<a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/book-review-conundrum-owen">http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/book-review-conundrum-owen</a><br><div id="content-header">
<h1 class="title">Book Review: The Conundrum</h1>
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<div id="node-header" class="clear-block"><div id="node-header-data" class="node-header-data-primary"><h3 class="dek">David Owen's new book argues that we already know how to prevent environmental catastrophe—we just don't like the answers. </h3>
<p class="byline byline-byline">—By <a href="http://motherjones.com/authors/alyssa-battistoni">Alyssa Battistoni</a></p><div id="dateline"> | Fri Feb. 24, 2012 7:42 PM PST</div></div></div><div id="node-body-top" class="clear-block">
<p><span class="inline inline-left"><img class="image image-preview " title="Courtesy of Riverhead" alt="Courtesy of Riverhead" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/conundrum-pic-view.jpg" height="407" width="250"><span style="width:248px" class="caption">Courtesy of Riverhead Books</span></span><strong>David Owen<br>
<em>The Conundrum</em><br>
Riverhead</strong> <strong>Books</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">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. </span><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">Ultimately, we need to reduce our consumption of limited resources, author David Owen argues in his </span><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">new book, </span><em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781594485619-2?&PID=25450">The Conundrum</a></em><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">. The conundrum being that w</span><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">e already know how to reduce consumption; we just don't like the answers.</span><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif"> </span>Owen, who first argued that efficiency can't solve our energy woes in a 2010 <em>New Yorker</em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_owen"> article</a>
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 <a target="_blank" href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/green-cars-jevons-paradox">debate</a>; and <i>The Conundrum</i> picks up where it left off.</p>
<p>Any new technology, no matter how big a breakthrough, is counterproductive <span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">if it encourages more consumption of limited resources</span>,
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."</p></div><div id="node-body-bottom"><p><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">Owen's unflinching perspective is particularly refreshing today, when even </span><a target="_blank" href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/gitmo-goes-green">Guantanamo Bay claims to be "going green</a><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">." </span>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, <span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">large-scale solar array and wind farms come with their own environmental risks, </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/business/energy-environment/24solar.html?pagewanted=all">like habitat loss.</a><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif"> </span>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 <a target="_blank" href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/rare-earths-lynas-bukit-merah-malaysia">rare earth metals</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/low-carbon-rare-earth-metals-built-environment">at a furious pace</a>.<span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif"> </span>"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?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif">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, </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/18/geo-engineering?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487">geoengineers</a>.)
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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://www.bitsofscience.org/recession-carbon-co2-emissions-rising-records-4261/">four days' worth</a>).
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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It's a sobering end to a book that's full of hard questions and uncomfortable answers. <em>The Conundrum</em>
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.</p></div><br>