16 Ideas for the Planet
Newsweek
April 16, 2007 issue - JOHN R. MCNEILL
Former Cinco Hermanos Chair Of Environmental and International Affairs, Georgetown University
The next 50 years are make-or-break
The way I look at it, global climate change and the environment have been important for quite some time. I hope they stay here in the forefront of the U.S. consciousness, but they may not. Something could relegate those issues to the margins tomorrow. Since 9/11, the situation has been fairly simple and straightforward: issues of terrorism and security have seized the public imagination to the extent that everything else has become a lesser priority. Anything that has a longer time horizon, like climate change, with a slower fuse to anticipate catastrophe, has to wait.
But clearly the salience of environmentalism has returned rather suddenly in the last 12 months, which is interesting because there hasn't been a real galvanizing event. Katrina for some people seems like a thing to come with a warmer world, but by no means is that clearly the case. But we certainly now have a shifting landscape in which almost nobody clings to the position that the science of climate change is bogus. Rather, the opposition has begun to say, "OK, it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it." My guess is that this position will further weaken, because I think the gradual development of new technologies will show it is possible to make the leap. I am very confident that there will eventually be a post-fossil-fuel economy and that technology will extricate us from this awkward position we now find ourselves in. The way I see it, the next 50 years will be the eye of the needle through which we need to pass. That will not be easy.
ARTHUR H. ROSENFELD, PH.D.
Commissioner, California Energy Commission
Energy efficiency is the ultimate answer
If we're going to survive global warming, there are two things we must do. We have to move in the direction of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and we have to improve energy efficiency. You can measure it in different ways—passenger miles per gallon of gas, lumens per watt—but we need to think in terms of doubling efficiency. Not "conservation," which implies sacrifice. Efficiency doesn't involve sacrifice. If you compare a modern refrigerator with one from 1973, which was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, it's bigger, it's gotten rid of CFC refrigerants, its inflation-adjusted price is two thirds less—and it uses 75 percent less energy.
Have we picked all the low-hanging fruit already? There's no evidence for that at all. People wondered about that when refrigerators doubled their efficiency, and we went right on and doubled it again. There's virtually no end in sight. One area of interest right now is standby power. If I go to your house at 3 a.m. on a nice spring night, nothing but the refrigerator is actually "on," but you're probably consuming 80 watts in remote-controlled appliances such as televisions and garage-door openers and in cell-phone chargers. These devices used to draw around three watts each, but the California Energy Commission recently passed regulations that limit them to a half-watt. If you buy a cordless telephone in California in 2008, it will use one fifth the power it did a few years ago—and that will eventually be true everywhere in the world. Which brings me back to my main point: that while we do need to develop renewable-energy supplies, energy efficiency is the quickest and cheapest way to delay global warming.
FRAN P. MAINELLA
Honorary Doctorate and Visiting Scholar, Clemson University; Former Director, National Park Service
Erin Patrice O'Brien for Newsweek
Fran's Gang: Mainella and some friends hang out
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We've got to get our kids outdoors more
Linking our children back to nature is one of the most challenging environmental issues we have. When I used to come home from school, my mom and dad just said, "Go out and play, and come back in time for dinner." But today, because of security issues, children aren't going outside and playing in nature as much anymore, because we want to know where they are every minute; there's a greater need for supervision. And, as much as we love our technology, many children prefer to come home and be on a computer and in a chair rather than being out of doors—it's what Richard Louv [a visiting scholar at Brandeis University and author of "Last Child in the Woods"] calls "nature-deficit disorder." It has health repercussions as well: there's a direct link between a lack of exposure to nature and higher rates of attention-deficit disorder, obesity and depression.
The best way to protect our resources for the future is by helping children develop an appreciation for the outdoors. It's part of a movement underway right now, with people across the nation working on how to get children linked back to nature. One of the things we're doing here at Clemson is, we're working on an institute that may help us link our parks back to our children and to people of different cultural backgrounds who may not be as familiar with the parks. This is a challenge for all of us and something we all need to work on. The best way to protect our parks and our environment is to foster an appreciation for the outdoors. We can call the movement "no child left inside."
CONTINUED
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