Mass extinctions, more Hurricane Katrina-like disasters, widespread droughts: A majority of climate scientists say these are just a few of the roads ahead if our consumption of oil and coal go unchecked.
The British government last month sponsored the publication of a comprehensive study on "dangerous climate change" — available in book form or as a free download — that provides the scientific backing for the conclusion that fossil-fuel emissions must be cut back "with resolve and urgency now."
A related title, also made available in both print and downloadable form, appeared around the same time. In January, Lester R. Brown published the second edition of his 2003 planetary prescription Plan B. Championed by Ted Turner and Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the original Plan B proposed concrete steps to, as the subtitle put it, "rescue a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble." Now, just three years hence, Brown has updated and revised his map for a saner future — Plan B 2.0 (W.W. Norton).
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Wired News caught up with Brown last month after he had returned from delivering his new Plan B to the World Economic Forum.
Check out Wired News' series of Q&As with expert authors on climate change:
- Tim Flannery: Director of the South Australian Museum and author of The Weather Makers. [Available here]
- Lester R. Brown: World-renowned environmental thinker, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 2.0. [You are here]
- Elizabeth Kolbert: Staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe. [Coming March 29]
Wired News: The real cost of gas, you argue, is $11 per gallon. How do you get that figure?
Lester R. Brown: Part of that cost is being deferred; part is being paid now. The study that I cite is the most detailed one I've seen. It parallels in methodology the study the Centers for Disease Control did on (the) social cost of smoking cigarettes. The costs to society of smoking a pack of cigarettes they calculated at $7.18. And they included two costs: the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses and the cost of lost worker productivity from those illnesses.
In the case of the cost of a gallon of gas, they included a number of costs: the cost of treating respiratory illnesses, the damage from acid rain and climate change. And that's a very difficult thing to do. There's a quote by Oystein Dahle close to a decade ago now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was for many years Exxon's vice president for Norway and the North Sea. He said, "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth." That's a lot of wisdom distilled into those two sentences.
WN: The world, you write, needs more economists who think like ecologists. Please explain.
Brown: One of the most interesting manifestations of realizing this at the government level came in China in the summer of 1998, when there was extensive flooding in the Yangtze River basin. It went on for weeks and weeks.
It eventually caused $30 billion worth of damage, which is roughly the value of the annual rice harvest in China. This was a big hit on the economy. After some weeks of this, the government held a press conference in Beijing. And they said we've been saying this is an act of nature, and that's true. But we've now determined that there's a human contribution to this. And they then said they were going to ban all tree cutting in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin. They soon thereafter extended it to the entire country. They justified it in economic terms, and they said the value of trees standing is three times the value of trees cut. And what they were recognizing is that the flood-control services provided by forests are three times as valuable to society as the timber in those trees. In a sense, that's what the world needs to see.
WN: Plan B 2.0 also discusses China's role as a consumer nation. What is your basic argument?
Brown: We've been saying since I can remember that the U.S. is 5 percent of the world's people and consumes a third or 40 percent of the Earth's resources. That was true. It is no longer true. Because China has now overtaken us in the consumption of most basic resources. If we look at agriculture — grain and meat — energy — oil and coal — and the industrial sector — steel — those five basic commodities China now consumes more of each than the United States except for oil.
We still have a strong lead in oil. But their meat consumption is nearly doubled ours now: 67 million tons to 38 million tons. Their steel consumption is more than doubled; it's 258 million tons to 104 million tons. We're not even in the same league with the Chinese. Now that China has overtaken us in total consumption of most basic resources, that sort of gives us license to ask the next question, which is what happens if they catch up to us in consumption per person?
It turns out that if their economy continues to grow at 8 percent per year, which is slower than the last few years, in 2031 income per person in China will be same as in the U.S. today. And if we further assume that they will be spending their money more or less the same way we do, then China's 1.4 (billion) or 1.5 billion people in 2031 will be consuming the equivalent of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest.
Their paper consumption at U.S. per capita levels will be double the current world production. There go the world's forests. Cars: three cars for every four people in China? That's 1.1 billion cars. The current world fleet is 800 million cars. Oil consumption? Ninety-nine million barrels of oil a day. Current world production is 84 million barrels a day, and it's probably never going to be much more than that.
So what China is teaching us is that the Western economic model — fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy — is not going to work for China. If it doesn't work for China, it won't work for India, which is projected to have an even larger population by 2031. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in the developing countries who are also dreaming the American dream. And perhaps most importantly, in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same oil, grain and steel, it won't work for us either.
WN: What kind of response did you get at Davos this year?
Brown: The China material hits everyone. You can go through it at the beginning of a talk in three minutes or so. It doesn't take long for anyone to lay it out.
WN: At least until the 2006 midterm congressional elections, it seems unlikely that there will be any big progress in Washington on fighting climate change. How would you rate the political climate right now?
Brown: One of (the) most interesting things happening right now is the movement by mayors in this country — I think, at last count, 260 of them — to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. This began with mayor of Seattle. He was the first. But it's become a national political movement. It includes all the larger cities from Los Angeles to New York. It's interesting because if you're looking at this as a political scientist, what you see is a grass-roots political revolution that has emerged in response to the leadership vacuum on the climate issue in Washington. The interesting question is where is this going to take the country? It's difficult to answer. But I don't think it's just an isolated development.
WN: Regarding alternative fuels, you write, "In a competitive world market for crop-based ethanol, the future belongs to sugar cane and switchgrass." In Brazil in 2004, you point out, half of the country's sugar cane crop went to making ethanol. And that ethanol is produced at 60 cents per gallon.
Brown: Let me talk about corn versus sugar cane. The great advantage of sugar cane is that the sugar cane itself goes to the distillery. The stalks are run through crushers like on the old-fashioned washing machines. They squeeze syrup out of the sugar cane stalks. Then what's left is a very fibrous material called bagasse. It is burned to provide the heat for the fermentation process that yields the ethanol.
In this country, probably every ethanol distillery for corn uses natural gas. Natural gas itself is becoming a scarce fuel. And it takes a lot of it, and so before you know it, your gas bill is counting for a large part of the market value of the ethanol itself. And so with switchgrass there are some of the same things at work.
WN: What is switchgrass, and how is it made into fuel?
Brown: The key with switchgrass — converting cellulosic material into ethanol for fuel — is getting a process that is economic and therefore energy efficient, which corn-based ethanol is not.
Switchgrass grows well under semi-arid conditions. It's a deep-rooted grass that provides a lot of ground cover, so it's a good conservation crop. And you don't have to plow the land and replant it each year. It's a perennial. You plant it and just mow it a few times each year and it keeps coming up again.
If we can get the process where it needs to be, then switchgrass becomes a viable option. The process that would be used requires a substantial amount of heat. So although the biological yield per acre is high, the amount of energy required to produce the ethanol is substantial.
WN: What did you think of President Bush's recent statements about hybrids and wind and solar energy?
Brown: Despite the talk, there's not been any major commitment of resources or any policy adjustments. If you want to read something interesting, read those couple pages (of Plan B 2.0) on the mobilization during World War II — when Roosevelt banned the sale of private automobiles in the United States. For nearly three years. That was his response to Pearl Harbor, mobilizing an enormous arms-production effort. But Bush's response to 9/11 was, "Go shopping."
WN: Your book also talks about the on-again-off-again history of the U.S. wind-energy tax cuts. Is there any prospect for making these permanent?
Brown: Not necessarily permanent, but to extend for five years or better yet 10 years would be highly desirable. That would provide the security to get turbine manufacturers to expand their capacity. They're reluctant to now, because they'll make an investment, and the existing tax credit ends at the end of next year. But there's some evidence that we're beginning to go beyond the tax credit now and that some investors are not so concerned about that. As a general matter, I think we ought to get those tax credits extended just so we can maintain a level playing field with fossil fuels.
WN: You advocate not introducing new tax burdens but rather switching taxes from income to gas. Is there political support on Capitol Hill for this?
Brown: There's never really been anyone who's been pushing for this sort of thing. It's been a real disappointment that something so fundamental to reaching our environmental goals has gotten so little support from the major environmental groups. They get terribly excited about drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. But some of these organizations don't have a single person working on tax restructuring.
WN: Is a carbon tax realizable in the United States?
Brown: Yes. One of the interesting things about the current situation where oil companies are writing energy and climate policy for the administration is how quickly things can change. As one who's been in Washington for a while, let me just flash back 10 years ago: I say to you that I think the tobacco industry is going to cave. And further I think they're going to compensate state governments for past costs of treating smoking-related ailments to the tune of $251 billion. Almost $1,000 for every person in the U.S. You wouldn't have even written that down, because it was so far beyond what we could imagine. Yet it was November 1997 when that's exactly what happened.
WN: You cite the example of Germany's tax system. Is that a good role model, do you think, to follow?
Brown: It is. But there's a better model now. Sweden in 2001 launched a major tax restructuring that comes to a couple thousand dollars per person. They're phasing it in over several years. They are systematically reducing income taxes and raising taxes mostly on energy-related things. It could be automotive fuel or carbon emissions more broadly. Electricity. Taxes on automobiles, and so forth. They are now talking about being the world's first oil-free economy within 15 years. Oil will be out of the economy entirely. That's a major step forward.
It may well be that the leadership will come from individual countries just deciding to go ahead and do things, realizing that the Kyoto Protocol is just not anywhere near enough. What Sweden is doing could emerge as a role model for other countries to follow it. Whereas when the topic of a gasoline tax comes up it's often as an additional tax, I think we need to make it clear that we're not increasing taxes but rather that we're restructuring taxes.
WN: I notice that Ted Turner has a been a big backer of Plan B. What specifically was his involvement?
Brown: Ted is one of the world's most committed environmentalists. After he read the original Plan B in 2003, he called and said he wanted to distribute it to the world's key decision makers — heads of state, cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEOs. He distributed it at Davos that year. In the end, it was 3,569 copies or so that he bought and that he distributed with a note saying, "I read this. It's important stuff. You need to read it too."
WN: You say in the book that we need a real "environmental Churchill." Are there any candidates for that job on the political scene today?
Brown: There are some people who understand this. One of the potential candidates for the next presidential election is (Sen.) John McCain. He does understand this. He's been speaking out on this for several years now. I think if he were in a leadership position, he probably would take some major steps in the right direction. It's also interesting that there are people who are beginning to see these things. For example, (Sen.) Pete Domenici from New Mexico, who's been chairman of Senate Energy Committee, steadfastly opposed including fuel efficiency standards in the energy bill that passed in the beginning of August. A week after Katrina, he said, "I made a mistake." He said, "We should have had fuel efficiency standards in that bill." He said, "We now need to put together a new piece of legislation that will include fuel efficiency standards."
You know what's so interesting about Katrina — and I dont think as a country we fully processed it yet. The numbers are about 500,000 people who left New Orleans, who evacuated those Gulf Coast towns. What I think we're seeing is the first large-scale flow of climate refugees.
Those of us who track these global environmental issues thought it would be Tuvalu or the Maldives Islands or some other island country that at high tide would get hit by a powerful storm surge and get wiped away. But it's the Gulf Coast of the United States. The thinking is that people are all going to go back. But I'm not so sure of it. The backdrop has changed, too, because we now know that a storm with the destructive capacity of Katrina is possible. We know that this past summer when we had a hurricane season that seemed like it would never end, we know that the surface waters in the Gulf of Mexico are the hottest they've ever been. And we also know that sea level is rising and at an accelerating rate.
The other thing that's contributing to the angst is that in the past, like in Galveston in 1900, we saw these (mega-hurricanes) as isolated events. Something would happen once and then things would go back to normal. But now there's no normal to go back to, because everything is in flux. I think at least subconsciously that's probably influencing decisions by people who left at the time of Katrina and may explain why a lot of them will never go back.