Running from Pittsburgh, PA all the way to Washington, DC is a picturesque bicycle path made by Rails to Trails. Rails to Trails is an organization that converts old railroad tracks to community use walking and cycling trails. As a result of their work, our ride to Washington, DC was the most pleasant 300 mile leg of the journey to date. I am even staying in town with Travis Skinner, a rails to trails volunteer who reached out wondering how he could help with the project.
Before I left Pittsburgh, PA I got a chance to stop in and speak with Dr. Ed Rubin at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Rubin is a specialist on CCS (carbon capture and storage) otherwise known as carbon sequestration, having coauthored the UN IPCC's report on the potential for CCS and numerous other publications on the subject. I will be outright in saying I went into the conversation with serious doubts about the practicality, cost and overall effectiveness of carbon sequestration as a climate change solution. Nevertheless, my goal is to learn from experts, not to project my own prejudices on potential solutions.
Dr. Rubin made it quite clear that he views climate change and our dependence on greenhouse gas emitting energy sources as a serious threat to life on earth. And it was that, he said, that compelled him to research options like carbon sequestration - not because they were pre-eminent solutions, but because we have such a limited window in which to address our rate of greenhouse gas induced warming that we must employ all available tactics in doing so. He explained that while he believes sequestration can provide a means of storing between 100-150 (rough ballpark) years of GHG emissions, it should be used as an intermediary step while we find ways to move away from coal.
On that same note, while in Washington, DC I spoke with Bill Fang at the Edison Electric Institute. EEI represents 70% of utilities in the US. Bill reinforced what Dr. Rubin had said when he showed me industry expectations of utility power sources in 2030. He and other industry leaders expect that coal use will increase nearly everywhere on earth in the next 25-50 years as energy demands continue to expand. While this flies in the face of my ideals and hopes, it is a realistic possibility considering that during that same period in time world population will increase from six billion to around nine billion people and per capita consumption of electricity will increase. In the meantime, we have no silver bullet technology to replace coal.
The reason that I believe many environmentalists like myself are skeptical about the potential for clean coal and fight its use vehemently is that we fear the funding for renewables research, which is already paltry compared to say medical research funding or even video game development, will be siphoned off to expand these short term solutions, leaving us in an even worse predicament a few years down the road.
Carbon sequestration only addresses some symptoms of the stresses we are putting on the planet. Think of it as using anti-acid pills to address heartburn while ignoring the underlying problem that you're living off Big Macs and milkshakes. It can never be a sustainable solutions and the greatest danger I see in its development is people believing we have solved climate change and never changing their habits, sources of power, modes of transportation, homes, etc. to develop a society that can endure without sacrificing every last bit of nature.
So, should we try to sequester carbon? Sure, but not in our oceans at the cost of marine biodiversity, not hundreds of miles from power plants in venerable pipelines which require decades and billions to construct, not with taxpayers absorbing all liability for leaks and accidents as has become the norm with nuclear power, and certainly not if it draws funding away from genuine renewables as it surely will.
So go on and try to make your coal cleaner, but know that within my lifetime the coal industry must decline and renewables must begin to bear the burden of our consumption crazed lifestyles, else we will go down in history as the generations which sacrificed much of the beautiful and diverse world we all take for granted.
Note: Interview/itinerary suggestions for the trip can be emailed to me.
| Ride To Sustain will pass through the following cities: San Francisco, CA – Sacramento, CA – Reno, NV – Salt Lake City, UT – Denver, CO – Omaha, NB – Des Moines, IA – Chicago, IL – Detroit, MI – Cleveland, OH – Pittsburgh, PA – Washington, DC – Philadelphia, PA – New York City, NY – Hartford, CT – Boston, MA |
