The 350 protests of October 24 have passed, and in the weeks that follow, we must remember why they occurred in the first place. This action sought to bring attention to the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are skyrocketing and leading to rapid climate change. Historically, carbon dioxide has made up 350 or less parts per million of the atmosphere. These levels were essential for creating life on Earth as we know it. Through industrialization, transportation, agribusiness, and the burning of fossil fuels, we have sprung past those historic totals in recent years and today have reached levels of 390 parts per million and rising.
This situation has rightfully alarmed people around the world. Led by the environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben, the 350 movement took off. Protests took place in many nations, protests that included people in areas of great conflict like Israel and Palestine working together to save the world’s climate and perhaps the human race. This movement has done great work in bringing the world’s attention to climate change.
There is much more to be done. Political will for action on climate change in the United States remains minimal. Rightfully or not, China, India, and other developing world nations claim they need polluting industrial development to reach international prominence. Certainly, these are challenging issues the environmental movement and world at large needs to address. The 350 day of action was a great start and hopefully, we can keep the pressure on nations to act.
However, for all the good environmental activists are doing, they are also engaging in some lazy thinking when it comes to action. Too often, we have not thought through the consequences of proposed solutions. As a society, we are desperately looking for technological fixes to climate change problems: solar energy, hybrid vehicles, carbon sequestration, etc. We want to continue living our luxurious consumerist lifestyles while not permanently warming the climate. I want this too. But is it possible? Moreover, what kind of new environmental problems will our technological solutions cause?
Take wind energy. No technology has received more attention in the United States as a possible way to address climate change. It is truly clean. The western Great Plains has the triple advantage of high winds, few people and economic stagnation. It could be a giant wind farm that would bring badly needed jobs. But what of wind energy’s unintended environmental consequences?
A major criticism of wind energy is that it kills birds. Birds follow the same wind currents that are useful for wind energy, and then fly head first into the turbines and die. The region’s farmers also grow a lot of food. What happens if wind turbines (among many other reasons) lead to a sizable decline in bird populations? That could lead to a rise in insect populations that could affect crop production. What would then happen to the world’s food supply? Would prices go up? Would we use even more dangerous pesticides than we already do to control agricultural pests?
Perhaps this doomsday scenario doesn’t take place, but it’s likely that wind energy will cause some long-term negative effects. It is vital that we try to think through technology and the consumer products it creates from production to post-consumption. Thinking critically about technology goes against something very deep in the American national mythology in particular. We have long fetishized it. From railroads in the 1830s to automobiles in the 1910s to microwave egg cookers in the 2000s, we have fallen in love with technology over and over again. While these technologies have often made our lives easier, they have also led to massive unintended consequences.
No one meant for the climate to change, but our technological developments have had this unforeseen circumstance. Now what are we going to do?
None of this is to say that technology is not part of the solution. Sometimes, there are relatively simple technological answers to environmental problems. The role of CFCs in creating the hole in the ozone layer is a great example. We changed some things, and this problem quickly started improving. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. More common are technological solutions to problems that lead to unexpected new problems, such as the use of fertilizer to grow more food that has created the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, or canals built in the Louisiana swamps to facilitate oil development that have allowed the ocean to swallow up the southern part of that state.
Thinking through the unintended consequences of technology means one of two things. First, we accept that there will be unintended consequences, that they will change nature in perhaps unfortunate ways, and that we will live with as the price of our consumerist society. Or we seriously critique that consumerist society, live within our ecological means, and try to create a more sustainable world even if it means reducing our privileged status. This would probably mean rejecting suburbia, automobiles, worldwide travel, air conditioning, and many other wonders of the modern world. I don’t really like giving up these things, but if we want to stabilize the world’s climate, simple technological solutions will not do the trick. Rather, it will take an active rejection of much of the Industrial Revolution and its consumerist wonders.
I do not intend this article as an attack on the environmental movement, which is doing great work on climate change. Instead, I am challenging environmental activists to create a more holistic way of thinking about the future, to recognize the law of unintended consequences when considering how to fight climate change, and to realize that critiques of capitalism and consumption are absolutely vital to any real change. The answers to these questions may not be what most people want to hear, but the issue is too important to ignore.
I agree that wind energy has been garnering a lot of attention in the United States. There is a lot of debate on the negative impact of the implementation of wind energy but let’s look at the positive aspect. Wind energy is the fastest growing sector in the US with plans being laid out to meet 20% of its electrical energy needs from wind energy in the future. Many companies like Pacific Crest Transformers have designed transformers for the wind energy sector and are indirectly helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Right–there’s no question that it’s clean energy as far as climate change goes. Maybe we as a people make a choice that we are going to sacrifice the birds and bats to fight climate change. But what I’m really arguing here is that any kind of energy is going to have unintended negative consequences and that, rather than hail new technologies as our savior, we need to try to think about what those consequences might be to make intelligent choices about what acceptable impacts might be.