It's Back to School Time for Climate and Energy

August 1, 2010 – Vol.15 No.20

IT’S BACK TO SCHOOL TIME FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

How many ordinary people, do you suppose, know what the troposphere is? How many voters could describe in detail the composition of the air we breathe? How many politicians could speak at length – without the help of office researchers – about the hydrologic cycle? How many good, hard-working Americans could discuss the dangers of persistent trade deficits, even if they knew what a deficit was?

Senate Democrats have decided against an effort to pass major energy and climate legislation this year. The votes weren’t in their favor they said. They’d offer energy-lite instead, which as I write this is legislation in limbo.

One of the problems of trying to pass an energy and climate bill is that, very likely, many people – from citizens to politicians – don’t get it. They don’t understand the core, simple principles behind global warming science or the economic problems of energy dependency. They're uneducated as well about basic earth sciences and some very simple economic mechanisms.

Obviously, politicians, advocacy, industry groups and industry itself wanting to move the nation to a low carbon, energy independent future, will have to regroup and try again. The trouble with passing significant climate and energy legislation – as well as getting people to voluntarily control their energy and emissions habits – may be caused by poor continuous education. By “continuous education” I mean the process of continuously reminding people of things they don’t know or may have known in the past but have forgotten.

How many know how thin the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere where we live, and where most greenhouse gases are accumulating, actually is? (At the most 10 miles.) How many people understand how emissions, such as carbon dioxide, are removed from the air? How many people appreciate the importance of trees in this regard? On energy, how many understand that spending more money on imported goods (like oil) rather than receiving money from the sale of exported goods (of any kind) means that the dollars earned here are leaving the nation at a greater rate than they are coming in. (Our trade deficit is a drainpipe for dollars. Most of that drainpipe is filled with dollars for oil.)

Most people probably learned a great deal about earth sciences and the environment in the 8th grade but may have forgotten. Many probably learned about economics in college but have forgotten as well. Continuously educating people – reminding people of things they many have already learned before as well as educating people who never had the opportunity to learn those things – may be the best way to overcome the resistance to efforts to change the nation’s (and the world’s) emissions and energy habits.

Most people should be able to answer some simple questions. Where does the exhaust of power plants, cars, factories, even ourselves, go? If we remove nature’s ability to extract carbon dioxide from air, such as by cutting down too many trees, won’t that seemly harmless gas build up over time? If we’ve changed the composition of the atmosphere can’t we expect some changes in the climate as well? Where does our oil, coal and natural gas come from? How many dollars per day are leaving the country never to return?

Perhaps in the next push to get climate and energy legislation passed, politicians and supporting groups should be more teachers than leaders and advocates. The process of education shouldn’t be a one time effort. On climate and energy, as well as a host of other subjects, education has to be continuous and made easy to understand. What we learned in 8th grade needs to revisited from time to time.