Quick Take
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Seuss’ eco-parable “The Lorax” warned us of dire consequences of corporate greed and climate blindness. Today, the tale is as relevant as ever, writes Santa Cruz activist Michael Levy. But, he says, the environmentalism of the past needs to be updated with a much deeper, broader vision, even locally. These days, he says, every “environmentally friendly” solution – even Santa Cruz’s new hydrogen buses – has a downside. He says we all need to call for solutions that replace extraction and consumption with community resilience, not new corporate technologies. “We need a revolution yesterday,” he writes.
“I yelled at the Lorax, Now listen here, Dad! All you do is yap-yap and say, ‘Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!’ Well, I have my rights, sir …”
Thus spoke one of Dr. Seuss’ most deliciously modern characters, corporate mogul the Once-ler, who, in the classic 1971 tale “The Lorax” is logging “Truffula” trees to make “Thneeds” and destroying the environment by routinely “biggering” his operations. The Once-ler is speaking to the tree-hugging Lorax, who is a curmudgeonly thorn in the Once-ler’s side as more creatures flee the desecrated forest.
In the story – a good Christmas holiday read (also a film) in the time of climate change – the Once-ler is peeved because the Lorax, like many environmentalists, objects to everything the Once-ler does to turn nature into products. And indeed, that is the problem with being an environmentalist in a growth-and profit-oriented society like ours.
Most would-be “green economy” solutions turn out to be, at best, an incremental improvement, and too often, a seductive ploy that just rearranges the icebergs poised to pierce our Titanic.
Here’s a current, local example. One of the rising stars in the dubious world of green tech is hydrogen. The Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District recently bought 57 hydrogen-fueled buses, funded mostly by state and federal grants. These will run cleanly through town, emitting only water vapor, and unlike electric buses, will be capable of running all day without a recharge break. Hydrogen has some good points as a fuel, and — so far — lacks the terrible environmental and human rights abuses inherent in lithium mining for “green” electric vehicles.
But this is not really a win for Team Lorax.
The problem is where the hydrogen comes from. Optimistically, it comes from “splitting” water (H2O) with electricity derived from renewable sources. Realistically, that method is decades away as a large-scale solution, and might never occur at scale. It takes a lot of electricity (and money) to make hydrogen gas from water. According to industry watchers at Hydrogen Insight, there are 11 immense wind- and solar-based hydrogen projects planned worldwide to meet expected demand.
How immense?
“The world’s largest [existing] offshore wind farm is just under 1.4 gigawatts (GW), but developer Green Hydrogen International wants to build two projects that each have 500 GW of wind turbines installed at sea,” Hydrogen Insight reports. “To put that into context, only 63.2 GW of offshore wind had been installed around the world by the end of 2022.” This staggering scale of construction represents an investment of upward of a trillion dollars. In summary, HI says that many of these projects are “so massive that they seem more like impossible dreams than realistic propositions.”
Even if our local Metro manages to find affordable renewable hydrogen during the critical coming decades, hydrogen reliance is a dubious bet as a direction for our society’s transportation needs.
Most would-be “green economy” solutions turn out to be, at best, an incremental improvement, and too often, a seductive ploy that just rearranges the icebergs poised to pierce our Titanic. Michael levy
Meanwhile, a hydrogen future is a huge gift to fossil fuel companies, because almost all the world’s hydrogen is made by “reforming” natural gas. This is not a good idea.
It is now clear that in the world of natural gas, “fugitive” methane that escapes to the atmosphere destroys any idea that natural gas is good for the climate. It’s just another deadly fossil fuel, and it takes more of it to power vehicles with hydrogen than it would take if it were just used directly, as it is in our current natural gas-powered metro buses.
So, “bad bad bad bad,” right?
Coal and oil are on the way out, soon please. Natural gas is a climate disappointment. Nuclear, oy vey. Lithium is problematic at best, and let’s not be naive about hydrogen.
How do we get out of this Seussian nightmare?
Not with last century’s environmentalism. Forget the Tesla and recyclable plastic bottles.
When you need a revolution, sometimes reform becomes a smokescreen for the status quo, rather than a help. And as we approach 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating — the point at which some island nations disappear entirely — it’s not melodramatic to say we need a revolution yesterday.
The annual United Nations climate conference known as the COP recently wrapped up in Dubai. The less wealthy nations called on the wealthy nations that built their fortunes on burning fossil fuels to pay “loss and damage” reparations to them. (The nerve!) The wealthy nations agreed to this concept, way back in 2009, to the tune of $100 billion a year. But it’s barely happened, and this year in Dubai, our country offered a total of – wait for it – $17.5 million.
We need the United States and other developed countries to take this international obligation seriously. Locally, that might translate to votes on election day prioritizing candidates who speak honestly about these topics.
Beyond the basic justice of it, we could expect many other benefits: a reduction of climate disasters here and everywhere. A reduction of the number of climate refugees flooding out of unlivable regions, some toward our borders. A good chance of heading off some of the wars that inevitably come with climate suffering and scarcity.
The U.S. needs to “join the human race.” We need to behave as members of a collective, which is what sharing a biosphere in crisis forces us to be. That means a change in our mindset: sharing our wealth, yes, but also rediscovering the wealth that comes from community instead of the kind that comes from manufacturing and consuming.
The scores of volunteers at local churches and synagogues who weave the cloth of community resilience by helping each other with celebrations, life transitions and personal health crises know what I mean. So do those who simply share stuff: Through the Freecycle website, folks share what they don’t want anymore, and I have a “vacuum cleaner co-op” with a nearby friend.
Beyond the critical stance of “The Lorax,” the key technologies we need to advocate for — at every level — are social, not technological. We need to create worker co-ops, neighborhood mutual aid groups and international climate and peace alliances. We should make sure that every school puts nonviolent communication, deep ecological awareness and community-building skills at the top of the curriculum. Some of these objectives exist in scattered schools, but it is not at the top of the curriculum. (This local teacher training program in sustainability is pointing in the right direction.)
And we all need to step out of our discouragement, and find our way to a “stubborn optimism.”
This is a harder path than switching to a new fuel source for our cars, and motoring forward in a supposedly “cleaner” way. But it matches the challenging century we are in, and it’s the only hopeful way forward. Let’s walk it together.
Michael Levy is a local musician, teacher, and facilitator who has called Santa Cruz home since 1979. In 2008 he was the founder of community resilience group Transition Santa Cruz, formed in response to the climate crisis and the peaking of traditional energy resources.