What about nuclear energy?

As I live in Germany, which is both a leader in climate policy and intensely against nuclear energy, I'm often asked my opinion on nuclear energy. I'm a rare nuclear agnostic, as I think that its climate balance is far better than coal or oil, but that its price tag and catastrophic risk make it less well-suited as a long-term solution than renewables. So herewith, my energy ranking, given with the caveat that I'm not an energy expert, but more of a hobbyist:

1. Negawatt: The best energy is that which you don't use. This includes turning off lights when you leave a room, not buying things you don't need, and in general living with a lighter footprint.
2. Energy efficiency: The energy that is used should be as efficient as possible. In this category would be reduced packaging, energy-efficient technology, and
3. Small-scale renewables: Here I'm a big proponent of Amory Lovins's argument that we need to make energy production more local and democratic. If you generate your own electricity, you're taking advantage of local resources, reducing energy loss through the grid, and cutting down on infrastructure. Small-scale renewables also increase the resilience and security of the energy supply.
4. Large-scale renewables: When small-scale can't do it alone, go for wind farms and solar campuses.
5. Nuclear: Cost-benefit-wise, it doesn't make sense to build new plants. But keeping existing plants running during the transition isn't totally bad. I don't know the full costs of extraction, though.
6. Natural gas: Burns cleaner than oil and coal, but has major extraction issues.
7. Oil: Incredibly risky to extract, comes from an oligopoly that shuttles money to much of the world's worst terrorists and extremist regimes, and very, very dirty.
8. Coal: Also risky to extract, especially to miners, and exacts a horrific toll on the environment, both at the mining site and where it is burned. Even if CCS technology became viable, the environmental costs are simply too high.

An answer to the sustainability v. growth debate?

Could it be that there was an answer to the sustainability v. economic growth as early as the 1990s? Witness the second goal of the President's Council on Sustainable Development's Sustainable America, published in 1996:

Sustain a healthy U.S. economy that grows sufficiently to create meaningful jobs, reduce poverty, and provide the opportunity for a high quality of life for all in an increasingly competitive world (p. 12).

Beautifully written and with a clear normative framework. This statement sees growth necessary that improves quality of life: a means to an end rather than an end in itself. This statement could help get the current economic debate back on track.

Obama again frames the debate as "jobs v. environment"

Pres. Obama chose perhaps the worst time to announce that he was rescinding EPA's new smog rules, right in the middle of a huge sit-in at the White House against the Keystone XL oil pipeline. It's as if he's handing us the nails to put in the coffin of his environmental record.

My biggest problem with this is how he allows the issue to be framed: we have to choose between a clean environment and good jobs. Since we're in a recession, it's OK to let more people die from air pollution for years to come. This is a false paradigm, but let's take it on its face: would we rather have jobs that make people sick, or be healthy and have higher unemployment?

Again, I don't think this is the choice. Renewable energy is huge growth sector and it reduces air pollution. But I'm just laying out the argument as it stands in the national debate. Notice that I didn't use the word "environment": the purpose of the new EPA regulation is not to protect the environment. It is to save lives.

So, human health or dirty jobs? I know what I'd choose first.

Sustainability and budgeting

My understanding of the debt ceiling debacle in the U.S. Congress this summer was colored by an excellent piece by Robert Reich on the budget debate back in 1992 and recently reposted by the New Republic. The crux of his argument is that we need to understand the budget in terms of time: are we paying for past excesses, keeping the party going, or investing in the future?

Although Reich's argument is based in economic sanity, it fits well with the concept of sustainability. A dollar of spending on early education, repairing roads, or R&D is an investment that will increase future revenue and/or decrease future expenditures. So it's far more productive than a dollar spent to service the debt or pay for Medicare (not that we shouldn't do those things).

The U.S. budget since this article was written has moved in the wrong direction, however. Since 1992, the deficit has grown exponentially, the country's population has gotten older, and we've started two expensive foreign wars on credit. Obama and Congressional Democrats obviously didn't understand Reich's categorization of spending in the debt fight. (Sorry, it was neither a discussion nor a debate.) Ezra Klein of the Washigton Post makes a similar point, tying the current situation to Reich's piece. He quotes the Economic Policy Institute's Ethan Pollack, who gets to the heart of the issue:

“What we’re doing here is transferring financial debt to investment debt,” says Pollack. “Cutting a dollar from the deficit by not repairing a road keeps you from passing one dollar of debt on to a future generation. But you are passing on a crumbling road. If you look at that using an accounting perspective that includes assets and liabilities, then by making a cut in the budget by not repairing a road, you’re not necessarily saving that money.”

That sounds anything but sustainable to me.

Grown in Detroit

I just saw Grown in Detroit, an excellent documentary on the public (now charter) high school Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit. It teaches teenage girls who are pregnant or already mothers how to grow their own food in the school's urban garden. Great example of the interrelationships within the system: the girls are educated, their children are educated, they grow food for themselves and their community, they learn about nutrition and business, vacant lots become productive farmland...the list goes on.

What is sustainability?

"Sustainability," like "sustainable development," is a notoriously vague, malleable concept. Countless scholars, pundits, activists, and more have tried to define sustainability in order to give it meaning and protect it from the careless or malicious use of greenwashers. To me, sustainability has a few key qualities:

• it's long-term. Decisions are made based on positive outcomes decades or centuries in the future, not just tomorrow. Although building pollution scrubbers on coal-fired power plants may cost money upfront, the long-term health effects make them a valuable investment.
  
• it acknowledges natural limits. The goal is not growth, but sufficiency, and understanding limits to natural systems, such as "sustainable yields" of timber, fish, and wheat.
  
• it's system-based. Solutions improve system health and viability by considering corollary effects of decisions. Smart growth development promotes health, lowers transportation and infrastructure costs, improves the local economy, and builds a sense of place: building the right systems leads to far-reaching positive effects.
  
• it's equitable. A long-term viewpoint implicitly promotes intergenerational equity. So it's important to consider intragenerational equity as well.
• it's democratic, often even consensus-based. Democratic, consensus-building decision-making processes reinforce the personal change and long-term system stability necessary for sustainability to function.
• it's not just about the environment. Because sustainability works with entire systems, it requires economic, social, and institutional viability as well as environmental quality.