What price civilization?
We have always paid a significant price for the success of our global society. For example:
–International trade brought goods that improved quality of life immeasurably for those that were in a position to enjoy them. However, with that exploration brought conquest, slavery, and pandemic, from which many nations and cultures never recovered.
— Developments in metallurgy brought about the industrial revolution, fueled by inexpensive fossil fuels. However, the benefits of industrialization were pretty much confined to the West, while the Middle East — which provided most of the oil — was left largely marginalized and undeveloped. This gap contributed to the creation of modern terrorism. At the same time, the burning of fossil fuels has created the apparently runaway global warming that’s occurring right now.
— The necessary mixing of races, religions, and cultures that accompanied the development of civilization was good and bad. The good is that we have all learned beautiful things about races, religions and cultures. The bad is that this learning caused racism, religious discrimination, some cultural extinctions, and war among those that were not prepared to assimilate what they were learning.
Fortunately, we do learn
Particularly with respect to the burning of fossil fuels, we are learning. There are many different levels of damage that can be caused by burning the various fuels.
— The burning of coal is probably the most damaging to civilization. Therefore, we have mounted regulatory efforts, including the [link url=”https://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/5bb6d20668b9a18485257ceb00490c98!OpenDocument” title=”Clean Power Plan”], which put regulatory restrictions on the burning of coal and other dirty fuels.
— The burning of diesel, gasoline, etc., are also damaging and problematic, since they’re so integrated into the success of civilization. Therefore, we’ve established [link url=”https://www3.epa.gov/fueleconomy/regulations.htm” title=”fuel economy standards”] that utilize conservation as a strategy to reduce emissions.
— We’ve pushed back against further development of unsafe fuels. Tars sands are probably second only to coal in the damage they can cause. A tar sands spill [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River_oil_spill” title=”into the Kalamazoo River”] caused a $750 million dollar cleanup effort that isn’t complete yet. Expansion of the Keystone pipeline system that [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline” title=”would transport tar sands from Canada across the US”], was denied. Efforts to find pathways to [link url=”http://grist.org/climate-energy/even-without-keystone-tar-sands-oil-will-likely-come-down-the-pipeline/” title=”transport tar sands across other environmentally sensitive areas of Canada”] are being fought with great energy and conviction.
There are no panaceas
Fortunately and unfortunately, we found something better — or so we thought. Hydraulic fracturing, or [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing” title=”fracking”], develops a completely different source of fossil fuel–natural gas. While it is true that the burning of natural gas releases a lessor level of greenhouse gasses than does the burning of heavier fuels, that should in no way be considered the long-term solution to our energy requirements.
And it’s worse than that. If we only look at the upside of fracking and natural gas utilization, history has shown us that we are missing half of the equation–and that appears to be true in this case as well. Fracking causes significant pollution issues, [link url=”http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/14/3768993/environment-america-fracking-report/” title=”which are described in detail here”]. So the inevitable pushback against fracking is gathering steam as well, and, it appears, with good cause.
In sum
I’m looking forward to a serious effort to find a downside to wind and solar energy production. I haven’t seen that yet. These two energy sources, plus geothermal and tidal, are the most natural that this marvelous Spaceship Earth have provided us. They should be our focus as we move forward in protecting our home.
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