Vermont Environmental Consortium

And

BRATTLEBORO REFORMER

#40, January 1, 2008
Five Environmental Terms You Need to Know
by
Daniel Hecht

The year’s end is traditionally a time for making lists – the best, most important, or worst of the year gone by. Given the enormous developments of 2007, some kind of environmental list seemed in order for this column. So I asked 40 renowned authorities to suggest the five most crucial environmental terms or concepts Vermonters should understand.

I asked scientists, energy experts, agency administrators, legislators, educators, architects, business people, engineers, community development planners. Some gave global, abstract answers; some specific and concrete. Biomimicry, zero waste, resource optimization, resilience, post-consumer content, negawatts, algae energy, systems theory, cellulosic ethanol: I can’t possibly note them all here.

Fortunately, the top five were encompassing concepts that put most of the others in context.

Most often suggested: “Carbon.” Carbon footprint, carbon sequestration, carbon offsets, carbon neutrality: They’re crucial because carbon dioxide is the major cause of global warming.

Your “carbon footprint” is the total CO² you generate in all your activities, from driving to eating food shipped from California to recycling (or not) to heating and lighting your house -- everything.

Your goal in reducing that footprint – tough, if you like breathing -- is “carbon neutrality”: emitting zero net CO². (You can roughly measure your output, and learn how to cut it, using the handy online calculator at www.10percentchallenge.org.) To move toward neutrality, you can reduce emissions; but you might also do some “carbon sequestration.” Sequestration means capturing it, containing it, to keep it out of the atmosphere. Major emitters like power plants require high-tech methods, but average citizens can chip in by growing plants that store CO² in their tissues. Stop mowing and surrender your lawn to long grasses and woody-stemmed plants; leave your woodlot alone, let growing trees soak up the gas; plant more trees.

“Carbon offsets” are an economic device intended to help attain neutrality. Basically, it’s financing somebody else’s carbon-reducing activities. Big CO²-spewing companies can buy offsets from, say, renewable energy firms, thus funding carbon-neutral energy development; individuals can buy offsets for almost any activity, like flying to Antigua this winter, from brokers such as AgRefresh and NativeEnergy. Analysts predict huge growth in offset markets, worldwide, creating many opportunities for entrepreneurial Vermont sequesterers, reducers, and brokers.
In second place: “sustainability.” It’s often said that everybody uses the word but nobody knows what it means; that claim is overstated, more a matter of emphasis. Concisely, sustainable human activities are those that allow nature to provide for our needs in perpetuity. The concept has ecological, economic, and social implications.

Ultimately, humans are short-term pragmatists and will meet their essential needs regardless of environmental impacts; if we have to, we’ll kill the last living elephant to feed our kids. A sustainable society manages both human and natural systems so things don’t get to that point. It looks ahead, assesses human needs and impacts and the equity remaining in natural systems; it balances human and environmental needs so that both endure indefinitely. Sustainable economies don’t consume resources faster than nature replenishes them; they make sure that people have secure, sufficient livelihoods so that eating the last elephant isn’t necessary.
Third: “ecosystem services,” the things nature makes or does to provide our essential needs, such as producing and distributing fresh water and breathable air, recycling nutrients, pollinating plants, and maintaining healthy forests and seas that nurture living things we can eat or otherwise use or enjoy.

Studies assigning monetary value to these services show that it would be prohibitively expensive (or impossible) to replicate them artificially -- to, say, build machines that oxygenate air as effectively as forests. Point: We need to explicitly value nature’s systems because it’s far cheaper, easier, and more pleasant to preserve the existing – and beautiful -- service delivery mechanisms.
Fourth: “true cost economics” is an economic paradigm that accounts for ecosystem service value and resource depletion/degradation cost. It’s a common-sense yet explosive idea, one that would drastically change the way value flows within our economy if we applied it. We couldn’t cut down a forest and count only the sale value of the lumber minus production costs; we’d also need to deduct the loss of valuable services the living forest would have provided. Nuclear plants couldn’t sell electricity without factoring in the cost of thousands of years of radioactive waste containment.

Wouldn’t prices skyrocket? Maybe. But proponents argue that we’d probably consume less; we’d use less injurious, wasteful modes of extraction, manufacturing, and consumption. And we’d probably invent great new industries that profited by preserving natural capital, not destroying it.
Finally, “peak oil.” Many experts believe we’re just about at the highest possible level of oil production, worldwide. From now on, there’s less and less of it, and what remains is much harder to extract. At first, they say, this will result in marginal changes in the cost of doing business versus its revenues, the cost of living versus how much we earn. Even small margin shifts will be tough; but later, energy shortages could precipitate catastrophic effects.

Our civilization is based on easy access to colossal amounts of energy; we’re unknowing gluttons. Remember horsepower? We once thought of a horse as a big, strong critter; equines were once our main power source. But now we casually employ a whole horse-worth of energy when we flip a light switch; we get around in cars that use hundreds of horses! It’s all thanks to oil and coal -- and there’s no comparably concentrated, easily-derived replacement. Though many petro-economists deny that peaking oil supply will produce the scenarios predicted, it’s wise to understand the phenomenon and its far-reaching consequences, and prepare to minimize its negative impacts.

Next week: The five biggest ideas, issues, technologies, and developments of 2007!

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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