environment: ancient sunlight Medford Transcript
by Warren
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Month 3, Day 21: Keepin’ it Local
Figured I’d follow my letter to the President with some more built around a similar perspective. This one goes to my local paper, the Medford Transcript, which has been printing some of my letters over the past few months. I’ll scan them in sometime soon and post them.
Have you written to your local paper recently?
With the hubbub around health care legislation, people may have missed President Obama’s recent announcement (in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, dated January 29,2010) that the U.S. Government will aim to cut its own emissions of greenhouse gases twenty-eight percent by 2010. While that’s a great start, it’s nowhere near enough. The world needs a new energy equation where none of our energy comes from oil and coal. A world without fossil fuels is as important to our long-term survival as a world without nuclear weapons.
The fact that rising greenhouse emissions increase the already very real possibility of a global climate catastrophe should be enough to force us to change our energy usage drastically. And yet, there is another element to be considered.
We wouldn’t turn a thousand-year-old sequoia into toothpicks or dismantle Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid and grind their stones into gravel, for to do so would be to disrespect their antiquity. Fossil fuels, as their name suggests, are the transformed remains of ancient life. We squander a precious and limited resource every time we burn the sunlight that fell on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, turning it into CO2 and dissipating it into the atmosphere. To burn oil and coal is to spend our principal, to eat our seed corn, to waste our inheritance.
Renewable energy sources are the ecological equivalent of a “pay as you go” policy; a change in our energy use patterns is not just good environmental and fiscal policy, it is also morally sound and philosophically correct. The President has started the ball rolling with his Executive Order. Now it’s up to us to take it further, finding ever more inventive ways to shift our energy sources from the sunlight of the Paleozoic era to that currently streaming in our windows.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: ancient sunlight Barack Obama
by Warren
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Month 3, Day 20: Wasting The Oldest Thing We Have
I was thinking about yesterday’s letter when I sat down to write, and then discovered that I had a philosophical point to make. I hope somebody reads this one.
Dear President Obama,
At the beginning of 2010, I made a resolution. Every day, I would write a letter to politicians, media outlets or important figures in our national discourse — focusing exclusively on climate change and related environmental issues. I’m proud to say I haven’t missed a day so far. And Saturdays are my day for a letter to you.
Today I’m writing/faxing/emailing to applaud your recent announcement that the U.S. Government will aim to cut its own emissions of greenhouse gases twenty-eight percent by the beginning of the next decade. That’s a great start.
But it’s just a start, and if we only get to 28 percent, it’s nowhere near enough. America needs to lead the world into a new energy equation, one where none of our energy needs are supplied by burning fossil fuels. A world without fossil fuels is as necessary to our long-term survival as a world without nuclear weapons.
We need to increase federal funding for all forms of energy research. I encourage research into so-called “clean coal” technology, but not because I think “clean coal” is technically feasible or economically sensible. I suspect that investigations of carbon capture and sequestration will yield other benefits that will positively impact our “footprint.” I would like to see funding for wind, solar and geothermal energy research increased geometrically. These sources rely on the energy our earth is receiving and generating right now — unlike oil and coal, which are ways of storing solar energy our earth received a very long time ago.
Taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere is irrefutably bad for the planet. There is no good side to an increase in GHG emissions; the possibility of a global climate catastrophe is a statistically significant risk. This alone should be enough to force us to drastically revise our energy usage. And yet, there is another and more philosophical element to this equation.
Human beings are awed by ancient things, yet we easily forget that in burning oil and coal we are wasting one of the oldest resources we have: the stored sunlight that fell on our planet hundreds of millions of years ago. We would not think of chopping down a thousand-year-old sequoia to make toothpicks; we would not dismantle Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid and grind their stones into gravel, for to do so would be to disrespect their antiquity. This should be our attitude towards the consumption of fossil fuels.
To burn oil and coal is to spend our principal, to eat our seed corn. Solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources are the ecological equivalent of a “pay as you go” policy. Ultimately, the only way human beings can survive is to stop wasting our inheritance.
Twenty-eight percent by 2020? A good start. But just a start. We need our atmospheric CO2 to be at 350 ppm or below if our grandchildren are not to curse us for our prodigality and irresponsibility.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders