Saving the Earth: at a reasonable cost.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been two articles in The Economist on responses to global warming. Although I noticed "The post-alcohol world" when it was published, I actually read "Lift-off" first because geoengineering had already appealed to me as a better solution to most of the carbon reduction schemes that have been touted over recent years. It was the concluding assessment in "Lift-ff" that prompted me to go back and read more than the title "The post-alcohol world".

"Lift-off" reports on the growing interest in various geoengineering solutions to the threat of global warming. For example, the article first discusses the idea of releasing sulphur high into the Earth's atmosphere to form particles which will act as a barrier reflecting sunlight away from the Earth and resulting in cooling. The real advantage to this solution, whatever the dispersal technique used, is that it's known to work; it was suggested as a solution by the regularly measured reduction in temperatures caused by volcanic eruptions that spew sulphurous fumes into the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately, there is also a disadvantage to pumping sulphur into  our atmosphere: it is harmful to the ozone layer which protects us from being fried by ultra-violet radiation, although this ozone reduction might be less than the damage already done by people flying around the world. More importantly, and the reason that the various geoengineering solutions are not more commonly discussed, is that many people oppose them on moral grounds, arguing that we should stop causing the problem by pumping ever more carbon into the atmosphere, rather than treating the symptoms of our mistreatment of mother Earth. Unfortunately, action to reduce our carbon footprints is economically very costly, and that makes it very unattractive, unlike the very low cost geoengineering solutions to the consequences of burning coal and oil.

That is, alternatives to fossil fuels, have been impractically expensive up to now, but that might be about to change, as reported in "The post-alcohol world", which begins with the hook: "[Making] something people want to buy at a price they can afford" is "hardly a revolutionary business strategy, but one that the American biofuels industry has, to date, eschewed" (¶ 1). It notes that technology has now improved to the point where US businesses do not need to rely on the expensive and inefficient production of alcohol from corn, but can instead realistically plan to produce carbon fuels similar to oil from non-food parts of plants such as the stalks using genetically engineered bacteria. Not only would such fuels be cheaper, they would also be far more versatile than expensive alcohol, and therefore far more attractive to consumers and healthier for national economies. So promising is this new technological fix, that three different bio-technology firms have entered into agreements with Shell, Total and BP, three of the worlds largest oil firms, to set up test facilities. As the article emphasises, this new development both gives new life to the old dream of replacing fossil fuels, and also offers encouragement to continue the search for new technological solutions to the problems confronting us.

Initially, I skipped over the bio-fuels report because, mistakenly judging from the title and sub-title, I assumed it would be reporting a minor twist in what seems to me a very foolish, because expensive and impractical, solution to global warming, and I immediately read the full article on renewed interest in geoengineering because I agree that the writer that that sort of solution makes a lot more sense than economically disastrous solutions that could only work with a lot of state force: people do not want and will not willingly accept a lower standard of living simply to stave off an possibly awful future. Energy use per capita is rising rapidly around the world, especially as China and India continue their rapid development, and I can't see that it is either fair, or likely to succeed, to tell people that they have to use less energy and therefore live less comfortably than they do today, or even worse to tell the citizens of developing countries that they have to stop catching up with what the developed world already has. I do not doubt that the global climate is changing, that it is warming up, and it is at least likely that the human habit of releasing carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is one causal factor in this warming, but I've never liked the idea of solving that problem by reducing energy consumption or making it enormously more expensive. Those are desperate solutions that seem to me doomed to failure, and I can't blame the Chinese and others for sensibly refusing to cooperate since it would seriously them to do what the rich Western world wants.

No. A much better solution, one that is more practical and just, is to find and deploy technological solutions to the problems caused by technology, and in this respect "The post-alcohol world" is as encouraging as "Lift-off".

And to end with a heresy, I'm not big on saving trees either. In practice, I do use much less paper today than ten years ago, again, simply because computer technology has removed much of the need for paper - I almost never print anything at home, and all of the magazines, journals and other media I read are vastly more useful in the online versions. But I'm not devoted enough to saving the planet to print class material on used paper or usually to print on both sides: I don't think that the minor saving in cost or forests outweighs the disadvantages. I am confident that the trees and the planet will do better and better as technology offers us more useful options at lower prices.

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References

Lift-off. (2010, November 4). The Economist. Retrieved November 10, 2010 from http://www.economist.com/node/17414216?story_id=17414216

The post-alcohol world. (2010, October 28). The Economist. Retrieved November 10, 2010 from http://www.economist.com/node/17358802