Maybe We Should be Living off the Interest, not the Natural Capital
One of the greatest environmentalists of all time, David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, once said:
In the years since the Industrial Revolution, we humans have been partying pretty hard. We've ransacked most of the Earth for resources. A small part of the world's population wound up with some nice goodies, but now we're eating the seed corn. We are living off the natural capital of the planet, the principal, and not the interest. The soil, the seas, the forests, the rivers, and the protective atmospheric cover - all are being depleted. It was a grand binge, but the hangover is now upon us, and it will soon be throbbing. From Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run by David Brower. (Page 2)
We're just beginning to feel the first symptoms of that hangover. We've all seen how weather patterns are changing. These days, when I visit my family in eastern Colorado during the summer, tornado warnings are commonplace. When I was growing up there a tornado warning was a rarity. It seems like every year the hurricanes get bigger and dissipate slower. The droughts and heat spells last longer and the winters are more severe. To complicate things even further, the polar caps are melting at an alarming rate and sea level is rising. The best computer models can't accurately predict the weather for more than a couple of days, much less predict long term weather events. Nevertheless, most researchers do agree that the situation has the potential for global disaster of monumental proportions. As Brower says, "the hangover is now upon us," and I say, its name is global warming.
The only way to mitigate global warming is to reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Of these carbon dioxide is the most abundant. Reducing atmospheric carbon means cutting back on energy use or switching to cleaner sources of energy. Nearly ten years after the Rio Conference, where the concept of making the polluters pay for the clean up of atmospheric carbon was first proposed, the idea has been little more than talk for most of the world. But, while everyone else was procrastinating, tiny Costa Rica with only a fraction of the earth's land area and population and no political clout, was taking action. But first let me explain exactly what I mean by making the polluters pay for the clean up. The concept is sometimes called "carbon credits."
Burning any hydrocarbon, like wood, coal, oil or gasoline takes oxygen out of the air and puts carbon dioxide into it. Since there are close to one billion internal combustion vehicles in the world, 610 million of which are newer than 1990, they are a major source of atmospheric carbon. If you drive an average sized car, every time you burn a tank of gas you deposit the equivalent of a 100 pound sack of pure carbon in the atmosphere. Trees remove that carbon from the air and fix it in wood fiber, and emit oxygen in the process. Of course we all breathe life sustaining oxygen. So, the logic goes, those of us who drive cars should pay those who plant trees and protect forests.
In Costa Rica the program is called " Environmental Service Payments. The way it works, in practice, is that people who purchase gasoline and diesel pay a special tax. The proceeds from that tax go to pay people who plant and protect forests. Since there isn't enough of the tax revenue to pay everyone who is conserving forest, some areas have priority over others. Wildlife corridors are one of the highest priority areas for the distribution of these incentives. The program has been operating since 1997. It is still small and has numerous problems, but it is working and has an incredible potential for protecting forest and restoring wildlife habitat. It is also an excellent example for the rest of the world.
Costa Rica has other programs that tend to mitigate carbon emissions. Here, as in most of the world, much of the electricity is generated at power plants that burn fossil fuels such as coal and diesel. This of course increases atmospheric carbon and reduces oxygen. Austerity in the use of electricity goes a long way to lower carbon emissions. With this in mind, the Costa Rican electrical utility, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) offers lower rates to customers who demonstrate that they are economizing. Stop and think about that. Those who are wasteful and consume large amounts of electrical power pay a higher rate per kilowatt hour than those who take measures to economize and use less. In other words there is no discount for volume purchases, but instead a penalty.
The way you get a discount is by cutting down on your electrical consumption. Another thing that ICE does to encourage consumers to reduce their energy consumption is to promote the use of compact fluorescent bulbs. They even have special promotions when they sell these very efficient compact fluorescent bulbs to clients at cost and finance them over a period of a year. You may think that the energy savings from switching to more efficient light bulbs is insignificant, but that's not the case. In 2001 when California was in an energy crunch, someone calculated the savings that would occur if every household in the state were to exchange four incandescent 100 watt bulbs for four equivalent 27 watt compact fluorescent bulbs. The saving would not only be enough to eliminate the need for any new power plants, but would be sufficient to allow the state to close 17 average sized existing power plants.
Costa Rica isn't alone in its efforts to curtail carbon emissions. A few other countries are also doing their best to economize, and some are searching for cleaner forms of energy. The tiny country of Iceland is committed to becoming the first country in the world to be fossil fuel free. They plan to completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2020 and replace them with clean burning hydrogen and geothermal energy. Mexico is also looking into alternatives to fossil fuels in order to alleviate air pollution. China is doing likewise. Denmark, Holland and Germany are all investing heavily in alternative forms of energy such as wind power. Royal Dutch Shell, a petroleum giant, has also invested heavily in Wind Power. Many European countries have instituted high fuel taxes as an incentive to consumers to economize.
So what can you and I do? We can set examples in the way we live our lives. I never considered my brother Rex to be an environmentalist, but when I went to visit him earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised. Rex and his wife LaVonne live about 10 kilometers from the nearest electrical lines, yet they have all the modern conveniences of city dwellers. Their power comes from one small wind generator, six electrical panels, twenty deep cycle batteries, and an inverter that makes the whole system 110 Volts AC. That means they can plug ordinary appliances into their electrical outlets. But Rex and LaVonne's appliances aren't ordinary by any means; instead they are super efficient models.
I was amazed and delighted to learn that all kinds of super efficient appliances are available. Some will reduce electrical consumption as much as 75% compared to ordinary appliances. Imagine the savings on a global scale if these super efficient appliances were to come into general usage. With electrical energy the savings is even greater due to a multiplier effect. Inefficiency in the production and transportation of electrical power is such that it takes ten watts of energy to put one watt of electrical power in your home. That means that by saving one watt of electricity in your home you are saving 10 watts at the power plant where your electricity was generated.
So here I am, thinking of myself as the great environmentalist, visiting my little brother, who never had any special inclination toward the environment, and learning a very important lesson from his example. Just think of what the readers of Monkeys are Made of Chololate could do by example, even if the only action each of us takes is to change four incandescent light bulbs in our homes for four compact fluorescent bulbs, and then tell everyone about it. I personally plan to go a lot further and convert my entire home to solar power. On those rainy nights when a tree falls on the electrical lines and you guys are all sitting around in the dark trying to play cards by candle light, I won't even know anything is wrong.
I also try to set an example by planting trees. You regular readers knew I would get around to it, didn't you? No I'm not really a tree hugger, but I do like trees and I do see some crucial reasons why we should be planting them, especially those of us who like to breathe:
1. Trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and convert it into wood fiber while, at the same time, releasing oxygen.
2. Trees conserve water which is equally important to life. If we run out of water we will only live a little longer than if we run out of oxygen. Water is another issue, but it is worth mentioning that rainfall records from the Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge weather station indicate that 1997, 2001 and 2002 were the three driest years since 1980 when the station began operating.
3. Trees, especially native species provide habitat for wildlife. This is particularly beneficial when they are planted in corridors that connect isolated patches of forest.
4. Trees provide lumber a valuable material that we use in our daily lives.
5. Trees provide paper, the usage of which the computer age has not only failed to eliminate, but instead, has multiplied. You can set a wonderful example by planting trees too.
As Brower implies in the quote at the beginning of this essay, we can't live off the natural capital forever. We need to come up with solutions that will enable us to begin living off the interest instead of the principal. Increasing our forest cover is one way to increase our natural capital and bring us closer to sustainable living.
Inform yourself and then inform others. There is a lot of excellent reading material out there for those who are interested in learning more. In addition to Brower's book, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, I also recommend Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkin, The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, The State of the World 2003, from World Watch, as well as World Watch magazine.
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