[Greenbuilding] A critique of Bill McKibben's recent widely read piece in Rolling Stone

Reuben Deumling 9watts at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 12:18:27 CDT 2012


What I particularly liked in McKibben's recent article was the bold
acknowledgement that most of the remaining fossil fuels have to remain in
the ground. The importance of this is hard to overstate. Where he was less
helpful--and some of you have pointed this out--is on the steps we need to
take to get there. That is where this piece comes in. A worthwhile read if
I may say so.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-07-31/bill-mckibben-wrong-we-must-not-forget-we-have-met-enemy-and-he-us
*Bill McKibben is wrong, we must not forget that "We have met the enemy and
he is us"*
by Nicholas C. Arguimbau

This is a response to Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone article,
"Warming's Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to
global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is,"
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math. Bill McKibben has once again put
his heart and soul into an attempt to stop global warming. That's more
than most of us can say, and I'm afraid much more than I can say.
Remember that. He is, like every living, breathing being on this
earth, our friend. The stunningly well-written call to arms has
apparently at this time already been read 450,000 times on-line and
received 3105 written comments. The attention is well-deserved. He
tells us, as do the oppressive heat and drought that have overtaken
the earth, that the time is now to protect our home from turning into
a living - or dying - hell.

For all that, I have a bone to pick with Bill McKibben. Just so you
know, on a much smaller scale I've put my heart and soul into the
environmental movement, too. 33 years ago the Sierra Club 's grass
roots San Francisco Bay Chapter gave me its "Conservationist of the
Year" award, primarilly for forcing the Sierra Club at the state and
national levels to rescind steps that were politically, pragmatically
and morally wrong. Sigh. Here we go again. Mr. McKibben says the
numbers "make clear who the enemy is." He is a great man with a great
mind, but I'm not sure, and I don't think he or any of us should be
sure, that he has chosen the only or most important "enemy." Just as
an example, ninety per cent of the oil in the ground is in the hands
of public agencies with no shareholders, and there is China, whose
major oil companies also have no public shareholders. So he seems, if
I understand him, to be taking aim at only 10% of the target.

But that's not the most serious question I have. Let me quote Mr.
McKibben as he tries to sort out who the "enemy" is. He first
dismisses John Q. Public. Says he:

"People perceive – correctly – that their individual actions will not
make a decisive difference in the atmospheric concentration of CO2; by
2010, a poll found that "while recycling is widespread in America and
73 percent of those polled are paying bills online in order to save
paper," only four percent had reduced their utility use and only three
percent had purchased hybrid cars. Given a hundred years, you could
conceivably change lifestyles enough to matter – but time is precisely
what we lack."

That certainly has a comforting ring to it. If my "individual actions
will not make a decisive difference," then I am free to go on driving
my car as much as I want. I am even free to demand that gas prices get
lower, even though I know full well that higher gas prices cause lower
emissions.. Indeed, Mr. McKibben has been careful to explain elsewhere
that his constituents need not be concerned that opposition to the
Keystone XL pipeline will cause Americans' gas prices to go higher.

So Mr. McKibben is telling us that he won't ask us to change our
lifestyles for the sake of global warming. That's the same route
George Bush took a decade ago. When Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was
asked whether President Bush would ask Americans to to reduce fuel
consumption in the interests of a cooler, cleaner planet, Fleischer
replied decisively,

"That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of
life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the
American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

Soft Energy Paths/Politics
President Bush wouldn't ask the American people to alter "the American
way of life." Mr. McKibben, a decade and too many tons of carbon
dioxide closer to disaster than I want to to contemplate, won't ask
them to alter their "lifestyles." Is there a practical difference? No.
The American way of life, our lifestyles, have to change. The
emissions ARE our way of life, our lifestyle. We have already passed
the level of atmospheric CO2 called for by the governments of the
world at Copenhagen to prevent a temperature increase of 2 degrees C
and the level Mr. McKibben's organization, "350.org," has made its
mission. We have no time at all to postpone implementing reductions,
at least 80% overall if I am not mistaken. We can't wait until there
are carbon-free alternatives, because the full technology has yet to
be invented: for instance, ultracheap batteries that to date have
eluded the engineers, must be designed and brought on line by the
billions. Nor are non-fossil home furnaces with non-fossil ultimate
energy sources going to be put in every home tomorrow. Nor are our
cars going to be turned to electricity or even to natural gas
tomorrow. We don't have the technology. We don't have the capital.
Mr.McKibben seems effectively to be limiting us to a search for new
technology, which is the course that has failed us for
decades.Technological changes of necessary magnitude are not going to
happen in the five years the International Energy Agency gives us when
we can no longer prevent even a dangerous 3.5 degree increase and will
be on the way to a 6-degree increase (ELEVEN degrees F!), which will
make a large portion of the earth uninhabitable, as well as drowning
out the world's coastal cities and some whole nations. So by failure
to address lifestyles, the only physically possible means for reducing
emissions in a timely fashion however difficult it may be, we are
bequeathing a largely uninhabitable planet to future generations.

But Mr. McKibben has another comforting, if inadequate answer: "Given
a hundred years, you could conceivably change lifestyles enough to
matter – but time is precisely what we lack." We might of course ask
ouselves, isn't that at least partially because the environmental
"leaders" have never, ever asked their followerrs in a serious way to
conserve? The trouble is, until lifestyle changes are made, the
emissions are still happening. Isn't it a tautology that to reduce
emissions of CO2, you have to reduce emissions of CO2? And that to
reduce emissions of CO2 you have to change lifestyles? Not quite a
tautology, because if we could reduce our emissions by adopting
alternative fuels, the presently nonexistent ultracheap batteries,
solar-electric cars, solar-electric home-heating furnaces, whatever,
we wouldn't have to change our lifestyles too much. But is that going
to happen in four years? Of course not. It is absolutely impossible.
We're not talking mere political or practical or economic
infeasibility here. The technology isn't there. The infrastructures
aren't there. The capital to make it happen isn't there. It absolutely
cannot happen. So we have no choice. As he says himself, "Time is
precisely what we lack."

If I understand things correctly, there is no fixed figure as to the
emissions reductions we need to make in five years, but one thing is
certain - it has to be sufficient to demonstrate that we have turned
around, that we are no longer on a grow-forever track, but on a track
that will make costly new investments in energy facilities unnecessary
and unwanted and uneconomical. For starters, thhere must never again
be an annual global INCREASE in CO2 emissions. And the beauty of
conservation is that saving energy saves money. It is ALWAYS
technically and economically feasible. It is "austerity." Nothing
other than lack of willpower can block it.

But instead, to make sure we understand that the public will not be
blamed in any way or asked to make any sacrifices, Mr. McKibben makes
a radical change to the Earth Day 1970 poster and call to arms that
were "the rallying cry for a generation of environmentalists" Walt
Kelly's immortal quotation from Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is
us." Instead, says Mr, McKibben, 'We have met the enemy, and he is
Shell."

And I thought the steps to curing an addiction, any addiction, must
include admitting the addiction, making "a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves" and admitting to ourselves and others
"the exact nature of our wrongs," Wikipedia, Twelve-Step Program. Mr.
McKibben is not off to a good start.

This is certainly not the way for Americans to get the rest of the
world to see us as serious about global warming, regardless of
realities. One reason global warming agreements have failed to date is
a global perception that in fact Americans ARE "the enemy." Even if it
isn't true, we need to overcome the perception. We are not going to
make much headway at bringing about a meaningful global
emiissions-reduction program if we continue to be perceived, as Mr.
Putin puts it, as "parasites." See Mr. Putin's remarks on the subject,
Reuters, Putin says U.S. is "parasite" on global economy. We will not
be perceived as parasites if we are taking the lead in showing we can
live with less.

Here's a cut from the Executive Summary of the 2011 edition of World
Energy Outlook, the annual projections report of the International
Energy Agency, which incidentally has fought the US government and oil
industry "no problemo" scenarios for years and finally parted company.
IEA is I believe the first agency (public or private) to identify the
"lock-in" effect of capital investments to be made in the near future
in additional CO2-emitting facilities. The economic "tipping point" to
preserve a precariously high a 3.5-degree increase in average global
temperatures, well above the 2 degrees mandated by the world community
at Copenhagen, is identified by IEA as coming in 2017, now only five
years away. Listen to them:

Steps in the right direction, but the door to 2°C is closing

We cannot afford to delay further action to tackle climate change if
the long-term target of limiting the global average temperature
increase to 2°C, as analysed in the 450 Scenario, is to be achieved at
reasonable cost. In the New Policies Scenario, the world is on a
trajectory that results in a level of emissions consistent with a
long-term average temperature increase of more than 3.5°C. Without
these new policies, we are on an even more dangerous track,for a
temperature increase of 6°C or more.

Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by
2035 in the 450 Scenario are already “locked-in” by our existing
capital stock (power plants, buildings, factories, etc.). If stringent
new action is not forthcoming by 2017, the energy-related
infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO2 emissions
allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035, leaving no room for additional
power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are
zero-carbon, which would be extremely costly.

Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided
in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need to be
spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

New energy efficiency measures make a difference, but much more is
required. Energy efficiency improves in the New Policies Scenario at a
rate twice as high as that seen over the last two-and-a-half decades,
stimulated by tighter standards across all sectors and a partial
phase-out of subsidies to fossil fuels. In the 450 Scenario, we need
to achieve an even higher pace of change, with efficiency improvements
accounting for half of the additional reduction in emissions. The most
important contribution to reaching energy security and climate goals
comes from the energy that we do not consume.

"The most important contribution to reaching energy security and
climate goals comes from the energy that we do not consume." That is
the the marching order we must impose on ouselves because we have
postponed and postponed and postponed real reductions in emissions.
Things would have been different thirty years ago, but our only choice
is to achieve the near impossible today. Even now, every year is a
year of record emissions. That cannot continue, and it cannot await
our achievement of some sort of moral victory against Shell or any
other private oil company.

If the public does not demonstrate by 2017 an ability and willingness
to make the conservation steps to eliminate the need for the "lock-in"
capital investments, it is our own damn fault if the "lock-in"
investments happen. We shall have effectively asked for them. Saying,
as McKibben does, that we have met the enemy and it is someone else,
is a cop-out, and I hope he and the rest of us are willing to see
that. (This writer thinks he is willing, because to his credit he is
said in his personal life to be making many of the cuts we must all
make.) We can and should complain about the billions of dollars in
subsidies that continue to help the fossil fuel industry along its
way, but they are as nothing compared to the trillions every year that
we willingly pay them for the billions of tons of poison we spew into
our breathing space.

We also need to recognize that from an economic point of view, energy
conservation consistently saves money rather than costing money, so
financial constraints from an ill economy are reasons for rather than
against such measures. Conservation is, as the current buzzword calls
it, "austerity." The capital investments IEA talks about wil be good
for the very wealthy and the large corporations, but will only further
burden the 99% and put the earth in ever-greater danger. McKibben and
all the major environmental groups, as well as all individuals and
oganizations concerned about global warning, need to understand these
facts, and start collecting and implementing pledges to reduce
emissions necessary to halt or postpone the "lock-in."

Listen to what IEA says. Despite the weaseling of the world's
governments and the banks and oil companies and even environmental
groups from which they take a lead, the International Energy Agency is
unafraid to say what must come next.

Why are the lead environmentalists afraid to say, simply, "We must use
less"? It has apparently long been thus. John Kenneth Galbraith, the
first and perhaps greatest economist for the 99%, noted over half a
century ago:

“If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is
plausible to increase the supply, to decrease waste, to make better
use of the stocks that are available, and to develop substitutes. But
what of the appetite itself? Surely this is the ultimate source of the
problem. If it continues its geometric course, will it not one day
have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of the resource problem
this is the forbidden question. Over it hangs a nearly total silence.
It is as though, in the discussion of the chance for avoiding
automobile accidents, we agree not to make any mention of speed!”

John K. Galbraith, “How much should a country consume?” in Jarrett,
Henry (editor), Perspectives on Conservation. John Hopkins Press.
1958. (Courtesy Lance Olsen of Montana, far better read than this
writer.) Why is conservation a "forbidden question" among leading
environmentalists, over which "hangs a nearly total silence"? If the
earth is to survive, that can be no more.

I don't know the answer. Didn't Nobel prizewinner Al Gore get into
considerable embarrassment about the sincerity of his concerns on
global warming when he simply stepped aboard an aircraft? Maybe it has
to do with many environmental 'leaders" and environmental "followers"
having one foot in John Muir's wilderness and one foot in the one per
cent's conspicuous consumption. How, after all, can a wilderness
experience be enhanced by a propane stove, freeze-dried gourmet food,
a titanium-framed backpack, a satellite-led GPS, an ultralight
rip-stop-nylon tent with a sleeping bag to match, the latter stuffed
with some chemical concoction from Dow ? For an amusing comparison,
Thoreau said that what you needed to take along for twelve days on a
canoe trip in the Maine woods included

"Wear, a check shirt, stout old shoes, thick socks, a neck ribbon,
thick waistcoat, thick pants, old Kossuth hat, a linen sack.

"Carry, in an India rubber knapsack, with a large flap, two shirts
(check), one pair thick socks, one pair drawers, one flannel shirt,
two pocket handkerchiefs, a light India rubber coat or a thick woollen
one, two bosoms and collars to go and come with, one napkin, pins,
needles, thread, one blanket, best gray, seven feet long."

Thoreau, The Maine Woods, Conscious Living Foundation.

At very least, there will be a great deal of grumbling from the troops
as we march forward. Wherefor do many of our leaders and those of us
they need to convince, follow the petrochemical and Silicon Valley
industries into the woods rather than follow Henry David
Thoreau?.Maybe the answer relates to why many environmental leaders
fail to see us consumers as well as Shell as "the enemy." If that's
the problem, perhaps they (and we!) need to spend some time in a
Tibetan monastery to prepare for the battle. But I don't know.

Maybe it's a matter of practicality or "political realism" - not
wishing to alienate potential supporters. But that is not true
practicality or "political realism". Realistically, "realism" will
only lead us away from saving the world. The only way to reduce CO2
emissions is to reduce CO2 emissions, a problem we do not solve by
avoidance. Avoidance costs us time, and as IEA points out to us,
"Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment
avoided in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need
to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions."

Maybe it's more fundamental As most "green" types know, many years
ago, three towering minds in the environmental/conservation movement -
John Holdren, Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner - put into a formula the
primary ingredients of adverse environmental impacts:

I = P x A x T

(See Wikipedia, "I = PAT,".) Galbraith identified "A" as a "forbidden
question," over which "hangs a nearly total silence." The same is
true, unfortunately, of "P." There is in the environmental movement a
conspiracy of silence over the population issue ("P") as well. What to
do about population is, like what to do about conservation, a
"forbidden question," over which "hangs a nearly total silence." See
Diane Francis, "The Real Inconvenient Truth", Paul and Anne Ehrlich,
"Speaking Out on Population: A conspiracy of silence is limiting
action on the world's most basic environmental problem," Issues in
Science and Technology, Winter 1988-89, at 36-37, Julia Whitty,
Population: the Last Taboo," May 2010, Mother Jones, Maher, "How and
Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection,"
Population and Environment, Volume 18, Number 4, March 1977.

In short, it seems, although this writer certainly could be "wronger,"
the mainline environmental grops won't touch "P" and won't touch "A."
What is PxA? The GDP, of course. The "growth"- oriented corporate
world does not smile upon nonprofits that advocate policies that might
interfere with the GDP or "growth." Neither (I am told but cannot
verify personally) do the foundations on which nonprofits depend for
funding. So the mainline environmental groups attacking global warming
and many other problems have largely confined themselves to "T" - the
regulation of "fracking" technology rather than its prohibition or
discouragement of fossil-fuel home heating, hybrid vehicles rather
than fewer vehicles or fewer vehicle miles driven, solar energy rather
than less energy - the list is endless. Indeed, a cursory examination
of the major federal environmental legislation that followed on the
heels of Earth Day One, reveals that they are silent as to "P" and"A."
putting almost all their emphasis on "T." A focus exclusively on
technology is largely just another fruitless attempt at avoidance, a
perception confirmed by "The Limits to Growth: a Thirty Year Update".

The days of limitless growth are over. Notwithstanding Harvard's
recent venture into the "peak oil" field, the fact is that "Peak Oil
is a Done Deal." (For citation to the latter and many other articles
in the field, see The Imminent Crash Of the Oil Supply. This writer
suspects that analyses in coming weeks of the Harvard report will
prevent it from outlasting the Presidential elections.) "Peak
minerals" is now clear. Vernon, 2007, "Peak Minerals", Oil Drum
Europe. "Peak water" is here. See, for example, Matthew Power, 2008,
"Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry. How Three Regions
Are Coping". That, of course, was four years before the present
universal drought. "Peak food" is not far away, and "peak grain" has
already happened. See "Peak Food: Can Another Green Revolution Save
Us?. So people who believe in growth forever or even for a decade, are
living in a dream world and are not being helped by those, like the
mainline environmentalists, who go along with the pretense.

Put another way, the proponents of "economic feasibility," however
"realistic" they may pride themselves in being, are going up a dead
end. The rules are changing, VERY rapidly. It is literally
"economically infeasible" to save the world from destruction. Why?
Because economists use the discount rate to make that determination,
and the discount rate mathematically eliminates planning for "the
seventh generation." Indeed, on the short term, preventing a collapse
may be "economically infeasible" because the supplies of the ultimate
commodities, humanity and biodiversity, exceed the demand. But can
that deter us from trying? We have to abandon the old ways in a hurry.

I agree absolutely with Mr. McKibben when he says, with Bob Massie,
"The message is simple: We have had enough. We must sever the ties
with those who profit from climate change – now." YES!

I agree absolutely with Mr. McKibben when he says, "The more carefully
you do the math, the more thoroughly you realize that this is, at
bottom, a moral issue." YES!

But there we have to part company. McKibben is apparently talking not
about consumers but about investors, for whom much of the industry
have none. Iraq, for example, has no private investors in the great
majority of its oil. China has no private investors in the oil
reserves it now controls. So what is Mr. McKibben doing here when he
talks about universities withdrawing their investments in oil company
stock? It would be a fun campaign to run, getting college students to
picket their administrative offices if they held Shell shares, but it
would have little or no effect in the industry, public or private, for
the near future. The campaign he reminds us of to free South Africa
was painfully slow. A similar campaign now against the private oil
industry would create some embarrassment in limited locations, but
would it cut emissions? No, because the emissions reductions must come
from us the consumers, won't come until we change our lifestyles, and
won't come out of a campaign that promises to leave lifestyles alone.

And to return to the moral question, we are by far the ones with the
ties that matter the most. We give the industry, both public and
private, trillions of dollars per year. We ARE their profits. We are
their raison d'etre.

Can we say that WE, who are the means by which the industry profits,
the means by which it creates the poison, the means by which the
poison is distributed to do its damage, do NOT "have ties with those
who profit from climate change"? That is a lie. And it is a moral
issue. This writer discussed at considerable length why it is a moral
issue in "A Greeting For 2012: Looking Back At Durban And Other
Progressive Failures, And "Occupying" Ourselves", and will not repeat.

If we do not NOW put a halt to all emissions we can conceivably avoid,
if we do not now eliminate the demand necessary for the "lock-in"
capital investments IEA has identified (or at least start reducing
demand so quickly that would-be capital investors see the writing on
the wall, then those investments will be made under the correct
observation that it is what we want. We shall burn in a hell of our
own creation, just as hot as if the only "enemy" were Shell.

We can seek to sever indirect ties we have with the "enemy" private
oil companies with shareholders, engaging in entertaining student
sit-ins if we wish, thus perhaps in a few years "severing our ties"
with the ten per cent or less of oil owners with public shares. It
will indeed make a moral point. But what about the negative moral
point we make byl our failure to stop giving trillions to the
industry, to stop creating the emissions that cause global warming: we
want to go on paying the industry its trillions in profits, we want to
go on poisoning the earth, as President Bush said, "to protect the
American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one." That
is NOT the right message to try to convince the world that we are
seriously concerned about global warming.

Thank you Mr. McKibben, for all you have done and propose to do. And
thank you for looking at what we need to do in moral terms. Pure
pragmatism, like "growth" for its own sake, must come to an end if we
are to avoid environmental Armageddon. Your approach is long overdue.
But your direction is futile unless you insist on much more. It will
not save the earth. It will not save our souls. Remember, "The most
important contribution to reaching energy security and climate goals
comes from the energy that we do not consume." It's that simple. So we
must get on with that task, forthwith.
--------------

See also

"The mainstream environmental groups are very vague about who will in
fact have to stop polluting, and how much, but the truth is that to
reach the goals we assert to be needed, we will have to decrease our
driving radically, decrease our consumption of electricity radically,
decrease our consumption of home heating fuels radically, etc.. How
much? Probably at least 80%, because in the thirty years between Kyoto
and our next meeting date, huge volumes of CO2 will have been added to
the atmosphere, making additional heating for the next century
inevitable.. You and I have to make those cuts or leave an almost
unlivable earth to our descendants, yet we go on using whatever fossil
fuels are available as if there were no concerns..."

http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau020112.htm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120801/11d5c89f/attachment.html>


More information about the Greenbuilding mailing list