Wired Magazine 2008
Inconvenient Truth
Here we have an environmental article that the major news outlets and science cable shows will never show the public. Why? Because this truth is truly inconvenient. The world is being fed a daily dose of global warming hog wash, controlled by radical environmentalist, Hollywood and who else, Al Gore.
We at www.infinitehealthresources.com strongly support organic foods and agree global warming is an issue. However, a common sense approach is rarely discussed.
The Kyoto Treaty, ethanol and Chemtrails are all disastrous results of poor or suppressed reasearch led by fanatics.
I may not agree with some of what is mentioned in Wired’s article, but it is refreshing to see another viewpoint.
Maybe this is the beginning of some real discussion.
Please read on.
Inconvenient Truths
In the age of climate change, what matters most is cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That means rethinking everything you evr learned about being green. The war on greenhouse gases is too important to be left to the environmentalists. There, We Said It.
The environmental movement has never been short on noble goals. Preserving wild spaces, cleaning up the oceans, protecting watersheds, neutralizing acid rain, saving endangered species — all laudable. But today, one ecological problem outweighs all others: global warming. Restoring the Everglades, protecting the Headwaters redwoods, or saving the Illinois mud turtle won't matter if climate change plunges the planet into chaos. It's high time for greens to unite around the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Just one problem. Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism's sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to take advantage of the energy efficiencies offered by urban density. We must accept that the world's fastest-growing economies won't forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science — and that, on the way up, countries like India and China might actually help devise the solutions the planet so desperately needs.
Some will reject this approach as dangerously single-minded: The environment is threatened on many fronts, and all of them need attention. So argues Alex Steffen. That may be true, but global warming threatens to overwhelm any progress made on other issues. The planet is already heating up, and the point of no return may be only decades away. So combating greenhouse gases must be our top priority, even if that means embracing the unthinkable. Here, then, are 10 tenets of the new environmental apostasy.
Live in Cities:
To many Americans, ecological nirvana is a bucolic existence surrounded by wilderness. But the Thoreauvian desire for more elbow room has led to sprawl, malls, and cougar attacks. The edge-city upshot is a national cadre of 3.5 million "extreme commuters," who spend more than three hours a day in transit, many of them spewing carbon dioxide between exurb home and city office. Automobile exhaust in the US contributes roughly 1.9 billion tons a year to the global carbon cloud, more than the emissions of India, Japan, or Russia. Even worse are the 40 million lawn mowers used to tame the suburban backcountry: Each spews 11 cars' worth of pollutants per hour.
The fact is, urban living is kinder to the planet, and Manhattan is perhaps the greenest place in the US. A Manhattanite's carbon footprint is 30 percent smaller than the average American's. The rate of car ownership is among the lowest in the country; 65 percent of the population walks, bikes, or rides mass transit to work. Large apartment buildings are the most efficient dwellings to heat and cool.
And guess what high-speed means of transportation emits less atmospheric carbon than trains, planes, and automobiles? The humble counterweight elevator put into service in 1857, which has made vertical density possible from Dubai to Taipei.
A/C is OK:
As a symbol of American profligacy, the air conditioner may rank second only to the automobile. Energy-sucking AC props up an unsustainable lifestyle in scorching desert cities like Phoenix, while the cheerful New Englander splitting wood and tending his potbelly stove is the epitome of ecological harmony MDASH so goes the green cant. But this stereotype gets it wrong. When it's 0 degrees outside, you've got to raise the indoor thermometer to 70 degrees. In 110-degree weather, you need to change the temperature by only 40 degrees to achieve the same comfort level. Since air-conditioning is inherently more efficient than heating (that is, it takes less energy to cool a given space by 1 degree than to heat it by the same amount), the difference has big implications for greenhouse gases.
In the Northeast, a typical house heated by fuel oil emits 13,000 pounds of CO2 annually. Cooling a similar dwelling in Phoenix produces only 900 pounds of CO2 a year. Air-conditioning wins on a national scale as well. Salving the summer swelter in the US produces 110 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Heating the country releases nearly eight times more carbon over the same period. Meanwhile, chilly Northeasterners can at least take heart in one thing: With global warming you can turn the heat down.
Organics Are Not the Answer:
The path to virtue, we all know, begins with organics. Meat, milk, fruit, veggies — organic products are good for our bodies and good for the planet. Except when they're not good for the planet. Because while there may be sound health reasons to avoid eating pesticide-laden food, and perhaps personal arguments for favoring the organic-farmers' collective, the truth is that when it comes to greenhouse gases, organics can be part of the problem.
Take milk. Dairy cows raised on organic feed aren't pumped full of hormones. That means they produce less milk per Holstein — about 8 percent less than conventionally raised cattle. So it takes 25 organic cows to make as much milk as 23 industrial ones. More cows, more cow emissions. But that's just the beginning. A single organically raised cow puts out 16 percent more greenhouse gases than its counterpart. That double whammy — more cows and more emissions per cow — makes organic dairies a cog in the global warming machine.
How about that burger? Organic beef steers take longer to achieve slaughter weight, which gives them more time to emit polluting methane. And if you're eating hamburgers made from grass-fed cattle, don't award yourself any prizes just yet. While pastured beef offers some environmental benefit — these cows don't require carbon-intensive corn for feed, and the land they graze stores carbon more efficiently than land used for crops or left alone — they're burping up nearly twice as much methane as cattle fed grain diets, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. If you really want to adopt a climate-friendly diet, cut out meat entirely. Researchers at the University of Chicago showed that the meat-intensive diet of the average American generates 1.5 more tons of greenhouse gases per year than the diet of a vegetarian.
But even organic fruits and veggies are a mixed bushel: Organic fertilizers deliver lower-than-average yields, so those crops require more land per unit of food. And then there's the misplaced romanticism. Organic isn't just Farmer John; it's Big Ag. Plenty of pesticide-free foods are produced by industrial-scale farms and then shipped thousands of miles to their final destination. The result: refrigerator trucks belching carbon dioxide.
Organic produce can be good for the climate, but not if it's grown in energy-dependent hothouses and travels long distances to get to your fridge. What matters is eating food that's locally grown and in season. So skip the prewashed bag of organic greens trucked from two time zones away — the real virtue may come from that conventionally farmed head of lettuce grown in the next county.
Farm the Forests:
Ronald Reagan's infamous claim that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles" contained a grain of truth. In warm weather, trees release volatile chemicals that act as catalysts for smog. But the Gipper didn't mention another point that's even more likely to make nature lovers blanch. When it comes to fighting climate change, it's more effective to treat forests like crops than like majestic monuments to nature.
Over its lifetime, a tree shifts from being a vacuum cleaner for atmospheric carbon to an emitter. A tree absorbs roughly 1,500 pounds of CO2 in its first 55 years. After that, its growth slows, and it takes in less carbon. Left untouched, it ultimately rots or burns and all that CO2 gets released.
Last year, the Canadian government commissioned a study to determine the quantity of carbon sequestered by the country's woodlands, which account for a tenth of global forests. It hoped to use the CO2-gathering power of 583 million acres of woods to offset its Kyoto Protocol-mandated responsibility to cut greenhouse gas emissions. No such luck. The report found that during many years, Canadian forests actually give up more carbon from decomposing wood than they lock down in new growth.
A well-managed tree farm acts like a factory for sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, so the most climate-friendly policy is to continually cut down trees and plant new ones. Lots of them. A few simple steps: Clear the oldest trees and then take out dead trunks and branches to prevent fires; landfill the scrap. Plant seedlings and harvest them as soon as their powers of carbon sequestration begin to flag, and use the wood to produce only high-quality durable goods like furniture and houses. It won't make a glossy photo for the Sierra Club's annual report, but it will take huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere.
China is the Solution Not the Problem:
Pop quiz: Who's the volume dealer in alternative-energy hardware? If you said choking, smoking, coal-toking China, give yourself a carbon credit.
Consider solar cells, the least carbon-intensive option after nuclear, wind, and biomass, according to an analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 2007, photovoltaic factories in the People's Republic tripled production, grabbing 35 percent of the global market and making China the world's number one producer. How about rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, critical for superefficient electric vehicles? Chinese manufacturers will soon rule that world, too. Windmills? "Prepare for the onslaught of relatively inexpensive Chinese turbines," says Steve Sawyer, head of the Global Wind Energy Council. His forecast: China will produce enough gear to generate 10 gigawatts of power annually by 2010 — more than half the capacity that the whole world installed in 2007.
China has three big reasons for jumping feetfirst into the carbon fight. Obviously, there's the threat of climate change — flooding in China's coastal cities, drought in the country's interior. Second, there's political instability: Air and water pollution is already a flash point for public protests. And then there's the burgeoning export market for green products stamped made in china.
Will renovating the planet spur the first wave of homegrown Chinese tech innovation? Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, thinks so. "China has as much or more at stake than anyone," he said at a recent corporate summit. "Solar energy, carbon sequestration — we're going to be blown away by China's progress over the next couple of decades." If only they could clean up Beijing's air in time for the summer Olympics.
Accept Genetic Engineering:
Keeping 6 billion people fed boosts global warming more than all the world's cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes put together. Agriculture accounts for almost 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One response is to eat fewer of the two- and four-legged greenhouse gas factories known as animals. Before you send back that T-bone, though, call in the bioengineers.
Genomics experts have been optimizing food crops for decades, punching in traits for lower herbicide use, less tilling, and higher yields — carbon cutters, all. But the fountainhead of agricultural emissions is nitrogen-based fertilizer, whose manufacture (mainly from natural gas) and poor take-up rates add up to nearly one-third of agriculture's contribution to global warming. Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta, along with a flotilla of venture-backed startups, are trying to change that. California-based Arcadia Biosciences is already peddling genes for nitrogen-efficient rice that the company reckons could save the equivalent of 50 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Arcadia's CEO, a lifelong Sierra Club member, is working to get carbon credits for Chinese farmers who make the switch.
What some greens deride as Frankencrops are also the only serious hope for biofuels. Right now, their net carbon benefit is negligible. Corn engineered for high yields and low fertilizer will help, but even better will be plants under development whose stalks and leaves can easily be turned into fuel.
The plunging cost of gene synthesis should help bio geeks deliver on another big promise: a new economy in which biochemical reactions replace industrial processes. J. Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics is working with BP on microorganisms that produce cleaner alternatives to gasoline. Rival Amyris Biotechnologies is working on bugs that make jet fuel. Meanwhile, the genetic engineers are cooking up climate-friendly meat without feet: The first symposium on lab-grown animal flesh met in Norway in April.
Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work:
What a cool idea: Instead of reducing our own carbon emissions, we'll pay other people to reduce theirs. Win-win!
Not so fast. Carbon offsets — and emissions-trading schemes, their industrial-scale siblings — are the environmental version of subprime mortgages. They both started from some admirable premises. Developing countries like China and India need to be recruited into the fight against greenhouse gases. And markets are a better mechanism for change than command and control. But when those big ideas collide with the real world, the result is hand-waving at best, outright scams at worst. Moreover, they give the illusion that something constructive is being done.
A few fun facts: All the so-called clean development mechanisms authorized by the Kyoto Protocol, designed to keep 175 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere by 2012, will slow the rise of carbon emissions by ... 6.5 days. (That's according to Roger Pielke at the University of Colorado.) Depressed yet? Kyoto also forces companies in developed countries to pay China for destroying HFC-23 gas, even though Western manufacturers have been scrubbing this industrial byproduct for years without compensation. And where's the guarantee that the tree planted in Bolivia to offset $10 worth of air travel, for instance, won't be chopped down long before it absorbs the requisite carbon?
Nationally managed emissions-trading schemes could do a better job than Kyoto's we-are-the-world approach by adding legal enforcement and serious oversight. But many economists favor a simpler way: a tax on fossil fuels. A carbon tax would eliminate three classes of parasites that have evolved to fill niches created by the global climate protocol: cynical marketers intent on greenwashing, blinkered bureaucrats shoveling indulgences to powerful incumbents, and deal-happy Wall Streeters looking for a shiny new billion-dollar trading toy. Back to the drawing board, please.
Embrace Nuclear Power:
Look at the environmental protection agency's CO2-per-kilowatt-hour map of the US and two bright patches of low-carbon happiness jump out. One is the hydro-powered Pacific Northwest. The other is Vermont, where a 30-year-old nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee, keeps the Ben & Jerry's cold. The darkest area corresponds to Washington, DC, where coal-fired power plants release 520 times more atmospheric carbon per megawatt-hour than their Vermont counterpart. That's right: 520 times. Jimmy Carter was right to turn down the heat in the White House.
There's no question that nuclear power is the most climate-friendly industrial-scale energy source. You can worry about radioactive waste or proliferating weapons. You can complain about the high cost of construction and decommissioning. But the reality is that every serious effort at carbon accounting reaches the same conclusion: Nukes win. Only wind comes close — and that's when it's blowing. A UK government white paper last year factored in everything from uranium mining to plant decommissioning and determined that nuclear power emits 2 to 6 percent of the carbon per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest of the fossil fuels.
Embracing the atom is key to winning the war on warming: Electric power generates 26 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 39 percent of the United States' — it's the biggest contributor to global warming.1 One of the Kyoto Protocol's worst features is a sop to greens that denies carbon credits to power-starved developing countries that build nukes — thereby ensuring they'll continue to depend on filthy coal.
Used Cars Not Hybrids:
In 2006, an Oregon market research firm released an incendiary 500-page report. Its claim: A Humvee (13 miles per gallon city, 16 highway) uses less energy than a Prius (48 city, 45 highway). Scientists quickly debunked the study, but the Hummer lovers got one thing right. Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, largely due to the environmental cost of the 30 pounds of nickel in the hybrid's battery. Of course, the hybrid quickly erases that carbon deficit on the road, thanks to its vastly superior fuel economy.
Still, the comparison suggests a more sensible question. If a new Prius were placed head-to-head with a used car, would the Prius win? Don't bet on it. Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Päster. A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota's green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile. A used car, on the other hand, starts with a significant advantage: The first owner has already paid off its carbon debt. Buy a decade-old Toyota Tercel, which gets a respectable 35 mpg, and the Prius will have to drive 100,000 miles to catch up.
Better yet, buy a three-cylinder, 49-horsepower 1994 Geo Metro XFi, one of the most fuel-efficient cars ever built. It gets the same average mileage as a 2008 Prius, so a new hybrid would never close the carbon gap. Sure, the XFi has no AC or airbags — but nobody said saving the planet would be comfortable, or even safe.
Prepare for the Worst:
The awful truth is that some amount of climate change is a foregone conclusion. The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, calculates that even if the US, Europe, and Japan turned off every power plant and mothballed every car today, atmospheric CO2 would still climb from the current 380 parts per million to a perilous 450 ppm by 2070, thanks to contributions from China and India. (Do nothing and we'll get there by 2040.) In short, we're already at least lightly browned toast. It's time to think about adapting to a warmer planet.
This notion is one of the great green taboos: Climate change is a specter to be fought, not accommodated.Still, our ability to cope with global warming is far greater than our chances of stopping it entirely. Technology lets us build carbon-neutral houses 7,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies. Monsanto and friends are engineering crops to withstand drought. For the hapless birds and bees, wildlife scientists are plotting what they call assisted migrations.
Still nervous? Then consider an even bigger taboo: geo-engineering. Invasive surgery on a planetary scale is getting attention from serious scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and National Academy of Sciences president Ralph Cicerone. Proposals include everything from costly, low-risk efforts (lofting a giant mirror into orbit) to cheap desperation moves (adulterating the stratosphere with reflective dust).
In his 1992 best seller, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore derided adaptation as "a kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react in time to save our own skin." Better to take Stewart Brand's advice from the opening page of the original Whole Earth Catalog: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." We're in charge here. Let's get to work.
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