Category: Hope

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Durango Herald Environment Global Climate Change Hope

Accept the Wager

            Recently Dr. Roger Cohen challenged people in Durango to a bet about global warming. A well trained scientist, he earned a PhD in physics. When Dr. Cohen worked for the energy industry he was responsible for managing basic research in climate. While Dr. Cohen acknowledges that climate change is occurring, he believes that most of the change is not human induced. He does not see us headed toward an anthropogenic global catastrophe.

            Right here on the Herald Opinion pages, in order to prove his point, Dr. Cohen offered a $5000 wager that it would actually be cooler a decade from now.

            “Don’t dignify him by acknowledging the wager” was my wife’s advice. My son Dave had another viewpoint. “Five thousand dollars is insignificant compared to the future of the human race!” Dave was angry that someone would consider jeopardizing the future of his daughters for so little money. Herald readers wrote Letters to the Editor on both sides of the issue.

            I am usually up for a challenge and considered this one, despite my family’s advice. I had several concerns, including religious. As a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends), I am not supposed to bet. Nevertheless, I wrote Dr. Cohen a letter accepting his wager, with some conditions. Global climate change is a good indicator of our abuse of Earth’s resources by excess population and excess consumption.

            To my surprise, my offer was accepted. We had several conversations and ironed out the terms of the wager—which ended up different from the original. For instance, we agreed to look at the average global temperature for three years instead of relying on a single value.

            There is interesting precedent to this wager. Dr. Scott Armstrong (a professor at the Wharton School of Business) has publicly offered the “Global Warming Challenge” to Al Gore (of “Inconvenient Truth” and Nobel Prize fame).  Gore declined.

            Dr. Armstrong was a friend of another business school professor, Julian Simon. Before he died, Simon was the spokesperson for the cornucopians—people who believe that the natural world does not have limits. A definition comes from Wikipedia: “A cornucopian is someone who believes that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by advances in technology.” Although most people don’t think of themselves as cornucopians—or even know that such a word exists—they act that way.

Some of Simon’s statements were outlandish. He wrote: “We have in our hands now… the technology to feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years. …we would be able to go on increasing our…population forever….”

It is easy to show that with just one percent growth, at the end of just seven million years number of people would be impossibly huge. We would exceed the number of atoms in the universe!

            Paul Ehrlich, who popularized concern about population with his book The Population Bomb, had a wager with Simon about resource depletion. The bet was that the price of five metals would increase over a decade, as they got scarcer. In fact, improved mining techniques decreased their cost and Ehrlich paid up. Unfortunately, their bet was about resources of secondary importance. Air quality (a prime resource) and many other important measures of wellbeing declined during that same period.

            The Durango wager has turned out to be much friendlier. One of Dr. Cohen’s original stipulations was “My winnings will be donated to a local charitable organization promoting science education.” I am on the board of Durango Nature Studies, which fulfills these requirements. I wanted to do the same, and we agreed that all of the money would benefit DNS. The Community Foundation Serving Southwest Colorado will hold the money for the ten year period as part of DNS’s endowment.

            A large volcanic eruption could blanket the globe and cool off the climate. We agreed that the bet will be called off if this happens in the second half of the decade of the wager.

            You will have to wait ten years to find out who wins the wager. I hope that Dr. Cohen will prevail! By then Dave’s girls will be eleven and fourteen. I would like to think that any cooling would be caused by people using renewable energy sources and taking action to cut greenhouse gas production. Then the world my granddaughters inherit will be cooler, and will remain a wonderful place for them to live in.

© Richard Grossman MD, 2008 

[The article above may be copied or published but must remain intact, with attribution to the author. I also request that the words “First published in the Durango Herald” accompany any publication. For more information, please write the author at: richard@population-matters.org.]

Categories
Action Hope

BOGO (Buy One, Give One)

“My town has no light,” writes my friend from Ghana. “The high school has no computer. All of us have to travel to Tamale on a rough road for 5 hours to have internet or better education. My parents have never touched a computer.”We all have images of young Abe Lincoln studying by firelight. The reality is that most kids who lack electricity just go to bed after dark. Too few parents can afford to light a lantern so their kids can do their lessons.It is difficult to study and to be productive after dark without artificial light. A recent medical article pointed out that “…1.6 billion people are exposed to adverse health risks because of lack of access to electricity.” Even if there were medicines and the best of doctors living in their towns, they would be useless without electricity for medical instruments and refrigerators to cool medication.Yet two billion people live without a reliable source of electricity. Kerosene is the alternative for many of these people. Kerosene lanterns always present the risk of fire, and they generate air pollution. Their smoke adds to the burden of respiratory disease that afflicts millions.The World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution kills 1.6 million people annually in developing countries. That means that one person dies every twenty seconds from smoke from kerosene lights and from cooking and heating fires. Those who do not die from the fumes may suffer permanent damage to their heath. Many of the affected are children, who cannot escape the pollution.Many of the poorest people—the billion who live on the equivalent of just one dollar a day—cannot even afford kerosene. They are doomed to a life of darkness between sunset and dawn.Burning coal and biomass fuels is responsible for much ill health in the poorest countries. When we visited India last winter we watched a woman harvest manure from the sacred cattle. After drying, this biomass was used to cook and heat.Sometimes help comes from unexpected places. An ex-Marine recognized the importance of a safe source of light for people in poor countries and has developed a solar flashlight. How could he get them where they are needed, without a huge grant or government support?BOGO! This stands for “Buy One, Give One.” We’ve had our BogoLight for several months now, and use it frequently. It sits recharging in a sunny window and is ready to go when we are. We take it camping, where it hangs from the top of our tent when we bed down at night and read a bit before sleep. Part of it glows in the dark to help find it for late night pit stops.In bright orange or pink, BogoLights are waterproof, dazzlingly bright and rugged. To order these lights, go to www.bogolight.com. I plan to do some holiday shopping there! You pay $25, which buys your light and the one that goes to a dark country. On the website you can choose what organization gets the gift. My current favorite is Saboba’s Hope, a medical clinic in northern Ghana near where my friend grew up. I recently saw a similar (but inferior) light in a store for more money.Perhaps you have heard of the One Laptop per Child program. It is an educational program to supply robust little computers designed for children in developing countries. They draw so little electricity that the child herself can generate it with a crank. The plan is for each child to have her/his own computer! The specifics are available at www.laptopgiving.org. Although the manufacturer has contracts from the governments of several countries, they are using BOGO to kick-start the program.Hurry if you want one of these gems! They are only available in this country until November 26th—that’s tomorrow. Each order costs $399. Of that, $200 is a tax-deductible donation that pays for the unit that goes to a child in a poor country.These two products, the solar light and simple computer, are both high tech and, at the same time, simple. Each is designed to help people in the developing world, but can fulfill a need in our country. Neither is bankrolled by big money. In each case, the generosity of individuals can help our friends in poorer areas. Remember, two of the most important factors leading to lower birth rates in developing countries are education (especially of girls) and promoting health.© Richard Grossman MD, 2007[The article above may be copied or published but must remain intact, with attribution to the author. I also request that the words “First published in the Durango Herald” accompany any publication. For more information, please write the author at: richard@population-matters.org.]