Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4
THE CLIMATE PR PUZZLE
IF WE HOPE TO AVERT A CLIMATE APOCALYPSE IN THE DECADES ahead, we must make funda-
mental changes to industrial society. Before these changes can be approved and implemented,
citizens and policy makers must first come to understand that they are essential to our survival.
Public relations (PR)—the management of the spread of information between an individual or or-
ganization and the public—will be an unavoidably necessary tool in this process.
But a PR message capable of persuading policy makers and citizens to end society's environ-
mental rampage remains elusive. In this essay I hope to explore why an effective PR message is so
hard to formulate, and how the whole project might be reconsidered.
Let's start with what needs to be conveyed. After years of research and thought, I would sum-
marize our dilemma with three general conclusions:
Conclusion 1: Energy is the biggest single issue facing us as a species. 1 Global warming—by far
the worst environmental challenge humans have ever confronted—results from our current fossil-
fuel energy regime, and averting catastrophic climate change will require us to end our reliance on
coal, oil, and natural gas. Ocean acidification is also a consequence of burning fossil fuels, and most
other environmental crises (like nitrogen runoff pollution created by fertilizers made from fossil
fuels, and most air pollution) can be traced to the same source. Therefore ending our addiction to
fossil fuels is essential if we want future generations of humans (and countless other species) to in-
herit a habitable planet.
But these energy sources are also “unsustainable” in a more basic, economic sense of the term:
oil, gas, and coal are depleting, nonrenewable resources. Already, depletion of the easy-and-cheap
sources of petroleum that drove economic growth in the 20th century has led to persistently high oil
prices, which are a drag on the economy. We have picked the low-hanging fruit of the world's petro-
leum resources, and as time goes on all sources of fossil energy will become more financially costly
and environmentally risky to extract. This is a big problem because the economy is 100 percent de-
pendent on energy. With lots of cheap energy, problems of all kinds are easy to solve (Running out
of fresh water? Just build a desalination plant!); when energy becomes expensive and hard to get,
problems multiply and converge.
One way or another, whether our concern is the environment or economic growth, it's mostly
about energy.
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