Chapter IV: An environmental balance sheet
“When we try to pick out anything
by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
– John Muir
How can the value of renewable resources, a clean environment
generally, be assessed in the new “complete” energy economy? The
environmental purist’s answer is that the environment is self
evidently priceless, must not be taken for granted, and be left
pristine. However, the 2nd law forces an admission that the
extraction from the surroundings of both energy, and the nutrient
resources that energy renews, is necessary to sustain life’s
systems, and that the extraction must result in a greater net
disorder in the surroundings. The natural disorder created in the
surroundings can be overcome, i.e. can become re-ordered, with the
constant influx of solar energy to the Earth’s systems. But
currently the rate of our consumption of energy and
energy-equivalent renewable resources is out of balance with this
intake. The resulting disorder in the surroundings is overwhelming
the ecosystems ability to regenerate order. The goal for a
sustainable economy is to overcome the disorder in the Earth’s
ecosystems with energy, ideally from the Sun, ultimately shifting
the universal net disorder of the 2nd law onto the surroundings of
the solar energy system. The key to prioritizing environmental
action, locally or globally, is to recognize the balances that an
ecosystem maintains with its natural cycles, and assess the energy
value of that balance that is otherwise taken for granted,
ultimately an energy received from the Sun.
The balance must account for feedbacks between other ecosystems: a
solution for one problem often becomes a liability for another.
“Doing the right thing” in one case is often in conflict with
another environmental issue, from the mundane, “Should I use a paper
or plastic bag?” to an entire economic restructuring, “Is a hydrogen
economy a good idea in the face of water scarcity?” Environmental
issues seem to make news only with each newly discovered crisis. The
greatest environmental problems are the ones that threaten to
disrupt a local or global life-sustaining balance, and/or consume
renewable resources at rates beyond their replenishment. In that
context, it is possible to assess the liability of the threat in
energy terms. In that way, it is possible to categorize and then
prioritize environmental problems by the energy demands required to
address the issue versus the energy value of the improved
environment in return.
The following environmental balance sheet is only an attempt to
broadly categorize our most pressing environmental problems in
energy terms. Like any balance sheet, the environment has assets and
debits, and must use the assets to cover expenses. More detailed
environmental energy analyses can be conducted for local issues
generally, or for a specific issue globally. Accounting for the
energy in terms of our most familiar, hands-on unit of energy
currency, the gallon of gasoline, may help to conceptualize the
relative value of assets, where 1 gallon of gasoline = 132
mega-Joules = 32 mega-calories = 37 kW-hrs.