Carbon offsets have all sorts of problems. The methods used to calculate teh precise offset are often sketchy, and it's not clear to what extent offset carbon stays offset. Creating a market for greenhouse gas reduction may also have the undesireable effect of encouraging companies and governments to keep belching factories going until they can sell the offset, or even build new ones for the purpose of being paid to shutter them. But this is really something special. Upon original reading, I had thought that it must be taken out of context or otherwise misleading:
Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’ (3)Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…
But no, their website is exactly as described. To be fair, there apparently are other projects that don't involve tethering people in developing countries to human hamster wheels, but all in all, that may be one of the most appalling things I've ever read. Special bonus question: why are the smiling brown people naked? Have they given up clothes to save the energy of washing them?
Well, in Europe - where population density is relatively high.. they have invented an ingenious new solution to fighting the obesity epidemic while also reducing CO2...
Gyms and car makers world-wide are trying to boycott the movement... What would happened if we do not drive to the gym, if we were not to use escalators, if we tried to dismantle rather than grow our inhibitions and connect with nature?
Jokes aside - I know many people who mistakenly assume that certain technologies represent more than means to an end. They stand for culture, civilization and progress. And yet it should be clear to anyone that factory farms and mono-agriculture are nothing but regress? We sacrifice natural, scientific understanding of the ecology for simple technological prowess?
A humanist (non-religious) libertarian - should in theory favor a non-technological agribusiness which is in line with ecology and economy to the modern, machine-based, plan-economics, mono-agriculture projects of the Communists (no country in the world has used so many chemical pesticides and machinery as Communist Hungary)?
PS: I forgot to answer the special bonus question: they are naked because they have not eaten the forbidden fruit yet (and cause it is stinking hot where they are)?
But don't worry - we will find an Eva for them an apple! They'll soon know what it's like...
Perhaps some American companies can help here. I'm thinking Nike factories in southeast asia. And the workers wouldn't need a clothing allowance.
Yes, that's the ticket.
There are some folks I WOULD like to see 'tethered to a human hamster wheel' - but sadly, I didn't see any of them in the picture.
What's Ted Kennedy up to? And could we please make sure he wears clothes? I mean, 'for the children'...
"And yet it should be clear to anyone that factory farms and mono-agriculture are nothing but regress? We sacrifice natural, scientific understanding of the ecology for simple technological prowess?"
No, it's not "clear to anyone" that methods of agriculture that produce vastly larger yields for a lower cost are worse than "natural" farming. Speak for yourself, but I rather like having cheap, abundant food. I might note that cheap food particularly helps the poor, who, if you had your desire to see food prices raised tenfold sated, might well have even more financial problems than they do now.
It's even more hilarious than that: human metabolism and food production are quite inefficient by mechanical standards.
You probably produce more CO2 walking than driving a car the same distance.
Mike
your link discusses western countries and argues:
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
I agree - for the West. Especially since:
"A vegetarian diet reduces the production of carbon dioxide (CO2). An average car produces 3 kg of CO2 a day while the effort to clear rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger produces 75 kg of CO2. Eating one pound of hamburger does the same damage as driving your car for three weeks!"
Machinery or not - doesn't change that! That also, partly, answers Brett's question?
Hugo:
Certainly, if we all moved back to preindustrial times, there'd be less global warming. (Or not, because we'd burn all the forests...) Substituting food, especially highly 'refined' foods such as meat, for fuel is highly dubious.
But substituting muscle power for even moderately efficient motors is, to put it mildly, not the low-hanging fruit, aside from the ethical issues rightly raised.
Historically it was only the rich who could afford candles. Then the rich could afford electric lightning and only the poor used candles. Today it is the rich who are lean and use candles and the fat poor can only afford electric lightning.
I am working in the Information Technology field and am not a nay-sayer to technological applications and "progress". I am NOT suggesting we go back to preindustrial times. But what and how we use IT is another question that has to be judged case by case? In this case - factory farms, mono-agriculture - the economic as well as the ecological benefits are, for the same reasons, questionable? We know in theory how to sustainably produce houses, TVs, computers, phones, movies, music, etc. but we do not know - technology or not - how to feed 6 billion people on a modern Western diet without...
Using technology to intervene with nature (as is done by modern agribusiness) is different to mining some natural resources and than fiddling with them in our homes and factories (PCs, TVs, etc)!
PS: I have not raised any ethical issues per se yet as you implied? I am looking at it from a purely economical and ecological perspective so far!
Again, we see the deep truth of the environmental movement: they wish 90%+ of humanity to die for their utopia. The hippies were bad enough when they were communists supporting the USSR, Che, and the Viet Cong. But even Mao only killed 60M, Greenpeace wants to kill 5.9 Billion.
Typo alert: "teh" in the first paragraph should be "the".
And, Hey, wouldn't you say that's just a tad hyperbolic? To be sure, there's a lunatic fringe to the environmental movement (as well as any other movement that you might care to name), but I hope you don't believe that the majority of environmentalists are advocating the near genocide of the human race.
I know that this is a charged topic but I think we can afford a bit of perspective, no?
This is the most disgusting thread I have seen in the domain theatlantic.com.
Climate Care will do no harm because no Indian peasants will pay any attention to them. Except those in areas where electricity grids are unavailable or too expensive for them to afford; people there could conceivably find a human-powered dynamo useful for some purposes.
There is no place in the world where one can have any success persuading peasants to use their own bodies rather than machines. It doesn't matter what Climate Care "wants"; it will not accomplish any of it. Exxon, on the other hand, is likely to accomplish whatever it sets its mind to, including significantly delaying the economy's imperative shift to non-carbon fuels.
Look, this Climate Carte blurb is poorly worded but surely there is no need to encourage poor countries to develop the exact same transportation plans that we have in the suburban US. Take a look at groups like the Village Bicycle Project...
http://www.pcei.org/vbp/
which deliver bicycles to villagers in Africa. Cars are just not affordable and public transportation is sparse. So, environmentally friendly, human powered, transportation can also be economically empowering. So, sure, let's laugh at the silly Climate Care liberals. But, let's also keep in mind that there is legitimate aid we can provide that doesn't involve building highways and providing cheap SUV's.
"We do not know... how to feed 6 billion people on a modern Western diet without using technology to intervene with nature."
This is true. Where you lose me is in the apparent opinion that this is a bad thing. Call me crazy, but I think that feeding people is good, and if we need to "intervene with nature" to do so, then having people not starve is generally worth the sacrifice.
This sounds like a hoax website to me. I think it's a Yes Men–influenced prank.
Oh, I see -- they apparently pay the peasants to use the treadle instead of the diesel pump. I'd assumed they were just doing education work to try and promote some kind of conversion.
This violates a generally held tenet of NGO development work, namely "sustainability". If the project simply involves Westerners paying Indian peasants to do something, it's not a sustainable way to reduce the CO2 generation of the Indian rural economy. It depends entirely on the will-to-offset of Westerners, which will be fickle, and it will in any case vanish once Indians become prosperous enough to charge more money for such idiotic and soul-numbing work -- which at 8% growth rates should happen rather soon.
So yeah, this is an idiotic project. However, energy-efficient stoves are a big deal, and sneering skepticism is unwarranted. Across much of the third world, people use unbelievably inefficient stoves for their firewood -- they balance pots on a few rocks, allowing much of the heat to escape. Teaching people how to use local clay to build something with three sides can save a heck of a lot of firewood or coal. And when you see communities that are bringing ecological ruin on themselves by exhausting their forests for firewood, it's hard not to think that this is something very much worth doing. Of course convincing people to change stoves can be really hard -- people are really picky about their cooking tools, whether in Manhattan or in Orisa.
A few things:
1) Carbon offset schemes do seem iffy, especially where child labor is involved.
2) The walking vs. driving emissions argument is mostly spurious because it assumes 100% of a person's calories come from beef, a very wasteful form of food. A fair comparison would consider a more varied diet. (Nevertheless it is very useful to know how wasteful some food consumption is.)
3) Traveling on a bike is, I believe, pretty efficient because of the wheels, the lightness of the vehicle, and the bearings that reduce friction.
4) Sustainability is going to have to involve reducing the rate of population growth. No one but crazy people believe we need to kill anyone off, as an earlier commenter ludicrously suggested environmentalists want to do.
If it's a choice between treadle pumps and diesel, go with the diesel.
but if it's a choice between treadle pumps and young girls across Africa and Southeast Asia spending exhausting hours carrying water from the nearest water source, pay for treadle pumps.
low-tech pumps can free up people to get an education and can substantially improve crop yields. It has nothing to do with greenhouse gases and everything to do with effective anti-poverty programs.
and as between treadle pumps and diesel engines, unfortunately the better choice can be the pumps because the village is too poor to afford diesel and so becomes reliant on aid which can get cut off.
And now, having looked again, I'm rescinding my earlier opinion. A couple of points need looking into. The site does not explain how the pumps are promoted, and I'm increasingly dubious that they are simply paying peasants to use the foot pumps. If they're not, then obviously there would have to be a rational reason why any peasant would switch to a foot pump from a diesel pump (rented, presumably, in such an economy); they wouldn't do it because the Englishman told them to, and if they did and it didn't work, they'd simply switch back. So, why might a peasant want to switch?
The website lists these benefits:
* Replaces polluting diesel-powered pumps
* Allows 2 or 3 harvests a year, instead of 1
* Prevents farmers having to leave their families to work in the city during 'off season'
* Farmers' income increases, often between two and five-fold
So before one condemns the initiative, one needs to get an explanation of how the foot pump allows 2 or 3 harvests instead of one, and why income increases dramatically. One suggestion: perhaps these farmers never had irrigation at all until the diesel pumps arrived (in the 60s, say). They may rent the pumps rather than owning, which takes a bite out of their income. The foot treadle pump may be a simple "technology", one they weren't aware of before, which allows them to own their own pump and thus increase income.
Similarly, I have seen ethnic Tai villagers in Vietnam's highlands who use household dynamos, turned by rivulets flowing down the mountain, to power their TV sets. The current available is far inferior to what you could get with an electric hookup, but they don't have to pay for it. In the Indian case, they may be substituting human footpower for the waterpower, but it may still be worth it to them.
Special bonus question: why are the smiling brown people naked?
If I were doing hard manual labour in the tropics, where I presume the brown people are, I doubt I would wear too much, either.
Brooksfoe said,
Could you give the rest of us an idea on how exxon is delaying the shift to non-carbon fuels?.
Thanks
On this subject, we just launched Carbon Catalog, a new independent directory of carbon offsets.
http://www.carboncatalog.org/
Carbon Catalog lists over 30 voluntary carbon offset providers and 120 of their projects around the world. Every project and provider is mapped and categorized for easy access.
Our aim at Carbon Catalog is to help people decide whether to purchase carbon offsets, and if so, from which projects and providers. We have no relationship with any of the projects or providers listed.
So let me get this straight: I can patch up all the externalities from my carbon use for only $50/year. (Probably less for me since I use way less carbon fuels than the average.)
Yeah, that's sure going to drive me into a more eco-friendly lifestyle!
And yet it should be clear to anyone that factory farms and mono-agriculture are nothing but regress? We sacrifice natural, scientific understanding of the ecology for simple technological prowess?
Grandad was an extremely efficient farmer for his day (dairy) and I assure you that he had a great deal of scientific understanding of the ecology of his farm. This was vital for him to achieve technological prowess and high milk yields. I don't know if you'd call his technology simple or not and I don't know if you'd call his scientific understanding natural or not, but his technological prowess was intensely dependent on a scientific understanding of the ecology.
You're creating a false dichotomy here - efficient farming and technological prowess requires a scientific understanding of ecology. Those factory farms don't create themselves you know.
And on the flip side - how do you know that non-modern-agribusiness is/was sustainable either?
Tracy W
Optimizing inherited inefficiencies could be called progress, I agree. But the point is that even so animal agriculture, especially mass factory farming, is not economical and ecological.
We are working against natural laws of sustainability when we grow mono-crop as feed. Pasture is the reason for more land erosion and deforestation than anything else on the planet. We have to clear the land, keep carnivores out, use pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Stuff that natural, organic or perma-culture farming does not require - it works with the laws of ecology rather than against it? Animals have job in the free market-place of nature - we merely enslave them (which leads to gains of few slave owners and dead-weight losses for society).
Here is an interesting talk between WholeFoods CEO John Mackey, who I like, and Michael Pollan (who I dislike) on this issue...
Hugo, neither of your links are working.
If this site isn't a hoax, then my irony mete is PEGGED.
Anyone catch the claims that working a treadle rather than running a diesel pump lets the farmer plant more crops per year? Would someone explain that to me?
And a treadle equipped farm will yield its owner profits of two to five fold that of a diesel one? If true, why would the farmer need any encouragement to use a treadle? Would someone explain that to me as well?
The bit about the treadle pump reminds me of something I heard long ago, during a visit to the Southern Institute for Appropriate Technology. Seems that there was once an idea to help some village mechanize their agriculture without bringing in expensive, high-maintenance First World machinery. So they rigged up a contraption whereby the villagers could grind their grain with millstones connected to bicycles. But, the initiative failed, due to cultural ignorance. In their society, only women ground grain, and only men rode bikes. This was supposed to be the classic example of well-meaning NGO ignorance, I was told.
Hugo Pottisch said
You are mixing two very different things when you talk about farmground and pastures..
The fact is cattle ranching in the US has preserved vast amounts of grasslands habitat. Grasslands sink more carbon dioxide then forests do.
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Farming is driven by subsidies and ag policy not demand for animal feed. The biofuel subsidies and the habitat destruction they are causing provide the most recent example of this.
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The most efficient and effective way to make farming more sustainable is to end farm subsidies.
Hugo, so-called "natural" agriculture is not sustainable. Take a look at pre-Columbian farming practices in the Americas -- the most productive farmlands were man-made (Aztecs, some Amazonian tribes) and other cultures practiced a "wear-it-out-and-move" agriculture. A farming village would work the same area for a generation or two, then move to more a more fertile area.
And, frankly, when you start talking about livestock as "slaves", you can't expect your audience to take you seriously any longer.
Typo alert: "teh" in the first paragraph should be "the".
Gee, thanks Andrew, I can't tell you how that monstrous typo was inhibiting my understanding of that sentence.
Pedant
Also, check what all those low-tech, living with the land, in tune with nature herdsmen have done to the Sahel in Africa.
Every time I say that environmentalism is the last socially acceptable form of racism, everybody gets upset with me. But it is true and this article is further proof, as if any were needed.
...animal agriculture, especially mass factory farming, is not economical and ecological.
CAFOs are highly economical, that's why they exist.
It is much more cost effective to keep hundreds of pigs or thousands of chickens in self-enclosed buildings with automated feeding and watering troughs that deliver a precise diet to the animals on a regular basis, rather than build fencing around hundreds of acres and expose valuable animals to predators, weather, and other hazards.
Disposing of the waste product poses an environmental challenge, but its also a business opportunity for those who choose to produce fertilizer or methane gas from the waste. The methane can be burned in electrical generators to power the farm.
Open your mind a bit and start reading about the serious efforts within the ag community to address the environmental issues from CAFOs. Lots of cool stuff happening.
But if you seriously consider animals to be slaves, then never mind. No sense in even trying to have a conversation about it.
"We do not know... how to feed 6 billion people on a modern Western diet without using technology to intervene with nature." Hell we don't know how to feed 6 billion people their indigenous diet without ag technology.
There are two choices - a) increase yields on existing farmland or cut down the rainforests/plow up the grasslands/eat all the fish/ b) shift to "natural" farming methods and cut the population from 6 billion down to a more manageable say 2 billion. Dr. Mengele would be proud if you can get rid of the brown people while you are rationing out the food.
Increase yields or rip up more land. I think Monsanto should get the Nobel Peace prize for geting ag biotechnology to the market place. This is getting into the rarefied air of Norman Borlaug territory.
For all you Exxon haters - biofuels are a crime against the planet. Indonesia is ripping out rainforest to plant oil palm faster than you can say "Lear jet". I'll bet dollars to donuts that it is an Exxon fuel we put into our transport systems in 2050.
To those who feel Congress is the root of much evil, that the motor fuel tax exemption the corn state senators got passed has "fueled" the ethanol and biodiesel craze is only more proof.
Unthinking acceptance of leftist environmental cant is one of the most dangerous intellectual acts we can make as a civilization. The laws of physics and chemistry trump enviro drivel at almost every turn.
Jonatahn Swift said it best:
"... whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together." Gullivers Travels
FEUDALISM. Feudalism, pure and simple.
To the eco-nuts, an idea world is one where a tiny elite (Algore!) have unlimited access to technology and resources while the uneducated masses toil in poverty. A couple thousand ruling people jetting around the world can't damage Gaia much, so long as "normal people" never travel further than 30 miles from their homes...
"Also, check what all those low-tech, living with the land, in tune with nature herdsmen have done to the Sahel in Africa. "
Also check out their infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and sustainable populations. Again- if you want to talk about wiping out 90% of the worlds population and reducing the remaining 10% to stictly regulated (not to mention brutally difficult) survival, than say so. The myth of the happy savage is a persistant one. Yet somehow they all gravitate to big macs and ipods when given the opportunity. The only people who seem to embrace subsistance lifestyles are the imaginary ones the greenies think they can force to while they continue their Timberland shod hikes they flew 1000 miles to take.
Brooksfoe said:
"Exxon, on the other hand, is likely to accomplish whatever it sets its mind to, including significantly delaying the economy's imperative shift to non-carbon fuels.
Are comments to this blog reviewed? If so, how did this one get through? If not, then:
'No, it's not "clear to anyone" that methods of agriculture that produce vastly larger yields for a lower cost are worse than "natural" farming. Speak for yourself, but I rather like having cheap, abundant food. I might note that cheap food particularly helps the poor, who, if you had your desire to see food prices raised tenfold sated, might well have even more financial problems than they do now.'
There are a couple of problems with this.
First, while I have no moral qualms with modern agribusiness, it is very energy intensive. It's cheapness is dependent upon energy costs that do not reflect carbon dioxide and methane production. If the supposition is that global warming is real, agribusiness is costing us more than we are paying today.
Second, cheap food does not help the poor, it hurts the poor. Paying for food is not a widespread problem. Hunger and famine have other causes - war, dislocation etc. Food is often a cash-crop for the poorer people around the world. Western agribusiness and farm subsidies keep the price of food so low that the only thing poor people can afford is food.
"Anyone catch the claims that working a treadle rather than running a diesel pump lets the farmer plant more crops per year? Would someone explain that to me?"
If you watch one of the videos, it appears that the treadle pumps allow additional crops to be plated beyond the one crop allowed by monsoon rains. In this case, therefore, the diesel pump would serve the same function, but it certainly does not read that way.
Hugo, neither of your links are working.
Shit... on top I had I forgotten about this discussion... Better late than sorry?
Here is an interesting talk between WholeFoods CEO John Mackey, who I like, and Michael Pollan (who I dislike) on this issue...
PS: Here the raw address:
http://www.wholefoods.com/company/pastpresentfuturefood.html
I have no idea why my "href=" HTML tags are automatically being removed?
It is much more cost effective to keep hundreds of pigs or thousands of chickens in self-enclosed buildings with automated feeding and watering troughs that deliver a precise diet to the animals on a regular basis, rather than build fencing around hundreds of acres and expose valuable animals to predators, weather, and other hazards.
If you have a concentrated and unsanitary population, this creates a potential externality in terms of pathogens. Such situations can actually ramp up virulence. This is especially relevant when we remember that farm animals are fed antibiotics to increase their growth rate. These are the same antibiotics given to humans, and resistance is easily transfered from one population to another. Factory farms are factories for producing antibiotic resistant bacteria, the cost of which they do not have to pay.
I think Monsanto should get the Nobel Peace prize for geting ag biotechnology to the market place.
You could probably choose a better biotech company than Monsanto for this example. They tend to be pretty unethical. Their roundup ready soybeans were tested for safety without the roundup pesticide actually being applied. What good is that? I was in school when their subsidiary, Searle, was first releasing Celebrex, their selective Cox II inhibitor (to replace Aspirin, which is a Cox I and Cox II inhibitor). They gave us a long speech full of very selective examples about how COX I was an unneeded artifact of fetal development. Now it becomes clear that COX I is an important mediator of chronic inflammation, and people who do take celebrex tend to take a some aspirin along with it. Monsanto has consistently tried to fudge it's research to make its products look better, and they deserve their share of skepticism for that.
To the eco-nuts, an idea world is one where a tiny elite (Algore!) have unlimited access to technology and resources while the uneducated masses toil in poverty.
Elites have always shown their status via conspicuous consumption. In the past, they had art commissioned, for instance. Today, art can be easily mass-produced. So ecological awareness is the new conspicuous consumption. Which is not entirely a bad thing. Those who invested in battery powered cars funded some pretty important R&D. I just don't want them to start getting their hands on government fiat power.
Yes, there are environmental extremists. But it's pretty ridiculous to think that because someone puts solar panels on their roof and buys a Prius that they want to kill off 2/3 of the planet.
The myth of the happy savage is a persistant one. Yet somehow they all gravitate to big macs and ipods when given the opportunity.
1. Many natives keep their lifestyles when allowed to. There are still reservations. People still live on them.
2. It's a bit unfair to look only at only those tribes forced to live on sparse desert lands for determining happiness. If you compare 14th century Frenchmen to 14th century native Americans, the natives were much taller, indicating much better diet for that time. One big problem is that tribal lifestyles don't produce good millitaries. So eventually they get pushed onto the worst land or are slaughtered. It's happened in just about every corner of the globe. And if you want to get into Jared Diamond, the plagues that afflicted agricultural societies made those societies more disease resistant.
Though I agree, tribal lifestyles were only ecologically sustainable because their population density was much much lower, so they're not a model for modern societies.
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