No smoking...

I read some time ago a very thought-provoking article about energy by Andrew Rivkin, who worked for the NT Times and signed on with the Obama administration. It's main theme was energy return on investment (EROI), which shrinks as sources of a given resource are more difficult to find. When it is more expensive to find the material, extract it, and make it usable, the investment is no longer worth the profit. So, while cost is among the most prohibitive factors in adopting new technologies and stemming our consumption of carbon-based fuels, we should make the latter more expensive. Hasn't the time come that we should pay to make up the difference for the environment's sake? Is it unlikely that the free market will lead soon enough to large-scale alternative sources?

The investment needed to make many types of renewable energy feasible, such as hydropower or even solar, is high. Versus energy gained from sources like coal and petroleum, large-scale implementation is still many years away. Fortunately, the cost is going down, and the market has begun to see large investments into renewable sources without much government regulation. Neutralizing the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, or using carbon credits to limit the use of carbon-based sources is possible through both government and consumer action.

But while various governments have decided to step in and stem smoking among individuals, both through funding large-scale campaigns, legislating non-smoking public places, and regulation at the FDA, they don't regulate to the same degree energy consumption of carbon-based fuels. Since climate change and carbon dioxide in our skies and oceans will effect everyone, why not? Arguably, it will have a greater impact on humans than the damage tobacco has over the years. Environmental changes will be collective and things we've seen already--flooding of coastal communities, greater melanoma rates, asthma rates, and a smaller number of earth's creatures--rather than with individuals that we know and care about.

We're at a turning point. We can either recognize our error and start to act differently--largely with our pocketbooks--or continue to degrade our planet. As a smoker, I am wont to speak about a habit of mine, in which I realize the health-problems but give barely lip-service to the scientific evidence (which is more certain than with the human role in global climate change). And yet, I perpetuate a life-threatening habit. It’s what I am used to, I say; smoking makes me comfortable. While we can't give up energy altogether, we can limit our use to stem damage now. Energy consumption systemic phenomena which involves many people, countries, economies as well as the environment, and is of course something that will continue as we develop. But if Americans could change the way they consume energy to better the climate, quitting smoking should be easy.

"When your cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who is warm"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No time like the present

Many people have wondered about how quickly my trip abroad came up, and said that they realized I had been thinking about doing such a thing but not that it would come up so quickly. “I remember that you mentioned it at happy hour,” one of my friends remarked. I figure that the only way to get underway in something new – particularly if it’s wildly out of the ordinary and something that takes quite a bit of initiative – is to do it as soon as you can. It felt good to surprise people with the fact that indeed, my plane flight was at the end of this week, not a procrastinated date in the future. Even some of the people who I had explained so fully what I was trying to do with the establishment of my enterprise were surprised that I was in action. It is funny how people react as the time passes during and after the trip – many of your acquaintances don’t realize until you return that you had ever gone. I noticed this primarily when good friends of mine went biking across the states and were busy telling people about the trip only months after they'd come up with the idea.

I have a framed photo of Russell Train (1920- ), taken while reclined in his office at the world wildlife fund after his career government stint as the environmental protection guru. Indeed, he may have influenced environmental conservation as much as anyone in the 20th century. On safari in Africa around the age of 35, Train fell in love with the place, and thought that more money should go into wildlife conservation on the continent. He returned to Washington and began the papers for incorporation of his African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, which supported education of conservation workers in Africa—to achieve it he raised money in the States and offered scholarships to study and return to work in Africa for several years.

It worked, and it led to his career of more than forty years conserving natural places in America and abroad. The outcome interests me less than the initiative that it took to take the opportunity as it lie before him. Since we’re presented with so few in life, we ought to snatch them up when they come along. Train began printing newsletters, calling people for meetings during his spare time, and establishing more contacts with people already working in conservation, which in the 1960’s and 1970’s were relatively few. The personal motivation that he had mustered in the establishment of the AWLF paid off, and in the late 1960’s Train was offered posts at newly created agencies of the Nixon administration, notably the Council on Environmental Quality and the EPA. All of this is a way of saying that by taking the chance when it was ripe--it wouldn’t have happened the same way if he had waited--he gave himself a role in the environmental movement. How would he have known what he might do if he hadn’t seen the opportunity and seized it the minute he got home. Think of a beautiful woman walking by on the street: she passes only once.

In younger years it seems particularly difficult to discern what is what. How will the next few years turn out--the next five? There are many decisions and opportunities in this short life. But we’re lucky that so many of them seem big and difficult, because it allows us to do amazing things. And some do seem to come at us full stop--they take a big commitment and its in our nature to hesitate. While you make yourself vulnerable in making the decision, vulnerability is what gives you time to grow into the decision and embrace it. For all the inspiration in life, here's to help my friends and so many who inspire me to push ahead.

"In the 21st century, from here--five years more--the first question that people are going ask after your income per capita is how much [carbon] we emit."

"En este siglo XXI de aquí a cinco años lo primero que van a preguntar después del ingreso per capita es cuanto emite [de emisiones de carbono]" – Ricardo Lagos

2093

We have but one life – it’s worth our while to enjoy the world around us. I found a beautiful metaphor which expresses this better than any: "this is water," an old fish told young ones. They of course didn't realize that they were in water at all, but it was the reality that they lived in. It is the same for human beings - we have to enjoy the water around us, and even move the water which surrounds us. Everyone deals with the same troubles, the same insecurities, and desires to have more.

My brother and his wife were recently blessed with something more incredible than they ever could have imagined. I reckon parenthood is something that takes you by surprise no matter what fabulous expectations you have for it. A thinking and acting human from scratch. Congrats to them! And for the rest of us, we now have another being in the world to enjoy – and see endless photos from his smitten parents.

Meanwhile, another man passed away last week. I was imagining how, to reach the age that he did - 113 - I would have to live until the year 2093! Imagine living until nearly the end of the next century, to see all of the technological, mechanical, and social developments that will come in that time. Henry is a the sign of new life here on earth, and the water around him hopefully he will enjoy more than the writer sometimes does. As I have written before, living positively and surrounding ourselves with good people is the only way that we might live to any ripe age. What type of racer will Henry be?

“Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work a little, see if they’re frontrunners or a come from behind. Find out what their whole card is, find out what makes them run.”
“Did you find out mine?”
“I think so.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’d say you don’t like to be rated, you like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather on the back stretch, then come home free.”
-- The Big Sleep

Man and his War

One day after Independence Day weekend, Robert Strange McNamara passed away. Forty-two years earlier, he left the Defense Department of Lyndon Johnson. He lived a long life of 93 years and exactly one month. Obituaries focused on his role in the Vietnam “conflict” that tore this nation apart throughout the 1960s and early 70s, and remarked that three decades later – when he could first bring himself to speak or write on the subject – that he said the war was wrong. He and other Americans who waged the war had misunderstood the region and people they were fighting.

As Tim Weiner noted in his obituary in the New York Times, his role in this conflict and his loyalty to President Johnson will forever overshadow the good things that he did for the world. Paul Hendrickson wrote the most authoritative biography of the man, and got to the heart of the torment that McNamara felt after the Vietnam War. In what most call a retributive stint at the World Bank and later on the boards of many organizations working toward development of the third world, McNamara brought nations to the table that should have long been included in development dialogue. He continued to fight against nuclear arms and to redistribute wealth throughout the developing world. Certainly, McNamara was caught up in a war that was unwinnable – as he believed long before he could bring himself to resign – but I do believe that he kept on with the best of intentions and was only later able to demonstrate them at the World Bank and afterward.

Much of the rancor about McNamara is that he lived to an old age while so many died on his watch. But, he lived so many years because he was passionate about many things and had the same determination in his personal life. We archivists have joked that he likely rode his exercise bike – as he the day before his death. In the course of four days he would fly from Africa to India and then to Aspen for skiing, then to South America for a summit, then to Washington to start it over again.

War is a terrible thing. But if McNamara didn’t wage it, would someone have done so in his place? We must not forget that it was a nation at war rather than one man and it went on after his tenure. McNamara has remarked that despite the tremendous costs he would do it again; he said candidly that he did not live with regret, though many claim they could see it in his face.

While I lack the visceral reaction to the War that my parent’s generation does, I believe his legacy will prove to be something more. Perhaps he can demonstrate how much of the time we have a Secretary of Offense rather than a Secretary of Defense. That we wage the same Orwellian war in the that we always fight; indeed we are fighting now. To let him rest in peace, I recognize that despite ruining so many lives he made many better, and seemed to have the best of intentions at heart. His later correspondence, interviews, and work show the love that he had from others who knew him as a man rather only as the Secretary of Defense. As so many Americans stand over his grave to see that he stays in it – as Bob Dylan hoped to do – our forgiveness may be as important as his contrition.

"Ecological considerations have made us all more aware of the interdependencies of our world. We have come to see our planet as ‘spaceship earth’ [Barbara Ward]. But what we must not forget is that one-quarter of the passengers on that ship have luxurious first-class accommodations and the remaining three-quarters are traveling in steerage. That does not make for a happy ship – in space or anywhere else. All the less so when the steerage passengers realize that there are at hand the means to make the accommodations more reasonable for everyone."

-- Robert S McNamara, ca. 1984