Sunday Support Group for Earthlings: Wise Man (OT)

My younger brother Scott, who is a wise man, has always had a good record with me where book recommendations are concerned. Knowing I like nonfiction, he turned me on to things like The Beak of the Finch (which later won the Pulitzer), The Botany of Desire (great on its own, and, as a bonus, it led me to one of my all-time favorites, The Omnivore's Dilemma by the same author), The Sports Gene, and Disrupted.

In fact, as I page back through my Kindle history, it's like a catalog of friends whose recommendations I value...TOP readers included (although I tend to lump all of those "finds" together as having come from discussions here, because I don't always remember who brought up what book).

Scott is first among equals.

This morning I read articles on the iPad about the energy shortages in California and a new study showing that the Greenland ice sheet has destabilized past the point of no return—it's likely to do nothing from now on except continue adding to sea level rise. And the thing that popped into my head was something I read in Scott's latest book recommendation: that my iPad, which I was using to read those articles at that very moment, is powered by fossil fuel! Something the author, whose name is Hope, says most people forget.

The book is called The Story of More, a bland title it took me a while to set in my head. Hope Jahren, the "lab girl" who wrote it (that's her own term for herself, and it's the title of her first book), points out that when she assigns her classes to document all the times during the day when they use electricity, some of them simply give up—there are too many instances to write them all down. For most people, she reminds us, our phones, tablets, and laptops can be coal-fired devices! You're reading these words right now while most probably liberating just a tiny bit of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Global warming (and global weirding, a term for increasingly chaotic and unpredictable weather) is a subject that, some time ago, I decided not to read about any more. Why? Because it's terrifying—far more frightening than any horror flick, any nightmare, any demagogue. I normally have a lot of intellectual courage; I'm not afraid to look at any question in the eye and decide for myself, even ones that have social stigma or are heavily loaded. I read the Bible for myself and I read Marx for myself. I'm not scared of demon words or of going straight to the works of those I most disagree with. But the Sixth Extinction and the helplessness of climate destruction? Too damn scary for me.

So if you're a denier, I'm down with that. Oh boy, do I sympathize. If there were ever a subject to bury your head in the sand over, this is the one. I mean, we gotta get through the day, and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and so forth. On the other hand, when I was six, the world had the same relationship to nuclear Armageddon, and we've somehow managed to go on living under that Sword of Damocles, dangling, as it has my whole life, from its single strand of horsehair above our heads.

Hope Jahren. Photo by Erica Morrow.

So it was with trepidation that I took Scotty's advice to read The Story of More (got that title yet?). But hey, it's a short book, and she gives it to you straight and sweet, almost breezily, crafting a clearheaded vision of the changing world over 18 short plainspoken chapters that wrenches old worldviews into a new order. Author Jahren (you pronounce the "J"), so aptly named, is much given to variations of phrases that all mean "yes but no" or "no but yes," and, true to form, at the end of the book she appends (literally—it's the Appendix) an extra 20 pages of, yep, hope. She admits that she can't see how we're going to get out of this mess we're in. Yet, at the same time, she's hopeful.

It's what I needed on the subject.

If you're ready and willing (a big "if") to have the big mess put in perspective for you, I can pass along Scotty's recommendation—The Story of More is a fine, wise little book looking down from overhead on a big, scary topic.

I'm fond of saying that human beings are extraordinarily clever and very unwise; but part of that is that we are extraordinarily clever. Hope, capital H—and hope, small h—counsels: never underestimate the human race. We can't foresee the future. But just because we can't right at this moment imagine a solution to our extinction doesn't mean a solution isn't out there.

One thing's for sure, though: from now on (really for the past 50 years, we just didn't accept it), the true story of humanity is how, and whether, our species can continue to live and thrive on a finite planet.

An excellent primer about how the frantic, never-ending race for more has put us in a pickle. Recommended, to those who can stand the subject. Gratitude, as ever, to Scott.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Charlie Ewers: "I was so impressed by this book that I specified it as one of the two texts for my Intro to Sustainability class in Environmental Studies. (The other text is Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken.)"

Schralp: "I have not read the book yet (but plan to do so; many a good recommendation I have gleaned from your blog). However, with regard to reading this on an iPad; how does the solar powered recharging of this device through production of electricity compare with the cost of printing, distributing and recycling printed materials?I feel certain you would not suggest that we stop reading...."

Mike replies: You know, I've always assumed that digital photography pollutes less than chemical photography, and that an e-book consumes fewer resources than a paper book. But is that really true? I'd love to see someone who really knows their stuff discuss resource and pollution issues with regard to photography. I'd be interested.

Comments

[Seth Honeyman]

Thank you Mike for adding a frisson of fret to our Sunday morning. One small cavil, in the USA at least, coal is no longer the dominant fuel source powering electric generation. Natural gas provides 38 percent, nukes over 19% and renewables an encouraging over 17%. The data are from the US EIA https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=21.
So maybe, just maybe, the times they are a-changing0

[Keith]

When I start to feel down about stuff, I try to remember that half of the smartest people that have ever lived, are alive now, with collaboration and communications tools undreamed of a couple generations ago. Pity that half of the stupidest people are alive too, and it seems like they are drowning out the smart ones.

[hugh crawford]

A hurricane like storm eastern Nebraska across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois, and another in Indiana is a pretty good example.
Where I am in California the forecast is as high as 111 for the next few days with the occasional cloudburst to make things extra sticky.

It’s the new normal I’m afraid

[Well, I don't mean to be a bummer, but, unfortunately, it's not the new normal. There is no end cap on climate change. --Mike]

[Stephen S.]

Where your electricity comes from depends on where you live. I'm in Ontario, Canada, where coal was phased out entirely in 2014. In 2020, electricity comes primarily from nuclear reactors, followed by the hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls, followed by wind and solar, then natural gas. Oil and diesel are last, making up only 0.1% of power generation since 2005.

[John Krumm]

I've done much the same (avoiding reading the grim details) but it helps me to be politically active. Keeps me focused. We just helped elect locally a clean water, clean energy candidate over a "take it slow, coal is good for now" incumbent. Landslide victory. One thing I totally believe, though, is that we will only survive if we do so collectively, through cooperative effort. It might turn out to not only be good for the planet, but good for our emotional, physical and even spiritual well being.

[MikeR]

Ordered! I could use a little hope right now.

Brief story: When my wife and I married some 37 years ago, I learned that she loved children's books, and loved stories of tough-minded women. She bought a copy of Bette Midler's "The Saga of Baby Divine," a somewhat autobiographical tale of an infant, not long out of the womb, crying "More!" That was the ongoing theme in the story. Thinking about it, I realized that, contrary to the usual belief that life strives to survive, to live, the underlying motive is "more." More of your kind, more food, more territory, more wealth, more stuff. I thought of the classic petri dish example of a mold or bacterium gradually encompassing more space, eating more of the nutrient, until it poisoned the environment that nurtured it, and died.

I'm afraid that, since then, I haven't been too hopeful about the long term prospects for the human race, and the other organisms we take with us. Even more dismaying when I consider who runs things.

Yes, please, a little hope.

[Trevor Small]

Ref. the nuclear armageddon fear: Desmond Morris theorised in 1967 that we'd be fairly safe from that, because any leader who triggered it would also be in the frontline, not sitting back behind the lines in safety.

[Thomas Walsh]

More megapixels. Need I say more?

[Merle Hall]

You might be interested in Low-Tech Magazine (https://www.lowtechmagazine.com). You can even read it on their solar powered server, if you like and it's a sunny day. Most every article I've read there is well written and well thought out and I've enjoyed even if I wasn't much interested in the topic at hand. Posts are irregular, time-wise, so kinda like Christmas when they hit my feed reader.

[George Feucht]

Thank you for the recommendation. I immediately ordered for Kindle.

As for powering my iPad with Kindle, we installed solar last year. We live in Southern California, so days with sunshine are plentiful. But I highly recommend that all folks do the math on solar capability for their location. Our system will pay for itself in 7 or 8 years. It hits its theoretical significant production falloff in 25 years. It is a NO BRAINER, both financially and environmentally.

The biggest question mark is the grid. If we all have solar, there is no need for power plants during the day and a huge need at night. So: How do we address this? Maybe it's using excess power during the day from solar to pump water into a higher elevation reservoir and then discharge it into hydroelectric generators at night. Or, it's as simple as night shifts for power plants.

Regardless, once home batteries become affordable and low-environemental-impact, I'll fight like hell to get off the grid. Our modest 18 panels currently (net) generate enough electricity to power us 100%.

[Steve Biro]

I'll be happy to read this book, Mike. But while I agree that humans can be very clever, there are times that, as a group or species, we can choose to be dumb as mud.

This has happened a number of times throughout recorded history - notably the Dark Ages. And, despite all of the technology and knowledge around us, we appear to be headed toward another one of those times.

Growing anti-science and anti-intellectual sentiment along with a retreat by many into nationalism, despotism, superstition and fear come at a particularly inopportune time.

I'm hoping that those who have been holding us back will wake shortly. In the meantime, I'll read the book and hope for the best.

[Benjamin Marks]

Hard to say: chemical vs. digital. Chemical: more or less a one time carbon impact (e.g. manufacturing) per image and per print. Storage in the cloud? Ongoing carbon impact from all those servers, spinning, heating, needing cooling. Given that the cloud is "forever" it is hard to see how you ever close the carbon loop on digital. The data only ever accretes, and therefore the carbon footprint never gets smaller . . .

[Tony Ayling]

We have 20 solar panels on our house and a Tesla 14 kWhr battery system. This not only runs the house 24/7 but uploads about 400 kWhr to the electricity grid each month. So I guess my iPad is carbon neutral (although I’d really like to know the carbon cost of production of the battery and panels). Now I just need an electric car to make better use of the surplus......

[Tony Ayling]

An addendum to my comment above: the elephant in the room, that which must be addressed before any other issue, is that in my lifetime the world’s human population has tripled. Add to that a global economic system that relies on continuous growth and how can any sane person not see disaster looming