George Bush in his State of the Union address on January 31, 2006. Was the President signaling a dramatic shift in American energy policy, or were these merely pious words meant for the history books?  Scarcely a day after the speech, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman issued this disclaimer:  Don’t take the President literally.  In other words, there will be no rehab for America's addiction under this president.

The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 was the first of several warning shots.  Almost 40 years later, we are still dithering as if our energy policy paralysis is the sum total of our mythology, our culture, our national heritage, and a cowboy lifestyle that refuses to face reality.  More than these, our energy debate mirrors our healthcare debate:  There are entrenched interests hell-bent on protecting their hordes of filthy lucre.

ExxonMobil gave $1.6 million to the American Enterprise Institute in an attempt to undercut the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a report widely regarded as the most comprehensive review of climate change science. The Bush administration sought to further undermine public awareness by censoring the key findings of climate scientists. Thus, our government, under pressure from the oil lobby, suppressed meaningful data to skew public debate.

Manipulating public opinion is easy when you are the CEO of Big Oil with money and lobbyists and politicians in your pocket. In the weeks and months ahead, Big Oil will be staging Astroturf events to protest new climate change legislation … groups such as Energy Citizens organized by the American Petroleum Institute whose members include Anadarko Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, among others (source).

Let me digress for a moment to tell another Genesis story. It begins 400 million years ago, between the Devonian and Carboniferous Periods, when the earth was still hot and humid and long before the polar ice regions formed.  As newly evolved forests drew carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fell where they stood - their carbon buried and sequestered under layers of sedimentary rock - the climate cooled and glaciers formed.

Hundreds of millions of years later, a peculiar Pleistocene creature walked the earth and learned in short order how to dig up and burn those fossil fuels to cook food, warm homes, build cities, drive Hummers, make microchips and Barbie dolls and a myriad of trinkets to delight the fancy ... all far removed from basic survival needs. In less than 25 generations, these peculiar Pleistocene creatures released into the atmosphere as much carbon as earth had sequestered over hundreds of millions of years. This is what is known as the anthropogenic cause of global climate change.



Meanwhile, the National Defense Institute explored the potential impact of global climate change as a threat to national security.  Its conclusion: Vulnerable regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the island nations of the Pacific will face food and water shortages, catastrophic flooding, unprecedented refugee crises, religious conflict, and the spread of contagious diseases. These will demand massive humanitarian aid efforts and/or a military response (source).

There will always be voices in the crowd who keep hearing messages the dead have stopped sending. There will always be voices arguing, not for the common good, but from pure self-interest. Implementing public policy changes are always difficult at best, and we can understand these quirks and follies of human nature with some sympathy, but the climate bomb is ticking and time is running out.  Our worst nightmares have yet to unfold.