Ten Reasons to Keep Faith About Global Warming

For some time, I’ve been meaning to write a post about ten reasons I am optimistic about our ability, as a civilization, to survive and even reverse global warming.  (I don’t like to call it Climate Change because the term seems too soft, to emasculated.)  There are lot of good things happening in the world right now, technologically and socially, and I list some of them below.

However, the more I thought about it, the more realized that “optimistic” just isn’t the right word.  I kept remembering something that the great writer and philosopher Erich Fromm once wrote about the word “optimistic.”  In his landmark book, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, he states:

Assume that I am planning a weekend trip to the country and it is doubtful that the weather will be fine.  I may say, “I’m optimistic,” as far as the weather is concerned.  But if my child is gravely sick and his life hangs in the balance, to say “I’m optimistic” would sound strange to sensitive ears, because in this context the expression sounds detached and distant.  Yet I could not very well say “I am convinced my child will live,” because, under the circumstances, I have no realistic basis for being convinced.

What then could I say?

The most adequate words would perhaps be “I have faith my child will live.”  But “faith,” because of its theological implications, is not a word today.  Yet it is the best we have, because faith implies an extremely important element: my ardent, intense wish for my child to live, hence my doing everything possible to bring about his recovery.

Fromm, as usual, gets to the heart of the matter here (in every sense).  “Optimistic” just doesn’t feel like the right word when talking about something as potentially horrendous as global warming.  It would, in fact, sound fatuous, given the current looming crisis.  But more importantly, the word “optimistic” would suggest a kind of arm-chair detachment from the problem, as if we aren’t, ourselves, part of the problem (and, conversely, part of the solution).

If we are to survive global warming, we must all be involved, and do everything we can to avert disaster.  So, as Fromm suggests, I have chosen the word “faith” to describe how I feel about chances.  It suggests hope, not mere optimism, and also a commitment to try to do something.

So, anyway, here’s the list:

1. Solar Power

This is the biggie, obviously.  The history of civilization seems like a list of one “energy crisis” after another.  From wood, to coal, to oil.  Each time, the next energy source has been revealed as more abundant, cheaper, and more powerful.  I think the trend is going continue with solar power.  We live on a planet that is bathed in free, clean energy—4.2 kilowatt-hours per square meter every day.   Over a year, that’s the equivalent of one barrel of oil for every square meter.

The only obstacles have been the price of and efficiency of photovoltaics and these, like every other simple engineering problem left to mankind, are being solved quickly and in a myriad of unexpected ways.  This really might be the answer to all the world’s greatest problems, especially since so many of them—hunger, drought, poverty, oppression—can be rephrased as problems of energy scarcity.

The most pleasing irony about solar power is that it will be of the most use in the places that it need it the most:  the equatorial regions of the earth.  We may soon see a “flipping” point whereby the poorest and hottest places in the world become the richest and coolest.

2. Biochar

As with solar power, it seems incredible that something as simple as biochar might be part of the solution to the world’s greatest problems.  It’s an ancient technology–the Incas used charcoal to fertilize the nutrient-poor soils of the rainforest—and it’s about as low-tech as you can get.  Basically, you take any kind of leftover organic matter (grass cuttings, dead wood, weeds…whatever) and cook the hell out of it at low temperatures in a sealed oven.  The result is a black, spongy, water-loving material that not only sequesters carbon for centuries but is great for crop soil.

The technical name for the low-oxygen cooking process is pyrolysis, and it does require a bit of energy.  But simple, green sources of this energy—solar ovens, for example—can make biochar a win-win proposition for farmers and ranchers in even the poorest locations.

3. Biofuels

Let’s face it.  We’re not going to give up the combustion engine any time soon.  Even if the conversion to solar power and electric vehicles doubles in pace, there will still be millions of gas-powered engines out there, especially in shipping and industrial vehicles.

But just because a car or truck burns gas doesn’t mean it can’t be green.  Biofuels are carbon-based, just like gasoline, but are produced from the fermentation of organic matter.  The sources of that matter can be anything from grass-cuttings to left-over cooking grease.  Biofuels are considered green because they don’t actually add any carbon to the atmosphere (the are carbon-neutral, as the saying goes).   Even better, they tend to burn cleaner than petroleum-based gasoline.  The real Big Kahuna of biofuel production might be fuel created from algae in on industrial scale.  We might soon see the day where fuel is “farmed” across the U.S. on scales comparable to agriculture.

4.  Microcredit

Again, this is an incredibly simple concept that can have fantastic global results.  Microcredit is simple the idea of giving small—very small—loans to poor people who have no access to traditional credit.  First conceived by the Asian banker Muhammad Yunus, the practice of lending even tiny amounts of money has proven to have a great positive on local economies in impoverished areas of Africa and India.  What has this got to do with global warming?  Everything.  Reducing poverty is the key to avoiding climate disaster, because poor people tend to make desperate choices.  (Look no further than Haiti to see how an impoverished society reacts to diminishing resources.)  Poor nations are more likely to burn up oil and coal instead of building a green infrastructure, and they are more likely to go to war over basic necessities like food and water.  Globalization has begun the third world’s rapid transition to modernity, but innovations like microcredit can help the remaining billion or so poor people start the climb.

5.  EVs

About thirty years ago, when I was a teenager, a friend of my father’s took us for a ride in his new car.  It looked like a regular car from that era, the 1970s, a boxy little sedan with wood paneled doors.  But when he took us out on the road, we immediately noticed something weird about the car:  it made no sound.  Grinning, my father’s friend explained to us that the car ran entirely on batteries.  He was, as it turned out, a pioneer in electric vehicles (EVs), doing research for the University of Florida.

At the time, I thought it was pretty neat, but hardly awe-inspiring.  The oil embargoes of the mid-70s were already over, gas was getting cheap again.  I was way more interested in getting myself a Corvette (which, alas, I never did).  I never heard anything else about my father’s genius friend and his battery-powered car.

Now, a generation later, EVs are not only a reality, they are actually hip.  I mean, Corvette-level hip.  The Prius and the Leaf made EV’s mainstream, but it took Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors has liberate the EV from the sub-domain of your nerdy uncle’s garage to the parking lot of the nearest frat house.  The times, my friend, they are a’ changin’.  Yesterday I saw a free charging station outside of a hip condominium complex.

Cars are the second highest source of carbon-emissions in the United States, and we need to start converting more and more of our 62 million vehicles to electric.

6. Futuristic (actually, Ancient) Construction Materials

When people think of greenhouse gas, they usually think of cars and coal-fired power plants.  Most people never consider that the buildings they live and work in are actually huge contributors to global warming.  One study estimates that up to 39% of all greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S. come from buildings and construction.

Some of the best solutions to this problem come from new, futuring twists on ancient technologies.  Specifically, wood and dirt.

Cross-Laminated-Timber (CLT) is a kind of processed lumber that is cheap, incredibly strong, and fire-resistant.   Wood is nature’s best way of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, and CLT can be derived from non-traditional sources like forests ravaged by the Mountain pine beetle.  Long popular in Europe, CLT is starting to take off in the U.S., especially as local governments relax regulations on what kinds of building can be constructed from it.

Just as CLT is a new twist on wood construction, rammed earth is a new twist on the most ancient building material of all:  dirt.  The name says it all;  rammed earth is the process of taking dirt, pouring into a wooden mold, mixing in a bit of cement or other aggregate, and then pounding the living crap out of it.  Rammed earth uses about 10% as much cement as a regular cinderblock building, and it also about as cheap as…well…dirt.    Rammed earth houses are naturally insulated, hypoallergenic, and (often) beautiful.  Check out this great video by David Suzuki about a house constructed with rammed earth.

7.  Next-Gen Nuclear Power

I know this will make persona non grata with a lot of my super-green friends, but I am a huge proponent of nuclear power.  It’s a terrible long term solution, obviously, and it comes with a lot of risks.  But even after Fukishima, nuclear remains the cleanest, safest, most reliable alternative to coal, and it’s able to handle big loads.

I visited France last summer, where half of all electric power is generated by nuclear energy, and I came to really admire the way the French have staked their future on nuclear.  Unlike here, in the U.S., the French reprocess most of their spent fuel so that they only have about 10% as much waste as American plants.  Yeah, I know, the waste is dangerous for thousands of years.  But the carbon we are dumping in the atmosphere every day hangs around for thousands of years, too, and it’s a hell of a lot more damaging.  The newest generations of nuclear power plants are not only safer (“passive safe” as they call them) but they are cheaper or more modular, making them a viable solution for even the poorest, most remote locations.

Are they still dangerous?  Yes.  But I’d still rather have one of the modular reactors built next to my house than a coal-fired power plant.  Until solar energy scales up, nuclear power is going to play a major role.

8.  This guy.  

According to who you ask, the climatologist David Keith is either a hero of science or a villainous corporate stooge.  He’s been one the primary researchers into the nascent field of geoengineering, which is the theoretical process of deliberated changing the earth’s climate with technology.  In particular, Keith has done a great deal of research into the notion of deliberately dimming the sky with man-made particles, which would reflect solar radiation back into space in much the same way that dust from volcanic eruptions does.  (The Mt. Pinatubo eruption of 1991 cooled the earth by two degrees Celsius.)

For some reason, the notion of deliberating dimming the sky sends many environmentalists into paroxysms of evangelical rage.  The theory is, obviously, fraught with danger, and should only be considered as a last-ditch, absolutely bottom-of-the-drawer resort to save the planet.  But, being a bit of a cynic about human behavior, I have a feeling that we’re going to need that last resort.  And soon.  Keith has also done a lot of groundbreaking work on carbon sequestration.  His TED talk is already a classic.

9. Vertical Farming 

Ever since Dr. Malthus first made his dire predictions about overpopulation in 1798, the world has been expecting a global famine.   So far, we’ve managed to avoid, first through the invention of artificial fertilizers in the nineteenth century, and then with the Green Revolution of the twentieth.  Now, with humanity expected to top the nine billion mark by 2050, we need to solve the food production problem yet again.  The answer, I think, lies in Vertical Farming.

First popularized by ecologist Dickson Despommier, the idea of growing crops in a specialized skyscraper sounds ludicrous.  But think about it;  the major impediments to a successful crop are drought, bugs and poor acreage.  All of these can be controlled in a closed environment—basically, a vertical greenhouse—the result being that vertical farms might actually be more efficient than a traditional farm.  Water can be reclaimed and recycled endlessly, bugs never get into the system, and crops can be grown year-round, night and day.  The only real limitation is power to light the crops, and this can be provided via reflected sunlight or some other form of alternative energy.

There are still lots of problems to solve, but the idea of growing organic, high-quality food inside a city is just amazing.

10.  Carbon

It may one of the greatest ironies in human history that the very element that is most responsible for global warming—carbon—might also be the greatest boon to our civilization.  For billions of years, pure carbon came in only two flavors:  graphite and diamond.  It wasn’t until 1985 that researchers founds a new configuration, giving it the delightful name of Buckminsterfullerene.  An arrangement of 60 carbon atoms, Buckminsterfullerene is an incredibly strong molecule, and then multiple molecules are strung together, you can a tube:  the now famous carbon nanotube.  In the past twenty-five years, nanotubes have gone from being an laboratory exotic to a mainstay of industrial applications, although the dream of pure carbon construction has yet to be realized.  I think it will be.  Carbon is the sixth most common element in the earth’s crust, and, once we figure it out how to take nanotubes from the nano to the macro scale, they will revolutionize construction, engineering, medicine, and practically everything else.   Thanks to our fossil fuel industry, there will be plenty of raw material in our atmosphere.

My Unusual Suggestion for J. J. Abrams

The Mahabharata

Once when I was teaching English in the 1990s, I showed my students the BBC’s production of Othello with Anthony Hopkins.  It was a very good production, with Hopkins at his blue-eyed best, and Bob Hoskins gives a great performance as a cockey-accented Iago.  However, on the day I showed it to my students, barely two minutes has passed before one of the girls asked: “How come Othello isn’t black?”

“Because Anthony Hopkins isn’t black,” I said, and everyone laughed.

I hadn’t meant to be flippant, and I inadvertently dismissed a question which, I later realized, was only natural.  I had been a student of Shakespeare for years, and I hadn’t even considered the reaction that my nineteen-year-old students might have to a white man playing a black character.   It had, after all, been the norm for white (usually English) actors to play Othello for almost four hundred years.  What I had failed to realize that, to the modern sensibilities of my students, it was unthinkable that Othello should be played by anything but a black actor.  Anything else would seem ridiculous.

And it wasn’t just kids who felt that way.  The English director Peter Brook encountered a similar kind of reaction when his magnificent theatrical adaptation of The Mahabharata came out on TV.  In Brook’s play, for example, the heroes and villains of the ancient Hindu epic are played by Germans, Americans, Greeks, Africans, and (of course) Indians.

Although I didn’t understand it at the time, Brook’s choices of actors represented an early example of what has come to be known as colour-blind casting.  (Yes, that’s colour with a “u”, the idea being of British origin; more on this later.)  The idea of colour-blind casting states that roles should be cast without regard to the actor’s race or ethnicity.  The casting director should be “blind” to such matters.

You wouldn’t think that this would work, but somehow it does.  In fact, the casting of non-Indian actors in various parts makes the work feel more realistic—more epic, in fact—than it would have been otherwise, in part because each actor seems perfectly tuned to his role.

I’m not sure why, but the practice of colour-blind casting has not yet taken off in America.  Perhaps this is because of the obvious, rampant racism that still afflicts our culture.  But I think, even more so, that the practice runs contrary to our particularly American expectations of realism in art.  We are the culture that produced Marlon Brando and the Actor’s Studio, after all.  These are great achievements, and I’m not saying that colour-blind casting is appropriate, or even desirable, in all cases.

Angel Coulby of Merlin

But still, I find myself liking shows that use colour-blind casting (and not just because I’m a lily-livered liberal).  A lot of British shows like the excellent Merlin use it, as did the Victorian-based Sally Lockhart films with Billy Piper (check out Shadow of the North).  Colour-blind casting lends itself particularly well to fantasy works, mostly because “realism” doesn’t have much place in such stories.  Beyond this, however, flexible casting opens the door to more actors, thus increasing the chances of a serendipitous fit.

Basically, colour-blind casting makes things more interesting.

Which brings me to the new Star Wars movies soon to be in production at Disney.  I think the new director, J. J. Abrams, could benefit from colour-blind casting.  This seem may seem an odd thing to say, considering that the Star Wars universe is populated with aliens and droids.  But think about it.  Speculation is already rampant on who will be cast as the children of Han Solo and Princess Leia–characters who will, apparently, figure prominently in the plot.  I will not dare to guess who be cast in these roles, but I will bet on one thing:  they will be white.

But why should they be?  Do they need to be white just because the actors Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford are white?  Is that really a good enough reason, especially in a work of art where space ships roar through the vacuum of space and laser blasts travel across the sky slower than bullets?  If Abrams were to find a great Chinese or African or Polynesian actor to play one of these parts, why should she be excluded?

Despite grumblings about his pidgin-speaking aliens in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, George Lucas has been impressively open-minded in his casting choices for all six Star Wars films.  Everybody remembers the great Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, but Lucas took lots of other chances in his casting.  Carrie Fisher was a beautiful girl in 1976, but hardly a typical Hollywood starlet.  And Lucas made frequent use of great older actors like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (veterans of countless B horror films cranked out by Hammer Films in the 1960s).

I would argue that Lucas’ off-beat casting choices were part of the reason the original Star Wars worked so well.  There was some real chemistry there.  Henry James called this “The Alchemy of Art.”

Billy Dee Williams as Lando

Since the announcement from Disney Studios that a new series of Star Wars movies would be coming out in 2015, every nerd and his nerdy grandmother have been talking about what they would like to see in these flicks.  And there are some pretty hair-brained opinions, surely.  But generally speaking, everyone wants the new series to capture the magic of the original films (especially the original trilogy).

Clearly, Mr. Abrams has taken on a grand responsibility.

But here’s another idea that would I suggest to him:  remember that Star Wars is a myth.  It’s not just a franchise, or a property, or a guaranteed of summer blockbusters.  It’s a myth.  Abrams should think in mythic terms when he conceives the new films.  Being open to different kinds of actors is one way he can help Star Wars become reborn to a new generation of kids—many of whom are not white.

Once when Steven Spielberg was asked whether he had any film training as a child, he said, “Yeah.  I watched The Searchers two hundred times.”

I suggest that Mr. Abrams watch Brook’s The Mahabharata about two hundred times.  I think I have.

Is Meditation “Just Another Exercise…”?

Morning Sun by Edward Hopper

One the most ironic reasons that many Westerners are attracted to Buddhism is that it is explicitly an non-Evangelical religion.  That is, Buddhists deliberately refrain from proselytizing.  As one ancient Buddhist text implores that a Buddhist should never talk about his religion unless a seeker asks him three times.

So it’s only right, I guess, that I am reluctant to talk about Buddhism, even though I have been a student of Buddhism for several years.  But then again, when I see something written about Buddhism, either as a philosophy or as a religion, that is just patently wrong, I feel the need speak up.

Such was my consternation when I saw this article on one of my favorite websites, LifeHacker.

LifeHacker is a really cool site.  It has lots of Do-It-Yourself advice about everything from computers to time-management to cooking.  But this little article really threw me.

 

To be clear, the question “Is Meditation Really Beneficial, Or Is It Just Ridiculous” was not posed by the blog itself, but rather by a reader.  One of the site’s writers, Thorin Klosowski, gives a very succinct, intelligent response defending meditation.

If you see the word meditation and immediately conjure up religious images or deadbeats wasting time at work, you’re not alone—but that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here. Mindful meditation, despite it’s awkward name, is really just about training your brain to concentrate and focus better. As professor David Levy describes it to USA Today, meditation is just another exercise…

The fact that LifeHacker is openly espousing the benefits of meditation did not surprise me.  Western doctors, psychologists, and counselors have long been aware of the healthful effects of regular meditation, including lowered blood pressure and increased neuroplasticity in the brain.  The really startling news about these health benefits is that they seem to occur regardless of what kind of meditation the subject practices—either religious or secular.

Clearly, LifeHacker is in the “secular” camp.  Most Westerners are, for obvious reasons.  We are a post-Enlightenment civilization, and Secular Humanism, as any Tea Party politician will tell you, is the accepted philosophy of the intellectual elite.

I agree with this stance, in part.  I think everybody could gain from a few minutes of daily meditation, even secular meditation.  There are several good books on the subject, including The Eight Minute Meditation.

There is nothing wrong with using meditation as relaxation technique.  In fact, we are a people desperately in need of relaxation.  Most of us are stressed-out, overworked, and anxious.  Meditation, even in its simplest form, can help with all of these problems.  After all, the first step that Zen Masters teach is how a person can quiet  an over-active mind (what Buddhists call “monkey mind”).  One way to do this is to sit and breathe, to concentrate on the simple, basic act of breathing.  Usually, this is done sitting on the floor with a straight back.  Practitioners of Zen Buddhism call this zazen (literally, “sitting meditation.”)

There are other ways to meditate, however.  Another common practice in the Far East is “walking meditation,” in which people walk and breathe in a formalized way, again allowing them to avoid intrusive thoughts by concentration on breath.

Some Buddhists are even less strict.  The great Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn, states that you can even meditate while jogging, or sitting in your car at the red light.  Basically, you can meditate anywhere, so long as you are able to quiet the mind and be aware of the present moment.

Buddhists call this awareness Mindfulness.  That’s the whole point of meditation, as practiced in the East.  The idea is that the endless, spiraling thought-processes of our conscious minds actually prevents us from experiencing the radiance of existence.  Far beyond being “just another exercise,” as Mr. Klosowski asserts, meditation is the best way of learn how to truly live. 

But how can you be Mindful of something without thinking about it?  To our Western, rationalist minds, the concept of Awareness Without Thought seems like an oxymoron.  But this is, in fact, the ultimate point of Buddhist meditation, if not the core of Buddhist spirituality.  You Are Not Your Body.  You are not your Thoughts.  Your are not anything, in fact, that can be captured in a single word or concept.

As Eckhart Tolle writes so eloquently, “The Brain did not create consciousness; consciousness created the brain.”

It’s no accident that so many Western Buddhists are lapsed Catholics and Jews.  The Judeo-Christian understanding of human consciousness is very closely related to that of Buddhism (so closely related, in fact, that some scholars have suggested that Christ might have been exposed to Buddhist teachings from Indian monks who lived in Jerusalem in the first century).  Nhat Hahn has written a fine book on the subject, called Living Buddha, Living Christ in which he beautifully describes the parallels between the two great religions:

In the Psalms, it says “Be still and know that I am God.”  “Be still” means to become peaceful and concentrated.  The Buddhist term is samatha (stopping, calming, concentrating).  “Know” means to acquire wisdom, insight, or understanding.  The Buddhist term is vipasana (insight, or looking deeply).  “Looking deeply” means observing something or someone with so much concentration that the distinction between observer and observed disappears.  The result is insight into the true nature of the object.  When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything in the else in the cosmos in it.

I was raised Catholic, and I also see a deep connection between the kind of prayer my grandmother used to tick through on her rosary and Buddhist meditation.  (Yes, I am aware that Catholic rosary beads originated in the Buddhist monasteries of India.)

Traditional Judeo-Christian prayer reveals divinity in the present moment.  Buddhist meditation does the same thing.  The only real difference is that, in Buddhism, the focus is not on an external unchanging God, but on the sublime reality of eternity itself, of which you and I are merely an aspect.  So are your house, your computer, and the desk you work at all day.  As Nhat Hahn writes:

When the Buddha was asked, “Sir, what do you and your monks practice?” he replied, “We sit, we walk, and we eat.”  The questioner continued, “But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats,” and the Buddha told him, “We we sit, we know we are sitting.  When we walk, we know we are walking.  When we eat, we know we are eating.”

Obviously, the guy who wrote to LifeHacker with the original question was laboring under a common misconception—namely, that meditation is just a New Age fad.  The picture that LifeHacker chose to run along top of Klosowski’s reply is an echo of this sentiment:  a very yuppie-looking guy trying to escape the reality of corporate existence by “blissing out”.  The guy is even sitting in the classic Lotus position (which, as everyone knows, is what a person is supposed to do when they meditate, right?).

But Mr. Klosowski is himself laboring under a separate misconception.  Namely, that meditation, as practiced by millions of Buddhists over thousands years, is “just another exercise.”

What most Western advocates of meditation don’t realize—or refuse to realize—is that zazen is only the first step.  Without a spiritual component, meditation is just another band-aid on the psychic wound of our daily, post-Industrial, cybernetic existence.  In her book Nothing Special, the late, great Charlotte Joko Beck wrote:

The actual practice of sitting [meditation] is always somewhat murky.  If we keep sitting long enough, however, slowly over time things get clearer.  There’s a continuum, and to sit is to move along that continuum.  It’s not that we get somewhere; more and more we just get ourselves.  I don’t mean only sitting on a cushion.  If we’re practicing well, we’re doing zazen all the time.

It’s interesting that what Western doctors and psychologists call “meditation” was first popularized in the America during the late 1960s, when it was still called “transcendental meditation.”  Somewhere along the line, we lost the “transcendental” part of the equation, and I think that’s a mistake.  In our slavish devotion to what the Buddhist teacher Robert Thurman calls “Nihilistic Materialism,” we have lost any tolerance for even the possibility of a spiritual component to anything, even consciousness itself.  

What I would ask Mr. Klosowski is this:  When you sit and simply “be” for that blessed hour a day,  what is that is doing the “being?”  Is meditation really just another exercise…?