A Sustainable Approach
Thursday, April 9th, 2009Sustainability is comprehensive. It has to be. You can’t develop a sustainable system and forget to address major components of that system because, well, it won’t be sustainable.
One of the newer facets of the environmental movement is called geoengineering. In short, geoengineers believe that since humans are doing such a good job messing up the planet, surely they can also find ways to fix it on the massive scale required to reverse the damage.
Geoengineers focus mostly on global warming. They have ideas about shooting particles into space and dumping tons of iron into the Antarctic Ocean to create huge algal blooms that will suck up CO2.
These ideas sound interesting, but they’re dangerous. They are not sustainable, because geoengineers have little idea what the net result of implementing their ideas would actually be.
Another environmental fallacy that’s similar to geoengineering in the limited view of its scope is the “grand plan”. A “grand plan” is an environmental program or scheme cooked up by politicians and subsidized by the taxpayers.
The recent boom and bust of the biofuels movement – in particular ethanol – is an example of a “grand plan” gone awry. Most ethanol in the U.S. is made from corn. By heavily subsidizing corn-based ethanol, a tremendous debate of food versus fuel was unleashed.
That debate didn’t look quite so pernicious when gas prices sat at more than $4 per gallon. But gas prices have dropped – as have ethanol prices – and the food versus fuel debate continues, although in more muted tones.
The problem isn’t that biofuels are bad. One day we might get biofuels in significant quantities from more renewable and efficient feedstocks, such as waste biomass or algae. But in the meantime, why is the U.S. still keeping out more efficient forms of ethanol, such as from Brazilian sugarcane?
As opposed to geoengineering and the “grand plan”, the reason other people babble on about market-based solutions to environmental problems or using a triple-bottom-line approach isn’t just to sound smart. It’s because these methods allow ideas and systems to develop organically and holistically.
Geoengineering and the “grand plan” sound cutting edge. They sound cool. But for all the bells and whistles, those ideas aren’t comprehensive. And in the end, they probably won’t prove to be very sustainable either.