Missoula News

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

In The Petri Dish: The Plight of our Energy-Sucking Species

By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 7-17-07

An iteration of Bacteria by physicist/artist Eshel Ben-Jacob

This is not the decade of global warming or even climate change. It is one of ensuing ecological destruction.

When the energy runs dry, all of the systems we have so carelessly created to gulp that energy down will be worthless. We can build tiny houses (less than 100 square feet), rip up our lawns for edible estates, drive a prius, sell carbon credits on the Chicago climate exchange, or refocus our energy policy on biofuels and ethanol, but as Wes Jackson from the Land Institute argues, “We aren’t going to invent or grow our way out of this thing.” No amount of human innovation can stop the ensuing ecological destruction. To even begin to do that, humans will need to cut their energy use in half, in just ten years. 

This was the sobering theme of the 2007 Sopris Conference: Innovative Ideas for a New West, held in Missoula this weekend. Sponsored by the Sopris Foundation, which aims to promote a self-sufficient and innovative West, the conference focused on the future of the West and its people who are known for their, “rogue effort and ingenuity.”

But it seems that regardless of this rogue effort and ingenuity, human ineptitude to live within the tides and provisions of the earth and our relentless need for carbon to fuel our current lives will end in our demise.

According to Jackson, this desire for energy is natural. All creatures want carbon because they need it to live. “We ache for carbon,” he says and in that desire we are not so different from pine trees or rabbits. We are just like bacteria in a Petri dish. As long as bacteria have no boundaries and plenty of sugar (that pretty white package of carbon energy) they will expand ad infinitum.

But there is not an infinite amount of energy to consume on this small planet of ours. The earth is a closed loop system whose energy production simply cannot be expanded. And so rather than expand upon the ways we use that energy, we must consider ways to reduce our use of it.

Our very agricultural systems are prime examples of our energy use ineptitude. According to the United Nations, agriculture is the most destructive activity on the planet. As we produce the food that is the energy to fuel our lives, we use oil energy to do it. We feed what Jackson calls the insidious “auto-mobilis” creatures to fuel our ability to grow food, work and live.

But as Jackson says, the energy crisis is the least of our worries. It’s temporary. It will pale in comparison to the longterm human crises that will follow. The larger problem with our energy crises is that it will lead to further misuse of the soil. And without healthy soil you cannot feed people and create healthy communities. These effects are seen around the world where 27 million people are slaves in countries where the soil is worn out. 

For Ralph Grossi, the president of American Farmland Trust, farming is on the cusp of innovation because of biofuels and a new energy boom. And while there are divergent opinions about ethanol and the way it will increase food prices and not necessarily change our energy use patterns, ethanol discussions in Washington are well underway. As Congress debates the upcoming Farm Bill, ethanol will be a major focus. While Grossi is certainly more focused on the current conditions of the system that will allow farmers and ranchers to succeed, he also views agricultural landscapes as providing ecosystem services: environmental goods, wildlife habitat and open space. These services provide an emerging opportunity that can generate new streams of revenue for farmers and ranchers.

But according to Howard Kuntzler, such opportunities will not be realized if the more pressing concern of our misuse of energy resources is not quickly addressed. With rather vociferous arrogance, Kuntzler assured attendees that, “we are not entitled to an orderly transition. And it won’t be.” Our “fossil fuel fiesta,” is over and what will come is a level of despair that we cannot imagine.

His acerbic ruminations were magnified by David Orr’s humbling facts, such as the Stern Review Report. The Chair of Oberlin College’s Environmental Studies program is best known for spearheading a $7.2 million building that is run on solar power, but he is increasingly known for his succinct connections between public policy and what he calls planetary destabilization rather than global warming.

This planetary destabilization is more than a matter of hot pockets over the arctic. It is the literal disruption of our current way of life.

For Orr, the American “people of plenty,” with, “optimism in our DNA,” will not be able to use technology or innovation to keep the weather from changing so drastically that wheat production will shift from the Great Plains to the northern reaches of Canada. While technology has a role in changing the way we use our resources, we cannot begin there.

Instead we must immediately reduce our energy use. Just as quickly, we must reclaim a philosophy that our country’s forefathers and mothers used to define our nation. We must retool the public words patriotic and conservative to overcome the arbitrary barriers of rhetoric that have split us apart. Instead, we must begin to create a government of participation rather than partisanship to then create an economy based on balance. This would be an economy that protects the commons of our air, water and soil as we have never done before. 

For Orr, this is a philosophical change that must happen at the highest levels of government, so that we are a nation no longer driven by bacterial growth and are instead driven by balanced use of our shared resources. Under this philosophy, politicians will no longer sell the growth economy. Instead, they will act on the behalf of posterity, envisioning a new economy and even a new way to govern and be governed.

This is how he would begin:
1. Stabilize our heat trapping gasses (primarily carbon dioxide) and rapidly reduce them. (See the Socolow Wedge)
2. Rapidly transition to more efficient use of those resources. We simply do not have decades.
3. Build a world that is “secure by design” in which every child has rights and posterity is the locus for every decision.
4. View ourselves as trustees of this planet.
5. Form a politics of participation rather than partisanship.

On a simpler level, the speakers seem to indicate that necessary change has two clear sides…
1. Use less. At least 50 percent less.
2. Tell everyone you know to do the same. Now. Contact every politician representing you to remake public policy. Now.

For many of the Sopris speakers, supported by a wealth of science and graphs, this is not some inconvenient truth. It is a known reality. We cannot continue to live in an economy that feeds the wide ranging, “auto-mobilis.” No solar array will provide the levels of energy we consume. No wind power or nuclear plant or clean coal will keep us in business. The way we eat and farm will change right along with the way we work. It must. In ten years.

This moment, this very second is the one in which we will do what Orr calls our generation’s Great Work. We must rise up and off our complacent behinds to collectively acknowledge that our energy policy is a sham. We will require our politicians to talk to us like we are adults. We will require them to lead according to the ecology. We will cut our consumption in half.

We are all in this Petri dish together, sliding up the glass edges searching for sugar. But the sugar is almost gone. And no technological prodigy is waiting on the other side to catch us. This time, we have to save ourselves.

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