TAYLOR PARKER
  • Home
  • CV
  • Opp's
  • Journal
Contact:

Just a little conservation journal...

I generally focus on conservation issues effecting biodiversity, land use/abuse, research, and job opportunities that I have come across. Most of the opportunities come from the Opps page and you can click on the button below to take you there.
Opps

The Role of Energy in Our Future

5/14/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
Mr. Nordhaus says this is the vision of the post-apocalyptic world I fear. It is a lived experience for many and to get us past this, energy needs to be worked with rather than fought.
“The great Existential Environmental Threat that we keep hearing about where we all live in a post-apocalyptic world is basically what the average Somali lives like now. What that is is poverty, what that is is energy poverty.” Mr. Nordhaus, Chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, ended his presentation at last night’s Aquatic Academy with this answer to a participant’s question. That startled me. That startled me partially because I believe that he is right in asserting that globally we are striving for more than that. It also startled me because I can’t imagine that I, as a wealthy Westerner, am so blind to not understand that that feared world is not one of a lack of (or polluted) natural resources but a world that is too poor to access those natural resources. That is too simplistic a view for the plight of an East African famine but it does spark a thought within my head that the causes are only partially environmental and more a case of tribal terrorism, gangsterism, corporate and foreign exploitation, wealth inequality, political corruption, the all-too biological characteristic of congregating and reproducing en masse, and the geographic luck of the draw as far as natural resources go. It makes me think that with better technologies of political development and more wealth for more people, the environmental concerns are exactly what Mr. Shellenberger described as “trade-offs” that will be addressed.

Mr. Nordhaus followed Mr. Steve Chazen, president of Occidental Petroleum. Both individuals shared that there is a growing global trend of oil and gas consumption that will not stop anytime soon. This has nothing to say about morality or whether it is “right or wrong” that this trend is growing but that it is the reality. In fact, the only morality presented by either speaker was whether it is “right” to deny anybody in the world access to energy needs that are available to everyone else.

I had to write down my question because I have difficulty understanding how I feel about this information. Here is the question that took me four weeks to articulate: “To get to a ‘green’ planet that addresses environmental concerns and raises the basic needs for 9 billion people, a cheap and clean energy is required. With our best science now, your position is that cheap and clean energy is nuclear and solar. To get there, to get away from high emissions, we need a good transition fuel and that is shale gas or fracking. Mr. Shellenberger mentioned last week that we need to consciously address the “environmental trade-offs” along the way but if we continue down this path, wont the environmental trade-offs become too large? Wont events like the Deepwater blowout and Fukishima hit a tipping point that will destroy the Earth before we get to that point?” His response was perfect: there is little to no scientific evidence that those large-scale events did much lasting harm. Additionally, there is little evidence that there has ever been a tipping point that we as humans haven’t been able to innovate ourselves past. Dr.  Schubel carried the response further by saying that the organics from agriculture coming down the Mississippi for over two hundred years has done far, far worse to the Gulf than the Deepwater blowout. His response is that we’ve found that nature is not fragile and we have found that it responds well to anomalies and resiliently bounces back but does not respond well to chronic problems.

Dr. Schubel ended by saying that environmentalists are losing this effort and we are losing it big.    My question to that is: what are we losing then? And that goes to the heart of the discussion presented by this Aquatic Academy. These new paradigms are waking up to a reality that no matter what, consumer trends are not changing and even if they do, it is absolute fantasy, a mathematical impossibility to believe that we will achieve 350 ppm Carbon in the atmosphere. Our focus needs to be to save our biodiversity, keep our wild-lands wild, raise the global wealth and access to basic needs, and work toward transitioning to cheap and clean energy. In the science fiction parlance that I know, this means taking us to a Type 1 Civilization on the Kardashev scale. And as David Deutsch points out, this is the only way to achieve humanity’s Beginning of Infinity.

1 Comment

Michael Shellenberger and the Eco Modernists

5/8/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
this graphic is awesome and is from the Breakthrough Institute Facebook Page
I'm going to start with summary of what an Eco Modernist wants first:
  • Truly believing and understanding that the world is still natural and enchanting
  • We need to embrace our high energy planet
  • Accelerate the speed and amount of energy transitions
  • Understand the environmental trade-offs with any action
  • Intensify energy and agriculture production to minimize footprint
  • Real innovation takes decades and hard persistent work
  • We need to consider the reversal of technology transfer from developing countries


The reason I want to start with it is because the way those come about is through the non-environmental-orthodoxy strategy of supporting the exploration of fracking and nuclear energy. 

The Aquarium of the Pacific hosted another speaker at the Aquatic Academy course last night. The talk was as controversial as the previous two classes. Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute spoke about using a new narrative to understand the human relationship with nature and specifically the human relationship with exploiting natural resources. Creatively, Mr. Shellenberger made parallels between the Judeo-Christian trope of a morality that promotes more austerity to achieve harmony. Using the tenets of the religious idea that if we a)recognize we are sinful, b) repent for our sinful ways, c) discipline our sinful desires toward more praising of the Ideal, then we will achieve Heaven. He then compared this to the findings of Cognitive Therapy, where Dr. Aaron Beck found that depressed people have the same three things in common: a)My world is bleak, b) I'm no good, c) My future is hopeless. And to tie it all together, Mr. Shellenberger used both of those narratives to explain the dominating paradigm in the Environmental Movement since the 1970's: human behavior is a greedy consumption-based exploitation that is virus-like and that we need to consume less and be less so that we can live in harmony with nature.

Using the Eco-Modernist label that Slate gave him and his colleague, Ted Nordhaus, Mr. Shellenberger states that the orthodox environmental movement is anything but orthodox. Using the the Tennessee Valley Authority as his first of several examples, he shows that what were termed 'environmental efforts' involved a paradigm that benefited humans as well. In essence, he is talking about the Nature vs Humans binary that I have grown up with in my own understanding of the environmental paradigm in ten years of conservation work. He exposes the dubious foundation of the development of this binary and discusses, although not explicitly, William Denevan's discussion of the idea of the Pristine Myth - the myth that indigenous cultures lived in harmony with their surroundings. This is Daniel Quinn's idea of Leavers and Takers presented through his talking primate, Ishamel.  The reason this is a myth is that hunter and gatherer/nomad/tribal people did not live in harmony with their surroundings. Instead, they did anything they could to survive because conditions no matter where you live are harsh.  For example, evidence is shown that many of the East Coast forests were planted by native peoples, that regular large-scale burning was utilized to hunt game, and damming of rivers and tributaries was a regular occurrence. People did what they needed to to survive. And, as Robert Wright and Steve Pinker point out, the world was more violent as well partially because of the scarcity of resources. 

Shellenberger mentions that the Environmental Movement has had two accomplishments. First, it has put in our heads that we need to reduce the environmental footprint and, second, that we can live in harmony with nature. His thesis is that while reducing our footprint is exactly what we need to do, the second accomplishment is not possible and that it actually undermines the first. 

If we are to apply the Nature Vs Humans binary for a second (to understand his argument in terms I can understand), it seems his focus from an environmental perspective is saving as much wild-lands as possible and the rest stems from that. Intuited in this sentiment is the restoration of degraded lands, the consolidation of 'human-influenced' lands (cities, agriculture, etc) and conversion of under-utilized production land toward more wild-lands - primarily, low/non producing agricultural fields. Of the Big Nine Planetary Boundaries that Jared Diamond talks about in Collapse and that were identified by Johan Rockstram's team from the Stockholm Resilience Center, this perspective deals easily with only a couple of them. Not explicit though is how to deal with air, water, and land pollution, and from what I understand he terms those issues as "trade-offs." 

Picture
I scanned this from a magazine a long time ago but cannot remember which one. It most likely is an old Scientific American but could easily be from National Geographic.

I have yet to process the information that Mr. Shellenberger presented but I like the foundation that he works from. Particularly, I am uncertain whether minimizing the 'human' footprint should be the number one priority of the environmental movement. But I do understand and enjoy the logic that the 'trade-offs' of pollution can be solved if our footprint becomes our focus. This is an admirable thread that is found from Thoreau to Gary Snyder, where Snyder wanted to the massive consolidation of cities and urban planning that involves 500 years. 

For the Eco Modernist, the primary goal is a greater and faster energy transition. The paradigm that would entail what I started with:
  • Truly believing and understanding that the world is still natural and enchanting
  • We need to embrace our high energy planet
  • Accelerate the speed and amount of energy transitions
  • Understand the environmental trade-offs with any action
  • Intensify energy and agriculture production to minimize footprint
  • Real innovation takes decades and hard persistent work
  • We need to consider the reversal of technology transfer from developing countries


I'm curious to see how the Breathrough Institute plays with these thoughts more and I will definitely be following their innovative thought.
0 Comments

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    Categories

    All
    3 Things
    4 Ways Of Knowing
    Adaptation
    Adobe
    Affordance
    ANOVA
    Ashi Waza
    Ausubel
    Baldwinisms
    Barrett
    Beginning Of Infinity
    Bekoff
    Biodiversity
    Blue Carbon
    Box Plots
    Breakthrough
    Cave Bears
    Cheetah
    Coert Visser
    Cognitive Reappraisal
    Commons
    Competence
    Comprehension
    Conservation Jobs
    Conservation News
    Construal Theory
    Consumerology
    Convolve
    Critical Periods
    Csikszentmihalyi
    Culture-pattern Model
    Delphi Method
    Dennett
    Design
    Dont Think Of An Elephant
    Doughnut Economics
    Drive-discharge Model
    Dr. Mark Johnson
    Dweck
    Earth Day
    Ecosystem Theory
    Eisenberg
    Endangered Species
    Environmentalism
    Environmental Psychology
    Environmental Wins
    Extinction Countdown
    Flagship Species
    Flourish
    Fluorescent Minerals
    Framing
    Gatekeepers
    Gentrification
    Group Socialization Theory
    Growth Mindset
    Heteroscedasticity
    Hitchens
    How Emotions Are Made
    Idiographic
    Indicator Species
    Instrumental Case Study
    Intrinsic Case Study
    Jaguar
    Judo
    Kellert's Typology
    Keystone Species
    Lakoff
    Lightroom
    Lion
    List
    Listed
    Listening
    Marcia's Identity Theory
    Maslow
    Neotony
    Neurochemicals
    Newsletter
    Nomothetic
    Nordhaus
    Ocelot
    Opps
    Peter Maas
    Photo Elicitation
    Photography
    Place Bonding
    Planetary Boundaries
    Poetic Naturalism
    Poetic Trasncription
    Positive Disintegration
    Positive Psychology
    Poverty
    Pragmatism
    Prefigurative Politics
    Premiere
    Prepared Learning
    Priority Species
    Pro-environmental Behavior
    Progress Focused Approach
    Qualitative
    Raworth
    Resilience
    Restorative Environments
    Rewild
    Roman
    Sebastio Salgado
    Self Determination Theory
    Self-Organizing Theory
    Self-sabotage
    Seligman
    Seoi Nage
    Serious Leisure
    Shellenberger
    Simulacra
    Social Capital
    Social Scientist
    Species And People
    Statistics
    Supervenience
    System Thinking
    Telomeres
    Thought Exercise
    Translational Science
    Umbrella Species
    Umwelt
    Validity
    Veridical
    Vernacular Conservation
    Wicked Problems
    Wildlife
    Wolf
    Wolfs Tooth

    RSS Feed

Enjoy the site!
  • Home
  • CV
  • Opp's
  • Journal