Noted thinker Lester Brown says the US’s way of dealing with the environment is much like Enron’s dealing with finances: it’s keeping costs off the books.
Speaking at the Aspen Environment Forum and quoting a raft of statistics and others, Brown says, “Socialism collapsed because it did not tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not tell the environmental truth.”
So, do tell, right? What’s this silver bullet, this magic elixir that will sober us up and get us on track with environmental fixes? Taxes. Yes, the dreaded word that you’ll only perhaps hear mumbled out of a politician’s mouth.
“We need taxes on coal, not income,” Brown says. Of course there’s more. A whole lot more of a strategy that Brown lays out in Plan B, his new book, on how to go from ignorance and arrogance to understanding and proper utilization of resources.
He too looks to the sun for much of the solution. Forty million homes in China, he points out, have already switched to rooftop solar water heaters. By 2020, 110 million homes are expected to have rooftop solar water heaters in China, fully proving enough hot water for almost half a billion people. Algeria, he also notes, is developing enough solar power and transmission lines to export energy to Spain.
Meantime, there are things we can do. If all the world switched to CFL bulbs we’d reduce energy demand by 12%, or the equivalent of 700 coal plants.
But at the center of Brown’s Plan B is the economy. We have to completely restructure it, he says to take into account the world’s natural resources, which are now subject to subsidy and odd trading between nations. The challenge can be met by raising public awareness. And the key driver in that is the media.
In other words we have to get the word out that the world is in an environmental crisis and showcase specific ways to fix it. If this conference is any evidence, that is occurring rapidly. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, ABC News, National Geographic and other news media in attendance here say they are stepping up their coverage—mostly via the Internet.
Budgetary constraints keep environmental news off the air and the front pages much of the time. But they try.
So again, it can be said, it all goes back to the economy. Environmental truths must be told.
As another noted environmentalist and thinker, Amory Lovins, noted in a speech he gave here: the US provides $250 billion in energy subsidies.
As I write that, AAA is reporting that gas prices have reached a new high per gallon.
Things aren’t adding up. And that’s just how things began to unravel for Enron too.
