Green, Efficient Excess

Alec Dubro

March 01, 2007

In the 19th century, inventors and engineers were noticing a peculiar phenomenon: As machines in general became more efficient, they used more fuel, not less. That was because efficiency brought the cost down and more people than ever bought them, and used them more often.

There’s no reason to believe that this theory is, in the main, any less applicable today. Think not of the individual unit or system, but of the big picture. Most automobiles are more efficient than they were decades ago, but in toto they use more petroleum and spew more carbon today. Even replacing older models with highly efficient cars is problematic: up to one-quarter of all energy a car uses in its lifespan goes into the manufacture of the car. Creating and maintaining a national roadway system also adds to the output of carbon.

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, “The average American personal vehicle uses 570 gallons of gasoline per year, which results in the emission of 11,400 pounds of carbon dioxide.” Even if widespread introduction of hybrid cars cut emissions by one-third—a wildly hopeful estimate—the move would not stop the buildup of CO2, just slow the rate. Right now, there are more registered cars than people in the United States, and making them more fuel efficient would probably encourage people to buy more of them.

Or, take electricity use. It’s true that compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use considerably less power than incandescent ones. But the amount and use of extensive lighting is so much greater than it was even a few decades ago, that the switch to CFLs is insufficient to reduce overall consumption of energy to a safe level.

Other promised changes have not produced the savings we had hoped. Computers were supposed to spur telecommuting, which would reduce overall travel miles. Perhaps some miles were saved, but today eight percent of all electricity is consumed by computers and their peripherals.

There have been some modest energy successes. Japan’s overall gas consumption is down. Guesses are that increased prices and growing use of hybrid cars are responsible for the savings. But it could also be a shrinking, rapidly-aging population with fewer workers. In any case, the degree of reduction is too small to have any effect on global warming.

The most-trumpeted domestic success has been California’s 25 percent drop in per capita overall energy use. But the ready availability of technology and the growing population has negated those gains. What’s the use of making 25 percent on each transaction when you lose it in volume?

So, the question remains: will a widespread investment in renewable energy production, with mandated use efficiencies, actually curb greenhouse gases? As one of our readers noted, non-fossil nuclear energy consumes a great amount of non-nuclear energy in mining, refining and transporting uranium. Worse, extraction and manufacture of cement—necessary for reactors, for hydroelectric, for wind farms, for geothermal—produces an enormous amount of CO2.

In theory, a change to carbon-less, hydrogen-based fuel production could cut emissions to a manageable level—within 40 to 50 years and presuming that the growth of a global consumer class doesn’t obliterate the gains. However, climate change isn’t the only environmental crisis—all of which are produced by growing technology. There remain the problems of chemical pollution, solid waste, and sprawl.

So in short, then answer is no, we can’t reduce global warming just by introducing greener power generation, and by producing green consumer technology. There is only one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that is to use much, much less energy and to have far fewer things. But that’s the problem.

I recently attended an Apollo Alliance luncheon. (Full disclosure: TomPaine’s parent organization, the Campaign for America’s Future, is an important part of the alliance.) The alliance promotes energy-efficient, green technology to create and maintain jobs in the United States. Featured speakers were Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Change To Win labor federation Chair Anna Burger. They all stressed that the changes they are promoting will sustain a middle-class future for us and our children.

The problem is, middle-class culture and middle-class values rest on the achievement of, or at least the pursuit of, material comfort—and in too many cases, moving well beyond comfort to excess and redundancy. To be middle class, as we understand it, is to be a consumer.

Material things take energy to produce, to distribute, to operate and to maintain—or more likely these days, to replace. In order to halt the descent to environmental disaster, we have to consume much less—and the thought is far too frightening for most of us to accept.

Having lived for too long in grad-student style, I came late to middle-class comfort, and I would hate to part with any bit of it. I understand that most of us are either personally or at most a few generations away from peasantry and penury. And none of us want to go back. Certainly I don’t.

But what we want, or at least think we want, isn’t a very good guide to a viable future. In fact, we don’t yet have an intellectual framework, or an ethos, for dealing with the onrushing environmental catastrophe. It’s as if we were trying to describe sub-atomic particles using Newtonian physics.

I am not urging that we abandon all attempts at technological improvement. They're good steps. At the same time, I believe we should abandon the hope that we can simply invent our way out of a crisis brought on by industrialization. Global warming is a human social problem, not a technological puzzle.

I don’t have a real answer, but for the time being, here’s one: Do less. Go slower, go less far, get less, use less, work less. Can we do it? Can we really slow down the pace of life, without returning to drudgery? I don’t know, but I do know we haven’t tried.

If we’re willing to find ways to cut way back on production and consumption, we have a chance at survival. It’s up to each of us to aim toward implementing the steps necessary, but we still need leadership.

And so far, unfortunately, few progressive politicos are willing to tell Americans that they don’t need more things. Yes, of course it’s true that many Americans don’t have enough, but they are surely outnumbered by those who have too much. Conservatives carry the banner of exploitation and consumption of resources, but at the moment no credible progressive leader will say that material increase does not equal well-being. I’m not sure if any of them even entertain the thought.

Most people have far more material wealth than they did in, say, the 1950s—even if it forced them to go into debt. But there is no evidence whatsoever that people are any happier because of that wealth. Recent studies say that poverty causes unhappiness, but that once people attain sufficiency, they can’t buy any more happiness.

So why can’t leader challenge the middle-class ideal. Do our new houses have to be so big? Do we have to be so averse to using public transportation? Can’t we encourage conservation with the same gusto that we encourage consumption? Can’t these values be woven into the way we make law, whether it’s an energy policy in Washington or a zoning change in a suburb?

I suspect that we’re terrified of losing our wealth, but that once we discard it, we’ll wonder why we ever lugged that stuff around for so many years.