Earth Day Musings
As one of those who believes that every day should be Earth Day, that we have finally entered an era where being “green” might actually be a good way of making some green (i.e., money), and that it is not too late to make things better both for ourselves and for future generations, I approach today with mixed emotions.
On the one hand I’m pleased to see growing corporate interest in improving the bottom line through more sustainable practices (even if much of it is still just lip service and spin). I’m also pleased to see documentaries like The Return of the Cuyahoga heralding both the progress that has been made over the last 40 years and the work that still needs to be done. The decade ahead uniquely positions Northeast Ohio to take on a leadership role in pioneering environmental restoration as economic development.
At the same time I remain concerned about how much attention is being paid to stricter mileage standards for conventional automobiles. CAFE standards, as they are known, are a two-edged sword. Raising the fuel economy of cars certainly seems on the surface a good thing. Better mileage means less fuel burned–and fewer emmissions emitted–for every mile a car is driven.
And yet this also has the unintended consequence of lowering the cost of fuel. If I dump my land leviathan that gets only 15 mpg for a smaller, more efficient car that gets 30 mpg, I effectively cut in half the cost of fuel per mile driven–making a longer commute more palatable and acceptable. Better mileage standards may well contribute to greater urban sprawl, negating or at least mitigating the overall fuel savings CAFE standards are theretically designed to deliver.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t be pursuing alternative fuels or greater fuel economy. These are clearly good problems for businesses to be tackling. And as bad as things are with oil today, clean water–already a crisis in the developing world–will soon become a major developed world issue that dwarfs any chllenges we seem to face with oil today.
We’ve come a long way since the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River made our stewardship of the environment a critical issue we recognized as a society needed to be addresed. And while many of the things we have done have brought about improvements in some areas, we still have far to go. We’ve made some of the necessary changes, but we’ve yet to make them into sufficient changes that will ensure the health of our planet and our economy for our children, let along for our children’s children.
Simiilarly, many of the early biofuels have had the unintended effect of causing price spikes in basic commodities, raising the prices of everything from corn to bread to meat and eggs in the process.