Sustainable thinking

I have discussed how our present energy path is not sustainable. We are setting ourselves up for difficult times ahead. We are dependent on foreign sources for 60% of our petroleum and we do not have a plan or a remedy.

Our fiscal policy is also unsustainable. The national debt is already over $8.5 trillion and is presently increasing at $300 billion per year. By 2008, the end of the present administration, every man, woman and child will owe more than $30,000. Deficits are likely to grow much larger as health and retirement costs mount for the baby boom generation. Besides diminishing the future income of Americans, the deficit could trigger a fiscal crisis.

One of the most remarkable events in my lifetime was the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is a good example of the result of pursuing unsustainable practices. When I first traveled to Russia in 1986 the exchange rate was $1.67 per ruble. Without going through all the details, the system collapsed so that today $1 converts to nearly 30 rubles. That’s a factor of 50, but the kicker is that the ruble was devalued by a factor of 1,000 in 1998. If a Russian citizen had saved the equivalent of $50,000 in 1986, he/she would have $1 left today.

Unsustainable practices lead to collapse. Jared Diamond, in his book titled Collapse, gives several examples. He starts with Easter Island in the Pacific, a civilization that became impoverished by overpopulation and deforestation of an isolated land area. The dot-com collapse of 2000-2001 is a modern example of the eventual result of unsustainable growth. Such situations tend to overshoot a level that can be supported and fall uncontrollably as the situation becomes desperate and faith in the system is lost.

An example closer to home to District 19 is the Ogallala Aquifer. It extends from Nebraska to the southern Texas Panhandle. This tremendous resource is renewable but is rapidly being depleted by agricultural and urban water usage. I remember as a boy that my father rented a farm near Whitharral that had 10-inch wells, describing the pipe diameter required for the water output. I am told that those same wells today only pump enough to fill a 5-inch pipe. Since the flow rate increases as the area (square of the diameter), the wells pump only one-fourth of the water compared to 50 years ago. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons, when a resource is freely available to all, but its management is the responsibility of no one.

The best way to avert collapses of our petroleum supply, national fiscal system, or water supply is to acknowledge we have a problem and initiate proactive changes. These situations, as well as global warming, have several features in common. They have a long time scale. They are gradually becoming more serious. The effects accumulate and are difficult or costly to reverse. Postponing action only makes the problem worse. The basis of the problems is the desire for short-term gains without considering long-term cost or effects.

In closing, I want to emphasize that I am optimistic about solving all of these problems in acceptable ways. But the present policy of neglect is making the problems worse and making the solutions more difficult.