Checking the Math

5 pounds of coal–
two hours of electricity per person

I
wanted to make a table display, an un-powerpoint visual to take when I’m speaking,
a reminder that what flows invisibly from the wall as electricity begins as
burning rocks. I recalled that the basement of an old house where I once lived in
Georgia still had a large pile of coal. A friend lives there now, so on a
recent visit he let me excavate and carry a few pounds home.

I had
looked up the figureshere. In coal-dependent Indiana,1133.312
tons of coal are burned for electricity per year for every 100 people. So I did
the math and put it in chapter 3, page 40: 62 pounds per person per day of coal,
an astounding figure.

I
rechecked it. How could 62 pounds of coal mined, transported, ground into
powder, burned to boil water into steam to power turbines, and then disposed of
as coal ash every day—and this is a bare simplification of the process’s many
steps—how can all that cost so little?

Much
of the cost is externalized—to black lung disease, to lost mountains and
streams, to asthma and other lung diseases near the power plants, to taxpayers’
wallets through industry subsidies. But still. I rechecked: 62 pounds. And that
doesn’t count natural gas and petroleum. Just coal.

Reading
the proofs last August I questioned the number again and retraced the math.
This time it came to 6.2 pounds per day per person. That was more reasonable, I
thought. So I changed it.

Preparing
for a lecture the day after the book was sent to the printer, I consulted the numbers a third time. It wasn’t 6.2
after all. It was 62. Rechecked. 62. The book wasn’t even out and already page 40 was wrong. Glad it wasn’t a math textbook. I alerted the publisher and was told it would be corrected in the next print round. I console myself that it’s certainly not the only mistake; I hope it is the biggest. 

Domenchino Adam and Eve 17th century

To go philosophical, the problem in mistakes is not the mistake itself. If our Creator
wanted to rule
out mistakes, the Garden of Eden would have been fool-proofed. We were created
for mistakes. The problem is when we can’t learn from them.

A
century ago, few knew that greenhouse gases would warm the planet, killing
species and creating monster storms. Fossil fuels were just beginning to work
their magic, thrusting progress ahead with unprecedented speed. As we came to
know the dangers in overusing fossil fuels, a rational society might have
changed course before we abandoned almost every other means of transportation,
warmth, cooling, light, farming, and industry.

But we
didn’t. We multiplied the mistake. We built jobs, wealth, and infrastructure
around this mistake for decades. Now we must rethink things. But instead of
agreeing to leave the rest of the fossil fuels in the ground and to seek
another path, we accuse scientists of making up facts; we argue about jobs in
Appalachia; we use the economy for an excuse; we delay and do further damage.

Bill
McKibben is scaring everyone. In a 2012 Rolling
Stone article
, he urged, “Do a
little math.” If we don’t do everything we can, both as individuals and as
communities, to change the path we are on, and quickly, the rest won’t matter
much.

Stanford
polling
shows the message is getting out, sort of. More than 75% of
Americans now believe climate change is real. The number rises to 84% in states
recently hit by drought or fearing sea level rise. Large
majorities even in coal-dominated states
support curbs in greenhouse gas
emissions from power plants. But only 15% in Kentucky find the issue very
important to them, and likely to affect their voting. In Indiana, 76% say global warming will be a serious problem for the world, but only 8% find this important.  

What? I wish
the next question had been, Why? Why the discrepancy between convictions and probable actions?

Even
if change seems unlikely in this political climate, it is nevertheless possible.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, citing three different studies
of the cost of making changes necessary to mitigate climate change, says:

Emission trajectories aiming to stabilize around 535 to
590 ppm of CO2-equivalent had total costs that ranged from 0.2 to
2.5 percent of world economic output in 2030, and from small benefits to 4
percent loss in 2050. Stricter stabilization targets, from 445 to 535 ppm CO2-equivalent,
had costs of up to 3 percent in 2030 and up to 5 percent in 2050. (Andrew Dessler and Edward A.
Parson, The Science

and Politics of
Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate
[Cambridge University Press,
2010], 149).

Percentages like .2% to 5% of world economic output are
not that much. Per capita U.S. GDP in 2011 was $48,442. So depending on whether
we want to save the earth a little or a lot, the estimated price tag appears to
be between $100 and $2400 per person per year, pennies or a few dollars per
day.

Hurricane Sandy

Since we are already seeing hundred-billion-dollar price tags
for single events such as Hurricane Sandy, it is time to stop arguing that
saving ourselves is too expensive, too divisive, or to inconvenient. It’s time
instead to check our math. Given the political will—a big given—this could be
done.