[Greenbuilding] David Owen: The Conundrum

[Reuben Deumling]

http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/book-review-conundrum-owen
Book Review: The Conundrum
David Owen's new book argues that we already know how to prevent
environmental catastrophe—we just don't like the answers.

—By Alyssa Battistoni <http://motherjones.com/authors/alyssa-battistoni>
| Fri Feb. 24, 2012 7:42 PM PST

[image: Courtesy of Riverhead]Courtesy of Riverhead Books*David Owen
The Conundrum
Riverhead* *Books*

What we perceive to be "easy" environmental solutions—energy efficiency,
natural gas, high speed rail, and even solar panels—won't actually fix the
problems they're trying to solve. Ultimately, we need to reduce our
consumption of limited resources, author David Owen argues in his new book,
*The Conundrum <http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781594485619-2?&PID=25450>*.
The conundrum being that we already know how to reduce consumption; we just
don't like the answers. Owen, who first argued that efficiency can't solve
our energy woes in a 2010 *New Yorker*
article<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_owen>about
the Jevons Paradox, the problem is thus: When we make things (like
energy) cheaper we end up using more of them. That article spurred a lot of
debate<http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/green-cars-jevons-paradox>;
and
*The Conundrum* picks up where it left off.

Any new technology, no matter how big a breakthrough, is counterproductive if
it encourages more consumption of limited resources, Owen argues. Consider
high speed rail. More efficient transportation encourages us to travel
more—when, really, the environment would be better off if we just stayed
home. If that seems harsh, it's because Owen's sustainability test is a
strict one, where the only activities that can pass are those that 9 or 10
billion people can engage in. Buying green products might be better than
nothing, but not by much: in fact, Owen argues, it amounts to little more
than "self-deception" on the part of those who see their "luxury
preferences as gifts to humanity."

Owen's unflinching perspective is particularly refreshing today, when
even Guantanamo
Bay claims to be "going
green<http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/gitmo-goes-green>
." Still, wouldn't a transition to renewable energy sources allow us to use
all the energy we want? Not really, Owen argues—because most fossil fuels
provide more concentrated power than most renewables, without reductions in
overall power use, "renewables would never be able to keep up."
Moreover, large-scale
solar array and wind farms come with their own environmental risks, like
habitat loss.<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/business/energy-environment/24solar.html?pagewanted=all>
 And even if you could run your iPhone on a built-in solar panel, the
constant demand for new products will keep us tearing through other
resources, like rare earth
metals<http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/rare-earths-lynas-bukit-merah-malaysia>,
at a furious pace<http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/low-carbon-rare-earth-metals-built-environment>
. "Lots and lots of brilliant people are working very hard, right now, to
turn those products into landfill," Owen says of the Kindle and iPad before
visiting the Consumer Electronics Show, where he sees thousands of other
devices doomed for the dustbin. Which leaves us with an unwelcome question:
"How appealing would 'green' seem if it meant less innovation and fewer
cool gadgets—not more?"

In fact, living "green" may mean changing a lot of habits we've come to
take for granted. To reduce consumption, Owen suggests, we need to drive
less, travel less, eat less meat, buy less stuff, and live in smaller
homes. He calls the automobile "Global Environmental Enemy No. 1,"
describes income inequality as "a global generator of environmental
harm," and declares that "dense, efficient, intelligently organized cities
are the future of the human race." In fact, Owen says, the whole concept of
permanent economic growth is "the equivalent of believing in
perpetual-motion machines and Ponzi schemes." All of which means we've got
a lot more to change than just the brand of paper towels we use.

Owen concedes that efficiency and innovation aren't bad in and of
themselves; efficiency and innovation can help us live well on less. But we
still have to reduce our overall consumption. And that's the trick:
"Turning reduced waste into reduced consumption is a trick we haven't yet
figured out," he writes, adding, "almost all of the serious environmental
problems we face now are the direct or indirect consequences of what
seemed, originally, like awfully good ideas." (Ahem,
geoengineers<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/18/geo-engineering?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487>.)
Indeed, efficiency and innovation have led to unintended consequences in
the past. As evidence Owen points to the invention of transistors in 1947,
which at the time was seen as "a brilliant breakthrough in efficiency,
dematerialization, and decarbonization." But over time, transistors enabled
the explosion of consumer electronics—which today use huge quantities of
energy doing tasks that were once unimaginable.

Owen acknowledges that reducing consumption is a tough sell. That's in part
why energy efficiency is oft-touted by politicians, he suggests, while
measures designed to cut consumption by increasing costs—like carbon
taxes—are beloved mostly by economists. In this sense, he says, the 2008
recession "put time back on the carbon clock" (about four days'
worth<http://www.bitsofscience.org/recession-carbon-co2-emissions-rising-records-4261/>).
But his argument stops short of offering solutions about how to get people
excited about cutting back consumption during a time when they're already
feeling the pinch.

Are we ready to relinquish the idea that we can innovate ourselves to a
better tomorrow? If faced with a choice between what Jevons himself
described as "brief but true greatness and longer continued mediocrity,"
will we pick the latter? Owen concludes:

How likely would the 9 billion human residents of the world be, in the
absence of any signs of worsening climate stress, to permanently endure,
decade after decade, the continuing sacrifices required to maintain the new
status quo—the halted growth, the forgone consumption, the reduced
mobility, the population control, the willing abandonment of vast known
reserves of fossil fuels?

It's a sobering end to a book that's full of hard questions and
uncomfortable answers. *The Conundrum* should unsettle anyone who assumes
their lifestyle is eco-friendly; whether that's enough to prompt change,
though, might be the toughest question of all.
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