“We are going dirtier.”
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Posted on January 26, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
The headline of this post comes from a Rice University energy expert. I found it in yesterday’s Daily Grist, a favorite environmental news source. It’s how this person understands the implications of Bush’s woeful proposals on energy made in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. They also quote Philip Clapp, President of the National Environmental Trust, who notes that Bush’s plan will increase carbon emissions significantly. You can read his statement here. A quote:
The President’s proposals will contribute almost nothing to stopping global warming. They will allow our carbon emissions to grow by 14 percent over the next 10 years. He has proposed a paltry one-and-a-half percent cut in the galloping growth of our emissions by 2017.
California state officials who are at the forefront of state-level efforts to curb greenhouse gases are also none-too-pleased with Bush’s pathetic plan. They, too, believe this proposal will increase emissions, not reduce them. This AP article was picked up in other places, not least among them, Forbes. It’s good that some in the business industry are making note of this.
“Without a cap or some kind of a carbon standard, we think the Bush plan falls short,” said California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Linda Adams.
“To the extent you replace gasoline with carbon-based fossil fuels in a different form, it deals with the import-dependence issue, but it probably doesn’t get you anything on the environment,” said Frank Verrastro, director and senior fellow of energy programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “It depends what master you are serving.”
Well, it certainly does depend on that, doesn’t it?
We are going dirtier, and this is big trouble, indeed. Maybe the worst part of it will be the perception that many US Americans will have that something is actually being done to address carbon emissions, when in fact this ‘new’ approach will result in more emissions. The last thing we need is a false sense of progress, or worse yet, complacency.
Another bad result would be if this derails Congressional attempts to get tough about reining in the dirty industries that spew CO2 into the atmosphere — coal, oil shale, oil sands, corn ethanol, natural gas. All of these sources have serious environmental problems, when what is needed is support for truly clean energies — solar, wind, geothermal, etc. — and the restructuring of society and the economy to make possible a fossil-fuel-free future.
Global warming is no joke, and the world is melting faster than many scientists had predicted. When you add that to our problem of ‘overshoot,’ living beyond the means of the Earth to replenish what we consume or to absorb the waste we produce, when you think about how these two crises will interact with each other — well, you see why we get scared. You see why prophetic leadership is necessary.
Comments
3 Responses to ““We are going dirtier.””
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frankwinters Says:
February 6th, 2007 at 4 34. am e
Seems to me the debate is confusing the issue (and our easily confused President) — and the issue is the dirt. Yes we are getting dirtier and warmer. Does it matter if the two are connected? Shouldn’t we work to be cleaner even if Al Gore is wrong??? And if we get cooler as we get cleaner — all the better.
ecologicalhope Says:
February 6th, 2007 at 2 29. pm e
We must get cooler as we get cleaner. Unfortunately, if we make progress on cleaning the air, the warming could accelerate, since pollution radiates some of the sunlight back out into the atmosphere — which is why it is so important to deal with greenhouse gases along with other types of air pollution at the same time.
Dan Says:
February 7th, 2007 at 1 04. pm e
I think the reason for this kind of problem is that our current environmental solutions tend to focus on consuming different things, rather than consuming less. So rather than requiring less fossil fuels, we are thinking about replacing them with biofuels. And, in Europe, rather than driving fewer cars, we are trying to force manufacturers to make cleaner ones. This all means that the primary cause - overconsumption - is not really addressed.
Dan - http://inbalance.wordpress.com/