How America will compete? The environment.
I've been thinking a lot about the two narrative threads the last couple of weeks: climate change in Copenhagen and global competition here at home.
As we muscle our way out of this recession, it's unclear to me exactly how America will hold its position as an economic superpower.
At the same time, we're muddled over how to reduce our contribution to carbon pollution and global warming.
Even if a meaningful deal is reached in Copenhagen, will America's Senate ratify it? Hard to imagine.
But when I look at the situation overseas, it strikes me that the answer to both of these muddles is more, not less, environmental stewardship.
China and India, the two fastest-growing world economies, have made many of their gains at the expense of their land and rivers and forests.
Their governments have tolerated practices so ugly and short-sighted that they are literally poisoning their own air, soil and water.
We've seen how this kind of short-sighted thinking plays out. The Soviet Union followed a similar growth-at-any-price mandate and much of Russia is now a toxic waste site.
Birth rates there have plummeted; quality of life is deteriorating. The once-powerful empire has plummeted to something approaching Third World status.
If the developing countries aren't careful -- limiting, in part, the unconscionable behavior of American companies working in their lands -- they will follow the same trajectory.
The Washington Post has a story today about the poisoning of the Yamuna River, which provides 70% of New Delhi's drinking water.
CNN recently profiled Linfen, in China, the world's most polluted city.
There's no way that's sustainable.The sun shines through a murky haze, if at all. The smells of industry are pungent. Just a few minutes outside and your eyes start to sting, your throat starts to hurt. You may feel dizzy or nauseous.
For visitors it can be unbearable. For residents, this is life -- breathing the consequences of China's long march toward economic prosperity.
China and India might out-compete us for a decade or two with this kind of madness, but if they're smart they'll do what America did after our own industrial revolution.
They will accept slower rates of growth, more regulatory hassles and, yes, less personal freedom, in exchange for long-term viability and quality of life.
The same enlightened self-interest will eventually shift the climate change debate.
Without the glaciers and snowpacks of the Himalayas, Asia's water resources will be thrown into disarray.
The same goes for America's Rocky Mountains, which supply water to much of the West.
Preserving the environmental conditions that sustain those natural reservoirs isn't granola stuff; it's good business.
And America can get there by investing massively in the technologies and exportable practices that reduce the human footprint without eroding prosperity.
posted by Brian Mann @ 12/17/2009 08:00:00 AM
25 Comments
25 Comments:
Good post.
Although I think you'd be more accurate to say "less business freedom" than "less personal freedom." China isn't exactly a bastion of individual liberty.
Copenhagen has proven that global warming is nothing more than a myth.
Likewise, the myth that progress in the US is damaging the planet.
Just the opposite. The US has the cleanest technology in the world. Other nations need to follow our example.
Textbooks will have to rewritten, now that we know the earth won't be underwater in 10 years, and that "science" was hijacked by politicians trying to rob us of our hard-earned dollars.
Disclaimer: no personal attacks please. Just a debate of ideas.
JDM -
Your post muddles a reasonable ideological stance (America and progress = good) with really unreasonable science (global warming = myth).
It's just not factually defensible.
What would be defensible (at least from a factual basis) would be to say, "I just don't care. Let the planet heat up if that's what it takes to continue economic growth."
But the fantasy that human-caused carbon-loading is not changing earth's atmosphere to change is just that -- fantasy.
The scientific consensus on climate change is as concrete on this as on any issue we face.
-Brian, NCPR
Getting beyond my personal distrust of the Climate Change Industry, I agree in spirit with Brians assessment of China and Indias (just 2 well known examples) issues. They are among the the chief polluters in many instances yet no shouts for change in those countries and other developing nations are heard. Instead, the US and Western Europe are expected to cripple themselves and to foot the bill for the rest of the worlds problems.
I don't see this as an answer to pollution (or CO2), just a redistribution of wealth and a way for the people behind the headlines to make billions.
JDM said: "The US has the cleanest technology in the world. Other nations need to follow our example."
Used to be true, but like a lot of things (health care, education) not true any more. We really haven't advanced much in clean technologies since the 1980s, because we let market forces handle everything. Even our public water systems are going to seed.
Germany, Japan and Denmark, to name three, are far ahead of us in clean technology overall. And even China beats us in certain measures, such as mass transit.
One other thing: The Chinese are now making noise about reducing CO2, because they've figured out that the Himalayan glaciers, and with it their western water supply, are disappearing. That's one reason they just announced a huge new nuke reactor program.
It would be nice if all the Global Warming/Climate Change people would focus on the number one cause of pollution. But you know and I know they won't.
As long as the number of people on this planet continues to increase, all efforts will fail.
When I was a kid in the 50's, there were about 150 million Americans. Now the number has more than doubled. The increase has been even more in many of the poorer countries.
More people equals more demand for power from any source. More people equals less land for farms, forests and all the other inhabitants of the Earth.
All the current efforts to reduce pollution and MAYBE do something about climate change is little more than putting fingers in a leaky dam or just plain old sticking the heads in the sand.
Free condoms and birth control pills for all will do more to lower the pollution than anything else.
Actually, there's a consensus that educating women, esp. poor women, is the best way to lower population growth. It gives them power to control more of their own economic and reproductive fate--which leads to more birth control, etc...--without any draconian measures.
Re: China, my own take is that it is quite possible it will suffer environmental collapse before it can ascend to number one power status.
While I don't want to minimize the climate change issue, its twin Peak Oil is much more of a concern to me.
The end of the era of cheap oil will be terribly wrenching to all of us and our way of life. If the Merrill Lynch estimate from last February is accurate, and daily oil production drops from 85 million to 55 million barrels a day, the transition will be very difficult. If there is an upside lower fossil fuel consumption will result it lower greenhouse gas emissions. In the meantime, we are so focused on our financial predicament, that we don't see what lies ahead.
Brian:
With all due respect, I would respond to you in this manner:
Man-made global warming is not factually defensible. (global warming and global cooling ARE factually provable because that's what happens all the time).
The proof of that is that we have done nothing intentional since 1998, and yet 1998 was the warmest year out of the last 10.
How is the earth cooling if man is causing the earth to warm?
JDM -
Critics of the climate change consensus like to throw out what researchers call 'outliers' - bits of noise in the data.
They then say they've debunked a massive amount of correlated, peer-reviewed, deeply scrutinized science.
"It's snowing in Houston!"
But anyone who works with scientists or understands how the scientific process works knows that this isn't remotely defensible.
The agreement on the origins and magnitude of this problem is overwhelming.
Deny away.
But don't expect these 'outlier' arguments to win you much support from people who review this subject seriously.
-Brian, NCPR
Brian:
So you're saying "deny the FACT that it has gotten colder for the past ten years as evidence that the earth is mythically warming".
Ok.
Second argument. How is giving $100 million to poor countries going to stop islands from going underwater?
I don't get the science involved there. Transferring tax dollars doesn't stop ice from melting, does it?
Thirdly, 10 years from now, I hope you are still available for discussion. Time will tell who got hornswaggled on this one.
I can't convince you otherwise, other than to say that man cannot cause the earth to heat up, cool down, speed up, slow down, etc. And the people in Copenhagen aren't even trying to do that. They just want our money.
JDM -
If all the world's top scientists are wrong, the US spends money developing more efficient industries.
We stop polluting in ways that go far beyond carbon, reducing heavy metals, mercury, smog, etc.
We consume less non-renewable energy, preparing ourselves for a post-oil future -- which is coming regardless of this discussion.
We spend resources protecting "carbon sink" areas that include some of the richest habitat on earth.
And those are the benefits if all the world's best researchers, working in concert, are wrong.
Now let's look at what happens if you're wrong.
If you're wrong, we continue to literally rewire the chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere.
We recalibrate weather patterns in ways that no one understands.
We destroy the ice packs that provide fresh drinking water to 80% of the earth's people.
We trigger massive extinctions in animal and plant species that can't adapt fast enough to changing temperatures.
We flood huge portions of the most populated parts of the earth -- the coastal regions.
Given this calculus, and the fact that the science is so heavily against you, the moral risk of your point of view is very heavy indeed.
--Brian, NCPR
Brian:
Listen to you. You have all the talking points down, but you still can't answer the fact that the earth is not warming.
You don't have the majority of scientists on your side. You have original work that was flawed that was copied many times over.
Many "scientists" including our own local universities are making a bundle of money off this myth.
You and they have the moral obligation to check the facts.
The earth is not sinking.
No one. No one. Is trying to keep the earth from sinking. They are taking our money and not fixing the earth from sinking. That too is a moral flaw.
The earth is not sinking. The earth is cooling.
30,000 scientists have signed onto a law suit against your cadre of scientists, so the "scientist" scale is balanced on both of our sides.
Of course, our local universities want to perpetuate the myth of global warming. There's BIG money coming into as a result of misinformed people willing to empty their piggy banks to keep the earth from sinking.
But the earth is not sinking.
This is your blog. I appreciate the right to be heard.
I give you the last word.
I don't know where Kurt Stager stands now on the issue but a number of years ago I contacted him for a story when this whole global warming thing first started and he was of the opinion that at least the Adirondacks were cooling.
I continue to maintain the whole Global Warming bandwagon was a mistake if the goal was to reduce pollution because if there were a reversal or facts proved otherwise, then everyone would feel safe to continue to mess up the environment.
Oh, and the Polar Bears as the poster child for Global Warming?
This is a real mistake. One of the largest concentrations of Polar Bears is in Hudson Bay. Hudson Bay is ice free every summer and the Polar Bears are doing well there. They aren't stupid. They hang out on land for the summer months.
And by the way, the Arctic Ocean has now frozen over and Hudson Bay is up to about an 80% ice cover - and is rapidly expanding.
Heavy denial around both climate change and peak oil is pretty intense. Folks hate bad news, esp. if they would have to change. Resources do deplete, such as the cod fishery collapse Down East in Canada. Long after the collapse, people were still quoted as saying all they wanted to do is go back to fishing. In the case of peak oil geologists say there is a problem, and economists say the market will take care of it. Likewise, there is consensus in the scientific community onc climate change, while corporations and other vested interests say there isn't. Denial does run very deep.
Since so much of the data has been shown to be suspect, if not blatantly wrong, I wonder if "the majority of the worlds scientists" will cry out for fresh data and review the whole thing? I doubt it. Too much money at stake.
I'm all for protecting the environment and keeping the earth clean and working towards alternatives. How giving our money and economic future to someone else to run helps I don't understand. Just like cap and trade- it does nothing to reduce carbon emissions, it just punishes western countries.
Plattsburgh received its latest measurable snowfall this year since 1937.
Until this first real cold snap of the year, the daily low temperatures were about 10 degrees above average for Clinton Co. (I'm a weather channel nerd.)
Lake Champlain hasn't frozen over in 5 of the last 8 years. Ask any local--or any frequent skier--and they'll tell you winters aren't nearly as harsh as they were three and four decades ago.
It's happening. Right here. Right now. Deal with it.
"man cannot cause the earth to heat up, cool down, speed up, slow down, etc."
Actually, he can, and has. When the bubonic plague struck Europe in the middle ages, farms were abandoned and forests grew back, sucking up a lot of carbon dioxide rather quickly, decreasing the greenhouse effect and causing big temperature dips.
Check this out:
"CO2 oscillations of (about) 10 ppm in the last 1000 years are too large to be explained by external (solar-volcanic) forcing, but they can be explained by outbreaks of bubonic plague that caused historically documented farm abandonment in western Eurasia. Forest regrowth on abandoned farms sequestered enough carbon to account for the observed CO2 decreases. Plague-driven CO2 changes were also a significant causal factor in temperature changes during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD)."
From this link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h328n0425378u736/
10:34- So eight THOUSAND years ago there were enough people in the world to affect the world environment? Estimates are 5 million people world wide at that time. Huh. Well, we might as well just give up and quit then because if 5 million can alter the earths climate then with 6 billion we're toast.
Bret,
Where in the comment does it say "eight THOUSAND"? The journal article is talking about oscillations in the last 1,000 years, which went like this:
1.Growing population in Europe equals more deforestation and more use of fire for heat equals more CO2 in atmosphere and stable or slightly rising temperatures.
2. Population dies off in plague, farms are abandoned.
3. Reforestation sucks a lot of CO2 out of atmosphere, greenhouse effect ebbs, temperature drops, and there's a little ice age.
Not that hard.
10:08- "(1) Cyclic variations in CO2 andCH4 driven by Earth-orbital changes during the last 350,000 years predict decreases throughout the Holocene, but the CO2 trend began ananomalous increase 8000 years ago, and the CH4 trend did so 5000 years ago"
Read the Abstract. It's not that hard.
I stand corrected, since I thought you were going off the comment and the part of the abstract I quoted. Thanks for your reading, and sorry (this time) for the snark.
To the point, however, 8,000 years is just coincidentally the birth of widespread human agriculture and forest clearance, as the abstract points out.
It's not the humans. It's the trees. When we cut them all down, it changes the climate.
Agree. I also think paving every field in sight does no good, nor does building massive cities,e tc. But, what are we to do?
Changing 60 years of zoning laws and ag policies that encourage sprawl and kill farms and wilderness (for the benefit of the auto, McMansion housing and monster agribusiness companies) and wilderness would be a good start.
"It's not the humans. It's the trees. When we cut them all down, it changes the climate.
December 21, 2009 11:23 AM"
Does anyone know how the percentage of CO2 a plant takes in is figured? I don't. I ask because I wonder if a brass land takes in as much CO2 as an equal area of trees or plankton in the ocean or algae in a pond. All I ever hear about is trees, but that sounds like a very simplistic answer to me.
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