Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (4 page)

This principle applies across the board to nearly everything we do in life. It applies to all the ways we obtain and use food, energy, and materials. In particular, at a personal level, it applies to our homes and our cars. For most people these two items are the largest consumers of both materials and energy, and we have considerable control over what sort of home and car we own.

I believe the best definition of
sustainable
has to do with constantly developing better practices and technologies that are in harmony with the environment rather than ones that cause damage to it. When we speak of sustainable forestry we mean doing it in a way that does not destroy biodiversity, includes reforestation, protects watercourses,
etc.
Sustainable agriculture means maintaining some natural areas in the landscape, preserving soil fertility, and minimizing deforestation through highyield technology. The adjective sustainable can be used to describe most of the ways we get food, energy, and materials. The example of the lightbulb above could be called sustainable illumination.

The term
sustainability
, like many other words, is subject to overuse and misuse. But if we stick to the above broad definition I think it is the best term to describe a balanced approach that takes into account the real needs of people while working to maintain a healthy environment. This is not always simple. There are serious conflicts to deal with and sometimes mistakes will be made while attempting new approaches. But it only makes sense to work in this direction.

Balance
is my favorite word. It represents an effort to find an agreement that satisfies everybody involved without causing undue hardship to anyone. While this may seem like a daunting task, unless you work to find common ground you will be condemned to endless conflict. Some people seem to thrive on conflict. Others are hopelessly pious and forgiving.

Amid the tumult of contemporary politics the best we can do is to seek the middle ground. Some may see this as selling out, but only the unthinking are that rigid in their views. The basis of progress is thinking, inquisitive people sharing thoughts and views and learning new ways to do old things. I am an optimist and I believe there are good reasons to feel this way, including the fact that the universe will continue to unfold in its glorious splendor.

I feel very optimistic because I have experienced so many situations where the outcome is a win-win-win for the environment, the community, and the economy. Here is a perfect example:

The Sacramento Valley in California was historically known as the Great Inland Sea. During the rainy season the banks of the Sacramento River and its tributaries would overflow, creating a temporary lake over an area of millions of acres. Since the arrival of agriculture the valley has been tamed by hundreds of levees and weirs, greatly reducing the frequency of flooding.

Of the millions of acres of farmland in the Sacramento Valley, more than 500,000 acres are used to grow rice, second only in the United States to Arkansas. Over the years, as the city of Sacramento grew larger, its citizens became increasingly annoyed with the rice farmers.

Farmers grow rice in fields that they flood in the spring, immediately after the seedlings are planted. Prior to harvest the fields are drained to allow access for harvesting equipment. After the harvest the traditional practice was to burn the stubble and leave the field an ash-covered barrens all winter. The ash provided a flush of nutrients for next year’s crop. But half a million acres of burning stubble make a lot of smoke and soot. The air pollution filled the valley for weeks and the townsfolk were not amused.

It is not a simple matter to get farmers to change practices they have followed for thousands of years. But some farmers who realized their practices were unacceptable to their neighbors from an environmental perspective decided to take action. In the mid-1990s they were joined in a working committee by state environment and wildlife officials, local environmental groups, birdwatchers and bird scientists, and many others who wanted to find a solution to this problem. Within a few years there were over 100 people involved in the process. Partly due to the fact the committee was made up of diverse interests, it worked toward a solution that suited everyone.

Today the rice is still grown as usual in flooded fields that are drained prior to harvest. But the practice of burning the stubble has ended. Instead the fields are re-flooded and the stubble is left to decay in the water over the winter. This is an even more efficient way to recover the nutrients in the stubble. Today there is no air pollution, and the rice farmers are in the good graces of their neighbors. But the most amazing outcome is that the rice fields now provide wintering habitat for 14 species of shorebirds. Between 200,000 and 300,000 shorebirds and about three million ducks and geese make use of the rice fields, dabbling for bugs and worms in the rich sediment of the flooded fields.

In a brilliant stroke of fine-tuning, the farmers and their new friends realized that the legs of shorebird species range from short to long. For instance, sandpipers have short legs while avocets have long ones. So the farmers flood the various rice fields to different depths to accommodate shorebirds large, small, and in between.

The farmers still grow their crop and provide two million tons of staple food. Air pollution is a thing of the past and rather than a desolate burned landscape there is a thriving ecosystem with millions of birds feeding all winter. It’s a win for the environment, a win for the community, and just as important a win for the farmers and their economy.

In September 2002 I was invited as the keynote speaker to a ceremony marking the designation of 550,000 acres of the Sacramento Valley’s rice fields as a Shorebird Site of International Significance.
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Many of the species that winter there pass from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere annually. On that day I felt vindicated in my optimistic outlook for the future of human civilization and the global environment. The evolution of rice farming practices in the Sacramento Valley provides the definition of sustainability.

Renewable, Clean, Sustainable, and Green

We throw these four words around as if they were synonymous when they actually have distinct meanings.

Renewable
is used to describe resources and energy supplies that have relatively short cycles of natural replenishment. Nearly all renewable resources are based on the sun’s energy. These include biomass, hydroelectric energy, geothermal heat pumps, wind and solar energy, and the wood used for fuel, construction, and paper products. Trees, and the wood they produce, are the most abundant renewable material
and
energy resource. All our agricultural food crops as well as wild fish, game, and plants are renewable and based on solar energy.

The term
clean
, as in
clean technology
, is relatively new and simply refers to technology that does not pollute the environment. By this standard wind, solar, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy are all clean. But it is important to look at the full life cycle. All technologies have impacts on the environment. Bauxite ore must be mined to make aluminum for solar panels, cement must be produced for hydroelectric dams and nuclear plants, and factories must be built to produce liquid biofuels. So clean is a relative term meaning cleaner, much cleaner, we hope, than previous or alternative technologies.

Just because a resource is renewable doesn’t mean it is clean. When wood is burned in an open fire it produces a lot of soot and volatile, toxic gases. Indoor smoke from fires for cooking and heating kills 1.5 million people annually, according to the World Health Organization.
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Therefore renewable fuels such as wood, straw, and dung are the leading cause of death from air pollution.

Sustainability, originally called sustainable development, is a concept, not something fixed or absolute. Some have described it as a journey rather than a destination, as there is no final perfect state of sustainability. As we and our environment evolve we must adjust to changing circumstances. While it’s nice to think there is some ideal state we could attain, sustainability is actually a perpetual work in progress.

Sustainability is a relative concept, depending on the time scale we consider. On one hand nothing is infinitely sustainable, even the sun will burn out (and evidently take the earth with it) billions of years from now. For practical purposes it makes sense to define sustainable in terms of human generations. It means getting away from just thinking about tomorrow or a few years from now and thinking 100, 200, even 500 years into the future.

And just because a resource is renewable doesn’t mean it is sustainable. The vast herds of buffalo that roamed the plains were renewable but they were harvested at an unsustainable rate and nearly exterminated. More recently the Atlantic salmon and Atlantic cod have been severely overfished and have yet to recover. And sustainability is not only an environmental concept; it also includes economic and social factors. Solar voltaic panels use solar radiation, which in itself is highly sustainable. But at a cost of more than 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, 10 or more times the cost of conventional electricity sources, it is unlikely solar panels are economically sustainable, especially in developing countries.

In the same way that some things that are renewable are not necessarily sustainable, some nonrenewable resources are highly sustainable. Iron ore, which is used to make steel, is a classic example. Iron is nonrenewable, but there is so much of it in the earth’s crust and it is so efficiently recycled that there is enough for at least tens of thousands of years, perhaps millions. Lead, zinc, copper, and coal are also very abundant and not likely to become scarce any time soon. Uranium and thorium, both of which can produce nuclear energy, are in sufficient supply to last thousands of years.

It is more important for a resource to be sustainable than it is to be renewable. And even renewable resources require nonrenewable resources to operate. Solar panels are made from aluminum, silicon, and gallium arsenide. Wind turbines require a lot of steel and concrete for their towers (about five times as much, per unit of energy produced, compared to a nuclear power plant).

Now we come to
green
, the most elusive and least precise of the four terms. Green is the most political term, as it tends to reflect personal biases and opinions as much as objective and measurable criteria. At its worst, green is a shameless marketing slogan, used to promote various products and services as environmentally friendly. Yet it is a useful term, a way of distinguishing relatively damaging technologies from ones that have less impact, if it is used objectively.

But green is very much in the eye of the beholder. We have green jobs, green energy, green buildings, Greenpeace and Greenspirit. Green includes renewable, sustainable, and clean. “Greens” believe in green attributes but disagree widely on what should be included in the category. Many Greens oppose hydroelectric energy even though it is the largest source of renewable electricity. Many Greens oppose nuclear energy even though it is sustainable and clean. And many Greens oppose or frown on forestry even though it provides our most abundant renewable energy and material resource. Solar panels and wind farms are considered green despite the fact that they are made with nonrenewable materials, some of which cause large greenhouse gas emissions when they are produced. Concrete is a prime example. I conclude that green is more of a political or marketing term than a scientific one and therefore refrain from using it when renewable, sustainable, or clean will do. If asked what green means to me, I would say it must pass the test of being sustainable and clean.

The term
greenwashing
has been adopted by environmentalists to describe communications, particularly from corporate interests, which they contend are misleading the public. There are plenty of good examples of corporate greenwashing. “Clean Coal” is my favorite case in point. But the characterization of solar panels as being green might also be questioned. How can a technology that costs 10 times as much as conventional electricity and that is made entirely of nonrenewable resources be green? How can windmills be green when they require five times as much steel and concrete per unit of power produced compared to nuclear plants and when they occupy vast areas of land? One might ask if the pot is not calling the kettle black in the war of words over what green really means.

Facts, Correlations, Causes, and Predictions

The headline screams:

“PHTHALATES LINKED TO ABNORMAL GENITALIA IN BABY BOYS.”

First thought, What on earth is a phthalate? (The
ph
is silent and the first
a
is soft, so just say
thallate.
). Phthalates are a class of chemical used as softeners in vinyl (polyvinyl chloride, or PVC) products. Pure vinyl, such as the PVC pipe used for water lines, is rigid. Vinyl is unique in that it can absorb many other elements and compounds, giving it properties that cannot be attained in other plastics. Your credit cards are made of vinyl; they are not brittle because they contain a small amount of phthalate. Other flexible vinyl products include vinyl flooring, blood bags and vinyl tubing, vinyl upholstery, vinyl records, and insulation on wiring to name a few. Phthalates are one of the most tested chemicals we use and have been cleared of negative human health and environmental impacts by the highest authorities, unless you listen to the chemical-fear activists.