Examining Our Footprints
THOMAS, BRIAN
Examining Our Footprints The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability By James Gustave Speth Yale. 295 pp. $28.00. Gusher of...
...For cor porations the environment barely registers, except as a fountain of apparently cost-free goods...
...One is reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s plea in Walden, “Surely I do not ask for too much...
...My point of departure . . . is the momentous environmental challenge we face,” Speth explains...
...Thus if we do not at least take preventive measures, we risk seriously compromising the ability of natural systems and humanity to adapt...
...He cites research by the energy economist Vaclav Smil, who demonstrates that innovative efficiencies actually increase usage...
...An Appendix also illustrates how thoroughly the U.S...
...cannot afford to continue deploying hordes of ‘petroleum soldiers’ to the Persian Gulf in the vain hope that given enough M-16s and F-16s, those soldiers will be able to secure America’s energy future...
...Bryce is not a global warming denier...
...Speth, currently the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was cofounder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and served as an adviser to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton...
...Bryce scoffs at the contention that the U.S...
...He is quite aware of what a demanding leap into an unknown future his scheme requires...
...Speth identifies three flawed hypotheses hobbling the modern environmentalist movement: (1) a belief in the efficacy of government actions and incremental, ad hoc approaches...
...Capitalism breeds environmental and social dangers, while failing to improve the well-being of Americans...
...can farm its way to energy sufficiency, especially with corn...
...Although Speth is not trying to revive Marxism or even socialism, he challenges the notion that consumerism is the heart of happiness...
...For instance, he has solar panels on his own house and presents a thoughtful account of the pluses and minuses of solar power for homeowners...
...New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is labeled the noisiest, most influential, least informed advocate of energy independence...
...Brazil, it turns out, achieved energy independence by discovering its own petroleum reserves...
...could abandon the Persian Gulf and cut the funds flowing to terrorists if it achieved energy independence...
...Bryce is blunt about the limitations of alternatives to oil...
...He simply is not concerned about climate change, figuring that enough nuclear plants or a few technical advancements will make it go away...
...No matter how hard we struggle, he sighs in The Bridge at the Edge of the World, the potential for destruction remains overwhelming...
...Along the way, Bryce debunks the mirage of Brazilians successfully producing ethanol from sugar cane...
...He wants to eliminate the perverse incentives that entrench unsustainable policies and to encourage sound behavior...
...This prompts him to make some favorable comments about nuclear energy...
...the unconscionable rise in food prices because of ethanol...
...Markets excel at growth, Speth declares, but not at mitigating ecological matters...
...But he pays relatively little attention to less risky possibilities...
...Everyone slid back into gas guzzling and coal burning...
...Cutting carbon emissions means weaning ourselves from petroleum...
...He regards the inability to move U.S...
...Yet he only glances beyond that to the larger potential of alternative energy...
...water supply...
...the strain on the U.S...
...The world needs sophisticated, farreaching environmental initiatives, Speth asserts, “yet the political base, the constituency for international action is inherently weak...
...Nevertheless, the more he unfolds it, the more countercultural it becomes...
...Speth looks to efficiency gains to slow down frantic consumption, while Bryce insists that lighter carbon footprints will only lead to demands for more, more, more...
...His aim is to improve the quality of life, foster social solidarity, and restore our connectedness to nature by making corporations accountable to society at large...
...Add energy consumption plus our political system and you have a vast tangle of extremely complex issues...
...Speth lays out the scientific consensus about climate change and ecological stress with authority...
...He covers the concept from several angles: the folly of wasting farmland on growing fuel...
...He urges working with other countries to ensure the stability of the world’s oil regions...
...But the world economy cannot stop emitting carbon...
...These new books by James Gustave Speth and Robert Bryce tackle them from very different perspectives...
...Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence” By Robert Bryce PublicAffairs...
...Germany and Spain have been quite effective in adding solar and wind power to their grids...
...the pollution that is already clogging our streams...
...According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we would still likely suffer rising sea levels, growing heat wave mortality, an intensified water cycle with concomitant windstorms, polar ice loss, droughts and floods, biodiversity collapse, worsening water insecurity, soil degradation, and forced migrations caused by ecological stress...
...An eased oil supply in the 1980s undercut the sense of urgency...
...Flayed, too, are the wealthy corn growers who co-opted the energy discussion to make their folly seem green...
...and (3) faith that the system can work...
...Although alternative energy still accounts for a comparatively small percentage of their overall power mix, the proportion is growing...
...All of which brings us to an odd convergence...
...energy policy onto a green path as a foregone conclusion because he believes Americans suffer from delusions about energy...
...But today’s environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control...
...Accordingly, he proposes altering the essence of capitalism...
...But nature is not negotiating...
...depends on foreign countries for a wide range of other strategic materials without arousing the kind of hysteria oil provokes...
...Huge volumes of greenhouse gases will continue to enter the atmosphere, especially as China and India increase their energy usage...
...26.95...
...2) assuming problems can be solved at an acceptable cost without significant lifestyle changes or threats to economic growth...
...One of his strengths is pulling together a wide variety of sources that show exactly how weak—which makes The Bridge at the Edge of the World an excellent quick survey of global climate and ecological management at present...
...Sustainability gurus like Amory Lovins and Al Gore get a few smacks for advocating cellulosic ethanol...
...Constitutionally optimistic, Speth finds hope in the burgeoning passion for green, in the strong performance of alternative energy stocks, and in the dozens of other areas where new attitudes seem evident...
...Global warming, he notes, has a terrible momentum...
...Even if the world stopped carbon emissions completely right now, we would endure five decades or more of climate degeneration...
...Numerous examples show Democrats and Republicans relying on bromides instead of facing reality...
...Unlike Speth, Bryce regards continued economic growth as an unproblematic given—anything else, in his view, is a kind of lunacy...
...He is surely right about the great difficulties we face in trying to speed up the transition to new sources of energy, and about fossil fuels dominating our energy profile for the near- and medium-term...
...He suggests ways to soften the current obsession with gross domestic product and instead focus on good jobs, restored infrastructure, health care, education, green technologies, and income equality...
...Some tentative steps toward “decarbonizing” were taken in the 1970s during the first oil crisis...
...After toiling for 30-odd years within the existing political framework, and writing three well-received previous volumes, he is skeptical about what he and his fellow environmentalists have achieved...
...Robert Bryce, an energy journalist, reports in an Author’s Note beginning Gusher of Lies that the book grew out of his two earlier works...
...On the other hand, Bryce confronts proponents of efficiency (like me) with an unhappy truth: Every past efficiency gain has turbocharged energy consumption, a phenomenon known as the Jevons paradox...
...We are rapidly hollowing out our nature, ourselves, and our society,” he warns...
...But he also says: “The U.S...
...371 pp...
...In an interdependent global economy, he contends, “independence” is largely a codeword for protectionism and isolationism...
...The best parts of his book demolish the rush to ethanol production and the idea that the U.S...
...A mixture of cranky libertarianism and sound thinking, Gusher of Lies bl asts nearly everybody—Republicans and Democrats, environmentalists and warhappy neoconservatives—for misleading the public about energy...
...editor of the blog “Carbon-based” CLIMATE CHANGE alone is a daunting subject...
...Reviewed by Brian Thomas Sustainability consultant...
...The chief form of this madness is the goal of “energy independence,” an undesirable fantasy...
Vol. 91 • March 2008 • No. 2
