Video: Energy and Ethics

Just got back from the TV studio, shooting a video of “energy and ethics.”  Here’s the script I wrote for myself.  Delivery-wise, I would give myself a B.  I was OK, but I’ve done better.

Since most of our energy comes from burning fossil fuels, the way we generate and consume energy has huge ethical implications.  That’s because our behavior affects the health and well-being of other people. 

There are over one billion cars and trucks on our roads, and we’re consuming 15 terawatts of electricity.  That’s 150 billion 100-watt light bulbs.  Think about that.  Right now, every man, woman, and child on Earth, on average, is consuming the energy equivalent of 20 hundred-watt light bulbs.  And we in the US are consuming five times the international average. 

What does this have to do with ethics?  Well, what’s happening to all that pollution?  It’s changing the climate – for everyone.  It’s damaging the lungs – of everyone.  Guess who is endangered by our addiction to oil?  Everyone. 

That’s where ethics come in. Decent people wouldn’t think of throwing their trash on someone else’s front yard, or getting in someone’s car and lighting up a cigarette.  Yet some of those same people have no problem buying a big, 8-cylinder gas guzzler, or heating a house that’s five times bigger than their family needs, or leaving a hotel room with the lights on. 

What we’re actually realizing is that cheap energy isn’t really cheap.  We think we can make electricity from coal for 3.5 cents a KWh, but that’s only possible if we realize some, but not all of the costs.  3.5 cents per kWh are the immediate costs, the costs we’re capturing.  But there are other costs that we’ve been pretending do not exist.  The Harvard Medical School estimates the costs of burning coal to the healthcare system at $300 billion annually.  And what about the costs of ruining the oceans with mercury and acidification?  What about climate change?  Who’s paying for that?  The real answer is that our children are paying for it.  We’re simply deferring the costs, like we’ve done with so many other things, to a different set of people living at a different time.  We’re reaping a benefit, i.e., cheap energy, by forcing someone else to pay most of its costs. 

That’s simply wrong.  That’s stealing.  It’s wrong to take other people’s money while they’re alive, and it’s just as wrong to steal money from our children and grandchildren.  It’s no more justifiable than going through a toll booth and telling the attendant that the guy behind you is going to have to pay both his toll and yours.  The attendant would say, “Sorry pal; it doesn’t work that way.”   Exactly.  It doesn’t work that way.   

But I think we’re walking up to this.  And I point out that radical changes in the way cultures view ethics are not unprecedented, even in my short lifespan.  When I was a little boy in the early 1960s, I remember that my mother would wear a mink coat when she would go out to dinner in the winter.  About a year later, you couldn’t FIND a mink in this country.  Everyone, almost to a person, had gotten the message that killing an innocent animal for its fur was ethically unacceptable. 

My point is that cultures do change, and I think I see a huge upheaval in the works here, with respect to energy and sustainability.  Very soon, it’s going to be cool to be green.  The advocacy voice for clean energy, conservation and energy efficiency will be impossible to ignore.  I hope you’ll join us at 2GreenEnergy.com in making this happen.