[Greenbuilding] David Owen: The Conundrum

John Salmen terrain at shaw.ca
Mon Mar 19 14:19:46 CDT 2012


It is a conundrum. Much of my work lately has gone back to social housing -
infill multi-unit housing proposals that move an aging demographic back out
of the country and getting them out of vehicles and close to services.
Environmentally the premise or basic concept is ideal and desperately needed
in my area but the added conundrum is that the development models (typically
development driven but then strata ownership) does not support inclusion of
sustainable buildings at the outset. Ownership simply inherits a building
that then is environmentally and financially more of a burden to maintain
and energize than it should be.  

 

 

 

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Reuben
Deumling
Sent: March-19-12 9:57 AM
To: Greenbuilding
Subject: [Greenbuilding] David Owen: The Conundrum

 

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 removed by sender. Courtesy of RiverheadCourtesy of Riverhead
BooksDavid 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
<http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/gitmo-goes-green> "going 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-ma
laysia> , 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=IL
CNETTXT3487> .) 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.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120319/20364730/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1556 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120319/20364730/attachment.jpg>


More information about the Greenbuilding mailing list