Shards of Consciousness

In The Best of the Interweb (sic) Easter Sunday 2007 Steve Olson linked to Luminus Maximus' diatribe against the compact flourescent light bulb. That got me thinking.

The we gotta do something problem of the day is global climate change, which the prevailing opinion of the day classes as bad and views as caused by man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

The situation with global climate change bears many similarities to the classic illustration of the tragedy of the commons. In the tragedy of the commons individuals acting in service to their self interest damage a resource held in common since benefits of individual behavior accrue to the individual, while negative consequences of individual behavior are spread out amongst all users of the commons. In this particular case the commons is the atmosphere. The individuals acting are humans as a whole, and nations individually. The users consist of all members of the biosphere of the planet. The activity causing the damage is the creation of carbon dioxide at a faster rate than the biosphere of the planet can absorb it, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Most people would agree that there is more atmospheric carbon dioxide now than there was at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Where there is disagreement is on whether there has actually been global warming beyond what would be the case without the activities of man, and if so, whether the warming is attributable to the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels caused by deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. There appears to be a reasonable consensus amongst atmospheric and geological scientists that the work of man has had such an effect, but the consensus isn't 100 percent.

Even if global warming is occurring due to the activities of man, I'm not so sure that is a bad thing. The planet has spent much of it's time in the grip of times of ice. I don't know about you, but I would rather avoid such things. Times of ice occur every 20,000 to 100,000 years. If global warming increased by the works of man can delay the resurgence of the ice, is that bad?

But, I digress. Assume for the moment we do want to decrease man's influence on the environment. Since the major changes have been through excess creation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and deforestation, the two main things we can do are to reforest and decrease our creation of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Reforestation is problematic

. Everything has unintended consequences. There is some evidence that reforestation in temperate regions may do more to increase global warming than to decrease it, which leaves tropical regions to be reforested. On the other hand, there are few countries in the world that have not destroyed a large portion of the forests that were originally on the land. I don't know about you, but I was always taught to leave something as much like I found it as possible (also known as clean up after yourself). Even though reforestation is problematic, it is an activity that should be undertaken to the greatest extent possible.

There are many things that can be done to decrease the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide we release. These come down to different ways to burn less fossil fuels. Individually these are the same things that have been talked about for decades. Solar heat for at least a portion of hot water and space heating, decent windows and insulation in our houses, solar electric for a portion of our electricity usage, more efficient modes of transportation, modes of transportation that don't rely on the burning of fossil fuels, front loading washers, low flow shower heads, pre-warming hot water by either using the waste waters from the bathtub or by having an uninsulated standing tank before the hot water enters the hot water tank, gas-fired stoves, dryers and heat rather than electric, more efficient forms of lighting than the incandescent bulb,

Some people may question the emphasis on using gas-fired appliances at home. The fact is, while electric heating appliances can approach 100 percent efficiency, electrical generation is only 40-70 percent efficient. Home-based gas appliances are 65-95 percent efficient. Tell me, which form of usage burns less fuel and thus generates less carbon dioxide?

Many electricity generators are built to meet peak demands. In a business the electric company charges on the basis of peak demand, as well as actual usage. Allowing the electric companies to charge for peak demand at the home level would decrease peak demand, decreasing the need for new power plants.

We can also convert from fossil fueled power generation to nuclear power plants. The same people who howl about carbon dioxide generation, also howl about this one as well as wind farms and solar electric farms, which rely on income energy sources rather than capital energy sources such as fossil fuels.

In the long run, these things are band aids. The major cause of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is increased population. I don't care how efficient you make electric usage, how little each person uses, as long as population increases, while we rely on fossil fuels and cut down more trees than we replace, so will carbon dioxide production. China's per capita production of carbon dioxide is only a fraction of the US per capita production, yet it creates over 16 percent of man made carbon dioxide while the US accounts for a little over 23 percent of man made carbon dioxide. (See Watercoolers). If we want to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide generated, the citizens of the US need to do our share (and there is much we can do), but if things don't change in China and Asia overall (especially India, the Russian Federation, and Japan), the decreases we make will be dwarfed by the increases there.

World population, which currently stands at 6.6 billion, is currently predicted to reach 8.9 - 9.4 billion by 2050. As other countries improve their standards of living, their per capita carbon dioxide production will increase, unless we in the industrialized countries take the lead in showing how a decent standard of living can be created and maintained with decreased reliance on fossil fuels and reforestation.