FOCUS: The State of the Earth

It is appropriate on Earth Day to reflect on the current state of our planet, to take stock of where we are, from whence we have come, and the challenges we face for the future. The score card is decidedly mixed.

World population is now 6.4 billion and is projected to rise to close to nine billion over the next 40 years. The good news is that an increasing fraction of the world population is enjoying a measure of significant economic progress. People are living longer. Rates of infant mortality are on the decline. More people have access to adequate facilities for health care and education. And, perhaps most important, women are assuming their rightful roles as coequal partners in society.

The bad news is that progress is confined to less than half of the world’s population. More than a billion are trapped in unspeakable poverty, forced to survive on less than a dollar a day. The problem is particularly severe in sub-Saharan Africa. There, deadly diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are on the rise. The quality of physical environments is in many instances on a path to ruin, reflecting unsustainable demands on soils, waters, and the biota imposed by peoples driven to survive in the present without the luxury of planning for the future. It is a sad fact that aspirations for poverty alleviation and environmental protection are often antithetical. Added to this, the toll from disasters, natural and man-made, is in many cases catastrophic, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Unanticipated variability in climate—droughts, floods, and violent storms—pose problems for those least equipped to cope, a problem not confined to Africa but one experienced increasingly in many different parts of the world.

Environmental problems in the past were experienced mainly on a local level, associated usually with effluents, both domestic and industrial, responsible for some combination of dirty air and polluted water (both surface and sub-surface) with complex consequences for both human and ecosystem health. It was relatively easy to associate cause with effect. Burning coal adds large concentrations of sooty materials to the atmosphere, in addition to gaseous compounds of nitrogen and sulfur oxides and a variety of toxic elements including, for example, mercury. The effluents from coal burning have a demonstrably negative effect on human health. It took a series of air pollution disasters, however, in Donora, Penn., and in London in the late 1940s and early 1950s before public opinion was aroused to a level requiring action. We learned later about the problems of acid rain and photochemical smog.

For the most part, solutions involved technological fixes—reducing the emissions of pollutants either by pre-treating fuels prior to combustion or by installing devices in the smoke stacks of power plants and factories, or in the tail pipes of cars, to accomplish a similar objective. Alternatively, we opted to switch to less polluting fuels such as natural gas. In either case, the solutions involved increased expense. We have been modestly successful in addressing the issue of air pollution in more affluent societies. It remains serious, however, in large developing countries such as China and India where coal is the primary fuel and where priorities for economic development often take precedence over demands for environmental protection. We chose to get rich first before taking action. Can we really blame developing countries if they opt to follow our lead?

Environmental problems, unfortunately, are no longer local. They have expanded now to global scale. The end product of combustion of fossil fuels is carbon dioxide, which has the potential to alter global climate with implications for temperature, rainfall, and even for sea level. Warmer temperatures and uncertain supplies of precipitation can exacerbate the problems for those least equipped to cope. We have a moral imperative, I believe, to anticipate these problems and to do what we can to mitigate their consequences.

The United States is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. With five percent of the world’s population, we account for 22 percent of emissions. Electricity generation, associated mainly with combustion of coal, accounts for 40 percent of US emissions. Transportation, fueled primarily by oil, is responsible for an additional 32 percent, with the balance due to a combination of home/office heating and cooling (11 percent) and various industrial processes (18 percent).

There are four obvious strategies to reduce carbon emissions in the U.S. while still preserving energy functions we have come to value. We could encourage substitution of energy efficient for energy inefficient electrical devices (replace incandescent lights with fluorescent lights, for example). We could institute standards for construction of more energy-efficient buildings. We could explore policy instruments to encourage a transition from gas-guzzling SUVs to more fuel-efficient alternatives (hybrids, for example). Or, most ambitious, we could take steps to initiate a transition from carbon-intensive energy sources to carbon-free alternatives such as wind, solar, and/or nuclear.

Independent of concerns for the environment, we have an obvious, national security interest in reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Oil imports account for 62 percent of current domestic consumption, and their contribution continues to increase. A tax on gasoline could promote a switch to more energy efficient vehicles. Politicians, however, show little inclination to take such a step even if the tax were implemented in a revenue neutral form. It could be offset, for example, by a reduction in taxes on income and/or capital. We could institute a purchase tax on gas-guzzlers offset by a subsidy for fuel-efficient vehicles. Again, political will is lacking. Will it take another oil crisis to prompt action? The solution is not to drill in Alaska—at best this would be a temporary band-aid—but to reduce our consumption of oil, foreign and domestic.

Today, wind power is economically competitive with fossil sources of electricity even without subsidies. To realize its potential, we need to upgrade and expand the national electric grid so that power generated in a farmer’s field in North Dakota can be made available to consumers far removed. Excess power could be used to generate hydrogen which could substitute at least partially for oil in the transportation sector. And we should think seriously about a new generation of nuclear power plants with appropriate planning to deal with issues of safety and waste.

We need leadership from the U.S. to mobilize the intellectual and entrepreneurial skills required to effect the transition from an unsustainable fossil fuel world to an environmentally friendlier alternative. It is a cruel hoax to pretend that global warming is not a problem, that Alaskan oil can reduce our dependence on the Middle East, that coal can be cleaned to the point where its environmental footprint is negligible, and that we can be isolated from the problems of poverty and environmental destruction in Africa. We live in an interconnected world. It is our god-given responsibility to ensure that its proper order is respected.

Michael B. McElroy is the Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.