Measuring Footprints, Musings around Earth Day

Imagine, if you will, that you lived on a farm and you had to live completely off of the land. That is to say, all the food you ate, all the materials you used, and all the items you made had to come from a square patch of land around your house. For most of recent human history this was not an imaginary exercise but a reality. Now, if you had to guess, how much land would you need? How many acres would you require to support yourself?

This is an interesting question since it involves thinking about food, about fuel usage (you are planning to cook, heat and drive, aren't you?) and about travel. In essence you are trying to ascertain what ecologists call your "footprint," the amount of land necessary to generate and grow everything that you need to live - and to live your life.

Recently I went to a website that helped me calculate my Ecological Footprint (www.my footprint.org). It is basically an electronic questionnaire that calculated from my responses how much land was needed to support my lifestyle. It turned out that my footprint was much bigger than I thought it would be: 16 acres. In other words, I require a minimum of 16 acres of usable land to provide all the food and resources I need in my life - and that is just for myself - if I then added the other four people in my household, the acreage would increase almost five-fold.

I thought this was a big number until I read that the average American needs 24 acres to support his or her lifestyle. This number is especially significant when we realize that the rest of the "First World" (the G-8 nations) get by on 10-12 acres per person in terms of resources. And this is to say nothing of the 2 billion poorest people on the planet who eek by on 4-6 acres or less. Indeed, according to www.myfootprint.org, if everyone in the world used the same amount of resources as me, we would need 3.7 planet earths to provide the necessary acreage.

We live in a world that can provide approximately 4.7 biologically productive acres of land for each person now living. At 24 acres per person, we live in a country that uses far more than its fair share. At some point, this will have to change and Earthday is one day each year when we can celebrate and honor the changes that we all need to make. Starting now and from here on out, sustainability must become a part of our spirituality. Maybe we should have a new corollary to the Golden Rule: Consider others, even as you consume those things that you use for yourself.

Sins of Emission

In the United States, heat waves lasting four days or more have nearly tripled in the last 50 years. Tropical diseases are migrating north, with West Nile virus detected in each of the 48 continental states. The amount of drinking water in the Western US has decreased since it depends on the seasonal snow pack melting and there is less and less snow. Since 1900, the amount of pollen produced by ragweed in this country has doubled as a result of warmer weather. By 2100, it is estimated that one quarter of the known plant and animal species could be facing extinction as result of changes to their natural habitat. According to NASA, 2005 was the warmest year ever on record. These are some of the implications of climate change that usually don’t make the headlines.

I have given up debating the reality of global warming. The question all of us should be asking is not IF it is happening but what will be its extent and what are we as a country and as individuals going to do about it. Is the science 100% certain? No. That is not how science works. But if you went to the doctor and she informed you that you were in danger of having a heart attack and that there was a 98% chance that your condition was the result of your lifestyle, what would you do? The same holds true with climate change. The evidence is overwhelming that burning fossil fuels and the resulting increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is having a dramatic effect on the life support systems of the earth.

As thoughtful religious people, this should worry us. We have a new category of sin all of the sudden: the sin of emission. In a very real and direct way, the lifestyle of the average American is stealing the future away from coming generations of people. This is especially the case since the United States comprises only 5% of the world’s population, but is responsible for at least 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Do we have a moral obligation to address these issues and find ways to move towards a more sustainable use of natural resources? Is there an ethical imperative to act now to save millions of people around the world who will lose their lives if the average American keeps using energy and polluting the way we do? If we believe in the Golden Rule, the answer is undeniably yes.

Clearly, there is a place for religion in all this. After all, one of the most important things that religions do is to remind us to behave righteously when our inclination is to behave selfishly. Houses of worship all over this nation need to call the people of the United States to conscience. I believe this is just now starting to occur. Religious communities and organizations all over the country are beginning to make sustainability a part of their spirituality. In doing so, there is a chance that the enormous societal transformation that needs to happen in this country actually will. Living more lightly on this planet is not just a good idea, it must become an essential part of what it means to be an ethical human being.

We can't do just one thing

In 1996, while I was in divinity school, I had the opportunity to take an unusual course. It was an interdisciplinary class offered at Harvard Law School that was team-taught by four professors: a microbiologist, a law professor, a comparative religions scholar and a professor of ethics. The class was called “Topics in Environmental Ethics.” It had a profound impact on me. It forever transformed the way that my faith life influences my everyday life. The class was an energetic seminar with several well-known guest lecturers coming in to talk about their area of study.

During this semester, we studied the growing environmental crisis in this country and what ethical systems got us into the current situation and more importantly what ethical systems are going to get us out. You may not think that ethics have a lot to do with the environment. However, ethics deal with what is right and wrong in our actions, and it is our actions both as individuals and societies that have caused the dire environmental problems which we now face.

Now, if I had to distill the implications of that class for me into one phrase, this is what it would be: it is virtually impossible to do just one thing in this world. Every action that we make has both intended and unintended consequences. While we may be focused on one desired outcome of an action, there will always be other effects that we may not be aware of or foresee. If there is anything we have learned from Twentieth Century biology and physics, it is that we live amidst a complex, and interconnected world; one where small actions here can have enormous effects far away. For every action, there is almost always one - if not several - unintended reactions because we live amidst a great huge web of interconnections—whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.

Allow me to tell you a true story to illustrate my point. The story is called “Operation Cat Drop.” It is the founding parable for the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. The story takes place on Borneo, that big island located along the equator just north of Australia and south of Southeast Asia. The nations of Malaysia and Indonesia share it today. Well, in the early 1950s, the Dayak people, the indigenous people of Borneo, suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization was called in. They had a solution. As some of you know malaria is a disease that is spread by mosquitoes. Thus, the World Health Organization, sprayed large amounts of the pesticide DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. Well, the mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good.

But there were some side effects. There is a reason that DDT was made illegal in many countries including our own in the 1960’s. Among the first side effects on Borneo was that the thatch roofs of people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT had an unforeseen and unintentional effect. In addition to killing the mosquitoes, the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars in that area on the island. When there were no wasps to control the number of thatch eating caterpillars, all of the sudden people’s thatch roofs caved in. Worse yet, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, small lizards indigenous to the island. And these geckos were in turn eaten by cats. As the cats started to die off, the rats, whose numbers had been controlled by the cats, flourished. The people were all of the sudden threatened by outbreaks of typhus and even the plague, diseases associated with rats. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization – remember this is a true story - was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo. It was called Operation Cat-Drop. And all because the World Health Organization wanted to control the spread of malaria by spraying for mosquitoes. Every action invariably has unintended consequences. You can never do just one thing. This fundamental reality of our existence is what we celebrate and hold up on Earth Day.

On Wednesday, March 21, Al Gore testified before Committtees of both the Senate and the House about Climate Change and energy policy. Near the end of his presentation, he presented a list of 10 policy recommendations for reducing CO2 emissions and increasing this country's energy indepence, something that very soon will be regarded as the partiotic duty of every American (IMHO). Here's the list of 10:

1. Immediately freeze carbon at the existing level; then implement programs to reduce it 90 percent by 2050.

2. Reduce taxes on employment and production, instead taxing pollution (especially CO2). These pollution taxes would raise the same amount of money, but make us more competitive by encouraging employment while discouraging pollution.

3. A portion of the revenues must be earmarked for low-income and middle-class people who will have a difficult time making this transition.

4. Negotiate a strong global treaty to replace Kyoto, while working toward de facto compliance with Kyoto. Move the start date of this new treaty forward from 2012 to 2010, so the next president can start to act immediately, rather than wasting time trying to pass Kyoto right before it expires. We have to try to get China and India to participate in the treaty. If they don't immediately participate, we have to move forward with the treaty regardless, trusting that they will join sooner rather than later.

5. Impose a moratorium on construction of any new coal-fired power plant not compatible with carbon capture and sequestration.

6. Develop an "electranet" - a smart grid that allows individual homeowners and small businesses to create green power and sell their excess power to the utility companies at a fair price. Just as widely distributed information processing led to a large new surge of productivity, we need a law that allows widely distributed energy generation to be sold into the grid, at a rate determined not by the utility companies, but by regulation. The goal is to create a grid that does not require huge, centralized power plants.

7. Raise CAFE standards for cars and trucks as part of a comprehensive package. Cars and trucks are a large part of the problem, but coal and buildings must be addressed at the same time.

8. Set a date for the ban of incandescent light bulbs that gives industry time to create alternatives. If the date is set, industry will meet this challenge.

9. Create Connie Mae, a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Connie Mae will defer the costs of things like insulation and energy-efficient windows that cut carbon but are often not used by builders or renovators because they add to the upfront costs of homes, only paying for themselves after several years of energy savings.

10. The SEC should require disclosure of carbon emissions in corporate reporting.