Tilting At Windmills

I was watching CNN Sunday night and...wait, stop right there. Why was I watching CNN Sunday night? Well, the Mad Men season is over, Fox was showing re-runs and my favorite part of Sunday Night Football (other than Collinsworth) had already happened. For my money, the best part of SNF is when the players introduce themselves. I especially enjoy the Miami guys, as in "Bryant McKinnie, The U" and "Jon Beason, The..U already know". And yes, I saw the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "The U" and yes, it was awesome. Also, the tag line, "What if I told you college football was hit by a decade long hurricane?", best movie tag line ever, I will accept no other nominees. That was my quickest digression to date, back to CNN.

CNN's Planet in Peril series had taken our intrepid reporter, one Anderson Cooper, to Hawaii. Anderson has a tough job. We were learning about the early stages of Hawaii's energy revolution, which is important because going to Hawaii is like a 17 hour flight for everyone, so I think they owe us all some oil. Of the many things I saw, two stood out.

First, some science guys have decided to air condition about 40 buildings in Honolulu by piping sea water in from offshore (and deep down, so it's cold) and running it through a pipe system which would cool the buildings, sort of like how refrigerators work. When I worked in Manhattan, I worked with a guy who couldn't afford an air conditioner for his apartment. His genius plan was to put a big bowl of ice in front of his fan. I'm sure the sea water AC guys thought their plan through a little more thoroughly than my old co-worker, but this still sounds more like a harebrained scheme than a great idea.

Second, we saw a 20-turbine wind farm in Maui. The turbines use computers to harness the wind in the most efficient way and they power about 9 percent of the island. This sounds a little more promising. The only problem is, anytime you want to put these things somewhere, the locals go nuts because nobody buys beachfront property so they can look at windmills. That's what happened in Maui, these 20 turbines didn't get built until oil prices went so high people just couldn't take it anymore. This stood out in my mind because it really epitomizes the way most people seem to feel about the environment. We're not anti-environment, but the things we have to do to improve the environment are annoying and inconvenient, and why bother saving the planet if we can't have a clear view of the pretty ocean?

I already had climate issues on the brain, because the President was over in Copenhagen last week at some sort of U.N. climate meeting. (Sidenote: I also saw Glenn "Goldmember" Beck recently announce on his show that he refuses to pronounce Copenhagen correctly. If I had the time, I think my blog would just be me watching every episode of Glenn's show and pointing out how consistently stupid he is. He's the best.) I, for one, was impressed with what the world's leaders got done in Denmark. They seem to have struck a very important deal to all go back to their respective countries and pretend they struck a very important deal. Good for them.

Truth is, if I was China or India or a number of other developing nations, I wouldn't be interested in a climate deal either. Picture this. You and I get stranded on an island. We've got water, but very little food. After a few weeks of eating dirt and whatever plants we figured out weren't poisonous, a plane flies over and randomly drops two big, delicious steaks on our island. I find them first and eat one right away. Then you show up, you see the one empty steak box and deduce that I've clearly eaten what was inside, and you go to eat the second steak, but I say you can't. I say it's all the food we have and we better ration it. Would you be cool with that? No, of course not. You'd say I got to eat my steak and the second one is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. We spent quite a bit of time burning fossil fuels with impunity and building our big shiny country. Now other countries want their industrial revolutions and we're telling them they need to watch their emissions and think about the planet. We may be right, but it isn't exactly fair (and sure, life's not fair, but try telling that to China, damn communists).

So, there's a lot of stories swirling around these days about the environment and climate change. Copenhagen, stolen e-mails from scientists, our liberal Congress making noise about trying to do some environmental stuff before they get thrown out of office next November. I have to admit, I'm a little torn on the climate change/global warming issue. I'm not one of these deniers who thinks we can ignore giant pieces of Antarctica breaking off because it still gets cold in the winter (Sean Hannity thought it was hilarious that it was snowing in Denmark during the U.N. conference. Does it ever stop snowing in Denmark? I'd like to see an episode of Jeopardy with Sean, Glenn Beck and anyone from Fox and Friends). And I'm not one of these people who thinks the science is still up in the air, mostly because that's what idiots say about evolution too, and whenever I hear it I get the sudden urge to hit someone over the head with a monkey.

I'm torn on climate change for the same reason you haven't seen an entire blog post from me complaining about MTV's Jersey Shore (I watched like seven minutes of an episode last week, just long enough to get a sense of what was happening but not so long that I could no longer control the urge to kill myself. The apocalypse is coming people, there's nothing you can do about it now). We all agree it's a very bad thing, but can we really do anything about it? Short of giving up all the cars and electricity right now, can we really fix this problem with gradual emissions reductions and solar panels?

Then I think, maybe I'm disheartened because our current ideas for responding to climate change are so crappy. Exhibit A, ethanol. Yes, ethanol produced from sugarcane has done a lot for Brazil, but we don't have sugarcane, we have corn. Currently most (or maybe even all, I don't know, or really care) of our gas is 10% ethanol. Hooray? I can't remember where I heard this, maybe an episode of The West Wing, but I once heard somebody compare dealing with an oil shortage by subsidizing ethanol to dealing with a gin shortage by subsidizing tonic water.

Exhibit B, cap and trade. This is where businesses that pollute get some sort of cap on how much they can pollute. If a business comes in under the cap, they can sell their extra pollution allowance to some other business that just can't help itself, creating a cash incentive for polluting as little as possible. I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain how stupid this is. This is like telling a criminal who killed 20 people this year that he can only kill 15 people next year, and if he wants to kill anyone else, he has to buy more murders from some other, less homicidal criminal. In theory, you'd get some murder reduction, but wouldn't you kind of be missing the point? That murder is bad and reducing it by a little bit only makes things a little bit less bad.

This is where I'm stuck. Are there better ideas out there somewhere that can reverse whatever climate change is already happening? Or, are our efforts to fight climate change just futile attempts that only serve to make us feel better? I don't know. I'm not saying this would mean we shouldn't try. 200 years from now, when our clever descendants have learned how to live under the sea, it would be nice for them to be able to look back at us and say "at least they tried".

This isn't one of those times when I say we need to either come up with a great idea or just shut up and die. I think we should keep trying. Sometimes good ideas come from bad ideas. Like, maybe if we make enough ethanol, we'll create ethanol based leprechauns who can use rainbows to clear all the carbon dioxide out of the sky. This is a great idea because, of course, as leprechauns, their rainbows would all lead to pots of gold, so it's a win all the way around. But let's be realistic, we're at least 15 years away from leprechaun technology. In the mean time, isn't it possible that we're just tilting at windmills with our alternative energies and clever pollution cap schemes?

The good news? The planet isn't going anywhere, the planet will be here long after we're gone. When people say we should save the planet, they mean we should save ourselves. If the worst fears of climate change scientists are realized, life might suck for a while, but we're smart (well, some of us are, a few at least) and we'll figure out a way to get past it. The really good news? If programs like the wind turbines in Maui get more popular, we'll have plenty of windmills to joust with.

Totally unrelated PS...I learned something today. Did you know Toys for Tots is run by the Marine Corps Reserves? I didn't know that. There are a lot of worthy charities out there, and it's hard to choose, but Toys for Tots allows you to help out, ya know, tots, and also the Marines. http://www.toysfortots.org/