Green impotence, or the "every solution creates a problem" problem
Recently, I've been interviewing numerous people who are involved in the complicated business of sustainability. Some are engineers, others are designers, and still others are end-users. The one thing that they've all noted, again and again, is that every green solution seems to create a new problem.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about diesel cars being retrofitted to run on vegetable oil. Basically, this technology means that refuse from fast food restaurants, which previously ended up dumped in landfills or contaminating the water supply, is now used to power cars. As soon as the post was up, I heard from people who noted that there is a potential vegetable oil shortage, that some fast food joints are now charging for oil, and that the IRS may come down on people who use waste oil to power their cars.
In other news, some naysayers recently discovered that compact fluorescent light bulbs, which are being hailed as an easy way to save huge amounts of electricity, have a downside. They contain mercury, which isn't safe for landfills, as it could leach into the water supply, poisoning us all and leaving us more jittery than the Mad Hatter on a half gallon of espresso.
Over the past few months, several companies announced their intention to use organic garbage to produce ethanol, which could be used to power cars. Basically, they will do so by fermenting the trash and distilling the produce. Of course, this will potentially lower the supply of trash that is available for composting, burning, and other renewable-resource projects.
Whether intentional or not, the unspoken message of these critiques is that we are safer and better off sticking with our current, flawed technologies, rather than pursuing new methods that might be flawed in other ways. Because of the critiques that I've mentioned above, I've heard of people turning their back on WVO propulsion, refusing to switch to compact fluorescents, and so forth. After all, as problematic as regular light bulbs and pricey gasoline can be, they are the devil we know, and are considerably less frightening than the devil we don't.
The truth, though, is that every technology, no matter how "green," has its downsides. If, tomorrow, we somehow figured out how to fulfill all of humanity's energy needs with farts and banana peels, you could count on two things happening: we'd have a shortage of beans and an excess of potassium. And, of course, someone would use those problems as an excuse for going back to fossil fuels.
Rather than convincing us to give up our quest for sustainability, the problems of our new technologies should, ultimately, show us the amazing progress that we are making. I look forward to the day when, instead of dumping waste oil into the water supply, fast food joints charge consumers to fill up with WVO. I can hardly wait until energy companies are fighting each other over who gets access to our garbage. And the mercury problem? Well, haven't we had that same problem for decades? After all, conventional fluorescent lights use mercury, too! When I was young, kids used to throw rocks at old tubes just to watch them explode, yet, somehow, the world is still here.
The other day, I was talking to the head of a prominent green engineering firm. He was working on a zero-carbon footprint building in Massachusetts, and told me that, were everyone to use the advances that he was using, the price would be untenable, and the resources would run out. He made it pretty clear that we can't all do the exact same things to fix the world. Every seemingly-bottomless resource that we find is, itself, limited, and the solution that works when ten people use it becomes a problem when ten million people use it. That having been said, our job (and our best hope for the future) is to develop as many solutions as we can. The other option is to become overwhelmed by the endless array of pitfalls, get frightened about the next big disaster, and do nothing.
The engineer told me another thing that stuck in my mind: every little bit helps.
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