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« 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 7 of 14
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The implications of these simple statistics are intertwined with another key factor contributing to the greenhouse effect: the massive destruction of rain forests. The photosynthetic process of trees and all living plants absorbs the carbon dioxide that is released into the air with the burning of fossil fuels. This natural recycling process is being disrupted by countries such as Brazil, current home to a third of the world's rain forest. Burdened with huge debts to world banks, Brazil is converting vast stretches of their forest into instant moneymaking ventures such as short-term cattle farms for American-based fast-food restaurants. The land proves useless after several grazing seasons, and the cattle farmers move on.
In their wake lies the destruction of countless sensitive ecosystems. Although the world's rain forests cover only two percent of the earth's surface, these rich forests contain half of all species of life on the planet. At present, forty-eight species of plant and animal life become extinct every day.
It is estimated that worldwide net tree loss accounts for twenty-five percent of global CO2 emissions. (Trees that are burned not only no longer absorb carbon dioxide; in the process of burning, they release more of it into the atmosphere.) Adding to the dilemma is the fact that almost half of the world's population depends on firewood for cooking and home heating. As areas around the globe become developed, they will switch to electricity, which will partially arrest the deterioration of this element in the current global-warming equation. But this is likely to increase the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity. If the entire world used as much electricity per capita as the industrial world uses now, worldwide use of electricity would be at least three times as great. Such catch-22 scenarios help show why the fossil-fuel addiction seems impossible to break: the more dependent we become on oil, the harder it is to secure an alternative route.
Deforestation is hardly an issue confined to foreign borders. High demand from other countries for U.S. timber, and the notoriously weakened dollar, have created a domestic timber industry boom at the expense of regal old-growth giants in Oregon. Critics claim the U.S. Forest Service is caving in to the Pacific Northwest's logging industry, which sells massive stretches of American forest to Japanese consumers.
Coupled with increases in the use of fossil fuels over the last one hundred years, global deforestation has already led to a doubling of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. In light of this, we must face the question: How can we balance our world's need for energy with these urgent environmental concerns? To date, this question has not been adequately addressed by any government.
A December 1988 report by the Electric Power Research Institute predicts that, because of its abundance, coal will supply about two-thirds of the additional energy needed worldwide over the next fifty years. This report advocates the development of an innovative clean coal technology program, and asserts that the domestic electric utility industry will invest more than $3 billion to make this program a reality. This program received a push from the federal government back in 1986 in light of Canada's concerns about acid rain resulting from U.S.-burned coal.11
This move toward less coal emissions is welcome, but America and its neighbors — as well as coal advocates in China and India — have to move beyond coal, and beyond other fossil fuels. To continue to rely on coal consumption, without seeking safer replacements, is like tap-dancing on thin ice. Consider the following observations by Dean Abrahamson, from a speech he gave at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota:
There is little hope for slowing climatic change if new commitments continue to be made to coal and the other hydrocarbons. Yet coal is expected to surpass petroleum as the world's most utilized fuel between now and the middle of the next century. So-called clean coal technology, the deployment of which would increase greenhouse gas emissions, is now slated to receive a public dole of over $500 million of federal funds for the 1990 fiscal year. Continued subsidies of coal, the most environmentally noxious of the fossil fuels, and of the destruction of old-growth forests are among the considerations which led to the following observation by D.A. Wirth in Foreign Policy: "the implications of the greenhouse phenomenon have not played the slightest role in long-term strategic planning by the U.S. government."
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Footnotes
- Two articles, appearing in the Mar. 17, 1989, Christian Science Monitor, highlight the market opportunities that will open up because of retrofits required by acid rain: Richard Wentworth, "Cost and Profit in Cutting Acid Rain," and John Borley, "Canadian Smelter to Spend $500 Million to Cut Emissions," both on p. 9. [« back]
