On April 18, 2000, Nova and Frontline combined to present a thorough analysis on PBS of the complex relationships between poverty, energy and global warming.
Let's start with the global warming. Since 1990, we have entered unknown territory, because our CO2 levels are higher than they have been in the past 350,000 years and continue to rise. On the other hand, there was 18 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere during the Mesozoic as there is now. This produced a global tropical climate, where tropical plants and animals lived in polar regions and there were no polar icecaps. Experts disagree about how much global warming there will be, if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, which it is expected to do in the 21st Century. Estimates of the increase in global temperature range from one degree Celsius to seven degrees Celsius. A five degree increase in global temperature would melt the ice caps and drown coastal cities and low lying countries.
The problem is complicated because there are positive feedbacks to consider, which would amplify the warming effects of more CO2 (low level clouds), and there are negative feedbacks which would dampen the warming effects (high level clouds). And everyone agrees that special rivers in the oceans, such as the Gulf Stream, have enormous effects on climate. The Gulf Stream is the surface part of a world wide flow which sinks to the bottom in the North Atlantic and after a global journey, connects again to the Gulf Stream on the surface. But no one has been able to model the effect on the Gulf Stream of increasing CO2.
One significant fact which emerged from this program is that mankind now uses 10 terawatts of energy. This will certainly increase to 40 or 50 terawatts as China and India industrialize. Where will this energy come from? In the short term, almost certainly from fossil fuels, primarily coal. Why not biomass? It would take the world's entire arable land to produce the 10 terawatts we presently use. And the area of arable land is not likely to increase. Why not solar? If used directly to produce electricity, we would only have electricity for the day time. Wind power is erratic, and the world has already damned most of its rivers for hydroelectric power. Why not nuclear? There is no safe way of disposing of the radioactive by-products, including the nuclear plants themselves.
My proposal is a drastic increase in efficiency, coupled with solar-hydrogen. In other words, the solar farms would produce hydrogen, which can be stored, rather than electricity. Efficiency will often require replacement of existing technologies. For instance, in my "gridlock" chapter, I propose banning ICVs (cars, buses, trucks) from the metroplex and the super-highways which connect them, in favor of a combination of electric trains and bicycles. This would have multiple benefits. We would be in much better shape from walking or biking as part of our daily commute. No more smog or acid rain. Auto "accidents" are a major cause of premature death. No more gridlock. We would all be able to get to work on time. And it would be a much more energy efficient way of moving people around the metroplex than using cars. It might be ten times more efficient. Turn off the streetlights to cut down on light pollution, eliminate chemical fertilizers and return to the use of horses and oxen on farms (they live on hay produced on the same farm) and we could maintain the same standard of living on one-tenth the energy. This makes solar-hydrogen a feasible alternative. Finding and adopting the efficient green economy will take time, perhaps a Century, during which we will be burning fossil fuels. So, I propose that during this transition time power plants at least should be required to capture the CO2, and sequester it underground.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)(see Newsweek's Periscope in the December 6, 1999 issue) we must quit burning fossil fuels and switch to solar power now. Computer models suggest that fossil fuel burning, methane production in rice paddies, in cows, and in termites, will all raise the Earth's temperature by as much as 10 degrees as early as 2200. That would certainly melt the ice caps, raise sea levels several hundred feet, and drown coastal cities around the world. What we do in the 21st Century will determine our climate for the next thousand years.
We do not quite have all the technology necessary for this. Ideally, sunlight is focused by double parabolic troughs to a quartz tube filled with a catalyst system which separates pure water into hydrogen and oxygen, which migrates in opposite directions out of the tube. Such a trough does not have to track the sun. It only needs to change its angle of inclination each day to match the sun's angle of inclination.
Europe could make use of the deserts of Africa for their solar energy farms, making some kind of deal with the nations that own those deserts. China and Japan can make use of the deserts of central Asia. While I'm sure Solar-Hydrogen is the only long-term solution to mankind's energy needs, in the short term, America could first switch to an all natural gas economy. We also have the problem of getting rid of Plutonium, which is a man-made element used in nuclear weapons. It is possible that the only permanent way of disposing of this dangerous element is to burn it in tamper-proof nuclear power plants, which are simply abandoned in place when they run out of Plutonium.
Let's just look at a few examples. The cost of manufacturing those plastic 6-pack holders is pennies. The cost of retrieving them from the oceans is astronomical. Thus, 6-packs in plastic pop holders have an astronomical cost at the checkout stand, and cease to exist. The same thing is true of monofilament fishing line.
What shall we do with plain old garbage, the kind that big trucks pick up at your curb twice a week? Handle it a different way. Garbage trucks are the only kind of heavy truck regularly in residential areas. If we can eliminate the need for it, then the neighborhood can be enclosed with a impregnable wall, given a single checkpoint for entering and leaving, and the people will be able to sleep at night, knowing they are protected. Requiring working garbage disposals will help with some things. Every enclosed neighborhood will have a spur of railroad track and a door in the wall for the train to pick up full cars and drop off empties. There will be shredders for plastics, smashers for cans, fork lifts for dumping the result into railroad cars and even a huge community composter, which will take grass clippings, leaves, household refuse, and shredded limbs from trees. The cars will have bins for each separate type of plastic, metal, or toxic items, such as batteries or old cans of paint.
We could also require that all framing members in houses (studs, rafters, tresses) be made of galvanized steel. Steel is already cheaper than wood, and is in every respect superior. It's just not traditional.
There should be beach zones and flood plain zones, where any houses built are non-insurable. Given enough time, the weather will clear the beaches and floodplains for us. No more FEMA, no more bail-outs. Agricultural land should be zoned agricultural. This means it can never be turned into suburbs or industry, never flooded by dams, never crossed by freeways. It can only be used for agriculture. This will deflate the speculative value of this land, so farmers can afford to own it. It will also maintain the green belt around metroplexes and halt urban sprawl.
The two most interesting zones are the arid zone and the prairie zone. The prairie zone is triangle shaped, with the wide part at the top, and the narrow part at the bottom. It is bounded by the Rockies. The Eastern edge used to be near the eastern edge of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. This region was originally tall-grass prairie in the east, shading into short grass prairie west of the 100th meridian.
The arid zone is the intermountain west, the vast, underpopulated region between the coastal sierras and the rockies. This is a triangle shaped region, broad at the base, and tapering to a narrow neck in eastern Washington state. Embedded in it are several metropolitan zones, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix and Albuquerque. All emigrants should be restricted to the arid zone exclusive of the metropolitan zones for two generations. This is where we need population. We must take immigrants, unless the promise of the Statue of Liberty as the "Mother of Exiles" is to be broken. But we can at least specify where they can and cannot live. The arid zone needs population because it will become the source of the nation's energy. In addition, I wish to restore the 1830 desert ecology and prairie ecology in the name of preservation of species and even of cultures. To that end, herding and agriculture cannot be permitted in either the arid zone or the prairie zone. Furthermore, all domestic livestock (even those growing wild) must be eliminated, except on Indian reservations, which are sovereign nations.
The prairie Indians, such as the Lakota, have never done well on reservations. They could be given their beautiful prairie back, and the huge herds of bison, making a good cash income on the side hosting visiting safaris, and taking them on Buffalo hunts. Only Native Americans are allowed to hunt prairie game with anything but a camera, and they must use bows and arrows. The prairie zone becomes the world's largest animal preserve, cultural preserve, and tourist attraction for safaris.
The idea of a Buffalo common has been proposed before, by the Professors Popper of Rutgers, who point out the decline to near non-existence of human population on what was originally prairie. Like the original desert ecology, the prairie is fragile. Domestic livestock destroy both, and must be banned ruthlessly. Most parts of the prairie do not make good farmland. Indeed, large parts of the prairie seen by Washington Irving in the 1830's now consists in abandoned farm land grown up in scrubby, weedy trees like the red cedar and scrub oak. Other parts consist in a thin layer of soil over desert sand dunes, and could easily revert to sand dunes after a long drought if they continue to be grazed or farmed. Those parts of the prairie which are flat and have deep soils and make good crops of hard red winter wheat should be left as agricultural islands in the midst of the sea of grass. Towns and cities inside the prairie zone are also islands, not part of the prairie zone.
One strip capable of supporting cities and intensive agriculture lies over the Ogallala aquifer, which I propose to refill with water from the Mississippi, pumped across Iowa. The closest part of the aquifer to the river is in eastern Nebraska. By refilling it, it will overflow to those parts of the aquifer further south, passing more or less along the boundary between Colorado-Kansas and Texas-New Mexico, a region otherwise utterly desolate and devoid even of interesting desert vegetation. This is one of two massive waterworks I propose, the other one pumping water from the Columbia and other Pacific rivers over or through the mountains to the arid zone.
Prairie is an ecology born of fire. Prairie consists in all and only those plants and animals that can survive periodic burning. That excludes trees, weeds and brush, although stands of wild blackberries and sand plums can survive in the creek bottoms. These are favorite foods of black bears, if they can be re-established.
Few people living in the prairie zone have ever seen prairie. The rangelands sparsely populated by a few cows or sheep are not prairie, because domestic animals selectively destroy the higher grasses such as big and little bluestem, and the hundreds of flowering species, many of them legumes, leaving only wire-grass, broom-weed and buffalo grass. The only true prairie left are those patches of prairie called "meadows" which are cut once a year for prairie hay. These small fields have never been grazed or plowed, but we lose more of them each year, to agriculture, grazing, or to urban sprawl.
True prairie is incredibly beautiful. And it smells wonderful, unlike domestic lawn grasses. It is a complex ecology of hundreds of species, many of which bloom with large showy spikes sometime in the growing season. In fall, the tall bluestem turns purple (seen as blue in the distance by early visitors), while in winter it assumes various metallic colors of gold, silver and electrum. When it turns dull brown in late winter, it is time to burn it.
Throughout the arid region of the west, water is precious, though not always expensive. One of the first rules we should institute is a free market for water rights.
The next rule is no sprinkler irrigation, drip or soak only. This eliminates those fabulously wasteful alfalfa fields in the desert. Alfalfa can be grown back east. Let's not waste our precious water on that. Another rule is: no livestock. There is not much livestock as is, but there is some in river valleys of Idaho and Utah. Next rule: desert plants only. It is criminal to plant lawn grass in Phoenix or LA when the arid loving succulents and cacti are so much more interesting and exotic.
Many people originally moved to the southwest to escape hay fever. That only works if the eastern pollen producing (water intensive) plants are left behind. Indeed, they should be actively rooted out and destroyed, since pollen is pollution to those with hay-fever or asthma.
Arid zone cities must be required to recycle their water. Outflow from the sewage treatment system goes through special treatment and right back into the water treatment system as input!
This can be done with artificial wetlands, which can double as a park, for the final processing of this outflow. The outflow of the artificial wetlands could be the purest water in the country. The outflow from modern sewage plants is already required to be of high-quality for environmental reasons. It is merely discolored and slightly odoriferous, being full of dissolved and suspended organic material. It makes wonderful fertilizer.
Algae and bacteria will grow on the organic material in the water, removing it. Tiny crustacea, insects, and fish will eat the algae and bacteria. Larger fish and other birds will eat the crustacea, insects and fish. Some of the larger fish will be caught and eaten (with perfect safety) by Sunday fishermen. The last stage is to put the water through ion exchange membranes which only allow water molecules through, no salt or viruses or bacteria.
The arid zone can be a beautiful and varied place, with its numerous mountain ranges, canyons, deserts and arid flora and fauna. All that is needed is a little bit of infrastructure to make it economically viable as a place to live. The federal government must provide this. Chief among the requirements is water. One possible source is the Columbia river. If half of the Columbia could be pumped to the east side of the coastal range, and then brought down into and throughout the Arid Zone, finally dumping into the Colorado, the water needs of the region could be met, so long as everyone shows proper reverence for the value of water. Some of the water is feedstock for the solar energy farms.
Who builds and maintains these solar farms and all the other infrastructure of pipelines and roadways? Immigrant homesteaders, of course. It is run like the Habitat project, except here we are dealing in adobe and Mexican saltillo tile. Homesteading is done a village at a time. The immigrants learn various specialties and help one another to build a village from local materials, and then create a network of pipelines and roads extending outward from it, connecting to the master network built by the federal government. Within each large region to be served by a village, (which should include both mountain and desert) the villagers pick their own spot for their village.
Once established, each village has a cash crop export in the form of hydrogen piped to the nearest major collector line, and make use of drip irrigation to establish local garden crops, to make themselves fairly self-sufficient.
Horses can reproduce; tractors cannot. Fuel for horses can be grown on the farm as crops or by-products of crops which humans cannot consume. Horses and oxen not only do useful work, they produce fertilizer. Oxen can survive quite well on straw, cornstalks, corncobs, and even paper or sawdust. Horses require a somewhat richer diet, but they also eat hay. This is not a proposal to return to the backbreaking labor of the 1930's, when my father worked sunup to sundown all summer with a team of mules to plow a quarter section of wheat. The oldest technology can be combined with the newest, to create the robotic farm.
Plowhorses are not expensive. They are not like the thoroughbreds that fetch fabulous prizes because they can run fast. Plowhorses can reproduce cheaply, and live on grass and hay. A farmer can have many teams of horses, all hitched to implements controlled by a computer program, which opens and closes gates, pulls reins or steers a wheel by radio control. The robotic farm implement will have electronic sensors. Motive power and fertilizer is provided by livestock. Because it is robotic, one farmer can run a dozen teams simultaneously. Every morning and evening, he has a production line process of harnessing or unharnessing, feeding, watering, and in general, animal husbandry. No doubt he goes out from time to time during the day to check on his teams, just as if they were hired hands.
The farmer receives the same number of dollars for a bushel of wheat now as fifty or one hundred years ago. The same number of dollars. Yet, the land, the tractors, the fuel, the fertilizer have all gone up ten-fold or a hundred-fold since the mechanization of the farms. It is not surprising that farmers are going bankrupt, blindly following the advice of the county extension agents of the local land grant college. How do we eliminate the ruinous surpluses which have made grain and milk dirt cheap for a hundred years?
The answer is grower's associations, as found in the citrus business. It should be the law that wholesale farmers have to belong to the grower's association for their commodity. Otherwise, the government stays out of it. The association decides exactly how many acres each grower will plant, and how many bushels he will sell on what date. In other words, the grower's associations carefully regulate supply so that it just barely meets demand. They are also given full control over exports and imports, and full power of attorney to sell the product. So the producers set the price, not the miller or butcher. Wheat or beef farmers could decide to stay out of the international market, if they wished, since the international commodities market is always dirt poor. They can prevent fast-food places from importing cheap Brazilian beef, which will help preserve the rain-forest as well as keep domestic prices high. The Japanese and the French also wish to keep their agriculture sector out of the international free trade market, and we should too. This is all part of conserving the soil, and preserving rural culture.
Won't this increase consumer prices at the supermarket? Not as much as one might expect. If the farmer simply gave the miller the wheat that goes into a loaf of bread, it reduces the final price by a nickel. Thus, a ten-fold increase in wheat prices adds fifty cents to the price of bread.
By banning the use of grain and supplements to "feed out" livestock and pork, we could instantly make all our domestic beef and pork a health food. It seems an ecological crime to feed grain to an animal that can prosper on paper, or sawdust, or acorns, or alfalfa. It seems almost an insult to that species of animal. And if the result has to go in a pot roast, or a true pit barbecue... we're going to have to ban those backyard charcoal grills anyway. They pollute the air. And once again, we may be just in time to save or resurrect a culture, that of the family farm and the rural communities, along with saving the land and our own health. And this is done without creating a bureaucracy (at least not a government bureaucracy) and with no red tape.
Copyright © Thales 1999
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