Article 3

The Dark Side of Our Dependence on Fossil Fuels:

Time for Quakers to Take a Stand

by Sandra Lewis and Kim Carlyle

(Reprinted in part from the Quaker Eco-Bulletin, Volume 2, Number 2, March/April 2002)

Most of us have reaped the benefits of an economy powered by fossil fuel. There is no need to list the wonders, comforts, conveniences, and prosperity wrought by this century-long dependence. But we can no longer ignore the extreme costs. We are on a collision course with ecological reality. It’s time to recognize how our dependence puts us in direct conflict with core values embodied in the Quaker Testimonies of Integrity, Peace, Simplicity, Equality and Community. Events of recent months shed glaring light on the dark side of our nation’s dependence on fossil fuel. The World Trade Towers’ destruction is, perhaps, its most dramatic expression to date.

Unacceptable Costs of Dependence

Seeds of War

U.S. foreign policy is now driven largely by our dependence on oil. We maintain a global military presence to ensure the flow. We make deals that support oppressive governments and overlook gross violations of human rights to feed our habit — slave labor to build a UNOCAL pipeline in Burma, for example. To ensure our access to oil, we train and arm factions like the Taliban, and then look the other way when these weapons are used to enforce despotic rule.

Gross inequalities of wealth and power among nations fueled by huge disparities in the use of fossil fuels sow the seeds of war. Our Peace Testimony calls on us to work to take away the occasion of war. Ending our dependence on fossil fuel has become an essential expression of this Testimony.

Seeds of Corruption

Nothing illustrates better the link between dependence on fossil fuel and corruption in American institutions than the rise and fall of Enron. Enron flourished in Texas and then nationally under government policies and subsidies bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industrial complex. While the Bush administration and other politicians try to disassociate themselves from the debacle, the fingerprints of Enron and other corporate interests are evident throughout the administration’s energy proposals. These proposals are now embodied in legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Enron story exposes a stunning lack of integrity — blatant and insidious — among leaders in government, industry, financial institutions and the media. It challenges us to confront deep threats to democracy itself that arise from our dependence on fossil fuel. Our Quaker Testimony on Integrity calls us to act against these threats.

Seeds of Ecological and Social Disintegration

Our use of fossil fuels is devastating the earth, destroying cultures, and endangering human health. To discover and recover oil, roads are slashed through rainforests, drilling sites contaminate fresh water and soil, leaky pipelines spill millions of gallons of crude oil on wildlife and pristine tundra, and indigenous people are pushed to the brink of extinction. The temporary influx of cash upsets economies, corrupts governments, and concentrates wealth among a few. Oil refineries pollute the air, soil, and water of the impoverished communities that surround them. The extraction of coal devastates entire communities as it removes mountaintops, destroys watersheds, and leaves behind hundred-million-gallon toxic slurry ponds.

The combustion of coal and oil are responsible for soot, ground level ozone, acid rain, and an increase in climate-changing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The air pollution exacerbates respiratory illness especially for asthmatic children and the elderly, is responsible for the decline of our eastern hardwood forests, and has poisoned most of the lakes in the northeast U.S. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. contributes 25% of the climate-changing gases, and yet the U.S. government has withdrawn from international negotiations to address world-wide human-induced climate change.

The true costs of fossil fuels are staggering and cannot be measured in dollars. The administration’s proposals to expand fossil fuel production and increase our dependence on them are politically corrupt, ecologically and economically dangerous, and morally bankrupt.

Toward Sane Energy Policies

Now is the time for Quakers to speak out for energy policies that are environmentally sound, socially just, and economically feasible. Such policies would explicitly aim at eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels and would include strategies, timetables and investments required to achieve this goal. As a nation, we need to pursue this with the urgency and priority of other great national goals such as landing a man on the moon.

Clean, renewable technologies (such as wind and solar) are currently available and emerging technologies (such as hydrogen fuel cells) are on the verge of being ready for general use. Renewable sources of energy should be phased in through promotion and subsidy for clean power, increasing emissions restrictions, and decreasing support for dirty power. The policy must provide for a transition to these new technologies that would include retraining of work forces and education of the general public.

Sane policies must account for the environmental, social and moral consequences of the energy we use. It is up to us to hold our political leaders accountable for enacting such policies.

Renewable energy can stimulate the economy

A number of studies have shown that energy conservation and the use of renewable sources of energy would in fact stimulate the economy:

1. A World Wildlife Fund study indicates that energy efficiency policies and development of renewable energy resources could result in 750,000 new jobs nationwide over the next nine years and 1.3 million new jobs by 2020. See this study at <http://www.worldwildlifefund.org/climate>.
2. A report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) entitled “The 2002 Farm Bill: Revitalizing the Farm Economy Through Renewable Energy Development.” shows that developing our nation’s on-farm renewable energy resources (bioenergy, wind, solar, and geothermal) has the potential to boost farmer income, create jobs in rural communities, diversify our nation’s energy market, and protect our environment.
3. A Department of Energy study reports that a government-led program to encourage energy efficiency could reduce growth in electricity demand by 20 to 47 percent in the U.S—a savings equivalent of 265 to 610 300-megawatt power plants.

In fact, if our country does not invest in the new technologies, we are likely to be left in the technological development dust as other countries cash in on the boom.

What Friends Can Do?

Join the Interfaith Climate Change Network (ICCN): ICCN <http://protectingcreation.org> is a new initiative of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment to coordinate interfaith lobbying activities on climate and energy. The Partnership’s goals for energy legislation in this session of the U.S. Congress are to:

• Raise vehicle fuel economy across the board in the shortest feasible timeframe, and require SUVs and minivans to meet the same standards as passenger cars.
• Support the development of hybrid-electric, fuel cell, and other promising clean technologies, and provide incentives to help individual consumers purchase them.
• Increase funding for inter-city rail and metropolitan mass transit.
• Invest more resources in renewable energy research and development with a focus on wind, geothermal, solar and biomass technologies.
• Apply the strictest feasible energy efficiency standards to consumer products including air conditioners.
• Increase funds for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program and other programs to alleviate economic hardship on low-income people.

Illustrative activity:    

Role Play on Climate Negotiations

The following role play can be done by assigning negotiating teams to nations, providing time for the negotiating teams to meet, and then for negotiations to occur, or by asking individuals to make their own decisions based on what they think is best, and then to discuss the reasons for the decisions. There is no right answer. The purpose of the role play is primarily to identify and discuss the practical, political, and ethical challenges involved in coming to agreement on this very important and complex issue.

The Challenge of International Climate Negotiations

It is February, 2008. New records for global temperature were set successively in 2006 and 2007. Food and energy prices are up sharply, and food shortages are spreading in Asia and Latin America.

In July 2007 the heads of state of many nations held an unprecedented summit at UN headquarters in Geneva without United States’ participation to demand action by the United States to reduce greenhouse emissions. As a result, both presidential candidates ran on platforms calling for major reductions, and unspecified action is favored by large majorities in both houses of the new congress.

In her State of the Union address, the new U.S. president called for negotiations by the largest polluters, China, the EU, India, Japan, and the U.S., to serve as the basis for achieving global reductions of 25 percent below projected annual emissions for 2010 by 2020, and 50 percent by 2040. However, the U.S. made no commitments about its own reductions within this target, and negotiators are now meeting to determine the reductions each nation will make by 2020.

To achieve the global reduction, the negotiators must cut the total by 1,200 million tons before 2020, and another 1800 mt by 2040. The projected 2010 emissions are:

China - 1471 mt   EU – 861 mt    India - 426   Japan - 258   U.S. - 1332

What reductions (totaling 1,200 for 2020, and an additional 1,800 for 2040) should be assigned to each nation?

By 2020 China _______ EU _______ India ______ Japan ______ U.S. ______

By 2040 China _______ EU _______ India ______ Japan ______ U.S. _______

Questions

• Should nations with higher carbon intensity that have not yet begun making reductions be expected to make bigger reductions sooner, or should they be given more time to adjust to making changes?
• Should nations with a higher population and high birthrate face fewer reductions, or should nations with lower birth rates benefit from having reduced their population?
• Should nations with higher life expectancy be recognized as having greater energy needs or should nations with lower life expectancy be recognized as having greater energy needs?
• Should consideration be given to the ease or difficulty with which a government can make decisions that its citizens may not like or support?

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