Seeking a low-carbon future.

AuthorBlock, Ben
PositionWORLDWATCH FIRST PERSON - Essay

As I traveled through the German and Danish countryside this past August, driving past forest corridors and harvested fields, the landscape seemed not to have changed for centuries. The exception, of course, was the wind farms. I spotted the spinning white towers with nearly every glance from my window. On several occasions, a single farm had installed more wind turbines than my entire home state of Maryland.

Along with six other U.S. journalists, I was participating in a tour of the countries' low-carbon advances. The trip provided a glimpse of how a renewable energy future may look. My ideal vision would line hilltops and seashores with windmills, power homes with sunlight, and heat farmhouses with energy from cow manure. I realize the vision is a bit rosy, even for Germany and Denmark. Although renewable energies such as wind, solar, and biogas are spreading, these technologies are too frequently beyond financial reach.

Regardless, we need to reach further. In the nearly two years since I began reporting on sustainability issues for World Watch, the world has lived through an energy crisis, a food crisis, and a financial crisis. Clearly, our business-as-usual strategies are failing to provide security and sustenance for all. Meanwhile, climate change, quite possibly the most daunting of today's challenges, is threatening to dismantle our way of life. We are currently on a development path that would heat the world's atmosphere by 5[degrees]C or more. Immediate emissions reductions are necessary if we are to limit global warming to 2[degrees]C, the stated goal of the industrialized world's leaders. Even so, "two degrees Centigrade will mean several small island states will go under. We will lose large coastal cities. It's by no means harmless," I was told by Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

My life of comfort has surely been part of the problem. When I built outdoor forts as a child, I scrounged up all our extension cords and carried the TV to my back yard. Society's three-meal norm did not quite fit with my gluttonous mind: the occasional buffet meal was a calling to consume five-plateful servings, if not more. My recent European travels contribute to climate change, as well. Each flight over the Atlantic pumped nearly a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

I have made an...

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