Can efficiency and renewables stop global warming? Consume, consume, consume.

• Author: Fitz, Don
• Position: 80% Less Energy - Critical essay

Would someone please tell the Sierra Club Exec Board that the idea of an "environmentally friendly car" makes as much sense as a "non-violent death penalty?" While the vast majority of those concerned with global warming consider reduction of unneeded production to be at the core of a sane policy, the Sierra Club has endorsed a plan that includes virtually no role for conservation.

In January 2007, the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) released the 180 page document, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. [1] Typical of big enviro analyses, it assumes a corporate dominated growth economy. Its novelty is its highly technical studies which claim to compute how much C[O.sub.2] emissions can be offset by energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy.

Teaming up with ASES to present the study to Congress, the Sierra Club enthusiastically wrote that "energy efficiency and renewables alone can achieve a 60-80% reduction in global warming emissions by 2050." [2] Adding the key word "alone" in the first paragraph of its release indicated that the Sierra Club wanted to be sure that politicians and corporate donors understood that it has no intention of criticizing the large quantity of unnecessary junk created by corporate America.

The ASES/Sierra report presents global warming as if to downplay its dangers. The introduction documents the need to limit greenhouse-induced temperature increases to 1 degree C above 2000 levels, which means limiting atmospheric C[O.sub.2] to 450-500 parts per million. Otherwise, there will be massive sea level rises and species extinction.

Those who do not read appendices might get the impression that global warming could be stopped once it reaches this point and people see how bad it is. Of course, this is not so. The most insidious aspect of global warming is that rising temperatures and C[O.sub.2] levels will reach a point of no return. It is only in the appendix that the reader learns that once those levels are reached, the earth will be so changed that temperature rise will be self-perpetuating even if industrial activity were to grind to a halt.

What ain't there

Solar power, wind power and energy efficiency (EE) play vital roles in reducing C[O.sub.2]. The rub is the role of conservation, or reduction of total production. For "deep greens," the most basic goal is social change that would foster the reduction of energy. For "shallow greens," conservation is, at best, something to give lip service to while tunnel visioning on eco-gadgets.

More blatant than the typical big enviro analysis, the ASES/Sierra report trivializes conservation as "doing without" or "deprivation." [3] It presents a vast array of technological playthings, some of which are quite good and some of which are less than environmental. What is most revealing is what it does not include. It discusses transportation without using the word "bicycle" or "walking."

It looks at efficient building design with no discussion of using empty buildings or designing buildings to last longer than 50 years. The report that Carl Pope boasts is "now the official Sierra Club global warming strategy" has an extended discussion of home heating and cooling without mentioning the word "tree." [4] Descriptions of wondrous ways to make EE buildings don't let on that manufacturing a ton of cement creates a ton of C[O.sub.2]. [5]

In the analysis of energy efficiency, the phrase "organic agriculture" never appears, there is no mention of the massive use of petrochemicals or factory farms and there is zero concern with the fact that the average American food item travels 1300 miles from farm to plate. [6] The strange approach to EE does not question the cancerous growth of household appliances, planned obsolescence, or corporate creation of artificial desires for unneeded products.

The authors have no comment on enormous waste in medical care or huge insurance buildings which drain energy while creating nothing of value. The chapters on transportation, such as plug-in hybrid electric cars, ignore the fact that air traffic in the United Kingdom will double by 2030, at which time it will have more effect on global warming than automobiles. [7] The call for a 10-fold increase in biomass says nothing about effects of monocultures, deforestation, genetic engineering or pesticide usage.

Those approaches left out of the big enviro plan for energy efficiency share something: they are common sense low tech or no tech solutions which involve reducing the quantity of production and energy use with no decrease in the quality of life. They have something else in common: they do not involve the swelling of corporate profits via increased manufacture.

When is energy efficiency not efficient?

Almost as much as solar and wind power, energy efficiency is becoming the unquestioned mantra of solutions to global warming. Refrigerators that use 75% less energy are a plus. Even better would be the German-designed Passivhaus, which is so well insulated that it has zero heating and cooling systems. [8]

EE is good. But projections about what it can offer are sometimes hallucinogenic. This is the case with the ASES/Sierra claim that EE can offset global warming by 57%. [9]

The first limitation on EE is the old maxim that the more parts there are to a system, the more parts there are to break. The ASES/Sierra report reads like an encyclopedia...