If you are coming here because of my article in the Isthmus, and for the first time, welcome!
[Regular readers: Please pick up an Isthmus Thursday, because I'll have an Op-Ed in there. I'll try to post the direct link once it is up there. Update: here's the link. If you like it, please consider clicking the "recommend" box, just to the right of the article. ]
The Op-Ed deals with entropy & ethics* as it has been playing out in the political arena here in Madison. For reasons of space constraints and unity of theme, I kept it pretty narrowly focused on the issue of over-paving, the resultant forced car use and the resulting increased overall energy use citywide, despite all the hoopla surrounding the mayor’s groovey-green gizmos sprouting atop fire stations around the city.
I make the case that the big environmental issue facing us all is the issue of Jevons Paradox,
the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.
In other words, as we get more efficient, we end up burning even more. Wants, now easily attainable through efficiencies, become needs.
Mayor Pave’s glorified solar panel sitting atop a “green” building, set in the energy intensive carscapes of suburbia, is just one example of Jevons at work. Some might call it cognitive dissonance. Some might call it greenwashing. Others hypocrisy. I’ll just blame Jevons. (For now.)
Other examples….Take for instance the US car fleet and the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards. From 1970-1990 we doubled the average MPG of the “fleet.” Guess what we did in the meantime? We drove more than twice as much on a per capita basis. Same with houses. In 1970 the average house size was 1200 square feet. And they were seives; energy hogs in the extreme. At least on a per square foot basis. By 1990 the average new home was twice as efficient, on a per square foot basis. But guess what happened? The average home not only got twice as big, there were fewer people living in each house! In both cases we actually moved backward in terms of total per capita energy expenditure despite having gotten more efficient in a technological sense.
Now we’ve got mainstream enviros telling us that we’ll be just fine if we just get more solar panels on roofs, if we just all bought Toyota Piouses. But we’ve seen that movie before…double efficiency…more consumption…double efficiency again…more consumption….
That we have made such technological progress and are relentlessly consuming ever more, More, MORE! tells me that something is missing from the dialogue — ethics.
I would suggest that a radical overhaul of our ethic — personal, professional, community — is in order. We will have to start with a big, heaping helping of plain, old self-control. [Gasp!] Thus, at the personal level, when we make an investment in, say, an energy efficient furnace, we shouldn’t then use the savings to buy a giant professional-grade refrigerator, add onto the house, pump out a second or third kid, or go jetting off somewhere. At the policy level, when our politicians vote to build green buildings, they shouldn’t site them in car-only neighborhoods. Hell, they shouldn’t create car-only neighborhoods at all.
We’ll also have to agree that there are no silver bullets, no messianic miracle fuels (no, not even solar, nor switchgrass), no groovey-green fixes (no, not even windpower; and here) that will get us all the way back down to 350 (ppm CO2 in the atmosphere). Every form of concentrated energy has its limitations and drawbacks.
Even if we were to discover a messianic miracle fuel that was cheap, easy to produce, burned nothing and created no pollution, think about what we would do with all that energy. First think of all the wasteful ways we use the limited energy we do have. Now imagine that it is unlimited. I reckon we’d pave the world. Why? Because we could.
Thus, self-control will be the key ingredient in getting us down from our current 387 ppm — on a trajectory to 700 — to 350 and cleaning up the other environmental messes we’ve already made….
I also think that part of the ethic will include good, old fashioned shaming. Polite Midwesterners will be horrified at the prospect, no doubt. Polite (though direct) Midwesterner Hans Noeldner has written extensively about the element of shaming in fashioning a new consciousness, and my buddy Tim Wong has been practicing it regularly on local listservs for years (Bikies, SASYNA-discussions@yahoogroups.com). And I’m not exactly quiet, either. Making it real, bringing it down from the policy level to the personal, Hans hammered the point home on the Madison Area Bus Advocates listserv:
We need to tell people that their choices and behaviors really matter. And that all of us have much to learn. Thus the most important thing is to challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as HUMAN BEINGS again. So long as well-meaning people remain behind that damned windshield, they will not learn the first thing about what we/collectively must do to create – not “walkable communities” – but “communities that walk”…and bike…and have enough people walking and biking to make transit viable.
Perhaps our message should be in-your-face: “Stop passing the buck! Habitat follows behavior.”
We need to tell people that their choices and behaviors really matter. And that all of us have much to learn. Thus the most important thing is to challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as HUMAN BEINGS again. So long as well-meaning people remain behind that damned windshield, they will not learn the first thing about what we/collectively must do to create – not “walkable communities” – but “communities that walk”…and bike…and have enough people walking and biking to make transit viable.
Perhaps our message should be in-your-face: “Stop passing the buck! Habitat follows behavior.”
Amen, Brother Hans.
And finally, those who end up getting shamed need to learn how to disassociate their person from their machinery. You are not your deathmobile, no matter how tightly you grip that steering wheel.
So sustainability, resiliency, green living — whatever buzzword you choose — is going to require extreme responsibility at all levels of government, all types of business enterprises, for-profits, non-profits, and yes, each and every individual in their daily lives whether at home, in their community or at work.
Maybe start by learning how to make your community more sustainable…like at the upcoming Sustainable Atwood “Big Picture” event on January 28, 2010, 7-9 PM at the United Way Building, 2059 Atwood Avenue.
And consider walking, biking or taking the bus there (bus lines #3 & 4 run within a block of this address).
It’s a start.
*I’d like to thank the Brothers Noeldner, Paul and Hans, for generating insight into these issues and how they relate to our current environmental dilemmas.
