SSF's Shannon Perry chats with Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet author Eric Sorensen.
“Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet is not another book of tips. Like its antecedents in the “seven wonders of the world” lineage, it’s a guide to miraculous human-made things. The twist about these wonders is that they already surround you. This book is an ode to seven everyday devices you probably already own or use, which are so powerful, elegant, and in most cases simple, that they are and always have been friends of the climate (and also of your pocketbook, neighbors, health, and children). It’s a reminder of everything that’s right about our lives, not everything that’s wrong.” - Eric Sorensen
Eric Sorensen, along with the Sierra Club and Sightline Institute, would like you to take another look at the wonders around you. In the recently published Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, Sorensen demonstrates how the things we already have can be repurposed (or just used more often) to help slow the assault on our natural environment. Bicycles, ceiling fans, clotheslines, condoms: if an object can be called a “hero,” then these are some of the Spandex-clad, arms-akimbo environmental champions of the 21st century.
I recently had a chance to sit down with Eric Sorensen and talk with him about the book, about global warming, and about lessons learned.
According to Sorensen, one of his initial interests was the question of carbon production and storage. While writing an article, he learned a great deal more about carbon, especially how pervasive the production of carbon is in modern America. For example, says Sorensen, just making toast in the toaster can amount to seven pounds of carbon produced each year. (Seven pounds may not seem like much, but that’s per toaster.) Your toaster, your answering machine, your car, all these things produce carbon – carbon is everywhere, it’s in everything we do, Sorensen says. Once you discover the truth of carbon production, reducing individual contribution takes on a greater urgency.
What it means to be green
The idea of being “green,” if I understand Sorensen correctly, is not to make life unpleasant or unbearably complicated. Even small adjustments, done consistently and by enough people, can add up to huge improvements in the health of our ecosystem.
For Sorensen, one of the most important steps individuals can take is the one away from the car. Sorensen himself is an avid bike rider and bike commuter, often riding the hour-and-a-half distance from his home in Kenmore to his work at Seattle University. He realizes that his willingness to ride so far and in all weathers makes him something of an outlier, but he stresses that opting to ride a bike for some trips on some days can make a difference. Sorensen started riding regularly to save money and strain on a tired 1977 VW camper van. But the advantages just kept piling up: he extended the life of his car by as much as 10 years, saving him the cost of a new car. He saved on fuel (admitting that the van got “crappy” mileage in its old age), and, he says, he saved a small fortune on not joining a gym.
One of the important lessons learned here was that what he calls “absolutist thinking” can be very counter-productive. Recent (and long-time, for that matter) converts to the cause are often purists. While there’s nothing wrong in that, the idea that to be truly green one must sell one’s car and bike or walk everywhere can be difficult to maintain and may come across as impossibly preachy to the general public. Sorensen, who drives when driving is necessary, advises people to “look for a moderate mix of things: bike some, bus some. If you get locked into absolutist thinking, it’s really a serious psychic burden.”
So, ride your bike a little more often. Once you start, you may find yourself advocating ways to make your city a little more bike-friendly: more bike lanes and sharrows (pavement markings to indicate to riders the safest place to ride and to drivers that there are bikers on the road), more driver and biker education, more trails. Safety, says Sorensen, is the #1 reason drivers give for not riding more often. The more you help to make your city friendlier for bikers, the more commuters will abandon the Beemer for the bike, and the cleaner the skies above us all will be.
Thinking environmentally takes training. We live in “patterns of energy consumption,” says Sorensen, too often making choices for reasons of convenience rather than conservation. One giant energy sinkhole is the suburbs. Cheaper and seemingly safer than living in the city, cleaner, usually with better schools and conveniently located “near” malls and shopping outlets, the ‘burbs are “just plain attractive.” But by moving people a significant (i.e. “driving”) distance from their work and their shopping centers, the fossil-fueled suburbs are the SUVs of residential arrangements. But, Sorensen says, “you can work around that. Find places you’re willing to bike to. Put air in the tires.” Some action is better than none, and every time you consciously choose the more environmentally friendly way of doing something, the more natural the choice becomes.
Chipping away at global warming
The microchip and its potential for greening up our lives holds great fascination for Sorensen. It’ll pay off, says Sorensen, when “people decide to use it in the name of efficiency. Right now, we’re in a phase where we’re enjoying its benefits by default. Instead of turning on a stereo, we turn on an iPod. But the default benefits are huge. We’re in a period where the economy grew in the 90s, but energy use didn’t grow, and it’s believed to be largely because of the microchip.”
Conducting necessary work from home is one area where the microchip has already whittled away at fossil fuel consumption and has the potential to do a great deal more good. “In Connecticut alone, telecommuting takes nearly 60,000 cars off the road every day,” Sorensen writes in Seven Wonders. That’s the equivalent of an entire urban transit system. The ease of conducting research via the Internet, whether it’s for a newspaper article or to determine which is the best bike for your buck, has also reduced travel times. We no longer have to drive around, looking for the product or information that we need; in fact, many products like books, CDs or movies, can come to us in purely digital form, obviating the need for travel, shipping, storage or materials.
Chips can also make the things we use work smarter. The programmable thermostat is one device that Sorensen really likes, both for its practical applications and for its educational value. The thermostat can be programmed around how people live their lives: most of us get up around 6:30, are out of the house by 9, back by 6 pm. We like to sleep in a little later on the weekends. For around $20, we can install a thermostat that takes that behavior into account in heating and cooling our homes, instead of trying to maintain a constant temperature that may only be enjoyed by the family dog. And such devices may be invaluable in teaching people that being more environmentally conscious doesn’t mean going without all our creature comforts.
Bearing the burden
Says Sorensen, he has long suspected—and research into the book has proven—that much of the burden of living green has been placed squarely on the shoulders of consumers. And that’s unfair in a lot of ways, he says. We make sacrifices, we change our behavior, we make concerted efforts to do the right thing, and the rest of society enjoys the benefits. A far more effective way of tackling the problem of climate change is to make global, systemic changes in the ways we do things. Certainly, individual action is important: we can make a difference, and our willingness to participate in environmentally conscious efforts can operate as a call for greater action from our policymakers. But it is the societal, cooperative efforts that can reverse the warming trend.
Fossil fuel use is incredibly pervasive, says Sorensen. Back when we were hunters and gatherers, there was a very direct, very obvious correlation between calories taken in and calories expended. You took in more than you used or you starved to death. Nowadays, an 80-calorie head of lettuce takes up to 4,600 calories to reach our dinner plates. A meat-based diet requires an enormous use of resources. We use fossil fuels for convenience’s sake, often without even thinking about it. There are ways to economize, to shrink the deficit, but in the end, says Sorensen, this system just isn’t sustainable.
We need to incentivize good behavior, according to Sorensen. Right now, even though fuel prices are high and rising, we still aren’t paying the true cost of gasoline. The financial and environmental costs of building and maintaining roads and filling those roads with cars, the loss of habitat and farmland, the massive pollution: these are all costs, but they’re not rolled into the cost of a gallon of gas. If they were, we would understand how expensive a fossil fuel-based economy really is.
Charge the true price, says Sorensen, and incentivize the healthier options. Charge the true cost of coal—the health concerns, the mercury poisoning, the destruction of the landscape—and suddenly it’s no longer a “cheap” source of energy. Incentivize solar energy production, and see how quickly the better option becomes the only option. We’ve been waiting for the market to make alternative energy more attractive—for prices to come down on organic foods and solar panels for our rooftops and less-polluting, fuel-efficient automobiles. The market won’t change until we force it to, by demanding more and better choices.
For more ideas from Eric Sorensen, check out his book, Wonders for a Cool Planet: Everyday things to help solve global warming, from your local library.