Bozoulian | Guest Column by Pete Talbot
Why Not Let Global Warming Dictate Growth?
By Pete Talbot, 4-02-06
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If our New West cities don’t dummy up, we’re all screwed.
I’ve written about growth issues in Bozeman and Missoula, in broad strokes, because that’s what I know – but enough of the vagaries. Here’s my solution to the growing pains that all New West cities are feeling.
Base future development on global warming. Seriously. Unless we figure out a way to accommodate our growing population in a way that doesn’t deplete our resources or degrade our quality of life, we might as well be living in L.A. And by using a greenhouse gas emissions formula to steer development, we might also be helping the planet.
Here’s how the formula works. Inventory how much greenhouse gas your city emits and then decide how you’re going to reduce it. Growth can only occur when you meet the benchmark standards you’ve set for your community.
Here’s an example. Instead of using straight diesel fuel; city buses, plows, dump trucks and street cleaners start using biodiesel. City Hall, the fire stations, library and all the schools get new insulation and solar panels. So now you’ve reduced greenhouse gases by enough to allow a medium-sized subdivision to be built in what was once a lumber mill near the downtown. Of course this subdivision will feature energy efficient homes with hiking and biking trails, and a small commercial core with perhaps a bakery, brew pub and video shop. There’ll be a playground for the kids, too.
Another example. Hundreds of commuters from a nearby bedroom community start taking the light-rail train into the city center to work. So now a cluster of townhouses and single-family homes can spring up around the their depot.
A methane gas collector is installed at the wastewater treatment plant, there’s efficient LED lighting in traffic signals, and in place of new strip malls and box stores, wind turbines go up and carbon dioxide absorbing trees are planted. This would allow for more homes to be built in, say, an abandoned trailer park or where the city’s old industrial area used to be.
Is this some sort of utopian dream? God I hope not. If we get ahead of the curve we can have affordable, livable cities. We’ll be able to maintain our communities and sustain our economies. And we’ll be helping to stop global warming, so that maybe in forty years, our grandchildren will still be able to see glaciers in Glacier Park.
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Comments
•There is an estimated 400 billion tons of methane trapped in permafrost ice.
Bacteria digest carbon in the soil, and a by-product is methane. As the gas rises to the surface, some got trapped by permafrost ice rather than entering the air slowly over tens of millions of years.
Fact 2:
•An estimated 50% of permafrost will melt by 2050, and 90% by 2100.
As a little permafrost ice melts, methane is emitted into the air, leading to more warming and more melting.
Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2.
Fact 3:
•A large peat bog in western Siberia is proving this positive feedback loop.
The peat bog is the size of France and Germany together, and is estimated to contain 70 billion tons of carbon. It has already warmed 3C, and the methane level is 25 times higher there.
Conclusion:
•An estimated 5 times more greenhouse gas will be emitted by the earth in the next 50 years than mankind throughout the entire Industrial Revolution.
An estimated 200 billion tons of methane will flood the atmosphere in the next 50 years (50% of the estimated methane in permafrost ice). Mankind has emitted an estimated 800 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
200 billion tons of methane is equivalent to 4000 billion tons of CO2 (because methane is 20 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2), so 5 times as much greenhouse gas is expected to be emitted by the earth than mankind has emitted during the entire Industrial Revolution.
Analysis:
•The effect of methane flooding the atmosphere is runaway global warming.
• It is a potential bottleneck for mankind and an existential threat to the US.
I will furnish additional information upon request. Furthermore, I believe I have the only solution to this threat.
Suggested reading:
http://planetsave.com/ps_mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6724&Itemid=69
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-27.htm
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/02/26/news/opinion/opin820.txt
I'm also curious what the experts are saying about the fact that Russia is coming through its coldest winter since 1978-79, and China its coldest winter since 1986. Parts of southern Europe, the Mediterranean, India and Alaska also experienced record cold snaps this winter.
Surely global warming must have something to do with it.
Damn near everyone except a few paid hacks from the coal industry agree that global warming is here. But even if the scientists' predictions can't be completely quantified, shouldn't we err on the side of caution? And why not start at home? I certainly don't expect any leadership on a national level coming from the current administration in Washington, D.C.
As for "spend(ing) our resources on adapting to the impending change in climate" instead of "imposing expensive restrictions on our economy in a vain attempt to prevent warming?" Let's see: try to save our oceans' fisheries, prevent our remaining forests from burning up and relocating all our major coastal cities inland; or building a sustainable economy using alternative energy and conservation. Tough call.
Pete
By the way, those "paid hacks" to whom you refer happen to represent an industry that is providing half of America's electricity. It amazes me that people like you are so anxious to drive up the price of energy by billions or possibly trillions of dollars, and the benefit will be ... zip, nada, nothing.
And let's be honest, it's not the energy companies that will pay, although that's the message you'll try to sell to the public. No siree, those costs get passed on down to you and me.
I wonder how those polls about global warming would turn out if the pollster first pointed out that mandatory restrictions on CO2 emissions will result is huge double-digit increases in their energy bills.
Err on the side of caution, you say? Have you looked at the size of the globe lately, Pete? You're bonkers if you think mankind's tiny imprint on this planet has had any measurable influence on climate. And in case you need a reminder, climate is measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years, not a couple hundred.
One thing puzzles me and it's something that the global warming crusaders conveniently ignore - whatever happened to the scientists who just 30 years ago were predicting we were headed toward the next ice age? For further documentation, see George Will's column in yesterday's Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html.
Could it be that scientists are hyping the global warming fear because it means more research dollars for their lab? Could it be the American media is playing up the story because it sells newspapers and TV advertising? Could it be that environmentalists are hyping global warming because it feats neatly with their agenda to eliminate the use of fossil fuels so we can all hope the wind blows or the sun shines to power those remarkable renewables? Why else haven't we heard stories on this side of the globe about the brutal winter in Russia and China? Hmmmmm?
Almost forgot, Pete. I've got another link that addresses your concern about Glacier Park. Read this article that unspins the George Stephanopoulos interview with Gov. Schweitzer and the vanishing glaciers. I was shocked and amazed by the articles suggestion that those glaciers have been receceding since the white man first laid eyes on them 150 years ago ... http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9588
I guess it must have been the CO2 emissions from all the SUVs and coal plants built by the settlers who traipsed the Oregon Trail.
I'm no expert, just a concerned citizen who spent 12 years on the City Commission and have recently edited a number of college geography textbooks, all of which take climate change very seriously. I want to see our community become more informed on the issue, take some kind of stand, commit to changes in practices (such as the ones you suggest or others), and make information available on changes individuals/businesses can make in their practices. In addition to the option of a specific global warming resolution and changes in city practices that also could be discussed during budget hearings, Bozeman is just about to start a process of updating its 2020 Community Growth Plan, another appropriate opportunity to discuss sustainable growth in the context of global warming.
Interested in helping bring some form of a resolution, scientific information, and action options before the City?
Wow. Your response to the greenhouse gas piece really opened my eyes. And I thought that all New West website readers were lefty-enviros. I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I really, really do. I hope the shrinking polar ice caps, dying coral reefs and abandoned South Pacific Islands are just a fluke in the weather, and the unseasonably cold Japanese, European and Arctic winters are the norm. That those goofy scientists are just looking for more funding and the media are looking to sell more papers or boost their ratings. Now, if you're right, I can safely crank the thermostat up to 75 degrees in my 20,000 sq. ft. home before I back the Hummer out of the garage to drive twenty miles into town for a quart of milk.
Pete
We have limited resources and face many challenges. Here’s a simple truth: The money spent to combat climate change is not available to eradicate malaria, killer of 2 million people each year, 90 percent of whom are children under 5. And it takes money to increase female literacy in poor nations -- perhaps the key investment for social progress.
What if those who question the need for dramatic action are all pawns of “corporate polluters”? Even if true (it’s not), the costs of addressing climate change will be paid by real people. Does anyone honestly believe Pacific Gas and Electric deliberately emits carbon to destroy our climate? Isn’t PG&E;simply responding to consumers’ willingness to give up something they value (i.e., money) for the energy required to run their washing machines and PCs?
The countries of Europe have been the most enthusiastic proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. And in recent years they have been trying to meet their targets under the treaty. Trying, but failing. According to a recent report compiling statistics from the European Environment Agency:
"Total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU-15 decreased by a mere 1.7% between 1990 and 2003 with CO2 alone growing by 3.4%... Under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the EU has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 8% compared to 1990 levels."
The overall effect of Kyoto, while costly, would be insignificant -- no bang for a lot of bucks. Kyoto would delay the warming of the planet for a mere six years. In other words, the earth's temperature in, say, 2100 without Kyoto in effect will be reached in 2106 instead if Kyoto is widely adopted.
Regardless of what America and other developed nations do, in the next decade there is no reasonable scenario in which atmospheric CO2 will not double. It will probably quadruple. This is due to the physical chemistry of carbon dioxide that makes it a long-lived resident in the atmosphere. The consequences, however, will not become evident for several decades due to the buffering capacity of the oceans. Climate change, whether anthropogenic or natural, is inevitable. Our challenge is to deal with it responsibly.
Somebody has to shine a little light on you lefty-enviros. This may surprise you, Pete, but I have actually studied meteorology. I'm probably wasting my time here, because I know environmental crusaders like you are willing to do almost anything to save the planet ... anything that is, except take a science course and actually learn something about it.
It seems to be all about carbon dioxide emissions with the global warming crowd. Where does water vapor fit into your equation? Do you know that water vapor accounts for two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse effect? Do you suppose the intensity of the sun has anything to do with it? Could increased volcanic activity in the earth’s oceans be heating the planet? Earth does have a molten core, you know. Do any of these questions cause you to think there's a whole lot of uncertainty in the study of earth's climate?
I am curiously awaiting your explanation for the brutal winter on the other side of the planet, and the reason we don't hear global warming "scientists" and the MSM telling the American public about it. Could it be that it doesn't sell newspapers or support the argument for more research dollars.
And maybe, just maybe, it could mean that earth's climate really does have a way of keeping things in balance?
Fortunately for us in Portland, Oregon, we will become the PREMIER (and only) major West Coast sea port. (I will miss San Fran and Seattle. LA, not so much.) But don't even THINK of moving here!!! We have Urban Growth boundry issues and can't be bothered with bands of Montanans who seem more interested in squabbling with each other about wolves and hummers than talking with each other about soloutions.
Marcia Youngman, you are the exception. Your voice of reason is much read and much appreciated in Portland, Oregon. Please write more about communities working together to solve, or at least address, these thorny issues.
However, according to persuasive television adds placed between each and every disater on Discovery channel, "NEVADA IS WIDE OPEN!!!!"
Brad and Pete, I think you two fellows ought to plan a guys only get-away weekend, hit a few casinos and night clubs and work out your differences offline. Nevada is wide open.
"Does anyone honestly believe Pacific Gas and Electric deliberately emits carbon to destroy our climate? Isn’t PG&E;simply responding to consumers’ willingness to give up something they value (i.e., money) for the energy required to run their washing machines and PCs?"
It's kind of like the argument that corps that employ unethical business practices (like operating sweatshots) don't do it to harm humankind. "Isn't [insert unethical business] just responding to consumers' willingness . . . "
That's just not good enough, in my opinion.
I think everyone here makes some good points. Like I always say . . . every perspective has "spin" so it's hard for us laypeeps to draw conclusions and sleep well at night.
Any additional links y'all want to throw out there? I always like to know source materials.
Laisssez faire, free market economist, Pete Geddes, tells us that climate change is inevitable, measures we might take to try to slow it down are too expensive and/or ineffective, people won't be inclined to give up cheap fossil fuels, energy companies are just supplying what consumers demand, and we could rid the world of malaria with the money we might throw at an "impossible" problem like global warming, so, "our challenge is to deal with it responsibly." Geddes would have us believe that we are defeated before we even try to work toward a more sustainable future. This mode of thinking is bankrupt and maladaptive. "Consume until we all die" isn't a useful philosophy.
Regulating our human activity to ensure our comfortable survival is only rational. I prefer to think that we might engage the power of human intellect, ingenuity, and scientific discovery to see what we can do to conserve energy, use the resources that we have more wisely, find viable alternatives, and reduce waste. Simple actions, tax incentives, regulation, etc. are all tools that we can employ. Let's tax fuel inefficient vehicles, invest in solar water heating, give tax incentives or other assistance for insulating buildings, require companies to use best available technology, encourage more use of bicycles, etc. Let's be constructive, address the issues, and get down the road.
You asked for source material. After reading some of the comments, I did a little more research. Here’s what I came across from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
“Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mostly carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and gas; plus a few other trace gases). There is no scientific debate on this point. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are about 370 ppmv. The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today, has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years, and likely not in the last 20 million years. According to the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm (75-350% above the pre-industrial concentration).”
Are there some natural phenomena that may be contributing to global warming? It’s possible. The sun’s energy output, and the earth’s orientation and position to the sun (its orbit), can affect earth’s temperatures. But again, I quote NOAA:
“…however for the prediction of climate change in the 21st century, these changes (the sun’s output and the earth’s orbit) will be far less important than radiative forcing from greenhouse gases.”
Much of the material on what communities can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions I found in the March 6, 2006, issue of High Country News (http://www.hcn.org).
Now let’s talk economics. Skeptic says that if we don’t continue burning our fossil fuels it will “drive up the price of energy by billions or possibly trillions of dollars…”
But these fossil fuels are finite. There’s already talk that oil production could peak within the next decade. I’ll bet that the countries that get ahead of the fossil fuel curve with alternative and renewable energy programs will be the countries whose economies flourish in the not-to-distant future. Let’s see what happens to China’s economy when the estimated 50 million new drivers have to pay five-bucks-a-gallon at the pump.
Mr. Geddes writes that, “The money spent to combat climate change is not available to eradicate malaria, killer of 2 million people each year, 90 percent of whom are children under 5. And it takes money to increase female literacy in poor nations -- perhaps the key investment for social progress.”
I believe we can have it all, it’s just how we allocate our resources. Right now, for example, we’re spending about one-billion-dollars a week on the Iraq war. That could go a long way toward combating climate change, and eradicating malaria and increasing female literacy.
He also writes, “The overall effect of Kyoto, while costly, would be insignificant -- no bang for a lot of bucks. Kyoto would delay the warming of the planet for a mere six years.” I’m not sure what a lot of bucks are, but I’ll take as many six-year reprieves as I can get as we continue to search for solutions to the global warming problem.
I do agree with Mr. Geddes, though, that we have to deal with the problem responsibly. I just happen to prefer pre-emptive measures to crisis control – although I think we’re going to need a lot of both to get us through this impending environmental catastrophe.
Pete Talbot
Climatic stasis is an impossibility. Climate change is global in scale and we’re already committed to future warming, for carbon dioxide is a long-lived atmospheric resident. Change is inevitable and we must deal with it responsibly. This means recognizing two key realties:
(1) Resources are limited.
(2) Allocating them involves trading off among many worthy and competing values.
The Copenhagen Consensus project is a recent example of this process. It asked some of the world's leading economists to rank the world’s ten biggest problems identified by the United Nations. These challenges are: civil conflicts, climate change, communicable diseases, education, financial stability, governance, hunger and malnutrition, migration, trade reform, and water and sanitation.
Their charge: “What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?”
The highest priority was preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. A relatively small investment ($27 billion) would yield extraordinarily high benefits -- nearly 30 million new infections averted by 2010. This is especially critical for progress in Africa, where AIDS threatens to collapse entire societies.
Climate change received the lowest ranking. Why? It takes enormous expenditures to achieve very small reductions in greenhouse gases -- and the benefits are uncertain. The panel declared current abatement strategies (e.g., the Kyoto protocol) “a bad use of our finite resources.”
The great grandchildren of the world’s poorest are those most likely to be adversely affected by global warming. Here’s the key to ethical policies. The best defense against adverse consequences of warming is wealth creation in the developing world. Here’s why.
In this arena as in so many others, wealth buffers adversity. The greatest dangers are policies that stifle Third World economic progress, e.g., First World trade barriers. This great truth is often ignored in the debate over climate change.
P.S. I have never and do not advocate a “consume until we die” philosophy. Please send some time reading my columns on this issue. They’re archived at http://www.free-eco.org. Click “publications.”
When you turn on the light by your bed do you really believe North Western Energy is doing anything other than responding to your willingness to give up something you value (i.e., money) for the energy required to finish your bedtime reading?
Let’s examine your sweatshop comment in detail. First, I do not excuse the real problems of unsafe and exploitive working conditions that do exist.
But if U.S. multinational companies are exploiting workers in poor countries, how do we explain the following? Wherever a new factory opens, a major problem is keeping job applicants from storming the gates.
Wages are low in developing countries because workers there are not as productive as workers here. Increasing productivity (i.e., more output for the same quantity of input) is essential to higher wages and improved social well-being.
Researchers at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Policy found the following:
• In Vietnam, Nike factory workers earned roughly five times the country’s minimum wage. In Indonesia, it’s roughly three times.
• Affiliates of U.S. multinationals pay, on average, double the local wage in low-income countries.
• A survey of footwear and apparel factory workers in Thailand found that 70 percent of workers regarded their wages as “fair,” and 60 percent had begun to accumulate savings.
These workers flee from other, less attractive sectors of the economy. Usually it’s agriculture, forestry, and mining where unemployment is high, the work dangerous, and the pay dismal.
Complaining that these workers are “exploited” may make us feel righteous. But the people who accept these jobs know they are superior to the next best alternative.
The wages these jobs provide enable parents to send their children to school rather than to work. Here are the results: In 1960, children composed 32 percent of the labor force in low-income countries. Forty years later, following the massive expansion in international trade, it’s 19 percent -- still too high, but a vast improvement.
Imagine what it was like to work in American factories 100 years ago. The labor was repetitive, exhausting, and often deadly. Workers earned wages comparable to those paid in poor countries today. The worst conditions were vividly exposed in Upton Sinclair’s muckraking book The Jungle.
With each passing generation, working conditions in the U.S. have gotten better. And developing countries will move up this curve much faster than we did. Swedish scholar Johan Norberg notes the trend. In 1780, it took England 60 years to double its per capita wealth. In 1880, Sweden did it in 40 years. In 1980, South Korea did in 10.
We know what countries must do in order to escape poverty. Thirty years ago Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and South Korea all had sweatshops. Over time employers have acquired capital and workers skills. Now these countries have better jobs at higher wages, and safer, more comfortable working conditions.
Where are the service stations selling biodiesel? I would switch in a minute even if it cost more, but there is no place to buy it that I know of. I think if environmental organizations were to help fund biodiesel production and alternative fuel research instead of filing law suits demanding someone slse do it, it would move things along ever so much.
Dreaming up ideas requires money to put them in practice, unfortunately the most vocal groups offer no assistance getting there.
Pete G, I don't care how much more the Vietnamese worker gets paid over his neighbor who doesn't work for Corp X, it's still exploitative.
But don't mean to take the discussion off tangent!
;) KJ
Don't think we off tangent.
Please explain how providing a job that pays more and provides safer, more comfortable working environment than the next best alternative is explotive?
Here's an example of what happens when the "sweatshop" jobs disappear:
In 1993 child workers in Bangladesh produced clothes for Wal-Mart. Senator Tom Harken proposed legislation banning imports from countries using child labor. Factories stopped employing children. And then what? The international aid organization Oxfam followed up and found many children had moved into even worse jobs, e.g., scavenging garbage dumps and prostitution.
The points on Global Warming presented in the comment section are all very interesting. And global warming is an issue, or more appropriately termed Global Climate Change.
But I allege that Pete really just wants to restrict growth and development in our communities. Read on ...
The global climate has been changing forever; just ask the dinosaurs. I mean, dang, Missoula was once a large lakebed held in place by a glacier dam; i.e Glacier Lake Missoula. The climate and resulting landscape is changing and will continue to change. The issue of global warming should just be pollution, and how much we as Americans and humans are willing to accept into our atmosphere, land and water. Because, we as humans will not ever stop the climate from changing.
As for Pete's suggestion presented here the real issue is growth, land use and property rights.
Pete, I would like you to try to remember that this is America, a free country. If a man owns land down the highway and sees that building on said land could be profitable, than as a tax paying, free American he has that right.
Many communities have regulations on the size, type, and density he is allowed to build. But the prerequisite should not be whether the fire station has installed new solar panels or not. Nor should the permit be denied until the city switches to bio-diesel buses, especially if the land lies outside city limits. That becomes an issue of taxation without representation and is clearly unconstitutional.
Growth and housing development is, and should be, based on the market, supply and demand. Remember, we live in a free country, a market based, capitalistic, Republic, not a socialistic, government-restrictive, commonwealth. In America, people are free to move where they want, when they want. And those that don’t like the American system are free to emigrate to another country. That’s why ours is such a great nation.
I suspect in Pete's ideal world, a family would have to apply to some government agency to ask for permission to move to Missoula or Bozeman. Then they would be put on a bureaucratic waiting list until the community has met the restrictions imposed by the likes of Pete. Otherwise where would they live once they arrived? Because in his model, housing would be highly restricted.
In practice, the guidelines suggested by the author would never be able to meet the demands of the American people. Therefore, under Pete’s model, impoverished shanty towns would spring up on the outskirts of America’s towns and cities as people wait for housing to be built under the unrealistic guidelines.
And I also suspect that he moans about the lack of affordable housing in our growing western communities. Under your plan housing costs would go through the roof! Just ask those living in Boulder, CO. That community enacted strict building restrictions and effectively squeezed out the working class, and most of the middle-income youth.
I believe your mixing of two issues is simple minded and downright unrealistic. For one, yes, pollution reduction is a good effort that we should all keep in mind.
But to suggest we restrict community growth to reduce it is just plain foolish, if not downright stupid. Because, just like climate change, it's going to happen. And as long we remain a free country, that can't be changed. Nor should it be changed.
Missoula, for one, is becoming an ever more attractive place for people to live. As is all of Western, and South Western Montana.
Every time our community improves itself with such things as a downtown water park, a wonderful river front park, a new skate park, an improved highway or a growing artist community, we become a more attractive place to move to.
So the answer you seek to the growth dilemma, because I sense that is what is really worrying you, is to try to stop these improvements our communities keep making. Maybe you should organize a protest of the new swimming pools being built in Missoula's McCormick Park. Those are bound to improve the quality of life in Missoula and there by help spur growth on.
Or you could demand that the city roads department and the parks department stop their efforts to improve the major thoroughfares, both traffic use wise and aesthetically. I would gamble that the outward beauty of our communities has inspired many causal visitors to move to Western Montana.
Or, if you really just hate the idea of a growing thriving community, you can always head out to Eastern Montana, or North Dakota. I hear they have declining populations.
To summarize, the climate will continue to change. And as a free country, America’s communities will continue to grow based on a supply and demand market system, not an authoritarian, socio-politically based government restrictive system.
Thank you
Don Linton
Economics is one part of the picture, science is another. So, let's hear your ideas, Mr. Geddes, on what human society can do to act responsibly and increase energy efficiency, conservation, and use of renewable forms of energy. Certainly you're not opposed to such things? Many scientists disagree with your premise that we can't do much to affect climate change or that it would be impossibly expensive. Conversely, they have been drawing attention to these issues and urging action for many years.
Investments in fuel efficiency, renewable energy and better mass transit systems have the potential to substantially reduce our use of fossil fuels, which may result in cost savings to society and individuals, as well as reduce our carbon emissions. What is the point in resisting this path? If we were to put even a tiny percentage of the money that we spend on WMDs and war and subsidies to the oil/gas/coal companies toward reducing energy consumption, our world would be a much more secure place.
I don't think that Pete Talbot is against "growing, thriving communities" by the way. Mr. Linton's suggestion that Pete willingly and without thought accept whatever the free market produces for his city or leave it is offensive. City planning and citizen involvement in that process has a lot going for it.
The reality is we are in the midst of climate chamge. Forget for a minute whether it is long term or not and realize we live in a world of finite resources where a little conservatism goes a long ways. It makes good business sense to do an energy audit of your business, and make the changes necessary to use less energy. It makes good financial sense to one day a week take transit, or use other alternatives to driving your car around.
"Growing, thriving communities" do use more resources, but they also have the capacity (finacial, and educational)as well as an incentive (we love it here, this is why we chose to live here)to be more conservative in how they use resources. The question is will the collective community will and leadership be there?
I know (or I think I know) where you are going with your arguement. However, I think you have to rephrase the title. When you say "let global warming dictate growth" you allow both sides of the global warming debate to bring their money, and their science into the planning and building arena. You will spend ALL your time arguing the merits of the science and chasing your globally warmed tail....and NOTHING will be accomplished, but one day you will awaken to a city that is no longer an enjoyable place to live.
If you take a look at resource use, the cost/benefit of energy efficent homes and transportation, and the root causes of climate change (the climate IS changing, no one can dispute that, but is it long term or not??) you can begin to address the ways we can save resources, save money, and in a small way do our part to lessen climate change.
With home heating and energy costs sky rocketing it makes a great deal of sense to build energy efficent homes. Yes, the up front costs might me 5-10% more. Long term, the costs are lower and the energy savings can be huge.
There is a role for planning and government to play in encouraging energy efficent housing. We can have that discussion next. There is a role for business and developers to play in building and promoting homes that use less energy. Financially it makes sense. Does it help with climate change? Probably, but I bet these days a home promoted as a being 10-20% energy efficent will sell better than one that isn't. You don't need to mention "global warming". The Toyota Prius is a great example of energy efficency finding the market place and being successful.
Finally, a growing and thriving community has the human resources, the educational resources, and the finacial resources necessary to shape their future. However, they typically lack the political leadership to plan and implement. Without leadership to keep the will of the community focused on betterment, the community divides along old status quo lines that lead to unsustainable, unlivable communities.
Regarding my concern for the welfare of the world’s poorest—you no nothing of my heart.
Tossing labels such as “conservative” is a convenient way to avoid wresting with the logic of arguments. But your ad hominem attack flags the weakness of yours.
As a wrote in earlier posts, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today we are locking into to future warming, likely by one degree c by the end of this century.
This is because carbon dioxide is a long-lived atmospheric resident. There is not a reputable scientist in the world who would quibble with this statement. It is simply a recognition of the realities of physics and chemistry. We can not magically cool the planet.
So what human society can do to act responsibly? I’d suggest understanding these realities, for they will help us to make responsible and effective policy decisions:
First, The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. How will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?
Second, billions of the earth’s poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Secure, reliable, and affordable energy is essential to their successful escape -- and they know it. This is precisely why China and India refuse to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol.
Third, fossil fuels remain our cheapest, most available sources of energy. “Renewables” (e.g., solar and wind) will play only a limited role in the short and medium term and can only augment, not replace, base load generation.
Unless we embark on a major effort to expand nuclear power generation, for the next few decades almost all new energy demand will be met by fossil fuels. (A single quarter-ounce pellet of uranium generates as much energy as 3.5 barrels of oil, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, or 1,780 pounds of coal.)
Fourth, all energy production has environmental impacts. For example, wind farms cause visual and noise pollution and kill birds. Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front contains oil and gas deposits but is also excellent grizzly country. In this prime habitat animals roam between high plains grasslands and mountain forests. Drilling can disturb this habitat; and burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.
Energy policy must balance imperfect alternatives.
Fifth, Since our Bicentennial, the U.S. economy has grown by 126 percent, while energy use has increased by only 30 percent. These gains come from a combination of advances in technology and an evolution in our economy. We’ve moved from energy-intensive manufacturing to services and information technology.
Finally, we count on science to help us assess whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real and whether the solutions offered will do any good. With limited resources, choices must be made. Science can help to identify the tradeoffs, but does not tell us how to choose among them. Human values, not science, are required to rank the outcomes.
My column in next Wednesday’s (April 12th) the Bozeman Daily Chronicle begins:
“NewWest (http://www.newwest.net) is a website focusing on “the culture, economy, politics, environment … of the Rocky Mountain West.” I’ve met with one of its editors and spoken with its readers. Most don’t understand my opposition to government subsidies for “Green” energy.”
I’ll welcome your response.