Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization--A Review

This documentary about Lester Brown was broadcast recently on the PBS program Journey to Planet Earth, with Matt Damon as host. Brown's online bio says he started out growing tomatoes in south Jersey, got a degree from Rutgers, founded the Worldwatch Institute, and has had a hand in writing 50 books.
     
The documentary follows Brown around the globe, as he speaks in various countries and contemplates the chain of events that could lead to civilization's collapse catalyzed by changing climate. I resisted liking the documentary at first, being tired of environmental documentaries that depend for movement on the protagonist traveling around in a car or plane, all the while telling us to stop consuming fossil fuels. Long, lingering shots of a jet flying gracefully above the clouds seems to send the wrong message somehow. And the film doesn't deal with the large percentage of people whose underlying religious and/or ideological beliefs prevent them from engaging in this subject.
    
But for an audience that already understands that climate change is a big problem, and understands the prophet's need to speed round the world to spread the word, the film offers a compelling case for ramping up the level of concern. Brown believes an 80% reduction in greenhouse emissions is necessary not by 2050 but by 2020, if we are to have a chance of saving the Himalayan glaciers that sustain four major river systems in Asia. The film is particularly good at showing hidden cause and effect. Lost glaciers lead to water shortages, which leads to food shortages in China and elsewhere, which leads to Asia competing aggressively for food grown in the U.S. and other countries, which leads to higher food prices for everyone.
     
Brown had initially rejected the idea that food could be the weak link in early 21st century civilization, but now believes that climate change will likely lead to the sorts of food shortages that caused past civilizations to collapse. Climate change is a "threat multiplier for instability", which has led Brown to track the "failing state" phenomenon around the globe, as more and more states lose control of their territory through violent unrest. "How many failed states before we have a failing civilization?", he asks.
     
Common in collapses of past civilizations was the failure of leaders to see early warning signs. A recurrent theme in the film is the suddenness with which events can spiral out of control, and how an imminent collapse can be hidden behind the facade of normality. Enron, for instance, at one point ranked 7th in total global worth, yet was proven to be worthless. Like Enron, we're leaving costs off the books, through such practices as not factoring the atmospheric dumping of CO2 into the cost of a commodity.
    
Some climate models are now showing that a 2.5 degree increase in global temperature may lead to drought and massive dieback in the Amazon basin, with 1 billion acres of forest and 20% of global biodiversity at risk of going up in flames. Brown puts forth the concept of problems developing geometrically, so that a situation can seem only half bad the day before it becomes all bad (google The 29th Day).
     
The film does offer a plan at the end, Plan B, which has four interdependent parts and is delivered in a frank and thankfully subdued way, avoiding the cheerleading tone of some other documentaries. My notes are incomplete, but the plan includes reducing the income tax combined with raising the fuel tax, restoring habitats like the ocean, curbing population growth by eradicating poverty and investing in people, particularly in the education and empowerment of women, tapping wind, solar and geothermal energy, and such. Nuclear energy is too expensive; carbon sequestration is not ready.
     
To give some wisp of hope to this venture, World War II is offered as an example of how the U.S. economy was radically retooled in a matter of months. No cars were built for 2 1/2 years as the factories produced armaments instead. Substitute wind generators and solar cells for armaments, and the general outline becomes clear. The participation of everyone is needed ("Saving civilization is not a spectator sport."), and along with averting calamity we will also gain a stronger sense of community.
     
Left unmentioned is the host of powerful economic interests and ideologies that are deeply antagonistic towards environmentalism and government, and stand ready to sabotage any movement towards coherent, unified response. That's the companion documentary that needs to be found.
     

Legislative Agenda Item: Make Plastics Out of Safe, Renewable Materials

On the topic of squeezing fossil fuels out of our lives, this from an opinion piece by Susan Freinkel, author of the forthcoming “Plastic: A Toxic Love Story.”

"Yet we can’t hope to achieve plastic’s promise for the 21st century if we stick with wasteful 20th-century habits of plastic production and consumption. We have the technology to make better, safer plastics — forged from renewable sources, rather than finite fossil fuels, using chemicals that inflict minimal or no harm on the planet and our health. We have the public policy tools to build better recycling systems and to hold businesses accountable for the products they put into the market. And we can also take a cue from the plastic purgers about how to cut wasteful plastic out of our daily lives."

Putting the Squeeze On Climate Change

(This can also be found in the "Squeeze Concept" page) Lots of numbers and good intentions have been thrown at the looming beast called climate change. Goals like 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 were meant to spur action, but clearly something is missing. The image below is a simple rendering to help visualize what needs to be done, essentially a "squeezing" of fossil fuels out of the economy and out of our lifestyles.

The vertical axis represents the nation's energy needs. The space in the graph above the year 2010 is mostly red, representing the current dependency on fossil fuels. As time travels to the right, people steadily "squeeze" fossil fuel out of their lives, by learning to use less of it (energy conservation) and installing more renewable energies like wind and solar.

Arctic Cold Hits NJ While the Planet Heats

Arctic air has been spilling down into New Jersey, bringing single digit temperatures and some puzzlement about how we could be experiencing such frigid weather if the planet is heating up. Part of the answer is that some areas of Canada and Greenland, meanwhile, are experiencing temperatures 20 degrees higher than normal. An article in the NY Times describes how changes in atmospheric pressure have allowed more arctic air than usual to spill down into the northeastern U.S., and how these changes may be driven in part by the substantial reduction in arctic sea ice over the past thirty years.

One has to be cautious about attributing unusual weather directly to climate change, but climate models have long predicted increases in extreme weather events, as overall warming magnifies instability.

Bag It -- A Documentary on Plastic

Star Date 1.22.11: The community room at Princeton Public Library was packed again, last night, for a showing of Bag It, a comprehensive and entertaining expose on the cumulative consequences of our use of plastics. That legacy can be found in the widening gyres of plastic debris in the oceans and in chemicals like bisphenol A and phthalates in our bodies.

The film's devastating critique is made palatable by a sense of humor. Lest the plastic-filled guts of dead marine birds and whales prove too wrenching, other scenes offer a fluffy and frolicking abominable snowman made of white plastic bags, and tragicomic encounters with plastic overload in the aisles of the local supermarket.

What does Princeton have to do with all this? Consider the destiny of a plastic bottle tossed onto Harrison Street. It disappears down a storm drain, gets washed through a pipe into Harry's Brook, flows to Carnegie Lake, where it may float about until storm waters push it over the dam and down the Millstone and Raritan Rivers to the ocean. The Atlantic, like the Pacific, has two gyres of accumulating plastic--one in the north and one in the south. Over a period of years, the plastic bottle and billions of other bits of plastic eventually find their way out to the gyre, slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller bits that fish, sea turtles and whales can mistake for food. The plastic bits also absorb toxic chemicals in the water, which would be a good thing if the fish weren't eating the plastic, absorbing the toxics, and passing the toxics up a food chain that can include humans.

Documentaries are meant to change your mind, or at least convey reality so vividly that one can no longer ignore what one already knew. The mind is admirably and exasperatingly well armored against all these attempts--understandable given the potential grief involved in letting go of a belief one has invested years or decades adhering to and defending.

Despite this, the film forced me to abandon one long-held skepticism: the notion that stream cleanups are merely a feel-good activity that serve our aesthetics but do little for the watershed. Paper litter may break down, and wildlife may find cover in a stray rusty pipe, but the plastics are likely as not to be swept downstream and out into the ocean, where they provide one more hazard for marine life already on the edge.

Of all the wonderfully presented scenes, interviews, and graphics in the movie, one that lingers is the man who is storing all his family's trash in his basement for a year. He's apparently able to avoid a huge mess by composting food waste, reusing containers, and avoiding products with throwaway packaging.

The positive message of the movie is that taking steps to withdraw from the culture of consumption can lead to a richer life that focuses more on human interactions and resourcefulness. Sharon Roe, who spoke afterwards about her company, which makes reuseable ecobags, spoke of the environmental journey of discovery and understanding that we all are on.

In many ways, it seems to be a journey both forwards into new, less harmful technologies and backwards to forgotten pleasures and values, to extract ourselves from the seductively convenient yet terribly warped and destructive world cheap fossil fuel energy has led us into.