h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Everytime I open a newspaper, turn on the television, or answer my
phone it seems I have to hear someone bitch about the price of gas
going up.

I will admit up front that I do not own or drive a car. But the frenzy of commentary pertaining to this issue seems at best feeble.

Perhaps your readers may remember that in September of 1999 The Citizen ran a story pertaining to the United Nations report on the state of the environment. The U.N., not generally given to hysterical warnings, issued a hysterical warning that the world was collapsing underneath us with the weight of industrialization. As I recall, the report included some rather strong language accusing the industrial leaders of the world (ie Canada) of 'fiddling while rome burned'. It was a frightening and powerful call to action; which is one reason that it was perhaps promptly buried.
It seems to me that if one was to take this report at face value, then
an increase in gas prices may not seem like such a bad thing; perhaps the price of gasoline should reflect that it is a limited resource and a commodity which must be consumed responsibly.

I believe it was Joe Crow of 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' who observed, 'Yeah, life is really tough when you can't afford to drive your luxury behemoth station wagon down to the shopping mall every weekend.'

Perhaps that is a bit harsh to those who depend on their vehicle to make a long commute into work each morning. Perhaps the inevitable day is coming when commuters will realize that they have made a lifestyle choice based on a fallacious assumption that our society is functioning at a sustainable level. Perhaps David Suzuki has had a real point to make these last thirty years or so.

I would like to invite your readers to connect the goddamn dots for once in their miserable lives. Perhaps the time they spend writing letters of complaint to newspapers might be better spent writing letters to their MPs demanding the Liberal party take a postion on the U.N. report. It's great to see the economy flourishing, really; but you know, it might be rough times for the stock market when our five-hundred-years hence descendants are living in ice caves hollowed out of a glacier; perhaps we had better take that into account in the next fiscal budget.

I live in Southern California, and here, cars aren't a choice...they're a necessity. There is a total lack of any viable alternative. Only one is the bus. I took it once to get home from school when my car broke down, and it took me three f**king hours. No thanks.

The thing that pisses me off about this whole issue is that technologies exist to wean us off of gasoline forever. An American inventor produced a carburetor that allows 100mpg without loss of power. Engines that run on alcohol and other alternate fuels have been developed. Where are all these things? Buried in the patent office, with the patent holders smirking in their shoufas, for the patent holders are none other than the Arabian Mafia, better known as OPEC.

Ishmael. I would guess you've read it. The fact is, the world is going to rot. More importantly - do you think we can actually do something significant about that, or is it hopeless? Will people ever wake up?

"I live in Southern California, and here, cars aren't a choice...they're a necessity. There is a total lack of any viable alternative. Only one is the bus. I took it once to get home from school when my car broke down, and it took me three f**king hours. No thanks. "

Hrm, I think that sort of makes my point for me, sorry to say. Humans managed somehow for 2 million years without cars; of course, most of them didn't live in california. Still I have to think there are alternatives. When all the fossil fuels are consumed does that mean californians will move to mexico?

You are right that alternate transportation patents are being kept down; it is a shame. The bigger shame though is that 95% of people are too stupid to notice or care, which makes this kind of thing easy to get away with.

Nope never read it, but if the premise is 'people are stupid' then I'm there. Was the author Jonathin Swift by any chance?

You can do something about it, the significance of which is to be measured not by its efficacy in accomplishing desired results, but in its alleviation of your burning desire to feel you've done all you can to avoid the share of fate which will befall you. Specifically, scream, rant, shout, beg, plead at or with every person you think might have a chance of waking up to do so.

Daniel Quinn. Only two hundred pages, reads fast. It's not really "people are stupid" it's "people aren't any diferent from any other species so they should get over their superiority complex before they kill themselves". Yeah.

I feel I do my share to help with our dependence on gasoline (petrol). I drive a small car, helped to build an electric model in college that the owner still uses, and am relocating very close to work to avoid driving. In Denver, as in Colorado, public transportation is scarce. I consistently vote for initiatives to alleviate this problem.

I agree the news reports are out-of-whack, and the American obsession with large single-occupancy vehicles is moronic. (In Denver, the "high-occupancy" lane for highways is for cars with two or more people in them.) However, I think high gas prices are not the solution. These will be detrimental primarily to the lower class. This is because trucks are the primary method of transportation for all goods, including food. The prices of everything will go up within a few months if the crisis isn't abated.

The upper class, with their behemoths of ineficiency, couldn't care less about the difference between $10 and $20 at the pump, nor will they be concerned when their caviar and wine purchase is $2 more at the supermarket. They will discuss it politely over dinner and move on. At worst, they will delay their extra-sized jaccuzi purchase. But the poor college student with no car will certainly feel a pain in his pocketbook when he's down to ramen noodles for dinner.

General Motors and other American car manufacturers have been buying out patents and businesses related to more efficient cars for the past four decades. These include fuel cell patents, solar panel patents, and alternative fuel patents. Their goal is quite simply to squash innovation, because a radical change in manufacturing processes would be expensive for them and could cause market instability. The American government used to fund an energy initiative to off-set this, but lobbying by said car manufacturers has resulted in debilitating cut-backs.

There's your problem.

Hrmmm. I have been following news that hydrogen cell engines are in development, and that hybrid gas-efficient vehicles are being fielded right now. This is partly due to the fact that your government did set deadlines on certain states requiring that a certain percentage of vehicles sold there by a certain date (this year I think actually) be emissionless vehicles. I am aware of the many of the environmental problems that we feel noone gives a damn about are left hanging due in part to corporate initiatives to protect their own marketshare, though. The whole concept of 'profit' sort of goes hand in hand with the concept of 'doing whatever the hell you find advantageous'.

That being said, while I agree with your analysis of the economics of gas-guzzling... high gas prices hit the poor harder than the rich... I think it might be fair to say that rich people driving cars aren't the biggest problem. It's the staggeringly huge middle class in North America that has incorporated several non-sustainable habits into their daily life and economic identity, and this is putting enormous pressure on the eco system.. Perhaps such luxuries as air conditioning and owning your own motorized battering ram and having disposable diapers for your kid should rightly be in the sphere of the economically advantaged. North America's population is consuming 1/3 of the world's resources at its current rate.

What bothers me is that people have so much trouble imagining what life would be like if they couldn't drive out to San Bernadino for the weekend to visit their sister or whatever. Hey, we managed for two million years without cars, it's not the end of the world if we find ourselves struggling to do that again. This failure of reason, or sense of invulnerability, what I call the 'world without end' syndrome, is a curious feature of a decaying utopia. I'm sure the Romans had a few nutcases in their latter days who suggested getting rid of the lead-lined aqueducts, too.

Bottom line: the slash and burn economies that fueled civilized growth for the past few millenia are unviable now, because our methods of slash and burning are far too efficient. Whether or not we manage to get 2% of california driving hydrogen-cell cars by 2005, humanity is in ecological escape and a paradigm shift is needed if we are at all serious about remaining in balance with the natural world.

I think you're grossly overestimating the impact human beings have over this planet, which is another aspect of that "people should get over themselves" thing Ioreth mentioned earlier. The fact is that all fossil fuel emissions produced by man over the last century, from coal burning as well as petroleum products, amounts to only 10% of those released when Mount Pinatubo blew. And we have had many more volcanic eruptions than that over this century. Those rumbling behemoths may make it impossible to see to your left when you're trying to make a right turn, but their impact on the globe is minimal. Better reasons for alternative fuels are cleaner air in the cities and independence from Islamic fundamentalists. Let them grub in the desert for a while, and they won't have so much time to engage in international terrorism.

It may be that I am grossly overestimating the environmental impact of human industry, although I am more comfortable doing so than underestimating it as so many do. It's not the sort of issue that I feel is deserving of hysteria, but I do not feel it is deserving of apathy either. The United Nations apparently disagrees with me, though, which is where I started this thread; they feel that these issues are deserving of hysteria, which I find rather interesting.

Your specific factoid regarding the amount of fossil fuel emissions released by volcanic eruptions has escaped me until this point, but I'm not sure I consider it ample evidence for a change of mind on this issue. For one thing, contrary to your seeming implication, cars are far from the only issue of import in considerations of the ecological impact of mankind; I suppose I might readily point to the numerous species of animal that go extinct every day, but noone complains about them; people complain instead about the price of gas. But even if cars were the only issue of import I think that you are perhaps hiding behind your statistic from a number of possible other ways of looking at the situation.

For one thing, I disagree that we could safely consider the impact of volcanic eruptions on the ecosystem to be minimal. I would consider them integral, actually. If we begin with the assumption that the volcanic eruptions that periodically occur are integral to the existence of the ecological conditions on this planet under which human life has thrived, then we can infer that such eruptions are actually in some sense useful to us, even if the villagers swallowed by lava might disagree or refuse to care. Even given that artificial emissions of greenhouse gas are not as significant as natural ones, we can assume that the sum total of all emissions has a cumulative effect on the overall balance of the eco-system... how delicate or sturdy that balance is is a hot subject of debate, but the question remains... why screw with it?

And as you pointed out, even if we move down from the global perspective, we do see a measurable impact locally in densely populated industrialized regions, in the form of smog. Smog may not appear to be a direct harbinger of armageddon, but I certainly see ethical issues at stake in our treatment of even local ecosystems, of which the overall ecosystem is an epiphenomenal dirivative.

And that's assuming that people driving the cars is our main problem. But most of the environmental impact of the automobile industry tends to come from issues related to the manufacture and disposal of said machines, most of which are built with a ten year life span. There is also the impact of the refineries that turn out the various chemical products necessary to the convenient operation of said vehicles. Hell, freon from air conditioners alone is having a measurable impact.

This is more of a pet hobby of mine than a burning cause, and I sense in your tone the familiar condescension of someone confronting a fanatic (one I am of course quite familiar with). Let's take it away from the personal level for a moment and consider it politically; why is your country so eager to bomb third world nations into parking lots at the drop of a hat from the United Nations; but at the first sign that you might have to curb your appetite for having fifty brands of cheeze-whiz to choose from down at Safeway, Americans seem amused by the prospect?

You can have the cheez-whiz.. take it, please.

The statistic I mentioned covers ALL fossil fuels, not merely those of cars. And the answer about volcanoes is that they are very necessary. Greenhouse effect is the phenomenon that keeps the earth from freezing over every night. Mercury has no greenhouse gasses, and has some of the coldest nights in the solar system as a result. Venus has an overabundance of greenhouse gasses, and so has a hotter surface temperature than Mercury despite its greater distance from the sun. All things in nature must exist in balance, and greenhouse gasses are one of those things. How much of an affect have we had? Surface temperatures have increased an average of 0.6 degrees Celcius globally since 1900. Is this amount of change really statistically significant? We've only recently begun to record temperatures in the atmosphere, and these are showing a cooling trend. What impact will this have? The sad truth is that all the science of this area is in its infancy, and to panic now would be premature at best and disastrous at worst. 25 years ago people were just as certain that we were headed for another Ice Age, and the time to act was then.

I say that it can be disastrous just based on the returns from other ecological projects. Consider paper recycling. Despite the fact that 87% of all wood cut for paper was cultivated specifically for that purpose, despite the fact that North America and continental Europe are more heavily forested than they were 100 years ago, people are convinced that we are going to run out of trees. It's like avoiding hamburgers because cows are endangered. Anyway, paper is collected by recycling centers, where it is turned into course, rough paper and toxic sludge. Someone forgot to mention that used paper has lots of ink in it, and for every 100 tons of paper processed, 40 tons of toxic waste are produced. Some of the world's biggest polluters are recycling plants. It's a nice idea, but completely misguided. Trees are a renewable resource... and incidentally, a crop of hemp will yield more paper per acre than trees, but people are prepared for such useful solutions.

So what have our ecological projects taught us?

- People are stupid.

- People are panicky

- People have less influence over the earth than they want to believe.

As for animals going extinct, I have to believe the numbers are inflated at best. People estimate that so many million species go extinct every year. That is impossible to prove, because of the estimated 100 million different species on earth, only about 1.4 million have been named. An experiment of sorts has been conducted in Puerto Rico, where nearly all the forests were cleared away ninety years ago. Today it is thickly forested again, and of 60 species of birds, only seven were lost.

It is not my position that the ecology should be ignored. Anything we can do to limit our impact is a good thing. But knee-jerk legislation is not the answer. Lets study things a bit more, and we'll learn how little we understand these things.

Sorry it took so long to get back to this... starting a new job and all has kept me hopping, and I sort of forget it was here.

I think you rather neatly sidestepped my attempt to divert this conversation back to the intent of the original question, but fair is fair.

I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly agree with you that environmental issues are a chicken little hysteria thing; not out of stubbornness on my part, I think, but just out of a failure to find your arguments terribly convincing. I think that extreme arrogance and assurance of humankind's continuing role int he scheme of things is as ludicrous as the extreme conviction that Armageddon is set to happen at 3:47 pm next tuesday. People (with the exceptions of Jules Verne and William Gibson) are usually wrong about any attmept to predict the future.

That aside, I'll try to pick through your message and explain why I find it unconvincing (I'm willing to be convinced).

I recognize that greenhouse gas is an integral part of our atmosphere and played a role in the development of life on Earth. I sort of consider that 'well, duh' information, though. I think the point I was making here was not that greenhouse gas is 'bad' but that it ill behooves us to tamper too much with the preexisting balance of things. Overall, though, this is an issue even environmentalists and scientists of all stripes cannot agree on; I rather liken it to watching Christians debate about evolution causing immorality, or some such. I realize that detailed records of the weather have only been kept for the last one hundred years, but that only means that your dismissal of the rise in temperature these past one hundred years is as meaningful as the fanatic's claim that it portends doom.

I agree with you that the recycling program is a load of crap, and also taht we should cultivate hemp (I'm cultivating some as I write this, actually). My biggest problem with it is that the blue box has become a symbol of people's unwillingness to take responsability for the environmental impact of their lifestyles; it's ok to blast holes in the ozone layer with your super-freon freez-o-matic as long as you remember to take out your blue box every Monday.

When it comes to your dismissal of the rate of extinction of species, I sort of find myself shaking my head. All I can offer, though, is a contradiction in the form of another statistic (from David Suzuki, I believe) that five to nine species of animal, insect, or plant life go extinct on a daily basis due largely to industrialism.

People are stupid, and panicky, but they are also selfish, arrogant, and pigheaded. More to the point, an enormous profit is being made in slash and burn industries right now, and profit-motivated endeavours carry a lot of momentum. I don't think it's premature to consider ways of putting the breaks on should such a thing eventually be deemed necessary.

I should point out that I am coming at this from a Canadian perspective, which may differ significantly from the American one. For one thing, our farmland is turning into desert right now, just as our department of Environment had projected about twenty years ago. Secondly, our fresh water sources are turning up with deadly strains of E Coli. Thirdly, a massive deforestation campaign in British Columbia nearly did wipe out a valuable natural resource. Trees are replenishable, nearly everything is, as long as you don't cull it faster than it can replenish. The problem is we have gotten marvellously efficient at culling things, and the profit minded individuals doing the culling don't seem of a mind to consider the long term (although that may be changing). Finally, the weather in my little valley of Ottawa the last 5 years or so has been totally nuts. Probably better if I don't go into detail about it right now, as it would be something of a digression, but I do have to admit it colours my thinking to see what I have first-hand.

I did want to point out that it is a general 'law' or at least a good rule of thumb that any species in ecological escape usually is put back in its place by a mass dieoff. I see no good reason to think that we might be an exception to that rule just because our anthills are bigger and flashier than the ones the ants build.

Lastly, you didn't answer my question. Don't you find it a bit worrysome that the United Nations is the one issuing the hysterical reports right now? Not that they're infallible or anything but, it's not like this is just the bread and butter of kooky greenpeacers anymore.

"People will believe any lie, either from the hope that it may be true, or from the fear that it is true." - Wizard's First Rule

I'm not trying to convince you that we're not harming the earth, just that our effect is not as profound as the panicked hordes want us to believe. If people would calm down, take their riddilin, and approach this rationally, we could come to some agreements that will actually make a difference for the better.

The US history of environmentalism is none too great, either, but it isn't as bad as you say happened in Canada. Still, the Army Corps of Engineers went draining wetlands left and right, and the government licensed cattle ranchers to graze lands to death, allowed strip mining, excessive logging... all the worst environmental damage has been done in this country on government-owned land. When a person owns the land, they tend to take care of it for the long term, but elected officials can't see past the next election year.

The fact that the UN has championed this cause bodes both well and ill. It bodes well that humanity at large is beginning to be conscious of their environmental impact. It bodes ill because this means that knee-jerk legislation can now wreak havoc on a global scale. I'm going out tomorrow to get my radiation suit... with the UN in charge of the ecology, I'm going to need it soon.

My observation is rather the opposite of yours, actually; that people in general, far from being hysterical or panicked, are for the most part lethargic, heedless, and mindlessly afraid of change when the spectre of environmental initiatives are raised. Knee-jerk legislation, as you call it, probably will do more long term harm than good. A fine example of this is the recent restrictions imposed on cloning technology research, for example, retarding science for the sake of affirming our unwillingness to confront our mortality in a stark, rational fashion. Still, if the industrial world hadn't spent the last thirty years with its head up its own ass (or buried in the sand or whatever) with regard to the sustainability of its activities, then perhaps the temptation to panic, or hastily start imposing restrictions, might not appear so appealing. Almost any legislation in a free democracy will wind up being knee-jerk, I think... especially in an information age.

Just thought I'd toss in something. It falls in line with Twophlag's point that we are are overly dependant on non-renewable resources.

There was a report or somesuch on TV a while ago which studied agricultre and it reliance on fossil fuels. The conclusion was that agriculture (Noth American at least) is wholy dependant on fossil fuel and electricity. Without either of those two elements food production will come to a halt. Not only that but farmers nowadays have no clue how to farm without their irrigation systems and air-conditioned tractors.

Maybe it is a good thing that the Amish and Menonites have stuck around for so long. We may have to ask them for help someday.

Gee! I remember this being something in the year 2000; but one wonders how you all feel about fuel prices now in 2008!

Not to mention the renewable fuel sources question.