by Curt Stager
A stronger argument for controlling our fossil fuel consumption is that a prompt switch to alternative energy sources is in our own best interest. If we don’t do it soon, then we’ll merely be putting it off until the eventual depletion of reserves forces our descendants to make the switch later on, and the losses of species and habitats to the climatic disturbances and ocean acidification that would follow an extreme-emissions scenario are both unethical and undesirable. If we stop our carbon pollution sooner rather than later, we can always resume it some other time if we so choose, but rushing blindly ahead now destroys options for the future. Eventually, climates will once again resemble those we know today, but by that time many of our companion species may be gone; climatic conditions are temporary, but extinction is forever.
That would be the “stop” part of my message. The “look” part would refer to learning more about how our planet operates and how our actions influence it. We still don’t know which species will be able to adapt to future conditions and which ones will be lost if we take a particular emissions path. We don’t even know how many species exist yet, much less how they live and interact with their surroundings. There is also much to learn about natural climate variability, ocean circulation, and the inner workings of ice sheets. Unfortunately, many of us seem to believe that the natural sciences are arcane and narrow academic specialties in comparison to other subjects such as finance, fashion, or politics, all of which are actually quite narrowly anthropocentric and, in isolation from the natural sciences that deal with the entirety of physical existence, are likely to produce shortsighted responses to environmental problems.
I ponder this depressing thought as Kary points out the rich palette of flowers lining the road. “Look at that big patch of blue chicory,” she exclaims, “and those Queen Anne’s lace blossoms look pretty, too.” Most of the vehicles before and behind us are driven by people with other things on their minds, for whom the flanking collages of trees, shrubs, and herbs are just a featureless blur. I’m thankful to be sharing this journey with someone who sees much more than that, but I wonder how most of society can be expected to make scientifically informed decisions about long-range planetary management without an accurate sense of all that may be at stake.
Even among those of us who put specific names on wild animals and plants, a sense of ecological history is often missing. As we contemplate a warmer future in, say, the Adirondacks, it’s good if we can describe an anticipated transition from sugar maple to oak and hickory forest, but it’s not sufficient. What are we to make of such a change? How do we weigh the pluses and minuses in choices that will affect thousands of species and countless generations? If we automatically assume that anything other than present conditions are intolerable, then we ignore one important fact. Present conditions aren’t normal, either. The Anthropocene is here already, whether we recognize it or not.
Consider those fragrant chicories and Queen Anne’s laces. They brighten up our roads and meadows, but they’re not native to this part of the world. They were carried here from Europe by people. Early Romans used to fry chicory in garlic, and Queen Anne ruled the British Isles in the early eighteenth century. Or what about those old feral apple trees on the forest edge? Apple pie is supposed to be as American as … itself, but that trademark Yankee fruit was originally imported from central Asia. In fact, the majority of our roadside and meadow plants are aliens, from purple clover and common buttercups to oxeye daisies and yarrow. To most of us they are aromatic and colorful sources of delight, and such immigrant plants have become welcome sources of food and medicine for Americans in the past. But to pro-native gardeners and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, these are best described as “noxious weeds.” Viewed from a historical perspective, their arrival on the continent is a source of dismay to those who favor North American species over others.
The same is true of many of our animals, too. The dark starlings poking about on that lawn are human-borne invaders and so, too, are the honeybees that pollinate its “weeds” and the earthworms that burrow beneath it, aerate the soil, and possibly bait a kid’s fish-hook. The ancestors of the brown trout in that Vermont stream were hauled across the Atlantic Ocean from Germany, and the rainbow trout hail from the West Coast. Even the relative abundances of local creatures are skewed by human activity; white-tailed deer and coyotes now far outnumber moose and wolves in the Northeast, reflecting the legacy of our hunting, farming, and forestry practices.
The Anthropocene has been under way for so long that most of us don’t even notice it, having grown up with it as the normal state of things. As we think ahead to the even longer stretches of human history that lie before us, it can also be interesting to ask what our times might seem like from the point of view of those who lived in earlier stages of this ever-changing human epoch. If we imagine ourselves living in New England in the 1700s, and we then imagine looking from that vantage point into the future, does the rural landscape as we now know it seem unattractive because it no longer looks like it did when Queen Anne ruled the colonies? Would a longer step back to the 1500s make us protest the Spanish introduction of culture-changing horses to this continent? And would a step even farther back in time make us mourn the arrival of the first Stone Age humans who would slaughter the American mammoths and mastodons and thus leave our landscapes unnaturally silent—but much safer to walk in?
I expect not, at least not for most of us. We love our Anthropocene world, artificially altered though it is by our very presence in it. Perhaps the same will be true of those who will live in the artificially altered versions of the future world that follow this one. How can we tell which changes are truly “bad” for all or most of the parties involved, and which ones might simply come to seem normal or even desirable later on?
Crossing into New Hampshire on a bridge over the headwaters of the Connecticut River, I revisit my choice of summary phrases again and realize that the “listen” component of it might present the greatest hurdle to becoming “responsible ancestors” in the next chapters of history.
This is the first period of Earth’s existence in which a single species consciously occupies and manipulates the entire planet. One of our most transformative evolutionary steps as a social species was the sharing of knowledge; you might not know which roots to dig up during a famine but if Grandmother does, her childhood memories can save a whole village when hard times strike. But now we’re being challenged to take another giant step, from shared knowledge to shared responsible action on a global scale.
In this new Age of Humans, our very thoughts and desires have become powerful environmental forces in their own rights, and how we think and act can be as important to millions of other humans (and other species) as to ourselves. The better we know and respect each other as people, the more we’re likely to learn from one another, the more likely we are to understand each other’s needs and goals, and the more likely we are to cooperate effectively for our mutual benefit. Greenhouse pollution problems will not be solved piecemeal, and there is also no way to avoid making a collective choice one way or the other. We’ll either decide to solve them together as a self-aware global community or we’ll decide to suffer through them together as a disjointed mob of individuals.
From this point of view it’s clearly worth putting the brakes on until we’ve had time to figure out where we are and where we want to go from here. There are many difficult questions to resolve, some of which may be painful. Any choice we make will probably benefit some people while harming others. Maybe a global hothouse could be more user-friendly for tropical nations if the low latitudes become wetter and for circumpolar nations if the Arctic becomes more habitable and navigable. On the other hand, those who live on the edges of expanding deserts would probably rather not see such things come to pass, and coastal peoples would surely rather not have to deal with sea-level instability and ocean acidification. The smartest and most ethically sound solution is to pause, listen
to one another carefully and respectfully, and then try to move ahead as a single species on our singular planet.
This, of course, is a challenge considering the practical limits of altruism, which many of us still limit to immediate family and friends as our ancestors did in smaller, less interconnected versions of the world. And the divisive gamesmanship and spin of modern politics and media are major obstacles now, as well. Convincing a majority to support any particular climate control strategy isn’t going to be easy, especially if it involves international laws that seem to threaten national sovereignty. But, to paraphrase John Lennon, even simply imagining the possibility of humankind making sound decisions together can be a good way to start. Creative consciousness-raising events such as the International Day of Climate Action organized by 350.org can be powerful sources of inspiration in that regard even for those who doubt that 350 ppm CO2 is a realistically attainable target in the near-term future.
We pull over at a rest stop for a stretch break, and I nose our car into an open parking space beside a battered pickup truck whose back end is plastered with a diverse collection of bumper stickers. “Save the Whales,” says one. “Save the Planet,” says another. But a sticker on another truck beside that one seems to be trying to counter them with a sarcastic “Save the Humans.” Do we always have to split so reflexively into opposing sides when discussing important issues such as global climate change?
If we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates, then those who enjoy or profit from their use may benefit, but the resultant emissions will afflict future societies and species with thousands of years of artificial climatic change and the multitude of cultural and environmental problems that would come with it. On the other hand, if we reform our combustive way of life too quickly then many of us may suffer hardships in the near term, and the citizens of 130,000 AD may also be doomed to endure an ice age. It seems like a Faustian bargain either way when we consider the full span of the Anthropocene epoch that lies ahead.
But maybe there’s a middle route. If we do manage to follow a moderate-emissions path, then we’ll probably be leaving most of our coal reserves where they lie and running our future civilizations on other energy sources. Environmental damage during the next several centuries will be held to a minimum, some societies might benefit from a partial and temporary opening of the Arctic Ocean, and the next ice age of 50,000 ad will be held at bay. This could also produce a longer-term benefit, as well, by leaving lots of coal already sequestered in the ground for later. By saving most of our fossil carbon in a safe, solid, reasonably accessible form, we would bequeath it to later generations for possible use, not necessarily as a fuel but rather as a simple, cost-effective tool for climate control.
Even if residents of 130,000 AD lack complex modern-style technologies, they could protect themselves from the ice age that is due to start then if they understand what is going on in the climate system and remember that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The only technology that would be required to mobilize it would be fire, one of humankind’s most simple yet powerful tools. And by setting reasonable quantities of buried coal deposits alight, future climate modifiers would not only be able to keep the global thermostat at whatever they deem to be an optimal setting at a crucial time of cyclic cooling, they could also harness the heat and light that coal combustion produces. Releasing CO2 exhaust in this manner would still dump artificially generated fumes into the air, but doing so in a responsibly controlled manner rather than burning it wholesale would minimize its harmful side effects. And even though coal supplies would still eventually run out in the very far future, our descendants could still keep many more ice ages at bay than would otherwise be possible with a single massive emission pulse in our own current century.
What would it cost to “save the carbon” today? It would require us to find alternative energy sources, and fast. But we need to do that anyway. We’re already near the limits of economically viable petroleum production, and the decline of cheap oil will have swift and severe consequences for those who will inherit the full measure of that problem. If and when the prices and availability of petroleum-based fuels, fertilizers, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, synthetic fabrics, and even roadway pavement go haywire, the scale of human suffering could outstrip anything in the works for us from climate. It is that horribly dangerous and fast-approaching situation that makes the need for a switch to nonfossil fuels a no-brainer of the first order.
From a full Anthropocene-scale perspective, coal is both too valuable and too environmentally damaging to burn indiscriminately. Its highest use is as a long-term climate protection device, not just cheap and dirty furnace food. Running power plants on it is like burning your house down around you because it’s cold outside. It’s like cutting a square of fabric out of the floor of your life raft to patch a hole in your trousers. In short, it’s … well, it’s kind of stupid.
As we pull back onto the road after pondering this idea together, Kary chuckles and begins to sketch the design of a bumper sticker for our own car. It’s black with white block letters and it reads “Save the Carbon.” Save it for later, for humankind to deal with wisely both now and in the future. If you see us driving down the road with that sticker plastered onto our back bumper, give us a friendly honk if you agree with it.
Route 2 leads us through the White Mountains and into western Maine. While passing through one in a series of pulp-scented paper mill towns, I slow down to watch the frothing Androscoggin River churn over a series of power dams. Kary asks the question that I’m thinking. “What are we going to run the world on without cheap fossil fuels?”
The carbon crisis that we face today involves more than pollution problems; it also includes the struggle to find enough affordable, sustainable nonfossil fuels to run our societies on. My guess is that a combination of alternative energy sources, rather than any single one, will be needed to wean us of our carbon dependence. And I hope that it happens quickly, because the other options are lousy. It would be perilous to continue with business as usual and thereby take the extreme-emissions path. But artificially sequestering enough carbon to return the atmosphere rapidly to preindustrial conditions may be so costly as to be unrealistic, considering human nature. Who will really be willing to pay for it when most of the benefits go to future generations and when some parties inevitably refuse to pitch in? And artificially raising the price of fossil fuels in order to force us to reduce consumption would essentially make energy too expensive for many of us to use, an unthinkable hardship to impose on anybody who has ever struggled to make ends meet. Our best hope is to encourage the development of new sources of energy, and I’m cautiously optimistic about it for two reasons: We have nuclear power in our back pocket if we really need it as a last resort, though present forms of it come with extremely serious unsolved problems of long-term safety and waste disposal. And we have billions of creative, interconnected people to tap for new and better ideas.
To me, one of the most exciting prospects for a new energy source is hydrogen fuel. Not just the kind that is being derided in some circles for being unrealistic, though. The version that is most often under discussion now has us splitting water molecules with electricity that must be generated by yet another power source, and to critics it seems like a waste of electrons that could be harnessed more efficiently for other purposes. In places like Iceland, where hydro and geothermal energy are naturally abundant and cheap, electrically generated hydrogen is already making notable inroads into the economy, and Iceland has recently built the first of a planned fleet of hydrogen-powered ships. But my favorite generative source is different, and it could be used almost anywhere on Earth. It’s photosynthesis.
Plants, algae, and bacteria have been splitting water molecules into their oxygen and hydrogen subunits for hundreds of millions of years, and they get their requisite energy from sunlight. The molecular details of how they do it and how we could mimic them through nanotechnology are now being worked out by botanists and
molecular engineers around the world, including teams at Australia’s Monash University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Penn State and Rutgers Universities in the United States. If all goes according to plan, synthetic solar water-splitters that resemble or even outperform natural photosystems might some day give us the mother of all green—or should we say, blue—fuels. The hydrogen source would be water and the main product of its combustion would be water, too; that’s how this lightest of all gases got its name in the first place—from hydrogenesis, the creation of water.
In my daydreams about this up-and-coming energy resource, I imagine rooftops rustling with leafy collector foliage, lawns converted to hydrogen gardens, and green cars slathered with photosynthetic paint. More likely, though, most solar hydrogen would be produced by centralized commercial operations and distributed through pipelines and pressurized containers, and it would be supplemented by electrically produced hydrogen, power dams, windmills, and other noncarbon energy sources. But no matter how new energy technology really develops in the years to come, let’s hope that it becomes commercially viable much sooner than later.
The sun is sinking closer to the crest of the White Mountains behind us as Kary takes the wheel, and the road breeze that flows over my right arm and curls in through the open passenger-side window feels cooler than it did a few hours ago. The temperature change draws my attention to the air current, and my imagination populates it with molecules that I know are there but are too small to see. The flow becomes a smooth stream of particles sliding like fine powder over my skin. With my eyes still fixed on the road ahead, a lightly meditative trance induced by long hours of driving paints colors on the invisible particles, and in my mind the wind takes on the pale hue of blowing sand.