Get used to it, baby: if there were an easier available place to find new oil than a mile beneath the sea, they'd be drilling there. The accident in the Gulf of Mexico, however damaging it is already, however widely it may spread, is minor compared with what is happening, invisibly, above our heads. That's the message of Bill McKibben's new book, Eaarth, and what he's been warning about for over two decades.
Each era is unimaginable to the era just before, except to a tiny circle of visionaries such as McKibben. Some of these visionaries are misguided, but this author bases his diagnosis on scientific evidence, even when, as in this case, the evidence has momentous implications for our "way of life."
Eaarth, with its doubled second vowel, is McKibben's deliberately drawling name for the planet we now live on, which is, he argues, no longer the planet on which we were born. The change is nothing as obvious and immediate as the slick in the gulf or as limited to one spot on the map. It is gradual and invisible, not unlike many cancers. Being invisible, it is deniable, at least for a while: "How could I be afflicted in my prime by cancer? There must be some mistake."
We're in trouble, writes McKibben, but we're still focusing mainly on undeniable perturbations, such as oil slicks and the global debt crisis--undeniable and relatively minor. If we can encourage the "green shoots" and return to vigorous growth, our leaders assume, everything will be okay. McKibben argues in his book that growth, part of the civic religion of the U.S., must be replaced--not by the wishful concept of "sustainability," a concept he rejects as "squishy," but by contraction and enoughness.
So what's the good news? (It's part of the American genius to assume there must be something good everywhere, as in Ronald Reagan's story of the room covered with equine turds, at the sight and smell of which the optimist calls out, "there must be a pony in here somewhere.") According to McKibben, the good news is that, while it's too late to prevent terrible damage from climate change and the peak of oil production, we can use our ingenuity to manage the contraction "gracefully" (quoting the final word of his text).
Although McKibben uses the term "global warming," a phrase that terrifies a climatologist but sounds tolerable to most people, he understands that the trouble will be experienced as climate change. Nature will reallocate water or, as he claims, has already begun to do so: some agricultural areas will wither in drought, while other places suffer torrential rains and hurricanes. Rivers will dry up or flood. Infrastucture will be damaged; food production, cut (at least food supplied by currently dominant means). Oceans will rise, fed by water from melting glaciers
The 1970s would have been a good time to begin a swift transition to a new economy. We had a President who, at moments, expressed our predicament with regard to energy. Back even before the young McKibben was writing "Talk of the Town" pieces, we were given a series of books, whatever their shortcomings, that might have forewarned us and pointed to some alternatives: for example, the Meadows and their colleagues,The Limits to Growth (1972); E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973); Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975); Denis Hayes, Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum Age (1977), Amory B. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths (1977); Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs (1978); William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Changes (1980); Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That's Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich (1981), and Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land (essays collected in 1982).
But the triumph of Reagan in 1980 made it clear that a majority was not yet prepared to halt the party fueled by a dramatic spike in energy available from fossil fuels, a spike so far lasting about two centuries. Coal, oil, and gas allowed us to be warmer in the winter, to build an electrical grid fired more than anything else by coal (and then also by natural gas), to build a fleet of cars and modern roads, to fly in planes, to make plastics and various industrial chemicals, and rounding out this list of examples, to bring fertility to soil (using ammonia produced by the Haber-Bosch process). What's not to like?
Of course the answer is CO2, an invisible by-product of burning all this fuel. Could the combustion from millions of sources, taken together, hold more of the sun's heat in our atmosphere and thus shift the climate? McKibben's subject is the trouble caused by that heat.
With many allies, McKibben found a way to stimulate a worldwide demonstration about climate change. He began with what might seem unpromising, with a number. It was 350, the maximum parts per million of CO2 that scientist James Hansen said would preserve the longtime conditions in which civilization flourished. Before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration was only 275 ppm; now it's 390.
According to the website of McKibben's campaign, "unless we are able to rapidly return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt."
Or, we could add while speculating about "positive feedback," the added heat absorption caused by the melting of reflective Arctic sea-ice still covering dark water.
In one of the most valuable books published in the last year, McKibben returns us to the theme of The Limits to Growth and thus questions the central dogma of our civic religion, as big a heresy as when, in the early 16th century, a Polish polymathquestioned the belief, supported by the Church of Rome, that the sun revolved around the earth.
McKibben's prescriptions are not unfamiliar, in part because of his own voluminous writing. He favors rebuilding local economies instead of imagining that we can sustain globalization; growing food by means other than industrial agriculture (including local, organic farms and millions of suburban gardens); developing an economic system around the values of durability, robustness, and enoughness; gaining the stimulation of travel in larger part via the internet; building social capital; and above all, reducing not the rate of increase in greenhouse gases, but the absolute proportion.
We know how to increase the gross domestic product, but (to allude to the title of one of McKibben's earlier books) is our system capable of producing just enough and of distributing it fairly? Easier to label the news of climate change as a hoax and to dismiss the messenger as a hypocrite or worse, a misguided nerd; easier, like a defense attorney, to raise doubt about the evidence (and in this case, to capitalize on the dutiful doubt that is the hallmark of good science).
Part of the value of Eaarth is the generous array of examples from all over the world, gathered from extensive reading, organizing, and travel (yes, let opponents of greenhouse gases have as big a carbon footprint as their work requires, say I). Part of the value flows from the courage of casting doubt on economic growth as the mantra of a successful civilization of the future. And part is McKibben's companionable, coherent, and good-humored account of our fix, delivered in the tone you might hear, in response to a question, from a well-informed friend on a hike as he steps over the sticks, gracefully.
Agreed. That is just common sense. On the other hand, the statement hints at just how difficult it will be to reduce the carbon footprint of the entire human species.
I suspect the easiest way to turn the clock back on CO2 levels would be to ban most passenger aviation. I can't help thinking that injecting tons of hot C02 directly into the stratosphere on each flight poses a disproportionate threat to the atmosphere, when compared with purely earthbound emissions.
I can't prove that my plan would have a dramatic effect, of course, but just think how easy and inexpensive it would be to try -- by comparison with almost any other remedy one might dream up.
Water makes a good fuel, when will we ever learn?
OK. That's the fantasy. The fantasy is comfortable and easy to live with. The reality is scary. It is unpredictable. Mankind is not only not able to fix the problem but mankind IS the problem. Even if we make the sacrafices and do everything right, things will still deteriorate for another 50 years. If we don't take drastic actions now, things will probably be much worse. Until we face these very tough realities, realities that are very hard to actually see, people like Mr. McKibben are whistling into the wind. Besides, were butting up against the most massive PR compaign by big business and big energy that the world has ever seen. They can buy anything. Including pseudo scientists and including public opinion. Huggs Becky who usually is an optomist
For one, the law of diminishing returns, which basically is that the more you have the more you need because each additional unit is valued less and less. It's why the Wall Street boys need ever increasing bonuses and why they must move beyond any fiction of financing to pure gambling and theft.
My view of sustainability includes contraction and enoughness.
People come to my house and always ask the same thing- “Why don’t you get a bigger TV?”
I reply- “I’m going the other way.”
As a kid we had a round black and white TV the size of a dinner plate. To us it was a modern miracle. Today people think only a loser has less than a 50” energy hog TV.
People ask why I bother to collect grass clippings to mulch-up the vegetable garden. Why not just spray the weeds? Because then I might as well eat the poison food in the store.
I agree with McKibben- think small, enough is enough, grow a garden.
Common sensible people should be involved in politics and make their voices heard, not just retreat into some off-grid la-la land.
Wake up America
Anyone with even a smattering of science education knows that in a closed system continuous growth is impossible. Basing our economies on carbon fuels makes the world a closed system: we will run out of fuels, we will run out of certain basic raw materials, we will pollute the biosphere and the system will collapse. There is no valid argument against this proposition.
However the system can be "opened" by the use of renewable energy sources, especially solar. But until these sources become a major component of our energy budget, the system must still be considered closed.
To the surprise of almost everyone, inexpensive, clean alternatives could be available in a relatively short time.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water at; http://www.aesopinstitute.org to learn a bit about a couple of them.
There are more. And they are moving toward practical products in several countries.
The science is new and difficult for those trained to think inside the box to accept.
But, independent labs are increasingly involved and practical applications are en-route.
As we can see, fossil fuels threaten to sharply impact life on earth much more quickly than is generally realized.
An early hit will be oil prices, which could exceed $100 per barrel in a matter of months. That can abort economic recovery.
One barrel of ordinary water can replace 200 barrels of oil. A gallon or two might power a hybrid car 1,000 miles.
The coal mine disaster, the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, and climate change, are alarm clocks!
Time to accelerate the development of breakthrough alternatives as rapidly as is humanly possible!
A 24/7 development program is ready to be born. Accelerate the birth!
Look under Key publications and Recent Papers. The most recent appears in the Journal of Hydrogen Energy.
Several earlier papers appear in the Peer Reviewed journal Physics Essays.
Ha, ha. Some people like to use the term phony. But hey, if you can make it work, go for it. Just don't keep posting over and over on the internet about it.