Are Environmentalists Just “Fiddling While Rome Burns”?
Decatur Metro | March 14, 2011An interesting read from The Economist…
“ENVIRONMENTALISTS are fiddling while Rome burns,” says Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. “They get in the way with silly stuff like asking people to walk more, drive less. That is an increment of 1-2% change. We need 1,000% change if billions of people in China and India are to enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle.” Forget today’s green technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, solar cells and smart grids, in other words. None meets what Mr Khosla calls the “Chindia price”—the price at which people in China and India will buy them without a subsidy. “Everything’s a toy until it reaches that point,” he says.
I’m sure not everyone will agree with me, but in my opinion, this argument is a big part of why the end-game of so many of our local efforts shouldn’t be “saving the environment” (aka “saving human civilization”). Instead it should be something more along the lines of “build strong communities” and all of the potential environmental affects of density, walking more, etc, can then just be viewed as gravy.
Latest from Decaturish
I mostly agree with you, but would distinguish between the degree and scale of environmental goals.
Environmentalism has had a tangible positive effects including cleaning local pollution (city air, river water) and animal and plant preservation, etc.
Excellent points.
However, couldn’t those most concerned about pollution be deemed “public health advocates” and not “environmentalists”? And as for maintaining diversity of plants and animals, it’s something that part of me says is inherently essential, while simultaneously the Darwin in me is just dying to shrug it off.
Yikes! Perhaps you meant darwinist; instead you might say you’re “while simultaneously… feeling entitled… to shrug it off.”
Your point is lost in your phrasing. At least for me.
Sorry. I believe that Darwin, a naturalist, would probably reject the viewpoint you’ve assigned to him.
Not sure I agree. I’d think that Darwin might be a bit more conflicted than you suppose. While certainly an intense lover of the beautiful intricacies in world around him, his laws of evolution clearly state survival of the fittest – and doesn’t that include humans and all the “less fit” species we wipe out? There’s inherent conflict in this.
Clearly? Never mind then about Darwin. For myself, I think I live quite removed from the natural world and can get along just fine with a table made of pine.
Darwin: “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”
First; laws of evolution?
Second; are we adapting to our environment or dominating our environment? Do we get to ignore the fact that we are changing our environment with malice aforethought?
Third; are these “less fit” species, (say that to a coyote’s face), we are wiping out our rivals or something else? Our victims? Our wards? Our collateral damage?
First; eh…yes?
Second; how does your question matter from an evolutionary perspective? Do beavers reflect on “malice” when they build a dam and destroy countless surrounding habitats?
Third; I don’t have to say anything to a coyote’s face, unless I’m caught with one outside my own habitat. But there are a few billion more of me, so even if the coyote eats me: advantage devoured-me! Again, you seem to be reflecting on how we think about evolution, and not on the brutal air-tight law that I’m basing this train-of-thought on. If there were countless exceptions and emotional components to evolutionary theory, it wouldn’t be a very good law of nature.
All this said, I still believe we should continue to protect endangered species and effectively “cheat the system”. Why? Because I think the diversity of ecosystems are a beautiful thing that can inspire and enlighten the “me Myself” (as Whitman would say). Maybe that makes me a weaker-than-average member of my species, but luckily we’ve evolved an infrastructure that protects me from any repercussions of that.
Are you seriously saying we are the moral equivalent of beavers? Since they couldn’t reflect on environmental manipulation then we don’t have to?
Okay, I have to apologize. I have since learned that the Darwin quote is not really from Darwin nor “On the Origin of Species”. It is a common misquote and nobody is exactly sure where it came from. Darwin actually wrote about natural selection and only used the term “survival of the fittest”, coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, in the fifth and later editions of his book.
Meanwhile, of course I’m writing about how we think about evolution, I don’t know any other way to talk about it. It’s a theory, a construction of human thought. Inside the theory are what some people claim are natural laws but that is a matter of debate. I will agree that evolution is a fact but it is a far different thing to say that survival of the fittest is a law. At any particular time the overriding principle may be survival of the lucky. Survival doesn’t equate with superiority, (at least in a biological sense, maybe so in an economic sense).
Survival of the fittest is a narrow and specific part of the theory that is about successful reproduction while competing for resources with other species within a local environment. We no longer compete for resources with any other species. We successfully reproduce in all spheres. We may still be evolving but not in the context of natural selection that Darwin wrote about. We take our habitat with us on vacation to the Galapagos. We have become the environment. Whales lived in an entirely different environment before we started to harpoon them. There is a moral obligation that comes with this kind of success. The fact that we can foresee the annihilation of the whales, (or the frogs or the spotted owls), places a burden on us to change our behavior. That is what separates us from the beavers.
When I was thinking of quoting Darwin’s work, I remembered that’s not why I’m here. So… thanks for picking up my slack, but I think DM’s response signaled an end. Let this be the “just walk away” point.
In bringing up beavers, I was only attempting to show that what we do to our natural environment is not restricted to conscious human beings. It’s just how the law operates. We don’t operate outside the system.
As for the moral obligation that we take on as a result of our undeniable success to those species which we dominate, I again state that I believe we SHOULD protect those species, however I still can’t help but see it as cheating the system.
Another type of rat or a pigeon won’t inspire the imagination like a humpback or a tree frog, but I betcha that “life” has already found a way to adapt to the human environment. It might not be as visually pleasing to our evolved eyes, but life always finds a way. And to me, that’s the MOST beautiful thing.
I have to go with George Carlin on this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw (Adult language)
I think the 1000% change is more alongs the lines of a paradigm shift in the way we view the world and our relationship with it and ourselves. Community, environmentalism, chindia priced object are distractions until we cross into the new paradigm. Maybe aliens or the discovery of the 5th through 10th dimensions or a new exercise that makes us more self aware and is needed like food… something along those lines. Whatever it is more than 50% of the planet will have to buy into it.
Regarding paradigm shifts, this is a good read:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the-ultimatum-part-1/
On this, I think that you are 100% right DM.
The context of VK’s remark is venture capital; he thinks others are being timid. Who’s surprised to hear that displacing fossil fuels [within the current system] is filed under long-shot/big-payday? (It’s been there for decades.) Besides, that’s not the sum proposition of environmentalism.
I think you should reconsider your “lesser impacts as gravy” notion. I suspect we could draft a long list of “strong communities” that bring negative environmental impacts – just as soon as we resolve what comprises “strong community” that is.
(VK’s position here is pretty much old news.)
There are trade-offs in everything. But to me, a goal of strong communities with plenty of environmental benefits seems like a better reconciled philosophy than an environmental one that can inadvertently destroy what it loves.
From a recent Vancouver Sun article entitled “New York is greener than Vancouver“…
“In a paradoxical way, the Sierra Club and other popular environmentalist organizations have contributed to residential sprawl.
Preaching the sanctity of open spaces helps to propel development into those very spaces, and the process is self-reinforcing because, as one environmentalist said to me, “Sprawl is created by people escaping sprawl.”
Wild landscapes are less often destroyed by people who despise wild landscapes than by people who love them, or think they do -by people who move to be near them, and then, when others follow, move again. Henry David Thoreau’s cabin near Walden Pond, a mile from his nearest neighbour, set the American pattern for creeping residential development, since anyone seeking to replicate his experience needed to move at least a mile farther along.”
I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree. Perhaps we can discuss it at another time.
Honest question: Does what’s happening in Japan right now have any bearing?
As regards the potential nuclear meltdown situation we should recognize this: everything is more expensive, in many ways, than we want to believe.
We will discount the cost of disaster, not to mention disposal, until we have no choice but to pay the price. We will build on credit and denial of the downside. That goes for the damaging fuels we currently use and the solutions we hope for.
Applying risk analysis to every solution operating or being proposed should point in the right direction, but none of us will live to see that solution realized. The words “breakthrough” and “tipping point” sound positive for the future, but what are the odds of positive vs. negative results in that regard?
Very good points. Will think on this and get back to you.
“… billions of people in China and India are to enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle.”
Why is that even considered a worthy goal?
There are other worthy benchmarks to a civilization than using up finite resources more quickly than others.
Definitely agree — Western “lifestyle” can’t hold a candle to the long-term cultures in China and India by any definition.
Maybe, but we invented MTV.
I don’t know if it’s being referred to as a “worthy goal”. Just the most likely.
And deriding it as “unworthy” doesn’t seem to be convincing anyone in aspiring first-world countries to change their minds.
Good response.
Maybe we can agree that, regardless of remarks like this one from V. Khosla, such efforts at change, however marginal for us, may be an important signal that our automotopia should be replicated with significant caution.
Actually, he just assumes that to”…enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle” is THE goal for Chinese and Indian societies. I am merely pointing out that his is a very myopic view of “progress”. There are better long term ways to better a society than to adopt a lifestyle that is already untenable.
Do you think that “a Western, energy-rich lifestyle” isn’t THE goal for Chinese and Indian societies? I agree there are better long-term ways to better a society, but I’m not sure anyone is making that argument.
Um, Ridgelandistan,
I don’t think you get a choice. It is inevitable that India and China will want energy just like you do. The point is that all the PC talk about wind or solar just does not get to the heart of the math for energy consumption. If the only way solar, for example, makes sense financially here in the U.S. is through the use of massive State and Federal subsidies (which is case currently), is it really reasonable to expect China or India to forgoe the use of cheaper alternatives to generate electrticity to utilize a “green” source to fuel their economies?
Clearly the answer is no.
If we are going to reduce carbon emiissions in a meanginful way planet wide (and that is the only way that it will be meaningful), cooking up subsidy schemes to induce the use of an alternative energy source will not work.
A green energy source to be effective on a meaningful scale MUST generate a return that makes it competitive independent of subsidies or other distortions to the market.
If we are able to do that then there would be no need to for “cap and tax” or subsidies, or other inducements to get people to use a better way to get their electricity. They will do so out of self interest.
When did subsidies get to be such a terrible thing?
We’ve subsidized everything — oil and coal to make fossil fuels cheaper; canals and trains to make transporting fuel cheaper; roads to increase travel and make sprawl affordable; mortgage interest to make sprawl affordable; depreciation schedules to make commercial sprawl affordable; airports to increase travel; tax breaks to lure car factories; bailouts to keep car companies in business; hospitals and clinics to increase the population; farm subsidies and petroleum based fertilizers, etc. etc.
The market has always been, and will always be, distorted. Is it okay with us if India and China distort their markets in the manner we did so they can live like we do?
I think Khosla is saying we don’t have any choice in the matter until we can offer them something better and cheaper. He may even be asking for government help in the matter, rather than just leaving it up to impoverished environmentalists and a few lucky venture capitalists.
Subsidies are a bad thing, particularly at a global level because they cannot mathmatically be sustained – they are an equivlalent to a pyramid scheme. If everyone were to make use of the susiduzed technology (as would be required for China or India to go solar in a meaningful way) – there would not be enough money to pay for the subsidy required to make the cost of implementation attractive.
This metaphor is not apt. Nero was crazy, and fiddling while Rome burns is doing nothing in an emergency. Environmentalists are doing what they can. The 100% change requires acts of government to happen, and as long as government is in the pocket of big business, that’s not going to happen. We’re going to have to wait for a serious environmental meltdown before people take it seriously and do something. In the meantime, environmentalists should be applauded for raising awareness and doing what they can as individuals, rather than derided for not doing enough.
If people won’t take it seriously until an “environmental meltdown”, then what’s the point of raising awareness now?
I sympathize with your desire to see law changes that are more pro-environment and less pro-business. However, I wonder if too much applause and too little derision allows us to think that we’re doing enough, when in fact we still live and participate in an economy that consumes far more than the rest of the world.
+1
This from a guy who has run through $ 158 million in venture capital since 2008 on a shuttered cellulosic ethanol plant in middle Georgia, in addition to $ 76 M in DOE grants since 2007, an $ 80 M USDA loan guarantee in 2009, and $ 6 M Georgia grant in 2008 for this boondoggle.
Dare I say Fail?
I don’t know who all I am replying to, so I will just go forward at this level. The economics of renewable energy will take care of itself in a competitive sense as and after fossil fuel/nuclear energy resources disappear as “economic resources.” At this minute, you may consider solar energy (for example) too expensive, needs subsidies for development, and can’t deliver the “lifestyle” options you now enjoy, but when the conventional alternatives become more and more expensive as the low-hanging fruit disappears, you will be forced to alter your lifestyle and expectations accordingly. And that applies to everyone in the world, not just the so-called “developed countries.” Just wait. In the meantime, doing what environmentalists are doing is an important factor in slowing the slide and offering the opportunity for development so that the transition won’t be so extreme and unacceptable. We can all play a part in slowing the slide by reducing consumption NOW and educating others as to what’s around the bend in the road.
This is more of the ubiquious Malthusian view of fossil fuel energy. People have been predicting peak oil for decades now, it still hasn’t come. That is in large part because you and I can’t possibly predict where we will find new sources of oil and gas. Just two years ago (approximately) natural gas was over $12, as it looked like demand was increasing and supply was more or less fixed. Supply wasn’t fixed — the supply of shale gas in the eastern US alone, inacessible until recently, is enormous. Austrialia has found a massive supply. Natural gas hasn’t cracked $5 in the last few years. It got much cheaper, not more expensive.
10 years ago the idea of steaming huge amounts of oil from Canadian tar sands might have seemed silly. Today we’re doing it. Back then, Texas was the oil state. Now it is South Dakota. The list goes on.
Consider also:
Julian L. Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. Simon had Ehrlich choose five commodity metals. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would decrease. Ehrlich bet they would increase. Ehrlich ultimately lost the bet, and all five commodities that were selected as the basis for the wager continued to trend downward during the wager period
Can you explain your point. Aside: The price of cooper is 400% higher today than it was in 1988.
Peak oil of the affordable variety IS here and has been for several years. Each new resource “discovered” involves higher costs and risks in exploration, production, refining, and transportation. Tar sand oil recovery is enormously expensive in terms of water supply needed and energy expended to recover it, and fracking (fracturing) of tight formations to get the last “new” deposits of gas is polluting ground water and causing seismicity in regions where it is employed. Coal deposits are exploited using high-risk methods and/or destroying mountains. As I said before, the low-hanging fruit has already been harvested. Fossil fuels of every kind (oil, gas, coal, etc.) are finite in supply, and the cost and risk of our continued dependence on them are dangerously short-sighted. Even nuclear energy is limited at this time to fission technology, with fusion only a future possibility — but uranium and other nuclear resources are also finite. And then there are all of those nuclear wastes being stockpiled in your backyard! You are being blindly optimistic about the continued availability of energy resources that we are now so rapidly depleting. Here’s a good website for reference, expert opinions, and statistics on oil/gas/coal/uranium reserves and technology: http://www.theoildrum.com
I might be inclined tree that the low hanging fruit has been mostly harvested, but that does not mean there isn’t a huge supply left at the top of the tree. I still see no evidence that suplies are “finite” in any meaningful sense, such that we will run out on any kind of forseeable horizon. Yes — they may get more expensive. But maybe they won’t. I don’t think anyone knows. To clarify, I am certainly not against using less energy, which has benefits whether we have tons of oil or not. Just saying that we presume to know things about many things, fossil fuels included, that we don’t really know.
I also happen to think that solar will eventually become ubiquitous. It would not surprise me to see thin-film solar on tens of millions of residential roofs within 10-20 years, slashing consumption of coal-generated electricity.
I hope to see real growth in the use of solar energy everywhere possible, and as quickly as possible. Your hope is my hope in that regard…
Hubbert’s curve was never intended to factor ROI. Yes, you can extend your peak by climbing higher into the tree but increased risk or building better ladders add cost. If the tree is truly large you will likely reach a point where it’s plain to see the ROI soon won’t be worth going further. Time to consider adding a different crop to the mix. We’re there.
Technically, world oil production is not ever likely to reach the peak it achieved in 2005.
The critical part Hubbert missed though was the willingness of societies to pay the added costs neccessary to extend the peak into a plateau and so ensure a few more years of status quo. Unfortunately, this turns the downside of the production curve into a cliff. Instead of a soft landing as fields slow down and we ramp up technology other energy sources, we drill deeper into oil dependence, unwilling to even consider alternatives.
Hear, hear! You are correct! Thank you…
Agreed.
Isn’t the point of these small rules & gestures really just to make way for the bigger (ie 1,000%) changes? Get enough people to feel guilty (justifiably or not) about their lifestyle (consume too much, general sinfulness) and then they will eventually make small changes to soothe their conflicted souls (recycle at home, go to church at Easter). Get established on this path and then you can increase the intensity of change (bring your own shopping bags & buy carbon off-sets, start going to church on non-holidays). Only at this point are people ready for the big changes – try anything big before this and you’ll lose a lot of people. And VK’s comments are definitely about the big changes.
Works for religions of all stripes.
Guilt doesn’t seem to have a big effect on the “faithful” (genocide, Children of God, priest/children), so I don’t see how it’ll work for the rest of the people who, in general, don’t care about the environment–theirs or anyone else’s– and only care about their comfort.
If anyone wants to soothe their guilt over their modern lifestyle — you are all reading the electric-powered internet, after all — I will sell you some carbon offsets. I have a stack of tires and wood in my backyard, and I’m going to burn it unless someone pays me $100. It’s a win-win: I get marginally richer, you can feel good about turning on lights and driving your car.
I’ll buy them and burn them in my back yard which is up-wind and up-stream of your back yard.
Win-win: I’ll be warmer and you’ll have some money to pay your hospital bills and move away.
Haven’t seen the “move if you don’t like it” argument in, what, a week now?
Gotta be less than that.
Everybody’s a libertarian until a rock band moves in next door.
Unless that band is Tool.
Parker: you were right. All I can picture are his “hot calves” now.
Should I change my name to hot calf guy?
I’d prefer “Señor Caliente Calves”, personally…
Yes, though people might begin to think that you have a thing for cows.
Hey DEM, let me get in on that–I have a huge pile of pressure treated wood scraps.
I think individuals genuinely want to do something, anything they can. I want to feel good about the things I do within the limitations of what I can afford to do. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t feel the same way. I don’t think it is an objective to make others feel guilty though I know plenty of them do. I have relatives who laugh at me for recycling and resent the fact that I participate in it willingly.
The point seems to be that things change slowly until the conversation and the norm has changed completely. In the 60’s and into the 70’s my family burned and buried our garbage in a pit out in the woods, (not too far OTP by the way). We wouldn’t dream of doing that now. The conversation about cars and emissions and mileage has changed but it took 35 years and a severe recession.
The hard thing is getting your head around the scale and scope of something like climate change. I can tell when Atlanta’s air is bad because I’m breathing it. So I’m willing to think about driving less. But how do you react to a statement like, “We are already locked into the next 50 years of increasing global temperatures. What we do now only effects what will happen in the 50 years after that”?
It’s important to know where people are coming from.
I’ve covered Khosla. He’s a venture capitalist, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a Silicon Valley maven, but also an Indian patriot.
When he talks about game-changing stuff, he’s talking about stuff that he’s sought to fund. A stove or home heater that’s more efficient is a big game-changer in India, where people still use wood. A solar stove is also a game-changer.
Here, many of the things he’s backed, while potentially game-changers, have also been big failures. Range Fuels, which just left Soperton on the hook for millions of dollars they don’t have http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/02/government-loses-bet-on-khosla-and-range-fuels was potentially such a game-changer. Khosla backed it, got government to back it, and then failed with it.
There’s self-interest here, in other words, which Khosla doesn’t reveal.