In 1965, the President's Science Advisory Committee warned...that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels would modify the earth's heat balance to such an extent that harmful changes in climate could occur.... The committee speculated about modifying high-altitude cirrus clouds to counteract the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. It failed to mention the most obvious option: reducing fossil fuel use.
- James R. Fleming, "The Climate Engineers" 58
Dear Mr. Fantasy, play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything, take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy.
- Traffic, "Dear Mr. Fantasy"
The problem, in all of this, isn't technology. It's the application of it. Our ideological blinders are firmly in place as we look for new forms of the same old things. In the summer of 2007, Detroit Free Press columnist Bill McGraw drove 2,700 miles to survey Detroit's 2,100 streets and the neigborhoods along the way, with a number of staff photographers on board to document the journey. Of the hundreds of photos and videos the "Freep" posted online, one really stands out: in an abandoned section of Detroit that's returning to prairie, a former city street just sort of disappears into a meadow. The concrete goes from solid, to cracked, to crumbling, to gone. Then buffalo grass and wildflowers (and garbage) take over.
That Detroit street is a metaphor. Once, people used it and needed it. But then they moved away, forgot about it, replaced it with something else, another house, another neighborhood, another street, another life. It used to be there, but now it's not anymore.
That's the way to look at technology's role on a warming planet. Continuing to throw research and development dollars and human brainpower at forms of transportation and energy proven to have been our downfall is illogical, especially with evidence pouring in that the new tech can be even worse than the old tech. Illogical is the nice way of saying that. Evil might be the more accurate way. Every agent of government, agriculture, and industry who smiles and spouts the words "clean" and "green," when neither is true and both need smoke-and-mirrors contortions to fit inside the pill being forced down our throats, knows full well that the pill is worse than a placebo; it's a carcinogen in concentrated form.
You can't run cars on food. 25 gallons of corn ethanol are equivalent to 450 pounds of corn. There's some form of corn starch or sweetener in more than half of the foods on the market. 59 As corn turns into gold for farmers, they abandon other grains, other crops: wheat, barley, hops, soybeans, the prices for all of which have doubled or tripled due to ethanol insanity. 60 Those with means, eat. Those without, starve.
"[W]e should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time," two English gentlemen once told a notoriously greedy businessman. "Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts." 61
Today, those numbers are millions, not thousands. But farmers and businessmen still answer the same way Ebenezer Scrooge did: "If you want my corn, you'll meet the price I quoted... plus five percent." 62
Plus ten.
Plus fifteen.
"I'd rather have corn farmers growing energy rather than import oil from countries that may not like us - that's how I view it," says George W. Bush. 63
I'd rather have a president showing leadership rather than push policies that can murder people. That's how I view it—although I'd ditch the double "rather" in the sentence.
You can't run cars on food. That's not technology; it's villainy. "We must ensure that we protect our wildlife and preserve our way of life," my state senator's computer auto-replied to an email I sent, after its software had isolated the key words in my message and chosen the most likely canned response from its pre-written files. 64 But the computer was wrong. Our way of life is a way of death. It has to fade away, like that street in Detroit, and be forgotten, and be replaced with something else. Seven billion people can't drive seven billion cars drinking seven trillion tons of food. It's not sustainable. And it's definitely not rational. Sensible people don't put their faith into something that grows in the ground, when weather is predicted to become wild and rain scarce. But this is what happens when a "way of life" ideology dictates what forms a technological "revolution" will take. The revolution becomes a literal one, and we spin around 360 degrees to arrive right back where we started from, looking for new forms of old things that created the shit pit we're in. Irrational, and even pathetic.
That Detroit street is a metaphor. Once, people used it and needed it. But then they moved away, forgot about it, replaced it with something else, another house, another neighborhood, another street, another life. It used to be there, but now it's not anymore.
That's the way to look at technology's role on a warming planet. Continuing to throw research and development dollars and human brainpower at forms of transportation and energy proven to have been our downfall is illogical, especially with evidence pouring in that the new tech can be even worse than the old tech. Illogical is the nice way of saying that. Evil might be the more accurate way. Every agent of government, agriculture, and industry who smiles and spouts the words "clean" and "green," when neither is true and both need smoke-and-mirrors contortions to fit inside the pill being forced down our throats, knows full well that the pill is worse than a placebo; it's a carcinogen in concentrated form.
You can't run cars on food. 25 gallons of corn ethanol are equivalent to 450 pounds of corn. There's some form of corn starch or sweetener in more than half of the foods on the market. 59 As corn turns into gold for farmers, they abandon other grains, other crops: wheat, barley, hops, soybeans, the prices for all of which have doubled or tripled due to ethanol insanity. 60 Those with means, eat. Those without, starve.
"[W]e should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time," two English gentlemen once told a notoriously greedy businessman. "Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts." 61
Today, those numbers are millions, not thousands. But farmers and businessmen still answer the same way Ebenezer Scrooge did: "If you want my corn, you'll meet the price I quoted... plus five percent." 62
Plus ten.
Plus fifteen.
"I'd rather have corn farmers growing energy rather than import oil from countries that may not like us - that's how I view it," says George W. Bush. 63
I'd rather have a president showing leadership rather than push policies that can murder people. That's how I view it—although I'd ditch the double "rather" in the sentence.
You can't run cars on food. That's not technology; it's villainy. "We must ensure that we protect our wildlife and preserve our way of life," my state senator's computer auto-replied to an email I sent, after its software had isolated the key words in my message and chosen the most likely canned response from its pre-written files. 64 But the computer was wrong. Our way of life is a way of death. It has to fade away, like that street in Detroit, and be forgotten, and be replaced with something else. Seven billion people can't drive seven billion cars drinking seven trillion tons of food. It's not sustainable. And it's definitely not rational. Sensible people don't put their faith into something that grows in the ground, when weather is predicted to become wild and rain scarce. But this is what happens when a "way of life" ideology dictates what forms a technological "revolution" will take. The revolution becomes a literal one, and we spin around 360 degrees to arrive right back where we started from, looking for new forms of old things that created the shit pit we're in. Irrational, and even pathetic.
Just as the scientists in 1965 knew that fossil fuels had set us on the sure road to perdition, yet couldn't see the solution sitting an inch from their faces, a current faction of science is ready to try altering the sea, the sky, the air, our crops, our genes - everything but the same old technology that is still hurtling us down that highway to hell. If anyone really wanted what's left of world oil supplies to last for as long as possible, wouldn't they have mentioned something about conserving it by now? Instead, we speculate about how much or how little might be left in the ground, continue on a maniacal spree to burn up every last drop, and trust blindly that whatever happens next will magically preserve our way of life.
The United States military consumes roughly 350,000 barrels (one barrel = 42 gallons) of fuel every day to keep its ships, planes, Humvees, tanks, Strykers, and hundreds of other machines running. 65 The average daily oil production in Iraq is two million barrels (bpd). This means that every six days, the United States burns 100% of the oil that Iraq has produced that day. If M. King Hubbert was correct, and 2005 was the year that world oil production reached its peak, then it'll be every five days soon. Then every four. Ultimately, it'll be the futile one-for-one exchange mentioned earlier. Oil consumed in order to consume oil. Hello?
But the same government minds that are watching this development unfold in Iraq are the ones who make recommendations like this one from the General Accounting Office (GAO) to Congress in February 2007:
To better prepare for a peak in oil production, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Energy work with other agencies to establish a strategy to coordinate and prioritize federal agency efforts to reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak and to advise Congress on how best to mitigate consequences. 66
Look closely. What's that plan again? What's the vision for strong, decisive action? Break it down:
Recommend
Work
Establish
Coordinate
Prioritize
Reduce
Advise
Mitigate
Yep, they've got a plan: replace oil with verbs!
We're on our own, ladies and gentlemen. The captain and crew bailed out a long time ago. But they didn't take all of the parachutes and life rafts with them. The ideology of a technological solution to our dire situation is not, in itself, problematic. Technology can be an awesome thing. Some amazing human brains are testing innovative and creative ideas right now. They know the clock is running down, but it's an ideology of a rapid, even "overnight," technological revolution being the singular answer that'll create even worse problems if we do it wrong. As our first witness, we call corn ethanol to the stand. As one scientist put it on NPR's Science Friday: Yes, we have to move fast. But we also have to move smart.
This shift is a big one, and heavier than a Plymouth Roadrunner. It requires going to the center of everything and then not only pulling the center out of place, but discarding it, leaving it behind, letting it be consumed by buffalo grass and wildflowers — and then replacing it with a new center worthy of Sir Terry Leahy's label, "a revolution of thinking." And keeping in mind, during the whole process, this observation from Alexis de Tocqueville two centuries ago:
I think than men bestir themselves within certain limits, beyond which they hardly ever go. They are forever varying, altering, and restoring secondary matters; but they carefully abstain from touching what is fundamental. They love change, but they dread revolutions. 67
The left brain can't handle moving the center — "touching what is fundamental." The left brain screams that if something works, say, like a way of life, then you just don't fuck with it. You leave it alone, keep it going, sing some Status Quo.
But technology can't be the only thing that's revolutionary in the immediate future. For once, it turns out that an oil company is being straight with us: we are "the greatest source of energy in the world," just as Chevron points out. And the right brain holds the creative energy for a huge collective ideological shift into Right Thought and Right Action. Technology will follow our lead.
====SOURCES====
58 The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2007.
59 "Starch - An 'Indispensable' Food Ingredient Faced with Market Challenges." Flexnews: Business News for the Food Industry, Jan. 29, 2008.
60 C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor." Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), May/June 2007; "Editorial: The World Food Crisis." The New York Times, April 10, 2008.
61 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
62 Ibid.
63 Martin LaMonica, "Bush Commits to Renewable Energy for Climate Change, Energy Security." C/NET News, March 5, 2008.
64 Email message from Sen. Debbie Stabinow (D-Michigan), Feb. 14, 2008.
65 Hon. Steve Israel (D-NY), "Next Generation Energy Security Initiative." April 9, 2007.
58 The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2007.
59 "Starch - An 'Indispensable' Food Ingredient Faced with Market Challenges." Flexnews: Business News for the Food Industry, Jan. 29, 2008.
60 C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor." Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), May/June 2007; "Editorial: The World Food Crisis." The New York Times, April 10, 2008.
61 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
62 Ibid.
63 Martin LaMonica, "Bush Commits to Renewable Energy for Climate Change, Energy Security." C/NET News, March 5, 2008.
64 Email message from Sen. Debbie Stabinow (D-Michigan), Feb. 14, 2008.
65 Hon. Steve Israel (D-NY), "Next Generation Energy Security Initiative." April 9, 2007.
66 United States Government Accounting Office, "Report to Congressional Requesters: Crude Oil: Uncertainty About Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production." Feb. 2007.
67 Chapter 21, "Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare." Democracy in America, Book II, 1840.
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