Δ KNOWLEDGEBASE
« Responding to Climate Change
Excerpt from In Search of Environmental Excellence:
Moving Beyond Blame
by Bruce Piasecki and Peter Asmus
CHAPTER 3
A Global Greenhouse: Framing the Debate
Page 6 of 14
« 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 »
Though the energy crisis of the seventies fostered a new conservation ethic that allowed the U.S. economy to grow forty percent without any accompanying increase in energy use, the ratio of energy consumption began to climb again in the first part of 1988. One of the most haunting features of a treadmill is its mesmerizing returns onto itself. We know better, yet we forget, returning again and again to the urge to consume rather than conserve. It's easier to waste and takes a lot less planning. But global warming demands that we move the nation as far off the petrochemical treadmill as technically possible, as soon as possible.
Nonetheless, the federal government slashed conservation budgets throughout the eighties. U.S. efforts pale next to those of our foreign competition. Though the United States consumes seventy-five percent more energy per dollar of gross national product than competitors such as France and Japan, American research-and-development funding for new conservation measures lags behind funding levels in France and Japan, as well as in the United Kingdom and West Germany.8
How do we get off the treadmill?9 The answer is known, yet its recognition will be resisted and delayed.
The age of cheap, clean, and abundant energy supplies is over. Domestic oil production has been on the decline since 1970. The nuclear power industry is nearly at a standstill. New energy possibilities in coal and other fossil fuels promise high prices, delayed deliveries, and considerable environmental risks. If America is to assert a leadership role in developing a new approach to both securing clean energy supplies and mitigating the devastating consequences of global warming, then now is the time to explore new alternatives.
A Great Equalizer
The global warming issue touches everyone and everything on the planet. It has forced people to view the earth in a new light, recognizing that what one does in one's own backyard bears consequences for the rest of society. Both rich and poor feel it.
Ironically, it is the wealthy who may suffer the most. As the earth warms, glaciers will melt, causing sea levels to rise, threatening some of the nation's most coveted coastlines. The EPA estimates that the cumulative costs for protecting our coasts, often home for the wealthy, would reach between $73 billion and $111 billion in 1988 dollars for a one-meter rise by the year 2100. Even with this investment, an area the size of Massachusetts would be lost forever, and our dwindling wetlands would be further reduced by fifty to eighty-two percent.
Of course, dramatic changes in global climate could ruin the fragile, less flexible economies of poorer, less mobile developing countries too. Further draining of world resources may contribute to what economist Robert Heilbroner calls the twenty-first century's special kind of "resource wars."
I do not raise the specter of international blackmail merely to indulge in the dubious sport of shocking the reader. It must be evident that competition for resources may also lead to aggression in the other "normal" direction — that is, aggression by the rich nations against the poor. Yet two considerations give new credibility to nuclear terrorism: nuclear weaponry for the first time makes such actions possible; and "wars of redistribution" may be the only way by which the poor nations can hope to remedy their condition.10
Since global warming could actually help some countries by improving regional climates for food production, such "resource wars" could disrupt any coordinated international strategy to combat the larger costs of climatic change. Nevertheless, this issue clearly requires international cooperation. To appreciate the international sensitivities of this issue, consider the following figures.
A study prepared by the Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute notes that twenty-five percent of the world's population resides within industrial societies which consume about seventy-five percent of the world's electricity. Average use of a refrigerator, air conditioner, and heater already has the typical Westerner using nine times as much electricity as the typical resident of the developing world.
Next Page »
Footnotes
-
Claudine Schneider, "Least-Cost Utility Planning: Providing a Competitive Edge," Public Utilities Fortnightly, Apr. 17, 1986, p. 15. [« back]
-
In The Control of Oil (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), John Blair argues that institutional barriers are the prime impediment preventing us from ending our almost sentimental love of oil. His prescription is to sever the cozy relationships between regulator and regulated. He calls for the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws to allow market forces to break up the big oil companies and to shape public policy. An end to depletion allowances and tax breaks would do the same.
His view, from over a decade ago, still rings with some truth: "In mutual dislike, rather than in mutual understanding, there is strength. Moreover, by making an industry's behavior depend on the judgment and actions of many buyers and sellers, the competitive approach minimizes the harm that can be done by any small groups of individuals, thereby making influence and corruption more cumbersome, expensive, and of most importance, ineffective."
The new concerns about greenhouse gases, however, change the agenda for the oil lobby, and require a quicker resolution than Blair's "mutual dislike." No matter how entrenched the petrochemical treadmill may be in society, the more efficient use of fossil fuels will be mandated by political reality. This is the first step to be taken in response to environmental concerns, because it is the easiest and most cost-effective. [« back]
- Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), p. 43. [« back]
