Problematic solutions

You know how I was bragging in a previous post about how we changed most of our light bulbs to compact fluorescents? Well, the other day we got exposed to the dark side of CFLs: mercury. These highly efficient bulbs have a tiny amount of mercury vapor inside them, which releases when they break. Bummer.

CFLs aren't the only climate solution with a dark side. Hell, even "walking" got accused of releasing more CO2 than driving in a recent Times article (if you eat only industrially-farmed beef.) (Major aside: I'd like to see the carbon footprint of the health care impact of obesity. Though, maybe, if you really wanted to be cynical about it, you'd count all those shortened lives as a carbon credit - yuck!!! Oh yeah, and I'd imagine most people would eat the same amount of calories whether or not they walk - just in one case they burn them, and in the other case they get fat. I prefer to walk).

Biofuels are currently the poster child for problematic climate solutions. They are increasingly controversial - accused of starving the poor, polluting land and water, using more energy than they contain to produce them, etc. Two recent articles in Science (Searching et al, 2008; Fargione et al 2008) studied the land-use impacts of biofuels and concluded that, unless the fuel feedstock will store and sequester more carbon than the current land use, clearing land to grow biofuels will incur a carbon deficit that will take years to pay back through displaced fossil fuels. Even if no land is cleared, but agricultural land is used for fuel production, this will (according to Searchinger et al) displace food production, leading to indirect emissions as land is cleared elsewhere to grow food. Another article (Righelato & Spracklen, 2007) concludes that much more carbon could be sequestered by converting land to forest than using it to grow feedstocks for biofuels.

So, yeah, trees store and sequester a lot of carbon. Are they the solution? Well, trees can release methane, another greenhouse gas (Keppler et al, 2006), and planting trees in higher latitudes can reduce albedo, which causes the Earth to absorb more heat. More problematic than these caveats is the fact that, in order to get people to start growing trees (and stop cutting them down), we're going to have to value the carbon they sequester. But according to Sinks Watch, paying people to plant trees justifies burning fossil fuels, won't sequester carbon permanently, and tree-planting projects can violate indigenous land rights and encourage sterile monocrops. Depressed yet? I am!

It seems the only "solution" without a dark side (except for perhaps damaging our growth-dependent economy - to be addressed in a future post) is less - less flying, less driving, less consuming, less throwing away... But this solution is problematic for other reasons: 1) it's difficult to change people's behavior, and 2) it's politically unpalatable, so politicians won't touch it.

Boy are we in a pickle!!!

Only we're not, really. All of the solutions discussed above (except obesity!!) are real solutions. They are just not THE solution. To repeat the cliche: "there is no silver bullet." Think of this as analogous to medicine. When you're sick, and you go to the doctor, she doesn't tell you to pour your penicillin on your breakfast cereal every morning. She doesn't tell you to gouge your heart with the thermometer in order to take your temperature. She tells you to lay off a bit, take care of your body, be sure to take your medicine with food and only twice a day. Oh, and eat your local green beens and drink your local milk. Eat some protein, but not all day long every day.

Likewise with climate medicine:

Compact fluorescents actually reduce the amount of mercury in the environment because they require less electricity and therefore reduce emissions from coal-fire power plants. I'm going to be careful with them (especially when they break) and be sure to dispose of them properly, but I'm not going to stop using them.

Likewise, I still believe biofuels have a role to play. I could go on and on about this (and I did, in my thesis and comprehensive exams), but there are many cases where biofuels can be made from waste or made in a way that makes sense with existing farming practices (ie, canola is a great rotation crop with potatoes, killing potato fungi - growing canola for biofuels can reduce the need for chemicals, and help potato farmers stay in business, protecting farmland from suburbanization). But I don't believe we can replace all or even a quarter of our petroleum needs with biofuels (at least with current technology) without serious negative consequences. Biofuels should be a niche solution, used where they make sense, to the extent they make sense.

I like trees, too (well, duh - I'm a tree hugger). And I think they have a pretty big role to play in all of this. But policies and carbon markets have to be designed to maximize co-benefits and minimize unintended consequences.

Oh, yeah, and using less? I think that's a great idea. It's going to be hard, but we do need to change our behavior, and I believe we can. Likewise, I think we can convince our leaders to help us. This solution is going to take social capital - it will take a community movement (as discussed in the "sharing the load" post). But it is possible.

Oh, and I'm still going to walk to school. I just won't power myself on a pure beef diet (why would I want to, anyway?). The beef I do eat will be locally-grown, largely grass-fed and delicious!