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which we are making our planet unfit for human life is more troubling
than any other, but the one in particular -- the one that should
really be keeping our engineers and genius inventors up at night,
working on solutions -- is global warming.
Can I take it for granted that I don't need to tell you why the
degradation of the environment is the biggest problem of our age?
That it is the threat to our livelihood -- the World War, the Great
Depression, the would-be Nuclear Winter -- against which we need to
mobilize the full power of our resources? I would like to think I
can take this for granted.
I'd like simply to assume that you know that it -- this
degradation, this destruction, this systemic poisoning -- supersedes
the current or near-future state of any national economy. That it is
an unfolding calamity far greater than a wave of new tensions in
Sino-American relations or another round of violence in the Middle
East. That it is not an "issue" the way, say, the balance of powers
between federal and provincial governments is an "issue." That it is
a cluster of events -- events resulting from human activity on this
planet -- that are demonstrably, measurably happening. That it is
not, therefore, an ideological construct. That while it might be
possible to assemble an argument or voice an opinion about clean air
and water, and fertile soil, and a habitable climate, that these
opinions are not right or wrong so much as utterly irrelevant. That,
for example, the sun's ultraviolet light, when it reaches the earth
without being filtered through a layer of ozone, is capable of
producing malignant melanoma in the skin tissue of any person,
totally regardless of that person's opinion about the relative
importance of "environmental issues." Can I take all of this for
granted?
Maybe I can't. These are, after all, details that get reported
with far less regularity than the fluctuations in Nortel's stock
price. Should I assemble some of the evidence? The polar ice cap is
melting, as are the snows of Kilimanjaro. Last November, the leaders
of thirty-nine of the world's small island nations petitioned the UN
to take action on global warming before rising oceans swallow up
large parts of their countries. Is that enough? Last September and
October, officials in Punta Arenas, Chile, advised the city's
120,000 citizens to stay indoors from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. to avoid the
sun. At present, approximately 19,000 Ontario lakes have acidity
levels inimical to plant and animal life due to abnormally high
sulphuric acid levels in the rain that falls into them. The hole in
the ozone layer over Antarctica is just under three times the size
of Canada. The government of Tuvalu -- one of those island nations
worried it might be submerged by the rising oceans -- has looked
into buying land in another country, just in case.
All this is really happening. It's bigger than you. It needs to
be fixed. And there are ways to fix it. That's my point.
IV
more miracles of
modern science that you
may not
have heard about
Before the end of this year, the majority of
the Stateline Wind Generating Project on the Washington-Oregon
border -- the world's largest single wind-energy development, 450
turbines in all -- will begin creating power for 70,000 homes. The
world's first commercial wave-power station went online on the
Scottish island of Islay last fall. A project is underway in
southeastern Spain to build the world's largest photovoltaic power
plant -- four times larger than any other solar-power facility
currently in operation. A gas station in San Francisco began selling
biodiesel -- a fuel made from food oils that can be used to run any
diesel engine -- in May. These are just the renewable-energy
solutions, and they were not hard to find. Dig a little deeper, and
you'll find not just constellations but whole vast galaxies of green
technologies. Go, for example, to the Environmental News Network
website (enn.com) and click on "Marketplace." The site's links
number in the hundreds: cottage-industry consumer products, business
services, green versions of every single item at your average
supermarket.
Pick one at random, though -- say, SolarRoofs.com, distributors
of the Fireball 2001 solar water heater -- and it may become clear
why not all of these ideas have made it to your local mall. The idea
is sound enough: Install a solar panel on your roof to heat your
water. Pays for itself in just a few years. Sign me up. Except look
at the website. Look at the Fireball 2001's cheap, messy website.
It's horribly designed, cluttered, littered with grammatical errors
and misused quotation marks. It comes across about as legit as an
infomercial for some miracle rust remover. Not very many homeowners
are going to make enormous changes to the way they get their hot
water based on a sales pitch that reminds them of an infomercial.
In fact, isn't all this stuff -- these half-formed and poorly
executed bright ideas, these small businesses without the money or
the business acumen to make it out of the planning stages, these
ingenious inventions and revolutionary engineering feats waiting to
be market-capped -- isn't it a little like, say, if you'd gotten
lost driving into San Francisco twenty, thirty years ago, and found
yourself out in the middle of the farmer's fields of the Santa Clara
Valley? And -- who knew? -- there's all these R&D facilities
full of ambitious geeks with big ideas out there. Isn't it, in a
way, kind of like Cisco and Intel and Yahoo and all the rest are
just sitting there, waiting to be scooped up and driven hard into
the mainstream?
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