I am the smartest!

This post has absolutely nothing to do with sustainable living, carbon offsets or green technology.

 I just wanted to point my few readers to news from yesterday about Norwegian research which argues that first-borns have higher IQs. 

Can you guess the order of birth of my brother and I?

Can I really offset my lifestyle?

Ah carbon offsets! Can you imagine life before them?

I find it particularly fascinating how a brand new term and concept has so easily slipped into the present reality of so many people. A year ago, even less for some people, very few people knew or understood what offsetting was or that they even had a carbon footprint. But within that time suddenly everyone wants to offset their entire life — travels, car, shopping, eating, farting… (yes you could theoretically offset your farts, they are methane after all).

So what is offsetting? How does it work? Who benefits? How do people make money from it? Is offsetting the same as trading?

The best article I’ve found in a while on the subject comes, unsurprisingly, from the Economist. The article explains how credit emissions are created and how they are priced and where they are traded. It also covers the sources of emissions and how they are being brought into the larger carbon offset market.

The author also provides a very good definition for what  the trade in carbon credit is about:

“The trade is not actually in carbon, but in not-carbon: in certificates establishing that so many tonnes of carbon dioxide (or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases) have not been emitted by the seller and may therefore be emitted by the buyer.”

There you go. This means that when you decide to offset your traveling you are in essence paying someone not to pollute for you. Its a nifty idea but does it actually happen?

This article dates back to March, but I think its a good snapshot of how carbon offsets work for the regular consumer.

[Treehugger.com is a good site for all sorts of up to date and relevant information and news on living a more sustainable life.]

I guess the question I’m left with, beyond the ones offered up in the Economist article on the workings of future carbon markets, is whether its really possible to just offset your life and keep living as we have for the past 150 years? I.e. could you just buy lots of relatively cheap — they are really affordable — and drive your fast car, fly to bermuda and not recyle?

The answer to that is probably no. Its not a zero sum game, its more like Commener’s closed circle. This offsetting business is offering us a nifty way to clean up our atmosphere, but for it to be really effective we do have to change our lifestyles. I’m not advocating for a radical change or that offsets aren’t a good idea. But a lot of the money that is getting poured into offsetting could maybe be better placed in developing new technologies that immediately reduce our carbon footprint.

This brings me to the current debacle in the Congress on upping CAFE standards.  Its been an interesting debate to observe, mostly because of the American car industry’s switch last week from full on misinformation campaign directed to keeping standards at the level they are now to a sort of half-hearted compromise.

The way the bill stands now by 2020 US car CAFE standards would increase to 35 mpg (currently at 25 mpg) with a 4% increase in mpg every year. The American auto industry (I specify American on purpose, Japanese and EU car makers are are already building cars with that level of mpg, it seems only Detroit lacks the techy know-how to catch up) changed its tack from all out opposition to support for an admendement to the bill. They are agreeing to the hike in CAFE standards but don’t want the 4% annual increase.

That kind of politics and lobbying makes me sick to my stomach. Some of the ads the car companies screened were full on misleading and pandered to American’s sense of fear. My personal favourite was one that went along the lines of “I want a safe car, not one with higher mileage” implying that you sacrifice safety for better mpg efficiency. I can read or hear that and think how misleading that is, but there are consumers out there who don’t see through the mixed messages and truly walk away thinking an SUV must guzzle to keep me safe.  Argh!!!

So back to what set me off down this road. Offsets are good, the markets are struggling but I think will work, however they are not a replacement for innovative technology and atmosphere-friendly choices.

The common sense thing to do

The New York Times has a interview of Barry Commoner today.

First off the man is 90 and  able, still living an independent life. Maybe I’m a little traditional, but I can’t help but respect people who’ve been around that long and seen so much. Not to mention having lived through most of the 20th century as an able bodied and involved thinker.

Commoner is worth mentioning because he was a big part of the movement to bring politics in touch with the environment. He published a pretty seminal book in the 1970’s called The Closing Circle which highlighted the importance of thinking of our environment as a complete cycle in which our every action had a reciprocal reaction/effect. He initiated the concept of ecological economics — the idea that there is no free lunch with our relationship with nature, that what we do has a cost somewhere in the cycle that we too belong to. Without his ideas I don’t think there would have been the MIT “Limits to Growth” ideas or, more importantly, the now commonly held and believed notion that the environment, our planet, isn’t finite.

I recommend reading the interview not because you’ll get a feel for these ideas — you wont, in fact I don’t think it will make sense to a lot of people who aren’t familiar with his concepts — but because its an insight into how to live a more conscientous life. As he puts it he’s not an “eco-freak”. I would agree with him that people who live lives that are so off-the-grid or whose identity is so bound up in their ability to prove they don’t harm the environment don’t bring, or bring very little, that is constructive to the table to solve the world’s environmental problems. Its a brand of self-righteousness that I find particularly unappealing.

Commoner’s philosophy is simple and direct : we should prevent problems before they arise because once they happen its much harder, if not impossible to fix them.

The problem is I don’t know if I agree with his take on how to prevent problems. An interesting comment he makes is on the use of DDT to stop malaria in Africa — he’s against it and believes that economic aid is a more usefull tool and better for the environment. Sure, theoretically, but economic aid wont act as quickly as DDT, and if the use of this pesticide saves the lives of people who will go on and become productive members of society than it becomes part of a bigger solution.

Green God

An interesting element of the green movement is position taken by religious institutions. I have to confess that I am not very well versed in where they stand, or rather if they take any stand on the issue of environmental protection, climate change and the role that their believers should take.

A rumour I heard about fundamentalist American Christians (a long time ago) is that part of their belief is that accelerating environmental damage and climate change is part of the count down to judgement day. Apparently, since they all think they are saved and want to get away from the un-saved masses of the earth they don’t mind hurrying up the process. However, this might be all make belief, and is probably, no definitely, the view of a small fringe minority.

In the UK Guardian today they have an article on Bishop of London (that would be the Church of England for the poorly versed in religious authority) stating that it is a christian duty to save the planet. Apparently he practices what he preaches.

This brings me to my point. I’m fascinated, assuming my first generalization of fundamentalists was true, that people who read the same book and both seek essentially the same ultimate goal would have such different takes on how to act within our natural environment. The question then becomes how important a role will these differing views play in religious doctrine and what it means on a global whole. There are, approximately, 1 billion catholics and add the million more christians, and thats a lot of people who take guidance from the same source.

So, I wonder, what does the bible say about protecting, or not protecting, the earth? And what does it define as protection and stewardship?

Its been a while

I apologize for the long absence from the blog. Truly unintended.

I started a very interesting summer internship in May and just didn’t have the energy to commit to the blog. That was a little unfortunate since so many interesting things have since happened, and this position is relevant to a lot of the things that interest me.

First off, I should let readers know that at no time will I blog about what I do at work. Thats a pretty important line to draw and for professional reasons I’m not going cross it.

I think I should start with a comment on the G8 climate negotiations. I have to say I admire Angela Merkel for her stance. I haven’t read much by her, or on this point of view exactly, but I do know that she is a scientist and grew up in Eastern Germany. I imagine that the tremendous ecological damage of the East German Socialist state had an effect on her as both a politician, a child and a scientist, and I wonder if this is some of the motivation behind her desire to act aggressively on the weather.

Either way she is an interesting political case, conservative but motivated to change. That and the Germans have always tended to be at the forefront of major global environmental issues. I wonder if it has to do with their germanic sense of order and cleanliness. One of my professors truly believed that the reason the Germans were so proactive in the late 80s early 90s on the Acid rain issue was because it was damaging their forests, and forests hold a very important mythological and cultural importance in Germany. I would laugh that off, but I’ve started to think that these environmental archetypes impact political consciousness more than we admit.

Bush’s response plan was typical — unconclusive, non-binding, not even that creative. I don’t mind non-binding,  I do mind that he has no real concret incentives in his plan. I’ve never been one for policy coercion, but I do believe in creating incentives and opportunities where the market fails, and he doesn’t do that.

My preditiction: The US and any country that doesn’t jump in now to do something about climate change in a market friendly way will loose out in the long term. When countries like China and India realise, and they already are, how much money they can make from the business of climate change, it will be too late for the US to catch up.