The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

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“Global Heating” brings to mind the old story of Pandora, who opened the box Zeus had given her and unleashed infinite, irrevocable ills on the world. Pandora was driven by curiosity, no bad thing in itself, but disastrous when isolated from foresight, commonsense , and counsel from Zeus.Today we’re driven by “progress,” no bad thing in itself, but again, utterly disastrous when there’s no forethought, no commonsense, and no listening to Mother Nature. For all its horrors, though, the old story ends on an up note: at the bottom of the box, Pandora finds HOPE. Could there possibly be any of that for us, too? – Christine San Jose

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The weather devils have been escaping from Pandora’s box, and the climate feed back loops are becoming self sustaining chain reactions. But waiting at the bottom of Pandora’s box we still have the spirit of Hope. Whether we can reverse the death spiral that has already brought: heat waves, droughts, superstorms, floods … depends on whether simple wishes become concrete steps to: 1) quickly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the thin atmospheric envelope of the Earth and 2) rapidly increase the storage of carbon and methane in such natural storehouses as forests, coastal habitats, and the permafrost of the Arctic.

In the US, 70% of all the carbon dioxide emissions that are turning the Earth into a hothouse come from coal, oil, and gas fired power plants and from the transportation sector. We the people can help by using less electricity and less oil — lowering the thermostat a couple of degrees in winter and raising it a couple in the summer, driving our cars at lower (and safer) speeds, and using public transit. But, the government can do more by bringing clean renewable sources of energy on line, starting yesterday. Government fleets of electric cars, or at least hybrid plug-ins, will run on electricity from the power plants using clean renewables. Then, networks of light rail lines within and between nearby cities plus bicycle lanes and walking paths (sidewalks) in all cities and towns would add up to a terrestrial transport revolution. Aerobic walking* classes would not only make Americans healthier and combat obesity, people would become intrepid walkers and never get behind the wheel for distances up to a a mile or two. On ocean waters, we can establish a merchant marine fleet of high tech sailing vessels to criss-cross the oceans carrying American made exports. We’ll call them Clipper Ships.

All of the above are direct government initiatives. We voters must provide unrelenting public pressure on our public servants (they call themselves officials).

The oil companies, with the enthusiastic assent of the present national and state governments plus the me-too press, tell us that we can never replace much of the current fossil fuel based energy with wind mills and solar panels. Well, be it known that ridge lines of windmills are put into operation in a matter of months. Solar panels can be placed on all public buildings of a town in a similar few months. Water turbines in river estuaries, too, are a quick fix. Geothermal wells coupled with heat exchangers are less trouble than drilling wells for water. Instead of giving subsidies to the oil companies, our taxes can go to subsidize the replacement of fossil fuel fired power plants by clean renewable energy sources. We can certainly start with the 251 municipally owned power plants of various cities and states. We can also give generous tax rebates or credits to families and communities who install small solar or wind plants for their homes and neighborhoods. Let us give these many small clean energy power sources the same official status as the monster coal, gas, and oil fired plants. Call it “distributed generation” — that sounds authorized and accredited.

Denmark, Germany, Spain, and Portugal are already far ahead of the US, per capita, for wind energy. The US is way back in eighth place — the US with the Great Plains and Texas and thousands of miles of coastline. Do we need a Manhattan Project to gain number one status in the world as befits us? No, we need public pressure on our public servants, and we need a smart, super grid to send the electricity produced by the sun in the Southwest, the wind on the Great Plains, and the tides and waves of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to far away population centers. But wait, each of these energy production regions is already close to population centers. Oh, let’s make a smart, super grid anyway.

A few more things we can do individually and as a people:

• Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle — in that order.

•  Plant trees … in forests, parks, and backyards. Trees are geniuses at capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it as wood. We haven’t figured it out yet. No, lawns don’t count for carbon storage, though they are a little better than Astroturf.

•  Keep and protect coastal wetlands and habitats — salt marshes, mangroves, sea grasses …  An acre of mangrove captures three times as much carbon (“blue carbon”) as an acre of tropical forest.

•  Charge a fee (not a “tax”) for emitting greenhouse gases: diesel generators and pumps, coal fired power plants, fitness centers where heavy breathing accompanies exercise …

•  Eat less (or no) beef. Raising cattle requires the use of large amounts of water, up to 2,000 gallons per pound of steak and hamburger, and produces massive amounts of methane.

•  Abolish war. War produces volumes of CO2 from all the shells and bombs and missiles that explode and all the tanks and planes and aircraft carriers that patrol. The Abrams tank is probably the most efficient at 8 gallons per mile. An aircraft carrier? Don’t ask.

What is really efficient is statecraft, negotiation, mediation, conciliation, patience, persistence, and creativity.

Nature has provided us with all the energy we’ll ever need — sun, wind, tides, waves, and geothermal. As to biofuels, let’s plant sweet corn for people, not for ethanol. Good planets are hard to find.

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*  In the interests of complete disclosure, Mort Malkin is the author of “Aerobic Walking—The Weight Loss Exercise,” published by John Wiley.