What will they think of next?
For decades, the environmental movement has had an underlying socio-political backdrop. Basically, what it amounts to is that they can't stand the big cars, suburbs, consumer products, agribusiness, and overall consumption level of post-war America (and the industrial world generally). So they keep coming up with "crises" that threaten the destruction of the world as we know it, unless we change our ways.
And every time the "crisis" is averted -- or overcome through technology and, in some cases, corrective legislation -- the greens are back to square one and have to come up with another impending "crisis," in another attempt to shut down what they perceive as the excesses of an affluent economy.
In the 1960s, it was the Silent Spring movement, an effort to ban pesticides in response to the book of that name. Pesticides were (and are) a legitimate problem, and in reaction to the environmental damage they were causing, government and industry made great strides to fix the problem. Crisis averted.
In the 1970s, it was the "energy crisis." A combination of misguided government policies led to oil and gasoline shortages, as well as stagflation. This was supposed to herald "the end of cheap energy," and we were all going to have to stop burning gas, end suburban sprawl, and generally mend our wasteful ways. As it turned out, high oil prices spurred exploration, and Washington bribed Saudi Arabia (with military sales) to pump more oil and undercut its OPEC allies. Once again, crisis averted -- and greens frustrated, as their predictions of doom once again failed to come true.
Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, they're all hot and bothered about "global warming." Finally, they think, we face a crisis that we can't clean, drill, and bribe our way out of. Presumably, there is no way to cut down on our profligate carbon dioxide emissions -- which, they claim, are causing the Earth to heat up in ways that will have disastrous consequences for civilization and ecology.
I've written enough skeptical pieces on global warming that I'm not going to address that subject today -- who wants to sound like Urbie One Note? Also, I reiterate that, as an old geography major, I do not dismiss the idea of global warming entirely. It is certainly possible that human CO2 emissions are affecting global climate; the evidence is not nearly as clear as Al Gore and his crowd have convinced the general public it is -- but the idea that we are causing some warming cannot be ruled out.
However, much as it pains me to say this, the greens may be mistaken in the idea that they've finally found the key to shutting down industial society. That's because once again, the capitalist market economy is smarter than they think. There may, indeed, be ways to cut down our CO2 emissions without driving less. Exhibit A: a new Volkswagen engine that incorporates both a supercharger and a turbocharger. (For those not mechanically inclined, a supercharger is a blower connected to the crankshaft of an engine via a belt, much like a fan belt, that forces more fuel-air mixture into the cylinders than would get in naturally because of air pressure. A turbocharger is a similar device, but instead of working off the crankshaft, it uses exhaust gas flow to drive the blower.) According to Car & Driver, the 1390-cc VW "twincharger" engine is able to put out as much horsepower (around 170 bhp at 6000 RPM) as a much larger engine but with lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
Another way of cutting down CO2 emissions -- albeit one that, for now, is less attractive for other reasons -- is to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. When President Bush touts the benefits of ethanol, he's just blowing smoke, for the most part, and trying to deflect public hostility derived from his coziness with the oil industry -- but ethanol does point the way to another method of decreasing our CO2 output. There are many economic and logistical problems to be addressed, but the energy industry is spending a lot of R&D money working on it.
Neither of these ideas is going to result in a huge reduction in CO2 emissions overnight, but they suggest that the green dream of abolishing capitalism through environmental "crisis" simply is not going to come true. They can come up with one crisis after another -- but each time, we figure out a way to answer their gripes while keeping the economy going. Once the auto and power industries figure out how to make cars and power plants that don't put out much CO2, the enviros will have to come up with something else to complain about. Wonder what it'll be?
Urb's Blog
And every time the "crisis" is averted -- or overcome through technology and, in some cases, corrective legislation -- the greens are back to square one and have to come up with another impending "crisis," in another attempt to shut down what they perceive as the excesses of an affluent economy.
In the 1960s, it was the Silent Spring movement, an effort to ban pesticides in response to the book of that name. Pesticides were (and are) a legitimate problem, and in reaction to the environmental damage they were causing, government and industry made great strides to fix the problem. Crisis averted.
In the 1970s, it was the "energy crisis." A combination of misguided government policies led to oil and gasoline shortages, as well as stagflation. This was supposed to herald "the end of cheap energy," and we were all going to have to stop burning gas, end suburban sprawl, and generally mend our wasteful ways. As it turned out, high oil prices spurred exploration, and Washington bribed Saudi Arabia (with military sales) to pump more oil and undercut its OPEC allies. Once again, crisis averted -- and greens frustrated, as their predictions of doom once again failed to come true.
Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, they're all hot and bothered about "global warming." Finally, they think, we face a crisis that we can't clean, drill, and bribe our way out of. Presumably, there is no way to cut down on our profligate carbon dioxide emissions -- which, they claim, are causing the Earth to heat up in ways that will have disastrous consequences for civilization and ecology.
I've written enough skeptical pieces on global warming that I'm not going to address that subject today -- who wants to sound like Urbie One Note? Also, I reiterate that, as an old geography major, I do not dismiss the idea of global warming entirely. It is certainly possible that human CO2 emissions are affecting global climate; the evidence is not nearly as clear as Al Gore and his crowd have convinced the general public it is -- but the idea that we are causing some warming cannot be ruled out.
However, much as it pains me to say this, the greens may be mistaken in the idea that they've finally found the key to shutting down industial society. That's because once again, the capitalist market economy is smarter than they think. There may, indeed, be ways to cut down our CO2 emissions without driving less. Exhibit A: a new Volkswagen engine that incorporates both a supercharger and a turbocharger. (For those not mechanically inclined, a supercharger is a blower connected to the crankshaft of an engine via a belt, much like a fan belt, that forces more fuel-air mixture into the cylinders than would get in naturally because of air pressure. A turbocharger is a similar device, but instead of working off the crankshaft, it uses exhaust gas flow to drive the blower.) According to Car & Driver, the 1390-cc VW "twincharger" engine is able to put out as much horsepower (around 170 bhp at 6000 RPM) as a much larger engine but with lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
Another way of cutting down CO2 emissions -- albeit one that, for now, is less attractive for other reasons -- is to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. When President Bush touts the benefits of ethanol, he's just blowing smoke, for the most part, and trying to deflect public hostility derived from his coziness with the oil industry -- but ethanol does point the way to another method of decreasing our CO2 output. There are many economic and logistical problems to be addressed, but the energy industry is spending a lot of R&D money working on it.
Neither of these ideas is going to result in a huge reduction in CO2 emissions overnight, but they suggest that the green dream of abolishing capitalism through environmental "crisis" simply is not going to come true. They can come up with one crisis after another -- but each time, we figure out a way to answer their gripes while keeping the economy going. Once the auto and power industries figure out how to make cars and power plants that don't put out much CO2, the enviros will have to come up with something else to complain about. Wonder what it'll be?
Urb's Blog
posted by Urbie at 12:19 PM
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