Water and Fuel

The forests, energy, water, chemicals, and biodiversity chapters of my copy of The Skeptical Environmentalist have been thoroughly highlighted in pink and marked in pencil. I read them all yesterday and today, and they are up for discussion next Wednesday in my graduate class at the University of Minnesota, Globalization and the World Food Economy.

I felt like the biodiversity and chemical chapters were a waste of my time. The conclusion of the biodiversity chapter was that some scientists have grossly overestimated the number of species going extinct without providing any evidence to back up their assumptions. We are probably not losing 40,000 species a day, even if we count as-yet-unidentified rainforest species of worms and insects. The maximum reasonable estimate is a loss of 0.7% of all species over the next 50 years, or a little more than 4,000 a day assuming 30 million species (though only 1.6 million species have been actually identified). The author had a point that we should base the estimates and assumptions on scientific evidence, but offered no policy ideas for actually preserving biodiversity while continuing to produce enough food to feed the world.

I was similarly disappointed with the chapter on chemicals. The author presented evidence by the well-respected Dr. Ames from the University of California that about the same proportion of natural chemicals as synthetic chemicals are found to be cancer-causing using high-dosage lab rat tests. If we really trusted these tests, we would conclude that apples and celery are actually more carcinogenic than DDT. The author agreed that the high-dosage lab rat test is a discredited method, but then seemed to conclude that synthetic chemicals are OK. I continue to be personally cautious about low doses of chemicals, synthetic or natural, in humans, over long periods of time. I saw what low doses of aflatoxin (a natural chemical--in other words, produced by a fungi) in our corn did to our dairy herd in the 90s.

I was much more satisfied with the conclusions reached in the water and energy chapters. I am now pretty sure that, though fossil fuel and water resources are limited, the biggest problems we face are developing new renewable energy technologies and water pricing mechanisms. There will come a day when we stop relying on oil, and it won't be because we run out of oil, but because we've developed more affordable, cleaner technologies. I'm also not worried that nations will go to war over water. It would be cheaper for a nation to build a desalination facility to produce useable water from the ocean than to invade and occupy an upstream nation.

Some policy implications I tentatively gleaned from today's readings:

1. Tax fossil fuels. The price we pay for oil, coal, and natural gas (avg. of 6.2 cents per kWh when the book was published) does not cover negative social costs of pollution, etc. (an additional 1.2 cents per kWh). Funding renewable energy research is still a good idea, because research will lower the cost of solar energy (50 cents per kWh when the book was published, but 30 cents now according to a brief Google search) and wind energy (currently between 6 and 10 cents per kWh). We also need research (I know this is being done at Iowa State) on biomass production, where it will not compete with food production, on poor soil, on land susceptible to erosion, and on land that needs to be replenished in fertility.
2. Price water--by the liter or gallon, not by a yearly flat rate. Agriculture (irrigation) is the number one use of water, ahead of other industries and household uses, and agriculture uses water very indiscriminately. Why not? The true social cost of using the water is not being paid. If so, we could encourage efficient use of water through drip irrigation and acceptance of the fact that some places where there is not much water should import their food instead of exploiting their water supplies to grow food locally. I hadn't considered this before, but cheap water is pretty much a hidden subsidy. In the U.S., agriculture gets to use $3.5 billion water for free. In poorer, developing countries, it is even worse, with a total unpaid water use of $22 billion by cities and $20-25 billion by agriculture. Worldwide , we need to stop using groundwater, because we're using it faster than our aquifers can replenish, and instead use dams, which would have the capacity to provide what we currently use and more. The result of these water management reforms: more food, less hunger, better health, environmental development, and wealth (wealth equals luxury uses of water like green lawns and dishwashers by the world's affluent).