Wired's call to environmentalists

The June issue of Wired Magazine just landed in my mailbox, and the cover story is going to be an interesting one for EcoGeeks.

I'd had a bit of a heads-up from Wired that this was going to be a feature, though I didn't know it was going to get the cover. And I knew from the start that I'd have a good time picking the article apart. And now the time has come.

The gist of the story is that, if we're going to take global warming seriously, we need to re-think environmentalism.

And while I agree with the overarching theme -- simply stated at the head of the article "The war on greenhouse gases is too important to be left to the environmentalists" -- I'll just be taking the mag's 10 points of contention and making my own additions...

1. Live in cities: TRUE
   The pastoral life has significantly more carbon impact than city life. However, I will say that city dwellers in the U.S. tend to have larger carbon footprints because they're more likely to travel on frequent plane trips. So y'all city folk shouldn't feel too good about yourselves, until you can cut back on the flying.


2. A/C is OK: meh
   OK, yes, it takes less energy to cool a space than to heat it. But I'll bet Wired isn't going to ask everyone in the world to move to the equator. It's not as if people in cold climates have a choice about whether to heat their houses.


3. Organics are not the answer: True, but neither is non-organic.
   Wired is happy to point out that organic food creates more carbon per pound than non-organic. But the magazine doesn't talk about huge areas of ocean that are dead due to agricultural runoff or the ecological effects of massive pesticide use. The real answer here is to decrease meat production and de-industrialize agriculture to increase yields through care, instead of through force.


4. Farm the forest: FALSE
   To say that we're not harvesting enough timber in America is pure foolishness. Wood sequesters CO2, that's fantastic, and, yes, it does so faster when trees are younger. But the vast majority of forest in America is already managed as timber farms (especially where forests are most productive, in the southern half of the U.S.) ... so there's really nothing more we can do. To increase timber harvest in areas not currently being harvested would simply mean the destruction of the last few remaining pristine forests we have. The ecological implications far outweigh the carbon benefits.


5. China is the solution: TRUE, absolutely
   That's all we're going to say, to find out what Wired (and I) believe, you'll have to buy the magazine.


6. Accept genetic engineering
   We're staying neutral on this one for now.


7. Carbon trading doesn't work: FALSE
   The only large-scale emissions trading scheme that we have to judge with (the American cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide and other emissions) has been a gigantic success. The cap has been met, lowered, met again, and then lowered again and met again. To say that a carbon cap-and-trade system won't work because Kyoto hasn't worked is, once again, foolish. Kyoto has no enforcement mechanism, and was, from the beginning, an extremely inadequate cap. All proposals on the table in the U.S. right now have two things Kyoto doesn't have: 1) Real, significant reduction targets, and 2) TEETH.


8. Embrace nuclear power
   From day one, EcoGeek has remained neutral on nuclear. And that is where we remain.


9. Used cars, not hybrids: Only if you want a 1994 Geo Metro
   Wired's premise here presents a problem. The only choices offered are a 2008 Prius, a 1994 Geo Metro, or a 1997 Tercel. In this case, the obvious winner is the Geo, followed by the Tercel. Unfortunately, these aren't the real choices. People buying a new car do not want a 1997 Tercel. It would certainly be better for the environment, but people would like something with, y'know, a CD player. And airbags maybe. Any car containing a nickel-based battery will have a large production footprint. But as we switch over to li-ion, the environmental costs of creating a hybrid will drop dramatically.


10. Prepare for the worst: Absolutely, without a doubt, really frighteningly true.

The article is definitely worth reading ... critically. And I appreciate the work that went into it, and we only really disagree on three points, which is nice.

The main point of contention between Wired and EcoGeek is that there is more to our planet than the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

The cover kinda pisses me off. I mean ... "Screw Spotted Owls"? For real guys, the amount of carbon that could be saved by cutting down the last refuges of the spotted owl is not going to make a dent. And the lack of mention of the success of previous cap-and-trade systems seems like a giant hole in the article as well.

But to say that global warming is the only environmental issue is foolishness. We have a whole planet to deal with here, and while it's nice to have a unifying issue, cutting down all the forests, and poisoning the land with petrochemicals is not going to increase our long-term sustainability.

I'm glad to hear that the massive problem of global warming is being taken up beyond environmentalism. But if we end up solving the climate crisis by destroying the planet, we're all going to feel pretty stupid.