Bigger Ocean, Smaller Continents

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, environmentalism, global warming, coastlines, polemics

I found myself getting quite skeptical as I read Mike Tidwell's new book. I found it particularly galling that, no matter what the context in which he mentions President Bush, he resorts to vituperation. This is not the mark of a sober mind.

However, in dealing with unreasable people and inconcievable circumstances, it does not pay to be reasonable. So, I read The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities openly, with interest (usually), looking for the merit in Tidwell's work.

Merit aplenty there is. Few indeed are those who continue the blinkered claims that "we don't know for sure" or that "it isn't so", that our appetite for fossil fuel has begun to warm Earth's climate. It doesn't sound like much; one degree C (average) in the past 50-100 years. But what an average! The tropics have hardly warmed at all. Nearly all the warming has been in polar regions, northward of 45°N and southward of 45°S...four to five degrees. That's enough to kill a forest in Alaska the size of Connecticut, enough to melt 70% of the glaciers in Glacier National Park to extinction. In ten years or so, the park will need a new name!

And we are doing it to ourselves. Tidwell writes, "...this is not the first time a human society has consciously offed itself. History is littered with such cases, in fact, from the ancient Maya of Central America to the Greenland Vikings to the Polynesian society of Easter Island in the South Pacific." (p33) And he continues, "[Jared] Diamond [in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed] identifies five major 'interacting' factors that have brought societies low: hostile enemies, climate change, self-inflicted environmental degradation, adverse changes in trading partners, and, finally, a society's political, economic, and social responses to the aforementioned factors." (p34)

The human race spent 100,000 years as hunter-gatherers, which produces a very short-term focus, a kind of tunnel vision; events that unfold over a period longer than the next hunting season are forgotten. Contrary to the proverb, "Nothing good happens fast", for most people, nothing that DOESN't happen fast even happens.

The author has put his money where his mouth is. He is doing his best, in his suburb near Washington, DC, to set an example. Beginning in early 2001, he has implemented these changes:

1. A higher-efficiency refrigerator (70% less energy than old one)
   
2. All light bulbs replaced with compact flourescent bulbs (also 70% less)
   
3. Power strips so he can turn off groups of "always-on" items such as VCRs with a flip of the switch (a trickle here and there added up to a few dozen watts, continuous; now eliminated)
   
4. A corn-burning stove (net carbon budget: zero; and no fossil fuels for heating)
   
5. A used solar hot-water system (produces about half his needs)
   
6. A 1.5 KW photovoltaic system (produces about 40% of electricity he uses)
   

I like all these, except the corn-burning stove. Much better one that also burns the stalks, which make up more than 90% of the mass grown. The net carbon budget from burning field corn may be zero or better, but there is still 90% biomass waste! Nonetheless, he has shown that one can reduce one's carbon yield by 80-90% at moderate cost, then actually regain the cost over a few years' time. After that, one begins to save the difference.

Mike Tidwell deserves a voice in this, so I am glad he got published. We are in times that need fanatics, that need polemicists, because milder voices go unheeded.