Aspen
The Rocky Mountain Institute’s 25th anniversary seminar, Celebrating Solutions, earlier this month was a mind-boggling look at a possible disastrous future. High-powered panelists discussed global warming, terrorists attacks, water shortages and rising sea levels that wipe out coastlines and create the most dire energy shortages.
These events are so catastrophic that we can’t comprehend them. But the members of the RMI seminar’s panel made suggestions that could change the course of these environmental threats, if the public demands changes. A sampling:
Fifty percent of all diseases could be wiped out by bringing clean water to people, since 1.6 billion people have no access to clean water. In many countries, women spend 20 percent of their day getting water, many times walking for miles, and it’s not always clean.
Global warming threatens a rise in sea levels that could obliterate coastlines and cities around the world, and destroy food and potable water sources. Millions of people would flee to higher grounds, not just in their own countries. Our current immigration problems would look like child’s play.
Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Old Snowmass, is an environmental think tank fostering business-led solutions. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was moderator at the seminar. President Clinton was a special guest. Panelists included Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia; R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA; Dr. Eric Rasmussen, a U.S. Navy physician on rotation to return to Iraq; Rob Walton, Wal-Mart board chairman; James Murdoch of British Sky Broadcasting; and other luminaries.
Woolsey, now vice president of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, talked about the 2003 blackout in the Northeast that was traced to a broken tree branch falling on a power line in Ohio. That’s because our integrated power grid now stretches across the nation, rather than a series of local stand-alone power sources. Woolsey pointed out that a terrorist attack could cause an even more disastrous power outage on the national grid, lasting months, not days. “We need to move to diversify our electrical sources, with solar, wind turbines, micro hydro plants, located where the energy is needed,” he said.
Amory Lovins, RMI founder, added that such distributed power has lower cost and financial risks, as well as being more secure. He noted there had been attempts to bring such power to Iraq, but the U.S. had already given contracts to the big companies, and the insurgents keep knocking down power lines, with widespread impact.
Woolsey noted that Iraq is the only war we ever fought where we were paying for both sides. “Theocratic totalitarian genocide is the threat in Iraq. It is an honest enemy … . They want to destroy our way of life and all of us.” We make it easier, he said, by borrowing over $300 billion per year from creditors such as China and Saudi Arabia, writing national IOUs at almost $1 billion a day to import oil.
He cited policies that could lead to substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and bring hope:
To learn about ways you could help protect our environment, go to , or call RMI at 970-927-3851. We have to change direction.
Joanne Ditmer’s column on environmental and urban issues for The Post began in 1962 and now appears once a month.
