Hope You Like Nuclear Power
by Coleman Kitchin
When it comes to the environment, think Iceland.
Iceland imports trees and bauxite, not principally for itself, but because it has such abundant energy that trees are shipped there to be kiln-dried, and raw materials are sent there to be made into aluminum, a very energy hungry process. The wellspring of its energy is geothermal, which could also doom it. Iceland lies in a very active volcanic zone at the top of the North Atlantic. And despite all its clean power, which heats and lights the buildings, Reykjavik is a fairly dirty city. Icelanders love their automobiles.
A looming concern in Iceland, beyond exhaust or earthquakes, is global climate change. If age-old ocean and air currents change their patterns, Iceland will be left literally icebound. Without the warmth the Gulf Stream carries to the northern latitudes, very frosty winters will ensue not only in Reykjavik, but from Boston to Paris. (Global warming might paradoxically cause such a disruption.)
G.W. Bush has abandoned the Kyoto global warming treaty, instead of submitting it for ratification. The explanation is that developing countries were not asked to do enough, but the spin is that Europeans, while publicly outraged and flabbergasted, are actually glad to be off the hook. They despaired of meeting the carbon dioxide quotas themselves. But what, in this statement, is really meant by "the Europeans?" Who despaired of meeting the quotas? The high-level politicians who flew to Washington to call Bush onto the carpet? Some class of industrial magnates? Journalists?
On the other hand, this political posturing shows how popular a cause environmentalism is in Europe.
And in the U.S. as well. I spent some short time riding in Nader vans in the 1980's, and saw door-to-door, grassroots support for environmentalism in conservative small Virginia cities. Likewise, in central West Virginia where the rebel flag may fly high (and without historical reason), people mourn the fact that the rivers are so dead that there is nothing to persuade their grown sons to stay in state, not even fishing.
Environmentalism is popular, but so is the automobile. Countries with impeccable public transit, like France, have more cars now instead of fewer, as the middle class continues its long postwar emergence, hurling itself through the countryside for weekends and vacations. Among the deep ecologists there is an opinion that any overuse of energy, even from a clean source like geothermal, or the new fuel cells, or solar or wind or tidal, is destined to cause trouble. At the least, energy use produces heat, as well as the inevitable by-products, and on a large scale the use of materials becomes difficult or destructive.
The Malthusian gloom of it all is not politically appealing, but neither is the triteness of Bush 's approach. Hurrying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling does not make much sense to anyone, when we know the resources are finite. Burning, and digging coal, is obviously a problem, with or without Kyoto, but rejecting Kyoto has meant that coal company stocks are up in defiance of the bear market. During the election campaign, we heard some talk of Bush and Cheney, and Gore, being "big-oil" candidates, and it's not too shocking to consider that the first moves of the Bush administration are aimed at these corporate clients rather than public opinion.
This attitude towards the public seems to be another evolution of in the sad development of image politics. Each successive president, from Carter on, seems more able to get away with responding to public opinion only on high profile issues. Bush may sign campaign finance reform or appoint a pro-choice Colin Powell as Secretary of State, but as a whole his staff and appointees are reported to be more rightist than Ronald Reagan's.
Which brings us to China. As of this writing, Powell is offering "regrets" but not the "apology" China demands for the return of the U.S. service people help there. What "client" is the administration playing to? Certainly not the right, or center, of domestic public opinion. With China the official concern, the concern of both Bushes and Clinton, has been trade. A market of a billion people is projected to develop into a consumer economy, as the United States did in the early twentieth century.
The public policy consensus is that free trade is good, consumer societies are stable, and a consumer market of a billion people is gold-plated good. But the raspy voice of labor points out that the trade is for now mainly one-way, fueled by low wages, and benefiting multinational companies. It is a type of colonialism in which the colonial power is not a country, but a class of deep-pocketed corporations, and the people facing extraction, expropriation and oppression are a diffuse mob, here as well as there. Who they are depends on what you consider expropriation. Low wages? Political repression? Crumbling school buildings? Two-earner suburban bedlam?
The political situation may be more troublesome than the environmental. And there are worse environmental problems than mentioned above. Europe may worry about the Gulf Stream and carbon dioxide, and cows and their hooves, and I may worry about diseased, acid-ravaged forests in the Blue Ridge. More worrisome are a likely fresh water crisis, perhaps beginning in China, a petrochemical crisis, and the various technological nightmares of war, outright and terrorist.
Problems can be solved, but the technology is only as good as the politics. As long as soft drink companies and airplane makers dictate foreign policy, or Dilbert-type engineering firms control the design of the next nuclear-power-like development in energy generation, we will have a "society" that grows ever more hostile to people, and evasive about dangers and trade-offs. Our strength lies in our vibrancy, transparency, and investment in people and education.