4 Questions

A good friend (and personal hero) of mine was recently able to meet E. O. Wilson, “the world’s most famous
biological theorist since Darwin”. Ed’s take on the oil spill went something like this:

The oil spill is like the economic meltdown, we depend too much on black boxes. The complexity of our society has moved past our ability to comprehend the consequences of our actions, and it would be foolish to blame bad guys, even though they are out there, for situations that are a result of our own daily choices.

(Ed and Pat – pics or it didn’t happen…)

A different friend of mine recently sent me an email with 4 questions. We were discussing the gulf oil spill and the realities that face human beings over the next century. His background is biology, mine is engineering and I envy him because his emotional connection to the natural world is much stronger than mine.

1. When all of the Gulf is irreparably degraded, what will be the motivation not to exploit it to the fullest extent with no regard for environmental, cultural, or social impact?

I think that the Gulf catastrophe will spurn people to take a more serious interest in the environmental aspects of the Gulf. I doubt it will open us up to further exploitation (beyond what is already taking place). If anything, it should act to ease the struggles of putting a price on carbon and trying to reduce our reliance on oil. Until things land on our doorsteps we are unmotivated to do anything about it. It took 9 years for them to agree to the first off-shore wind farm in the USA. NINE YEARS. I was listening to an interview with one of the Martha’s Vineyard opposers stating that one of the main reasons they opposed the wind farm was because there would be a tanker with transformer oil out on the water that could burst. Imagine, he said, if the oil escaped and washed up on their beaches. Well I think that argument won’t hold much (oily)water now. It will be hard to argue against wind farms when the alternative is the destruction of an entire region of America.

Recently I’ve become a low-carbon champion. I’ve always argued that dilution is the solution to pollution and that the engineers will be our saviors from current/future calamities. However, engineers are also responsible for building a sustainable world. The Institution of Civil Engineers recently changed their charter to read: “Civil Engineers at the heart of society, delivering sustainable development through knowledge, skills and professional expertise.” Sustainable is the big word they’ve dropped into there. I am the same engineer I was back then in that I believe that engineers are responsible for delivering a well diluted world. However, I no longer expect engineers to be the savior for the world’s green house gas crisis, and I no longer think the world will be able to dilute itself sufficiently.

I recently attended a debate about London’s low carbon emission requirements and goals and whether or not they were achievable. It was hosted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Civil Engineers and had some of the world’s leading climate scientists and engineers. The consensus was that London doesn’t stand a chance of meeting its carbon reduction targets. In order to reach targets there would have to be a massive shift in both the way power is generated (we would need Nuclear Plants coming on-line now to meet the rates and currently they’re still arguing about when/how/where to build them) and in the way people live and function. The most necessary change was in people’s attitudes and decisions. One of the speakers didn’t have a refrigerator. Ask yourself if you could live without your fridge? I would struggle.

So I calculated my carbon footprint. You can see it below:

The average footprint in the UK is actually 9.4 according to Wikipedia and the USA is 18.99. I’ve got 2 tonnes in flights which at a push I could reduce but am not really willing to limit. I may try to offset that carbon if possible but it will depend on how expensive it is. I’ve also got a couple of tonnes in household power generation which a shift in our supply of power would affect. However, my biggest contributor is the “Secondary” items such as clothing, electronics and food. The decision to buy local produce, second-hand clothes, curb my flight usage, stop eating heavily packaged and processed food and most horribly decrease my love of the latest electronics is a personal one. The Engineer is not going to be able to force anyone to stop making their own choices. The Scientist is not going to be able to point out future theoretical scenarios that will frighten us enough to change without it landing on our doorstep.

I don’ t think that the destruction of the Gulf will result in a more massive destruction as a kind of open season. I just think that people react to what they perceive as imminent.

To put it another way, I don’t think there is any scientific evidence that would prove that Katrina was the result of climate change. However, there is plenty of scientific evidence that suggests if we don’t stop a global accumulation of green house gases there will be a more likely chance of Katrina type events, and therefore a greater frequency of them. This frightens me because I know that current infrastructure won’t be able to handle an increased probability of extreme events. As I write this I know that there will be those of you who disagree with the increased probability of extreme events and how our current choices may affect future climate. Once we’ve accumulated enough toxins to affect the global climate on such a wide scale it will be on our doorstep, but unfortunately it will also be too late to change.

2. If evolutionary behavior conforms to principles of self-preservation and individual perpetuation, how then can toxic environmental degradation ever be avoided?

I believe in risk assessments. I write them all the time to determine if a development should be allowed to be built within a flood plain. Sometimes I write that the chances of a catastrophic flood are extremely slim and although the consequences would be very high, the development should still be allowed to take place with the provision of certain measures that would either reduce the risk or ease the clean-up after an event.

I know for a fact that BP write risk assessments. The implications of an event like this were understood, and it was agreed that there should be safety precautions (considerably expensive precautions) to keep the risks minimal. But in the end a risk is only ever equal to the probability of an event occurring multiplied by the likely impact of the event. What sort of weight were they giving to a large-scale oil purge from a massive well? Did they/do they think that the environmental damage and degradation are so massive that the small probability would still result in a huge risk? If they didn’t then I would suggest that they will now. I would expect the entire way they understand their risks to change after this. Arguably too late for the Gulf Coast though.

3. If, as seems to have been the case for the last several million years, evolution operates on a species scale, what is the role of toxic environmental degradation, habitat destruction, and fragmentation in driving adaptation? Has anyone ever analyzed genetic diversity within a species as a function of habitat loss/fragmentation to determine if contiguous intact habitat is actually detrimental to adaptive processes?

I don’t know the answer to this one. I’ll leave it for you biologists. I would think that the issue is with timescales i.e. humans have sped the process up to a rate that is unsustainable?

4. What difference do these questions make if the world is ending soon (2012 ha ha ha) and we’re all going to a better place? However, if this is in fact true, will we stand up to scrutiny of our actions to steward creation or can we be excused for ‘senioritis’ at the end of the existence of our species?

I think this one also comes back to the idea of an accumulation of toxins in the environment. If the world was ending in 2012 would it mean we could pull the plug on every oil well in the world and just let them spew into the oceans without any remorse? The events like Exxon Valdez and the Deep Horizon are an excellent way of describing what the likely effect of an unhealthy amount of any substance would do to the environment. It is exactly these types of events that should be highlighted as the reason for reducing our accumulative effect on the planet.

Sorry if I’ve ranted. The short answer is that I’m annoyed at our insistence on oil but I understand why it is necessary (still necessary) to drill offshore in the gulf. I also understand that it will be up to the Ocean to sort this crisis out. We will not be able to affect the breakdown of the oil with bacteria or booms anymore. It is way past that. Luckily the ocean/the sun is equipped with all its own devices for breaking down volatile organics. However, there will be collateral damage that we probably won’t understand or appreciate for a very long time. Again, that’s one for the biologists.

It is time for those nuclear scientists/engineers to start on those nuclear developments, I just hope they make sure that whoever is in charge is writing a realistic risk assessment.

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