Good evening.
Welcome to Friday Night at the Carry and to the fifth annual Ned Ames Honorary Lecture.
It's an honor to have you all here tonight.
Who is Ned Ames? Ned Ames and his wife Jade are actually with us tonight.
I'm not going to embarrass you too much, but I am going to say a word or two.
For those of you who don't know Ned, Ned is a friend of the Carry Institute.
Ned is a friend of mine and of many people in this room.
He's the person who didn't really join the Carry Institute.
He was there at the beginning forming the Carry Institute.
At an earlier time in his life, Ned was a manager of the Flagler Trust,
Mary Flagler Trust and the trustee of that trust.
It was one of the people who had an idea of independent science
being able to make a meaningful contribution to the world at large.
It was involved in every detail of forming the Carry Institute
and finding the right people to make it be what it is
finding gene likeness and creating a place that would be conducive to objective science
and caring about some of the meaningful facts in the world.
For 30 years Ned has cared.
He's been at every board meeting.
He's organized and seen through the transfer of the funds from the right Flagler Trust
to become the normist part of the Carry Institute's endowment.
He actually, while he did eyes, is simply true that he protected that money
at a moment when it was very vulnerable in 2007
and the Carry Institute would be a lot less of an institute
if it wasn't for the protection he gave that endowment.
As a trustee, I've worked with Ned for a lot of years.
He fights when it's time to fight.
He capitulates when it's time to capitulate.
He does it gracefully.
He's caring, honest, honorable, loving, and believes in the Carry Institute.
So we are here to honor Ned with this lecture tonight.
Thank you for being here, Ned and Jim.
I would like to introduce Bill Schlesinger tonight,
who is also a friend and the President of the Carry Institute.
Bill has a big resume that I'm mostly going to pass on.
I mean, he's a Dartmouth boy and Cornell boy and PhD and doctor
and hundreds of scientific papers and great books
that I haven't read called Biotude Chemistry and Analysis.
A little change.
Bill is a big guy. To me, it is the love.
I mean, that's not hard to like, Bill.
Bill has done a lot of important things at the Carry Institute.
I mean, he has published papers and important journals.
He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He's had things on NPR and he's worked very hard
to do a lot of important things in the national science arena
that I don't fully understand.
I thought that rather than touching on all of his academic accolades,
which are long and important,
I would just simply share with you how Bill has affected me locally.
If I was picking one thing that Bill's done for the Carry,
a single thing over the last six years,
I would pick his passion for sharing science with non-scientists.
I think it's a meaningful thing.
You're here tonight because of that passion.
When I met Bill, I honestly didn't know what an NSF grant was.
I didn't know what biogeochemistry was.
I didn't know about carbon sequestering in a serious way.
And there's a lot of things that I was just driving by
in 44 and not being quite sure what this place was all about.
And of course, it's been working with Bill for six years.
And every term he's taken past,
like how can we reach out to the state of New York
and do things like EarthWise,
which is the minute and two-minute spots that you hear every day
on WAFC in Albany. They're fantastic.
They're just fantastic.
And he's reached millions of people with those spots.
You know, when we first met,
the fight against the Carry didn't exist.
We didn't have a lecture series.
We didn't meet all the neat scientists and neat writers
and wonderful people who have come here.
And Bill is still responsible for that.
So I guess the one thing that I think Bill most wore
in his six-year series in balancing the budget
is improving the quality of the building.
It's his passion for sharing science with people
who aren't scientists like me.
Bill's here tonight to give a lecture called
If I Had a Hammer.
I have heard Pete Seeger saying if I had a hammer.
I've heard Peter Yarrow saying if I had a hammer
from Peter Ballenberry.
And I'm looking forward to hearing Bill Slesinger
saying if I had a hammer tonight.
I'd like to welcome Bill Slesinger,
the President of the Carry.
Thank you.
Well, many, many thanks to all of you
to come here tonight.
Good to see many, many friends.
He was a very old friend.
He's often since grad school.
So this is a great honor for me.
And Alan, I want to thank you for that kind introduction.
And hopefully I won't have to sing in front of whole seats.
And of course, Ned and James is a real honor
for me to be able to present the fifth Ned A.
Environment Honorary Lecture to recognize
all that he's done for the Carry Institute, particularly.
In my seven years here, it's been absolutely essential
to know that Ned was close to the count.
Most of you will not know that Ned actually played
a very important part of my early career decision
in the field of environmental science.
I was working at Tilton School in New Hampshire
in the summer of 1970 in a program designing curriculum
for junior high school students in environmental studies.
We were working on water pollution.
Ned and the Ford Foundation were one of the funders
of that particular effort and came up to,
for the dreaded psych visit where the program director
received what's actually going on with the money that's been created.
The summer of 1970 was right after the first Earth Day.
I was kind of playing around with a career
in environmental science or environmental education.
I would say that summer in particular was one
that made me decide to go on in environmental science.
And I haven't gotten over that summer experience
at the Tilton School, which Ned, you were an important part of.
And then 36 years later, I was down in Eastern North Carolina
on a donor trip for the Southern Environmental Law Center.
And I ran into this guy that I knew I had seen before
in the past, and then it all came together.
The Southern Environmental Law Center
are being a good profit.
They recognized a good force of funds and had invited Ned.
And Ned pulled me aside and said,
you know anybody that likes to run the Institute of Ecosystem
Studies at the Millbrook?
And I sort of took that in.
And one thing led to another.
And in the fall of October, 2006,
Paul Risser offered me the job of being the second president
here to replace Gene Linens.
And the rest is history.
I really enjoyed working with Ned and Paul
and Fred Gentry who's in the audience here somewhere.
It's Steve Carpenter and Irene Manning,
I believe this is the darkness over here somewhere,
as working with the board,
with their leadership of the board over the last seven years.
So it's been lots of fun.
Lisa and I will look back at this period of time
and work with the real funders
with what we've been able to do,
the people we have been able to meet here in our state.
Now, of course, I'm scheduled to retire
at the end of June, a couple of months from now.
And so this is likely to be my last
significant public appearance here.
I may have to introduce a few speakers
with some things between now and then.
I'm pleased to say that, you know,
the Friday night, anything is,
these have really been something that I've been proud of.
They can go along with the art establishment
of the Brighter and Artist and Residence Program,
Adventiery Institute,
and the earthquake segments on WAMC
and other stations that NPR syndicated to.
This was really an effort
that a number of us got going at when I arrived in Terry
to bring the Kerry Institute out of its shell.
We didn't want it to continue to be
that kind of mysterious place around 44.
It needed to be known
and it needed to really,
and, unfortunately,
translate and transmit its message
from the walls of science
to the community of policy makers
and perforable media.
So the complicated issues
that face us on an environment
could be better understood by the public.
So that's, you know, I look back
at sort of what I spent seven years doing.
These will be the kinds of things that I dwell on.
Now, after we've had a bunch of lectures here
on Friday night over the last seven years,
they've covered a huge number of topics.
I want to try to reflect on my take
on a number of these lectures tonight.
So they're going to get, you know,
sort of the environment through my glance
of what I think we need to do
to deal with environmental problems that face us.
I came up with this title
because I want to hammer on four points
that I've called, of course, one of the apocalypse.
Some of my staff here said
you could have decided to talk with four horsemen
in the apocalypse.
No, you were wrong.
So I came up with it if I had a hammer,
but the hammering is going to be hammering
on those points that I really think
are essential for us to face up and do an address
if we're going to have any success
in dealing with an environmental issue.
This is going to be my view.
There's no question about that.
I hope it's informed correctly by science.
You may disagree with it.
It may not be pretty.
And of course, there's nobody said
from the beginning of time
that science needs to make you feel good.
So that's kind of where we're going tonight.
And I can do that kind of unabashedly
because I remember that old Turkish proverb
that he who tells the truth should do so
with one foot of the stirrup.
So that's me.
So let's get out of it.
My first horseman in the apocalypse
is something that Alan Whiteland
really hammered home here
in his presentation in January
with the book Countdown,
which is I think that there's no question
that the group is showing the signs
of having a human population
that's above and carrying the burden.
Of what this planet can handle.
We see that the manifestation of that
is the rising carbon dioxide
in Earth's atmosphere,
which we've really been unable to
have much effective action on.
The depletion of the ocean's fisheries,
which, you know, when I grew up
and we did family vacations on Cape Cod,
my dad used to say the oceans are,
you know, you'll never deplete them,
you'll never pollute them.
I now realize that, in fact,
those things are happening.
And also, the loss of species
in all the habitats on the surface of the Earth.
These are all things that tell me
that we're following our nest
and we need to do better
if we're going to persist as a species
and persist with a healthy biosphere of winds.
Now, I've heard it said in this auditorium
that human population is not part of the problem,
that the rate of population growth is slowing.
And certainly, the latter is true
about the rate of population growth
is not as high as it was a couple of decades ago,
but it's still in fact growing.
And just as one might have a bathtub
with water running into it at a gallon per minute,
if you cut the greater growth of water to that bathtub
to a half a gallon per minute,
it will overflow eventually,
maybe not as soon as it would
with a high growth rate.
But it's only a matter of time.
And I look back at this and say,
well, gee, how do we get into this situation?
We human, almost every human species
have done really well with following
the teachings of many of our religious leaders.
Many of our religious traditions
are being fruitful and voluble.
We're also perhaps rooted in what Darwin recognized
as survival of the fittest of leaving behind many offspring.
And of course, that's fine if the planet is close to empty.
It's not so good if the planet is essentially full of,
and one begins to see the nest overflow.
And so one looks at the past of human populations
through time.
One sees some interesting fluctuations
in human numbers.
This is a population of Spain
from 1,100 to 1,800.
And we're here, population in millions.
You can see an unrelenting rise
of human numbers over that period.
But a couple of times,
when the population dropped by a regular
or a minute and a half.
And so there's two lessons in that particular graph
that I think are interesting.
One is, of course, the underlying
and unrelenting growth of the population.
The other is that, in fact,
underlying that, you can have wild fluctuations
if we don't manage our own numbers well.
You can have a major percent drop
in human population over a relatively short period of time.
So the Earth has experienced that on the path,
and it wouldn't surprise me if we experienced it again
in the future.
So all of that is seen in this unrelenting graph
of human population back to the year zero here,
here, population in billions,
up to nearly the present,
which, you know, Spain has lost it
in the numbers here globally.
But one can see this incredible exponential growth rate
that's now taking us beyond 6 billion
to 7 billion people as I speak tonight.
And so we can look at it and say,
this in a lot of all kinds of fashions
represents an unsustainable situation
in terms of impact on the environment.
Now, I've also heard and said, actually,
I've heard and said from behind this podium
that don't worry about this
as the standard of living increases
the rate of population growth will slow,
and we have nothing to worry about
in those circumstances.
And in fact, there's some proof in that too.
If one looks as a measure of the standard of living,
the per capita power consumption
by human beings in one graph,
one good which is there,
and human fertility birth per woman graph vertically,
we can look at a situation where,
in societies and times of the Earth,
when the per capita power consumption,
per capita resource use was relatively low,
you have very high fertility situations.
And as per capita resource use increases,
in this case with energy,
the birth rate comes down to,
basically too, the replacement point rate
for the typical, you know,
total savings on the planet.
But the problem with that,
you can look at it and say at first cut,
that's a very reassuring graph.
In fact, population is rising,
but it's the rate of resource use,
standard of living increases that will naturally slow
and meet your tail.
But you can look at that and say,
recognize a few other aspects of that.
If you look at this fertility,
times the per capita wattage consumption
at the high fertility end of the graph,
6 times 300 by 1800 is the multiplier on average.
And if you look out where one might see
in a steady state in human population of fertility to two,
we've increased the wattage per capita consumption
to 11,000 times two, 22,000.
You can look at that and see that the total energy being used
has increased by more than a factor of 10.
And so there's no question, I think,
that as standard of living goes up,
fertility drops, that's reassuring.
But as you do the multiplication
of each end of that graph,
you realize that the total energy used.
And you could do this for food production on land
or nitrogen use.
Any one of the metrics of resource use
that we've measured today,
you realize that this is a very nice curve,
but the downward slope was nowhere near steep enough
to see an actual implying in fertility
with an increase of resource use
that would keep the resource use,
the total portion of product of the two constant,
you'd have to have a line that was as steep as that.
And so we've got a lot of work to do.
And you can't just, I guess my message there,
is that we can't just look at doing nothing
with human population numbers
and expecting that our standard of living
can make here the problem.
Now, of course, I can remember back to when I took
in economics and college and ran,
economists agree, so there are places
economists love population growth.
You've got a Chevron, ran and had an economist
in some other magazines a few years ago
welcoming the arrival of 700 million
new human beings each year on employment.
Of course, I was sitting there looking at that
and saying, well, of course, 18 years later,
they're going to welcome 700 million new drivers
on the road, and that will be good for Chevron.
And I mean, that's the mentality that goes in here,
that if we have a population growth,
we'll actually have increased economic growth
and everything will be rosy.
You can look at Dutchess County
and the growth in Dutchess County,
a lot of people are, you know,
readily opposed to growth in Dutchess County,
but I've heard it argued in very public places
that the growth in Dutchess County
will mean more toilets for plumbers to fix,
more faces for doctors to lift,
more houses for developers to build
and everybody will be happy if Dutchess County
chose growth.
And so we can look at this and say,
you know, the economists have,
they've really kind of had a spool
in the thinking that we grow the economy
and I'll touch on that more in just a minute,
is it will be the solution to the sole problem.
The growth economy is something
that really leads to
an exacerbation of our problem.
This is human population in billions.
When I was born, there were about two and a half billion folks
on the planet.
We're now up here to about seven billion folks.
This is carbon dioxide concentration
under its atmosphere in parts per million by volume.
Again, a lot of good things.
And you can see a very nice straight line
of correlation between the numbers
of people on the planet
and the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.
To specify, this is the anthropogenic
contribution to carbon dioxide
under its atmosphere.
It's subtracted out, but I'm out there to be there.
It has background, and it's only showing
the increase that we've made out.
But I notice that correlation.
I've had a number of graduate students
that I would hope would bring me correlations
like that, and their data
never seems to happen.
But if you look at population versus
the total amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere,
they in fact seem to be very well correlated.
I think it's not rocket science
to see that there are more of us on the planet
using more resources.
We will use more resources,
or everybody will live in poverty.
One reason we don't like to talk about population
growth as part of the environmental problem,
and I think it's not in line with the
real credits for speaking out on the issues,
kind of unusual, is that Franklin Glenn
has gotten tied up with a whole lot of
ancillary questions of abortion policy
and immigration policy.
And we've really gotten to get over the
squeamishness of talking about those issues
if we're going to have any headway
dealing with human population growth.
It also is tied up with,
look at the developing world
with high rates of population growth
where we can make a difference.
It's leading to vast inversions
of natural lands to agricultural lands
which of course leads to losses
of species diversity.
And eventually it leads to the problems
of how much immigration we should have
to this country.
I don't know the answer for that.
But I think this country needs to
very quickly come to grips as it
argues about immigration policy
as to what our lifeboat here may be
too full to handle overflow
from the rest of the world.
And why have you cut back on our efforts
in the family planning of World Water?
And so my first message for dealing
with this course of the apocalypse,
the first door of the apocalypse,
is that we need to foster policies
that ensure that every child is a wanted child
that we recognize.
With fewer of us there will be a greater chance
for better life for all,
almost savings on the planet.
At all costs we must preserve
a couple of rights to choose.
And since Roe versus Wade,
there's been 50 million legal abortions
in this country.
And even the most conservative
of folks must recognize that if we have
widely available family planning
services and policies,
that they're ready to become an abortion
in this country and worldwide
will be long.
So my message there
is that the U.S.
and the people we elect,
particularly at this level,
should support family planning
at home and abroad
and the empowerment of women
to bring the human population growth
into some kind of reasonable numbers.
So,
the second harsh one of the apocalypse
is going to be economic growth.
We've got to get over this idea that growth
is always good.
That got hammered into being in question
on economics and Dartmouth.
Again, I've heard it at all times in different places
that if you take economics people say growth,
you've got to have growth.
Good for a good economy is growth.
Now, what happened to the idea
that a company that turns out a quality
product
had made a small profit on that
if you'd have to put some money back
into research and development
and keep it out of inflation
and pays a standard dividend year to year
that that was bad
as opposed to focusing all our attention
in the corporate world,
the growth industries, the growth corporations,
the growth stocks
of my own experience
in universities and classrooms
and laboratories is that
the figure is not always good
and I think that we need to
get serious about the teaching of economics
and economic theory
that would allow our society
to transition to a steady-state
economy and give off the growth
of the bandwagon.
Kenneth Boulding, one of my favorite
economists speaking out
on an environment of issues a few years ago,
many of you have probably heard his statement on that
that the only people that believe
that exponential growth
can go on forever in a finite world
are either
madmen or economists.
You know, I think he had it right.
So are we going to go back
to our population growth
here
and see that this growth
is truly exponential
and has been for the last couple of
hundred years?
Economists will argue
don't worry about that.
Unlike the population
of reindeer on a small island
off the coast of Alaska
which also showed
exponential population growth
so they were put out in the south
in 1944 largely
so the generals
on their R&R World War II
the Pacific becoming hunt
and some few
maybe even two reindeer
were put out on that island I guess 29
all applied rapidly
with the shape of the curve
just about like our population growth
and then of course they hate
their habitat bear and the population collapse.
I hope that doesn't happen to us.
The left hand side of that curve
looks
worry simply like the shape
of human population growth
on the planet today.
But you can look at an economist who will say
well don't worry humans have the ability
to increase the size of the plot
as in the island.
We wouldn't be feeding anywhere near as many people
as we are on the planet today
if we hadn't had the ingenuity
to develop nitrogen fertilizer
production artificially.
The deaths that increased the size
of the by, of course what they don't tell you
is largely following
the coastal waters
that we depend on
affects the air we breathe.
A study that came out earlier this year
from a group of scientists
at Harvard that pointed out
that the
profit from the Midwestern
firms using a lot of nitrogen fertilizer
was roughly balanced by the
increased health care costs
of the nitrogen pollution
in air pollution
caused downwind.
Nobody sees that half of the equation
economists said it wasn't going to increase the size
of the by. We're producing more food
feeding more people.
The costs of that are spread
in a confused manner
that many people don't know but we all
had with shortened life
and increased health care costs.
So we have to
look at
the arguments that
we could increase the size of the by
the economic argument that
we're not going to have this kind of collapse
for what that means.
We're basically sustaining
a large human population
on this planet with the continued
use of fossil fuels
that supply nitrogen fertilizer
that feed us all.
But that's a finite resource
with rising CO2 and climate change
as
it's
a site product.
There's those that will argue
we'll keep with solar and wind power
we might increase. We can make
nitrogen fertilizer with renewable energy.
Great. Let's get on with it.
But it simply means that
another resource that I would argue
this is probably going to be fertile land
for feedings will soon
draw the limits to
the human consumption of resources
on that planet.
So my first and second harassment of the
apocalypse are kind of joint side by
side. One is population growth
and the other is at least my view
that the population growth
will not self-correct
and that economics
and ingenuity
will not increase the size of
planet Earth and allow
exponential growth to go on
as kind of pooling said that it wouldn't
quantify that planet.
Now my
third harassment
rides what I call a horse
of greed.
Resources are not
used uniformly across the surface
of this planet.
I can't think of a more unpopular
plan form to run
for office than to say that any group
of voters must get along
with less.
That's one why I'm not a politician.
When I look at
the squirrels on our bird feeder
here in Millboard Road, wherever I
had a bird feeder, and I look
at the behavior on Wall Street,
I firmly believe
that we are not far
from the Darwinian
rules that say
we should be fruitful
while we get the most resources
you can
for your particular family
and
this is not going
to do good things
for how our society
deals with the future.
There's no question.
We like stuff.
We want to think that our kids
will have even more stuff.
When it snows in the winter
we like salted roads
which we worked here
at the Currie Institute.
So we like
salted roads so we can continue to get
our stuff all winter and get it fast.
We like large houses
and large cars
and we don't see if I'm getting our stuff
from overseas if that's convenient.
So we're
exporting our environment issue
overlooking that person
costs jobs at home.
I don't think many people
are aware that about 5% of the carbon dioxide
that should be
credited to emissions from
U.S. society
is actually permitted
in China producing the products
that we brought over here.
And it's so easy
to overlook as a customer
or a shareholder
the impacts that are distant.
They're sort of over the hill.
I'm going to get my share
and not worry about where it comes from
and what rain forest
was cut down to supply.
So when you have
an argument that Darwinian behavior
is really manifested
in the global savings
it's seen in the people that supply our stuff
even when
environmental science
hallucinates the problems
of that supply.
As Tyrone Hayes
argued from behind this podium
when we looked
at Atrazine, a billion dollar
product line from Sinchenta
that's now known
as the most widely used pesticide
on crops.
Tyrone's work and others
have now shown that it produces
these hideously deformed frogs.
You know, we drink that water too.
And
I can't help but believe
that this is
even at low levels.
We find these at parts per billion levels
that we are subjecting ourselves
to chemicals
that have genetic
altering capabilities
that are not good for any of us.
But of course Sinchenta has gone to the wall
depending on this product because it's so
important to their bottom line.
And we've seen the same with this
with leaded gasoline
with phosphorus detergents
with neonicotinotinite
insecticides with mountain top removal
lining. In every case
we allow a product
to get that product line
going.
And it becomes almost impossible to stop it
when environmental science
points out problems with it.
You run up against a full
well-funded lobby of
defense attorneys, fat
profits, and the Darwinian
instinct of corporations
to defend their practice,
to defend the continued
use of addressing
to allow
to produce
the growth products, the growth company
that people are looking for.
I think we're going to have to rethink
the role of the corporation
in the modern world.
From one that
right now is sort of only answers
to profits for insurable.
That doesn't seem to be working all that well
when we notice these huge problems
in an environment.
A corporate world without regulation
has been very radical from about half
the people that we elected to office now.
But I believe a corporate world
without regulation is the sure
road to the apocalypse.
So all the
environmental debates that I've been dealing
with over the years,
both the Duke and the Terry,
they often boil down to jobs
versus the environment.
Lisa and I have seen this along the coast
of Maine.
We're in a small town where the loss
of pecan fishery,
the sardine fishery,
herring fishery,
overfishing of scallops
has now landed this suggestion that
we must scrape the brown algae
from the rocks of the shore
and keep the fishermen in business.
You know, that's not healthy
for a long-term recovery of the fisheries
or otherwise.
We see this when the EPA
is accused of being the job-killing industry.
Just recently
the spring went in.
Here are some very
favorable CO2
carbon dioxide reduction standards
were rolled back in the face of
a weekly economy.
We almost say things are, I think, way
too fast to sacrifice
environmental
benefits today
for jobs that may be needed
today without realizing
the long-term problems we're creating
for ourselves.
Those, as these problems
become global, such as the rise
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
and
various
folks, policy makers
will argue that we should
stay out of the affairs of sovereign nations.
I can't help but think
of an old anecdote
of two guys in a rowboat
dealing with
their out-for-a-day of fishing.
One pulls out a drill
and begins to drill a hole in the bottom
of the boat.
And the other one says,
you've got to stop that.
It's going to sink the boat
in the future.
And the one where the drill says,
oh, shut up, I'm drilling it under my own sea.
That is essentially
the way we're dealing with a lot of global
environmental problems right now.
Roughly one-third of the rising
CO2 in our atmosphere right now
is due to population growth
and two-thirds due to increasing
resource use on the planet.
The movement of
other chemicals on the surface
of the earth, you've got to forgive me, I've got to wax
into a little biogeochemistry here.
You don't need to buy the boat.
You can get it all on one table.
So these are various of the elements
that are important to life.
Carbon, nitrogen,
phosphorus, sulfur,
which will be in the morning down in Mercury.
These are the
annual rates in which those elements
move around on the surface of the earth.
They get emitted to the atmosphere
by volcanoes.
They condense and flow down rivers
to the sea.
And these are estimates of the amount
circulating in the biosphere
without humans.
That's as if the earth
was without us.
This is the effect we've had
on us for carbon, for instance.
That's the natural circulation.
This is the circulation that we enhance
by burning fossil fuels.
It's roughly mobilized carbon
at 36 times the rate
that would be mobilized naturally.
And so, too, as you look down that column,
we are mobilizing nitrogen
at about 8.8 times
natural phosphorus
about 12 times natural.
Sulfur,
what, 1.6 times natural.
Fluoride.
We've had less effect on it.
But for a number of these
elements,
we have had, we almost say
in our pursuit of economic growth
and products, have had
enormous impact on the chemistry
of the surface of the earth and the rate at which
things are mobilized from the crust
and move around
the earth. And we've been looking at this
to say, well, gee, carbon, that's the source
of the global warming problems.
And carbon is the source
of the global problem
of the eutrophication of estuaries.
Phosphorus,
a similar pollution of natural
waters. Sulfur,
that's acid rain.
We do a lot of chemistry,
a lot of biogeochemistry
at the Cary Institute.
Some of my scientists will argue
that this is unfair, but I would say
it's the bread and butter
of the history of the Cary Institute
to have the effect of humans
on the chemistry of our planet.
And it began with some of Dean Lincolns's
work on acid rain
30 years ago,
where he realized
that the impact of humans
on the acidity of rain
was largely derived from burning
sulfur-based cold
fuels in power plants
in the Midwest. And that
formed sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere.
And when sulfur dioxide
breaks with rainwater, it rained out
of sulfuric acid.
You may not feel much chemistry,
but you probably know that sulfuric acid
is another strong, nasty stuff.
Well, I even
been at Labor here and heard people
denying that acid rain possibly could
have an effect on forests.
Thankfully,
wiser heads prevailed.
Gene and other scientists
were able to convince the EPA
and the federal legislation
to put scrubbers on some of those power plants.
The level of hydrogen ion
graphed on the left here
and sulfate in rain
graphed on the right.
Beginning in 1983,
have marched down steadily.
These are data gathered
actually at the Cary Institute
out on our field there.
This would be the background level.
You know, we've had a remarkable impact
when humans decide something
is bad for the environment
and work on a solution for it.
We can have incredible
effect on that.
And we just need to
have that impact
on decision-making more often
and realize that some of these problems
are not going to go away
quite themselves.
Now, I'm not running for office anytime soon
and my good wife told me
that if I ever decide
to run for office, she will immediately run
to the press with stories
about it.
So, I'll say
a government theory that no politician
would come up with it, they'd expect it
to be elected.
And that is going
to be a statement that if we want to get off
our diet of fossil fuels
that have so many impacts on employment,
we've got to start taxing caravan emissions
for the atmosphere.
Thank you.
You know, I'm a firm belief
that the Canadians are going to get the oil
out of the oil.
I don't want to target its deposit
whether or not we build a keystone pipeline
but they won't get it out
or they won't get it out anywhere near as fast
or as much if it's priced
unattractively to other forms of energy.
And that will happen
with a carbon tank.
The same is true of Mount Topry,
but every ton of coal taken on the mountains
of Malaysia will be less
attracted if it costs
more than alternative sources
of energy in the environment.
The same is true of natural gas produced
by fracking in this state
and the old impending controversy
of the Constitution pipeline.
The way to win the battle,
the way to win the war
is to quit fighting these battles
individually
and actually fight the war
which is to get the underlying cause
of why fossil fuels are so attractive
and that's because they're inexpensive
and if we put a tax on them
I use that tax to reduce
the productive tax
on income
and put it into R&D
on renewable energies
and we'll lean ourselves
with that fossil fuel diet.
I can think of no better way
to stimulate
an industry of alternative fuels
than what we've already seen
with the wind power industry
which is to have
this is the wind power
cost in cents per kilowatt hour
has been dropping continuously
and the installed capacity
has skyrocketed
and when did it skyrocket
and skyrocketed when the price
of producing power with wind
was cheaper than the price
of producing power in the coal.
That's when we began to see
that skyrocket.
So we're going to win the war and quit fighting
all these little skirmishes
that we have
that make us feel good.
We're doing something for the environment
but in fact we continue
with our fossil fuel diet
we're going to have to make fossil fuels
expensive and the carbon tax
will do that
as the popular slogan goes
the stone age didn't begin
we ran out of stones
we discovered in different ways
to make fossil fuels somewhat better.
Fossil fuels to sum up
this third horseman fossil fuels
have been a great bargain
we all have about a hundred servants
based on the chlorine content
that we use every day of fossil fuels
we all have about a hundred servants
working for us
and you know that's produced
a wonderful economy
that we all enjoy
but it's one that I think
that we think about
replacing with
a strong pitch on renewable
and non-fossil carbon
based sources of energy.
So
I want to think a little bit about
the fourth horseman here
a little different track
the fourth horseman
I say rides a trail
of diminished species diversity
like Stuart, Cam, and Tom
and some others
who have spoken from this platform
over the Friday night lectures
in the last couple of years
I'm a species person
and nevertheless
I'm worried that ecologists
have a very poor track record
of pointing out why species are important
the passenger pigeons gone
the American chestnut is mostly gone
the world didn't seem to fall apart
the bluefin tuna
is probably well on its way to being gone
I don't know whether the oceans
will fall apart without it or not
but all those things worry me
and I think we need
we as ecologists, the scientific community
needs to do a much better job
showing the species diversity
actually makes a difference
not just to the function of the earth
but to our daily lives
when I
think about it I'd say
what a world but not wood cocks or woods rushes
or the humpback chow
or blackfoot and ferrets
be as interesting as the world is today
and as popularized by Paul Ehrlich
who I guess was looking out the window
of an airplane
seeing all the rivets in the wings
and there's only Paul in mind too
so you don't have to start popping those rivets
when would the airplane
become unsafe and then there's any
published a book that said
how do we know
as we drive certain species instinct
that the species in question
the one that just disappeared isn't the critical rivet
that holds the biosphere together
we need to work on that science
tomorrow morning
now I won't do this
but tomorrow morning if I can shoot a wood thrush
a wood thrush
wood thrush is right
right there
I get in big trouble
migratory bird protection act says
that'd be a bad act
somebody a bunch of years ago
a bunch of policy makers decided
that was an acceptable behavior
and yet
if I'm a land developer
and arrive at a woodland
where the bullbills are knocked the whole thing down
and the various of the trees in that woodland
have a wood thrush nest
nest in them
even if it was begging young
in them
I don't get in any kind of trouble at all
in fact they probably praise for speeding
economic development
and so we have a real
problem here with
what protects
the biosphere
the
and there's some silent pillars out there
you can look for reasons to say that
acid rain
emitted
in the midwestern US
floating eastward over north america
better than it used to be
we've made a big effort
to clean it up
but over some areas it has certainly reduced
the calcium levels of the soil
the extent that wood thrushes
could no longer make
eggs, testing eggs
no penalty for that
nobody gets blamed for it
it's done infusely by people that don't know
or see the impact
of their efforts
same with carbon dioxide
we could change the climb up with rising carbon dioxide
to the extent that wood thrushes could not nest
in eastern north america
at all
would anybody be concerned
that about a third of the species on the planet
are likely to go extinct
with the anticipated climate change
in the rest of the century
and coupled with
species lost from invaders
that have been
documented by Dave Strayer and others
on our scientific staff
the loss of critical habitat
I think we're not
careful we're going to be looking at a very
uninteresting and impoverished world
that's my fourth horse line
you can look at the planet now
and see that in fact
humble safety and human beings
have had a huge impact
on the land surface that we occupy
as seen by NASA
and defense satellites that might
let's see the planet
live up
we can see for instance
in Dick Holm's study
of bird populations in Hoverbrook
in New Hampshire
the value of long-term ecological research
started in 1969
he continues these studies today
individuals of birds in Hoverbrook
for 10 hectares
they've marched steadily down
where about half as many as he found
one as a young professor
he started to work on that
if we like to preserve species
meaning to preserve their habitat
on land and sea
we need to realize that when forests lose their birds
they see
outbreaks of insects
or the increased consumption of foliage
and more of the productivity of those forests
so birds are more than just something
pretty to look at
they're really an important integral part of the ecosystem
upon which we all
can for food and fuel
and fiber
a diversity of plant species also
in some work that Dave Tillman
and others did in Minnesota
where they created plots
with different
what we call species richness
a number of different species
per plot from done
that's a bear plot
up to 25 species of grasses
and this was the nitrate that leached below
the breeding zone of those particular plots
nitrate of course of being
a bad
water loop
for when it leaches out of the marshes
soils and into the rivers
and what did he notice when you have lots of species
the amount of nitrogen leaching below the breeding zone
is relatively low
these species diversity
you're going to move up the curve in this direction
species are lost and the amount of nitrate
that the system flushes out
increases dramatically
so those species of the grassland
are doing a big service for us
they're actually reducing the nitrogen runoff
that causes problem for us
in water pollution
down slope
down river
now I have seen over the last few years
an increasing emphasis
on conservation biology
away from the traditional
approach that I grew up with
that species are intrinsically valuable
to preserve
to one that suggests that we should
preserve species solely
for their benefit of human society
and I think we want to remember the words
that Bobby Kennedy said to us
not from behind the podium
because Bobby speaks his trance around
and out
from everybody here
that when God asked Noah
to take two of each species onto the earth
he didn't say
take the ones that are economically valuable
he said take two of all the species
on the planet
and put them on the earth
and that's really a philosophy that we need to think about
as we produce
or approach our environmental problems
so my message is tonight
I'm basically hammered on these points
hammered on the horsemen of the apocalypse
and
just to summarize my suggestions
the first
the workbench has a hammer
we don't need to sort of sit there and take it
we've seen some good examples
with the solution to acid
rain problems
with the closing of the ozone hole
we're getting lead out of gasoline
we've got a lot of success stories out there
but we need to reduce the human population growth
by universal family planning
empowerment of women
not just in this country
but worldwide
we have to carry that ethic across the oceans
reduce resource use
by actually taxing non-renewable
resources
to reflect their full impact on the environment
preserve habitat
for all the species that share the planet with us
those will be ways in which
we can make a difference
we both here at Carriott
and we as citizens
that elect the people that make these kinds of decisions
we really don't know how to get there
it's not going to be an easy road to get there
because
transforming our society from a fossil
part of the derived society through renewables
will not come
in one jump
or easily it's going to ask an economic cost
but I hope you
will join the Carriott Institute
in following
that path
now
as I did tonight I want to thank a bunch of folks
who have made these great
programs
really what they are
made them as successful
I didn't even know how to get any credit for doing all of this
but I could have done a lot of
and a lot of people have been
absolutely instrumental in making this work
over the last seven years
and I can't thank all of them
but I want to point out
a few people that I think are here tonight
that deserve special
money
I'm going to go ahead and merit a staff
particularly Randy Irish
who cleans this auditorium
it provides us with coffee
and how clean you've kept the parking lot
open on so many snow
covered evenings here
friend
there he is
well actually these people should come down here
applause
I also would like you guys
to see
I'm supposed to do this too
okay I'm going to go right in here
this here
I was supposed to produce feed-seeker
laughter
would that be wrong
anyway
let me go on with it without feed-seeker
so Ben Freeland and Leslie Tomlety
who have made it
their business
to get the word out about these Friday night programs
every month
and to remind as we would say
in the south
a gracious plenty of cookies
for all of you to enjoy
we'll see what a
got here
computer savvy
of course
if I had a hand
applause
so Ben Leslie where are you
oh no
applause
let me have a
welcome to Bicky Boyle
Amy Hirsch
every large gathering
of people in this auditorium
there must be some way that
I want to do it
applause
there is a visitor
who I can see in the back
there has been some responsible
for the audiovisual
programs
responding after hours
of other issues
that people like meeting them up with
Laurie Quillen
applause
Laurie is instrumental
in getting any of the speakers
to convince them to come
here and join us
when they hear
where is Millbrook and how big is the auditorium
Laurie can talk to them into coming
and dig some wonderful presentations
my better half please
tell them I'll get to come up to them
applause
the difference is that
we might be good to ask
and of course
Kerry does arrive
and work and set the argument
that was a great idea last night
we'll be sure to ask
and of course Lisa is the person behind the scenes
I know a lot of those
and that day they saw
and they want to
applause
so I think the other folks
is really among
the others that made me so successful
I want to say thanks to all of you
and thanks to all of you
who came tonight
who have been such well supported of this series
and I trust it will go on
into the future
and we'll have many further
writing nights here
we'll be right back
applause
applause
applause
