The cold war is over. Capitalism has won. The brave new world of free trade and global integration is upon us. What does this mean? Who benefits? Who loses?

Technological advances and globalization have given rise to new ethical issues of staggering complexity. How can democracy be extended to international trade? Do multinational corporations currently exercise inordinate and undemocratic influence to manage international trade? Is the World Trade Organization just a puppet of multi-national corporations? At what point do the answers to these questions become obvious, and are they? If so, at what point is the time-honored American tradition of non-violent civil disobedience an acceptable option?

The issue of globalization moved to the forefront of international news coverage in 1999, when in Seattle nearly 50,000 protesters succeeded in literally bringing to a standstill the first meeting of the World Trade Organization ever to be held on U.S. soil. The sheer number of the protesters, along with their stunning success in paralysing a city and captivating television news audiences around the world, did not happen by accident. Long prior to these demonstrations, preparations were afoot throughout the world, particularly on the west coast, and perhaps more than anywhere, from a coalition of activist organizations based in San Francisco.

Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) is headquartered on the third floor of an older building in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. Since 1988 this non-profit has worked to get their message of economic, social, political and environmental justice out to citizens around the world. They have engaged in traditional public education campaigns as well as actions that are somewhat more, shall we say, creative. To get ready for demonstrations against the World Trade Organization’s planned meeting in 11-99 in Seattle, Global Exchange hired a young University of California, Berkeley graduate named Juliette Beck. For over a year she worked with a disparate coalition of activist groups, and she has been annointed, possibly inaccurately, as one of the principal architects of the protests.

For her efforts Juliette Beck has become, at the ripe old age of 27, an international celebrity. She has had a feature about her in the New Yorker as well as the London Times, she has been interviewed by Charlie Rose and others, and when it came time for EcoWorld find an authority on the issue of globalization, we were fortunate enough to schedule an interview. When we called Beck she commented that December would probably be a good time for us to meet, since she didn’t plan on shutting down any international organizations that month.

We met with Juliette Beck on a mild, cloudy afternoon where the sun didn’t break through until it was setting on the horizon. Their office suite was broken up into several large rooms that were all warm and comfortable, with a multicultural group of mostly young people who seemed to be working hard and enjoying themselves. All the furniture was mismatched and all the workspaces were highly individualized. Posters with Global Exchange campaign messages hung on the walls along with art. Mobiles hung from the ceilings. The place quietly hummed with activity. Just outside the windows, swarms of pigeons wheeled through the air to settle on the nearby powerlines or onto the roof of the Raley’s market across the street.

Juliette Beck is a confident, engaging, knowledgeable and passionate advocate of the issues she represents. Like many we have met in the environmental movement, she appeared to have the serenity of someone who derives immense personal fulfillment from their work. Here is what she said:

How did you begin working at Global Exchange?

I came in to help organize the World Trade Organization campaign because for the first time the Geneva based World Trade Organization was meeting in Seattle in the U.S. and President Clinton was hoping to use this as an opportunity to launch a “millenium round” of trade talks. The backlash against corporate managed trade has been growing both in the U.S. and worldwide.

What were you doing before you came here?

At UC Berkeley I studied an interdisciplinary approach to the global problems and it broadened my eyes to the way that institutions based in the U.S. have major impact in the lives of people all around the world. It didn’t seem like it was very responsible the way that the World Bank and multinational institutions were carrying out their policies was very much in head-on collision with the limits of the natural ecosystems. It was obvious that this was going to become one of the pressing issues of my day and age and my lifetime. Unsustainable usage of resources are causing extinction rates that might not have occurred since meteorites hit the earth. These are the issues that started to preoccupy me back at UC Berkeley.

I didn’t know what to do till I discovered a group called “50 Years is Enough” which was formed on the fifty-year anniversary of the World Bank and the IMF about 5-6 years ago. They are part of a network along with Global Exchange and The Rainforest Action Network among the founding organizations, they are headquartered in Washington DC but I worked with the Bay Area Chapter. One of our first campaigns was about sweatshops. Clothes are a great window into the global economy, getting consumers to think about who makes their clothes. Are people who make their clothes being treated fairly? Some of the most heinous human rights abuse occurs in factories where our clothes are coming from.

How do human rights and environmental issues connect?

Even though my heart and passion is about preserving the environment for future generations, I realize you have to be able to speak to people and get people to change their practices and take action in order to stop the disruption that’s happening on a global scale. It’s important to be educating U.S. consumers on how to change the way that the people are normally taught to get their needs met. We are trying to promote a vision of global justice. Its not just about donating money to poor people in the global south to get life-saving medicines or a new well for their community, but also to promote awareness here in the U.S..

We incorporate both the environment and human rights into an alternative economic model that contrasts with the corporate model in our fair trade coffee campaign. This grew out of an effort in Europe to bring together producers, small farmers, who grow coffee in the tropical areas in the world with the go-between people who distribute and the purchasers and the consumers. When you bring all those groups together to sit around the table and say “what would be a fair price” you make sure that built into the trading process is a fair price so that the bottom line isn’t just making money for the middleman but guaranteeing a fair price for the people that grow the coffee.

Small farmers have to be organized into a cooperative that’s supporting one another in their community. They will have a guaranteed fixed price so that regardless of how the people on Wall Street are betting on the price they will be paid a fair amount. They will get credit, which is very important because the coffee producing families only get one payment per year.

What about the coffee plants that have now been developed that tolerate full sun instead of growing as understory crops?

It’s been a disaster. Coffee is an understory crop and these new strains have contributed to the destruction of the rainforest. They take these products that are developed in laboratories and plots in the U.S. by Navartis and Monsanto and other corporations and they are engineered to grow faster and have a higher yield but they aren’t sustainable, they require higher chemical inputs. These new high yield varieties are sold and marketed to developing countries, and the World Bank gives loans to buy these products and its been disastrous.

Do you think all genetically engineered food is bad?

I’ve been very alarmed at some of the studies that have been coming out showing that corn pollen from genetically engineered corn made the larvae of Monarchs unable to reproduce.

What about genetically engineered rice that contains vitamin A? Wouldn’t planting this rice prevent severe malnutrition, especially in Southeast Asia?

Its very tempting to look for a quick fix, but any nutritionist will tell you that the key to good nutrition is a balanced diet. There’s a lot of ethical problems with genetic engineering. There is a new term called bio-piracy. A Texas based company has shifted around a few strands of DNA and they are claiming ownership of a strain of rice that has existed in India for thousands of years. Chiapas has declared itself a bio-piracy free zone.

Can these organizations be reformed?

Yes, for example, they’ve got literacy projects in Turkey. I was emailed by someone on the ground there who said look at all the things we’re doing to improve literacy. The changes that have been made have been in response to popular uprisings by local communities who say they want more openness, transparency, participation by local communities; the World Bank has made small progress on all of these things. But countries now have huge foreign debts that they have to make interest payments on, and how do you generate hard currency? You turn your forests into cash and you turn your fisheries into cash.

Centralized development projects have turned these countries into exporters of one or two commodities, while at the same time the global commodity prices in all these raw materials have just plummeted.

The current World Bank ideology is growth uber alles, free market expansion, do what’s good for the multi-national corporation and somehow that’s supposed to benefit these countries, thou shalt attract foreign investors. We believe there should definitely be international institutions that should be involved in setting rules for the global economy but they have to incorporate different world views. The one that is being cooked up now at the University of Chicago and the London School is a very limited economic paradigm.

So to date they really haven’t made any significant progress towards reform?

If you’re a country that is already cash strapped you have to make very inhumane decisions, sometimes a country is paying five times as much for debt service as they are for health care. Countries in Africa have been forced to reject loans to deal with the AIDS epidemic because of the payments. The World Bank is reacting to mass protests in these countries to accepting new loans. This has been an extraordinary year for raising the issues we’re talking about, the World Bank is getting pressure from the outside, from inside Congress, from the right, from the left, from all spectrums.

Who is the anti-globalist coalition? Who was in Seattle? Who were they?

The call that went out for Seattle was that this trade affects everyone on the planet, we’re all affected, we should all be there and be represented. Form a group of people, a group of 15-20 people and create your message. Create your single sound bite that you want to deliver about what’s wrong with the WTO, the issue that your particularly passionate about. And people came with the most amazing creativity, I can’t even begin to fathom, what people came to express. It resulted in a very good picture of the widespread impacts of world trade, everything from people dressed up in turtle costumes to indigenous rights groups to people from faith-based organizations who formed prayer circles. There were hip-hop youth that came and did rap in the streets to demonstrate against the corporatization of culture.

Is this a culture war as much as an economic war?

There was an affinity group there that had a beautiful banner that said “life is not a commodity” and for me that pretty much summed up what was happening with the WTO who is really trumping other aspects of life, their spirituality, their education; there’s lots of spheres of our life that should not be commodified and turned into a vehicle for making profit and yet that’s exactly what the WTO is facilitating.

The general consensus in the mainstream of top political circles is that capitalism has won. The ideological struggle between capitalism and communism is over and capitalism has won. Whether or not that is true, do you think there is subtlety to the idea of capitalism? Are their kinds of capitalism that can exist in a way that is positive for these other values?

We all have our ideals about how we’d like to live but I’m more concerned about the present and the fact that we live in a capitalist and highly globalized society and how are we going to transition this system. Yes, capitalism has won, the cold war has ended, and there are very few examples of socialism left. How do we transition this to a more people-centered and environmentally centered system?

How many people were in Seattle?

There were 50,000 people, the labor unions alone mobilized 23,000 people. In SF there is the International Longshoreman’s Warehouse Union. I went and spoke at labor union halls for the ILWU everywhere from the Port of Stockton to San Francisco to San Diego to Los Angeles. They shut down the whole western coast during the WTO meetings in Seattle; they had a work stoppage from Vancouver to San Diego.

What’s the biggest problem the labor unions have with the WTO?

They’ve been really heavily hit by the de-industrialization of the United States. There’s such a huge trade surplus now, the trade is coming in and it’s not going out and the workers are paid by what they lift.

What were you doing during the Seattle demonstrations?

My main concern was how the corporate media was going to frame what was happening. I wanted to make sure that there we had really good spokespeople and that our communications were as professional as possible and that our press releases were going out in a timely way. We had a desk inside of the independent media center covering the WTO meetings; I worked with the Direct Action Network media team. We also had a number of meetings to organize the action beforehand - the action to shut the meetings down - of course when the people started getting arrested we had ongoing vigils and the response to the martial law that went out.

How did you coordinate your efforts?

We were a pretty high-tech group. Lots of cell phones. When I was in Seattle on the morning of November 30th, I went into the convention center where we were accredited by the WTO along with other NGOs, many of which are industry associations, so we actually had had a press conference on that morning inside the WTO’s hotel about how we intended to shut down the WTO.

Later on November 30th when the tear gas was flying and all hell was breaking loose in the streets I went into the main convention center and realized it was totally empty except for a few hundred people that had gotten there, so I thought, for these few hundred people who are here let’s invite them to have a dialogue. They are always (WTO) telling us “don’t go out and protest in the streets, be good, talk to us around the table,” so here we were. Three of us walked up to the podium at the front of the hall and said “We’re from Global Exchange and we’re here to have a dialogue about the way that human rights and the environment and labor standards are being undermined by the WTO’s rules.”

They didn’t like that too much and they grabbed us and as they threw us out we started screaming “where’s the democracy, where’s the freedom of speech?”

You guys were also at the WTO meeting in Washington DC in April and again over the summer at the conventions. Those weren’t quite as disrupted, is that because they were ready for you?

Oh yes, they had definitely studied us. The Philadelphia police and the Los Angeles police departments all had representatives in Washington DC to observe our strategy. I’m sure they were spying on us. What they did in Philadelphia right away was they came in and stole all of our art. One of the ways we were going to get a very creative message was through giant puppets and by creating a festival atmosphere. We wanted to blockade the streets with giant puppets; it’s hard to arrest a giant puppet. They came into the warehouse where the things were being made and just shredded everything. They put it all through a giant wood-chipper.

How do you keep turnout high on an issue like this? It’s not exactly like the Vietnam War years where people were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. It’s a little more cerebral, a little less tangible. How do you sustain this?

Well that’s really what our challenge is right now. There are people who have had their lives transformed by being part of a mass action, being with ten, twenty, thirty thousand people who passionately believe there can be a better world. Now we’re trying to figure out how to bring that back into their communities, their work, their professional lives. I doubt a lot of the people who were on the streets of Seattle can become a corporate lawyer; things have changed because of how they’ve been impacted. Things are going to happen through a groundswell of grassroots activity, talking to people who weren’t on the streets and explaining why we were there. Lots of public education, lots of campaigns, targeting corporations who often are headquartered in a particular city. We have our campaign against Gap sweatshops. Gap operates factories as part of a subcontracting regime in over forty countries worldwide. In Cambodia we are fighting for a living wage of about 60 dollars a month; they’re currently paid about 40 dollars a month.

How does that compare to wages for other jobs in Cambodia?

That’s a good question, but it’s not a subsistence wage.

What about the people in these countries? What are you doing in terms of working directly with local groups around the world?

The cross-border organizing is one of the foremost parts of our strategy, building global-local links. Often the head of the World Bank or the WTO or Clinton will say “you people in the U.S. are standing in the way of development when in fact it’s workers in this country and workers in another country where Ford Motors has relocated to that are the target. So now there are efforts to build global unions, to organize across borders. The work that I’ve been doing here in the wake of Seattle is looking at the next major international corporate managed trade negotiations; where the corporations are coming together, where they are in their coalitions. Right now it’s to negotiate the free trade area of the Americas, NAFTA expansion to all 34 countries in the Americas except for Cuba. This is the same flawed process of corporations sitting behind closed doors and meeting rooms that are laying out their agenda and there’s no democratic process. We don’t even have access to copies of the text.

Why can’t the U.S. be a force pulling countries in the right direction in these meetings, instead of taking advantage of the fact that they don’t have our environmental standards and labor rights?

That’s what’s behind the corporate accountability campaigns and codes of conduct we’re encouraging U.S. corporations to adopt. Many companies, for example, have committed to a set of business principles for corporations doing business in China. We’ve gotten Levis, Intel and other companies to sign to this.

Is there momentum with these code-of-contact campaigns? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

I see shifts and changes being made in a lot of areas. The fact that socially responsible investment is the fastest growing sector of investments is really promising and shows that people are responding to the ways their consciousness is being raised with actual changes in the way they want to buy things and invest things. We’re seeing a lot of resolutions showing up in public company shareholder meetings addressing everything from the use of their rainforest products in construction to issues of income inequality.

In the U.S., whenever a union tries to organize, there is a threat to move the company overseas or bust the union. There is a much more conscious effort on the part of corporations to keep working standards low and to keep wages low. That’s why wages have stagnated to 1970’s levels. The threat of moving overseas has given corporations power over their work forces and compelled unions to accept lowering wages even in this time of a booming economy.

Are there opportunities coming up for your group to get the kind of exposure that you got in Seattle?

At the heart of these issues is democracy. This year we started to look very closely at the nature of democracy in the U.S. and we realized we are very far from having a true democracy. Corporations and their campaign finance contributions are calling the shots. There is no such thing as one person one vote, the electoral college gets in the way of that along with corporate influence in the election process. So we are launching a campaign to create true democracy, to democratize the political system of the U.S., to demand proportional representation, clean money reforms, easier voting and voting rights…

You mean going to a parliamentary system?

Right, it would not be winner-take-all. Most western democracies are parliamentary.

Wouldn’t that be a big shift for the United States?

We have to start somewhere. We hope that we have the attention now of the American public to also be questioning the archaic system and to overhaul the political system. For this December 18th we have put out a call for actions to occur in all the state capitols in the country when the electors go to cast their votes. The action theme will be to “create democracy now,” to “clean it, fix it, build it.” This is a theme we chose because we need to clean up our corrupt system and fix things like the Electoral College and build a true democracy and give people power and real representation.

There is an energy right now sweeping like a wave across the country of people thinking globally and acting locally like never before. There is a very complete, holistic view of what needs to be done. It’s not an either-or, where corporations are compelled to pay a living wage, but who cares what they do to the environment. People are really thinking about how to integrate social and environmental responsibility and that’s what’s different from even a decade ago. A movement’s occurring in the U.S. where the legacy of the environmental movement is now joining up with social justice advocates and forming new, more powerful coalitions. This is the wave of the future, people who want to form a socially just and environmentally sustainable system.

What kind of big project would you do if you had more resources and could really do something on a grand scale? What would you do?

That’s ambitious. Debt cancellation is probably the biggest impediment to sustainable and equitable development for people living in the global south. It hits me at a very visceral level. It’s a very immoral and usurious relationship that’s been created because of the way World Bank and IMF have loaned their money. When it comes to creating global equality it’s getting the boot off the developing country’s neck.

How do you deal with the plutocracy in these developing countries who are co-opted by multinationals?

You have to promote real democracy and empower people in different sectors, women and others, to have a voice. There are projects like micro-credit as opposed to a highly centralized development project. It’s happening right now, in Argentina there’s a mass revolt happening as we speak. It’s a global movement. There’s a new wave of awareness and resistance in the last few years. It’s a global movement that has its roots in peasant movements, anti-colonial movements, women’s rights movements, labor struggles. The growth of independent media centers has been a really important step to get accurate information to people instead of the corporate-filtered advertising barrage most people are reacting to. It’s really hard for us with limited resources to compete with the snazzy-groovy-sexy advertising campaigns of multi-national corporations.

Where can we go to buy clothes that aren’t made in sweatshops?

The problems with the sweatshops are systemic; they’re throughout the garment industry. If you really wanted to reform the whole garment industry you’d have to start with the way the cotton is produced. For every pound of cotton produced there is a third of a pound of chemicals. There needs to be a market for organic cotton. There would have to be a campaign that brought together organic cotton growers with unions and workers that are turning it into a textile, and then the mills that pay living wages to the workers that create the actual garments.

It would be nice to identify the good guys, and if you could drive people into the companies that are doing the right things, that might be a way to induce the other ones to follow suit.

Definitely, and some areas are easier than others. We’ve had some good progress with coffee. We demanded Starbucks sell fair-trade coffee, and they have started to do this.

How do you get these values into the mainstream?

That’s the challenge. There are studies showing that over 50 million people in the U.S. share these same values. They want to see systemic change, they don’t want to be wasting the earth’s precious resources, and they want to buy products that are from companies that are socially and environmentally responsible.

View Readers Comments about Fuel Cells

In the western corner of West Sacramento, in a promontory of light industrial buildings that runs along the south frontage of Interstate 80, is the home of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. They are a depot for most of the hydrogen fuel cell powered cars in North America. In a new building on Industrial Boulevard, are spaces for auto makers and other partners from all over the world. When we visited last week, in front of the building the flags of eight nations snapped in the Pacific breeze, and across the street the vast floodplains of the Sacramento Delta stretched away to the south.

Although the facility opened up on November 1st, most of the suites are still vacant. Only Daimler-Chrysler and Honda actually have cars and crews on site. According to Linda Ortiz, the office manager, the California Fuel Cell Partnership has eighteen partners, they are auto manufacturers, energy and fuel providers fuel cell companies and governmental agencies.

There are eight suites for auto manufacturers, two of them occupied already by Daimler-Chrysler and Honda, as well as vacant ones for Volkswagon, Ford, Nissan, Hyundai, Toyota, and General Motors. Cars delivered here will be demonstrated from this site and will be open to the public. The cars won’t stay there all the time, they’ll be moved around on a regular basis to go to shows and events around the US and around the world.

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The Electric Car: Development of Battery, Hybrid, & Fuel Cell Cars

So where are these cars? We headed into the back of the property, where the bays for the auto makers faced onto a back lot that looked out onto the freeway. On our way, we ran into the Chief Engineer for Honda, Shiro Matsuo, standing in the parking lot behind the building, watching for incoming cars while his team tested a fuel cell car. The car was doing laps across the length of the back lot.

We asked him what the car was doing, going in circles around the lot, and his answer indicates the cars are still very much in a development stage, “This fuel cell is not very good at lower temperatures, so we do not want to start the fuel cell system on a public road.” The car in question, Honda’s V-3, is one of the most advanced hydrogen fuel cell cars in the world, but it can not run on the open road before being warmed up for at least 5 minutes. So much for a quick start.

Honda’s other models of fuel cell cars are the V-1, which uses a metal hydride fuel tank, and the V-2, which runs on methanol using a reforming device to convert the methanol to hydrogen. The systems on these cars are so big, particularly the reformer on the methanol car, that both versions are only able to have two seats. Matsuo mentioned that California is building another depot, probably in the Bay Area, that will house new cars that use reformer technologies, such as Honda’s V-2.

Shiro Matsuo Chief Engineer, Honda

From a technological standpoint, methanol cars are further from being ready for the road than hydrogen cars because of the weight added by the reforming system. But there are technical obstacles to be overcome before hydrogen cars will be seen on the roads. In addition to the problem of slow warm-up, hydrogen fuel cell cars have a short range. Honda’s V-3 only has a range of 110 miles, a defect which can only be partially offset by designing a larger hydrogen tank into the car, since a bigger tank adds weight and takes up more space. A higher efficiency vehicle is still in development and won’t be ready for another year. Moreover, progress is incremental, so next year’s model will not be a breakthrough, just an improvement.

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Fuel From Water: Energy Independence With Hydrogen

When asked about diesel cars, Matsuo had definite opinions, since it turned out he had a background in diesel engineering. His comments were interesting: “The efficiency of the diesel engine is very good, but the bad point is that it can’t get rid of some of the pollutant material, especially the particulate matter. The newest carburators produce precise high pressure injection into the cylinder which greatly increases combustion.”

Like others we talked with that day, Matsuo’s comments reflected a perception that the U.S. market, and California in particular, is more committed to zero-emissions than the rest of the world. When asked how close the new diesel cars have come to complying with ultra-low emissions standards, Matsuo wasn’t sure. He said “there are new catalysers being developed to absorb more particulate matter, it’s getting better year by year.”

Hydrogen Fuel Station West Sacramento California USA

Toxins from methanol leak into the soil from bad tanks and accidental spills, particles from diesels foul the air, even methanol reformers emit some pollution, about 20% of what a typical gasoline automobile produces. Nothing is perfect, except hydrogen, which can be made from electricity and water and can be produced in limitless quantities using nothing more than solar energy and water. If hydrogen burns, it leaves no trace in the air, except for a bit of water vapor.

This pristine appeal to environmentalists, combined with the fact that fuel cells really aren’t technologically ready to power a car on any fuel but hydrogen, is why California built this facility before any others and why the major auto makers of the world are trying to make sure they keep their foot in the door. Opposite the back parking lot, just in front of the wire fence that separated us from the whizzing eastbound traffic on I-80, was a giant hydrogen fuel station. Hydrogen is stored under great pressure, 3600 and 5000 PSI in the big tanks, 7000 PSI in the smaller distribution tanks.

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Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell And The Race To Change the World

Hydrogen may be ecologically and technologically the logical fuel right now for fuel cell cars, but there is no consumer distribution system in place. While methanol, a liquid, can be piped, trucked and stored in the existing network for gasoline with minor conversion costs, hydrogen will require an entire new fuel distribution infrastructure. Partly for this reason, fuel cell vehicles even in California, where government subsidies and regulations are the most favorable to fuel cell development in the world, fuel cell vehicles are not expected to be on the road in significant numbers until 2004. Even by that time, most of them will be in commercial and government fleet use, where they will have a hydrogen station on site. Don’t expect to see hydrogen stations on the freeway off ramps for the next several years, if ever.

Hydrogen Storage Tank

But hydrogen retains its appeal, and the prospect of gas stations that require no fuel deliveries, just solar electricity and water to convert to hydrogen to recharge their storage tanks, is a seductive vision. On vehicles that can be refueled often or have low range requirements, setting up a fleet that would run on fuel produced in limitless quantities at an on-site station will probably be a competitive economic investment within five years or sooner. Fleets of buses, which can tolerate a bulky power system, will probably be one of the first places hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be strongly competitive. As Matsuo said, “in the long run, fuel cell vehicles will gain a percentage of the market but I don’t know if they will ever dominate.”

What will be the next generation car? Diesels, hybrids, or ultra-efficient & ultra-clean gasoline or methanol powered cars using combustion engines? The answer is all of the above. Will one type dominate? The correct answer to that question will make a lot of people rich, but it’s probably safe to bet it will not be fuel cell vehicles that dominate. What about hydrogen combustion engines, since they burn so clean?

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Fuel Cell Systems Explained

We talked with Richard Tuso, an Electrical Technician at Daimler-Chrysler. He reiterated that the fuel cell vehicle is preferred because it “does a molecular conversion of hydrogen to electricity which causes zero emissions to the atmosphere.” He noted that methanol vehicles use a reformer which catalyses the methanol to separate the hydrocarbon from the hydrogen, but the reformer puts out emissions that are still at about 20% of an internal combustion engine. Richard acknowledged that “Methanol is easier for the fuel infrastructure, but where we’re heading for in the long run is zero emissions, not low emissions.”

When asked about the possible dangers of distributing and stockpiling huge amounts of hydrogen, which is highly pressurized and explosive, Tuso downplayed the dangers. Most of the supposed problems with hydrogen are based on a public perception that it is much more dangerous that it really is. “The perception is evident when you take into account the precautions we take here,” said Tuso. “The fueling station we built here cost five times what a comparable station cost in Germany. We have hydrogen alarms and air ventilation systems that are constantly running.”

In reality, said Tuso, “The only real problem is the pressure that’s involved, and that’s not a problem with proper tanking systems.” He showed us pictures of cars that had been dropped from 45′, then from 90′, and in all these test cases the hydrogen tank did not explode, in spite of being under pressure. Moreover, he said, “the tanks are designed to blow up, not out. If, for example, that tank back there exploded,” said Tuso, referring to the hydrogen station in the lot behind the building, “90% of the debris would fall within the fence around it.”

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The Hydrogen Economy

The danger from accidental hydrogen fires was even less of a problem, according to Tuso, because “Hydrogen is a very clean fuel, it would ignite easier than gasoline, but the likelihood of it igniting is still slim. If it did ignite, the flame doesn’t put out much heat. Gasoline fires usually consume the whole car.” He cited tests where hydrogen gas tanks were exploded and ignited, and invariably the flame went upwards and didn’t burn very hot. The back windows, for example, would not typically be damaged in a hydrogen tank fire, whereas in a gasoline tank fire, the back windows usually melt.

Notwithstanding the cost of building an entire fuel infrastructure for hydrogen, the biggest problem hydrogen fuel has may end up being a public perception that it is too dangerous to handle. “People here think of the Hindenberg and Hydrogen bombs,” said Tuso, “Some people think we have a hydrogen bomb back here.”

We left that day not sure whether or not we’d found the car of the future. Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars will be part of the market, but they probably won’t sit in everyone’s garages, owning the car market the way gasoline powered cars do today. Hybrids have better range and overall performance, and they’re already cheap to manufacture. Expect to see more of them in the near future. What will emerge in the long run is anybody’s guess. Outside the U.S., cleaner burning cars using conventional fuels such as diesel and gasoline will probably stay on top of the market. How clean can they get? How clean is clean enough? Stay tuned.

California Fuel Cell Partnership
3300 Industrial Blvd., Suite 1000,
West
Sacramento, CA 95691.
916-371-2453.

View Readers Comments about Fuel Cells

There is nothing simple about fuel cells.

Oh, the concept is simple. A fuel cell is a battery that you can refuel. Period. End of story. They make electric current. They should have been called Fuel Batteries.

Fuel cells are batteries that can be fueled by gasoline, methane, ethanol, or hydrogen, to name some. Charge producing electrons are chemically extracted from the fuel by the elements inside the fuel cell, which from an electro-chemical standpoint are identical to the elements inside the common battery, a continuous electric current, with energy derived from this fuel input. They last anywhere from one to six years before they wear out or need an overhaul.

They come in all sizes, and will be used for everything from micro-appliances to tools and appliances, to home power units, to car power units, to building power units, to utility power plants. Fuel cells will power ships at sea and colonies in space.

Fuel cells today are expensive to manufacture and depend on ongoing technological innovations to ensure their eventual economic viability. For example, unless you want to run a fuel cell on hydrogen fuel, you will have to process your fuel through a “reformer.” This device reformulates non-hydrogen fuels such as gasoline, methane, etc., to turn them into hydrogen.

This problem is being overcome but progress is slow. Reformers are still very expensive. Some of the higher temperature fuel cells can actually directly process non-hydrogen fuels, methane, gasoline and ethanol, without using the reformer. This can degrade and destroy lower temperature fuel cells, as well as high-temperature fuel cells using earlier technologies. And high temperature fuel cells that can directly process non-hydrogen fuels are still expensive, too. Nothing simple here.

None-the-less, if technology stocks are overvalued, some fuel cell companies may be undervalued. Imagine when the next wave of consumer electronics hits. The next wave of portables will need something easier than batteries. Think of fuel cells vs. batteries the way you might think of digital stills vs. film stills. No reloading. No film container. Just add energy. The fuel cell subsystem lasts for the same lifetime as the whole unit. In the future, the fuel-cell powered VR headset or heads-up-display sunglasses will recharge by plugging a small fuel ampoule into a port on the unit. A pill of ethanol, for example. Standard size ampoules for all kinds. That’s pretty easy and pretty cheap electric power maintenance. Beats batteries. Gets my vote.

Cars using fuel cells still take a long time to start their engines, and since most car drivers take a quick start for granted, this is a problem. Energy density is also still a factor limiting automotive fuel cells, since a moderate size car on acceleration needs at least 100KW per kilogram. Fuel cells for cars that are economical to produce today are only getting about half that efficiency.

Nissan Fuel Cell Car

One of the biggest remaining questions with car fuel cells is what fuel will they use? The chief advantages of methanol is that it is for all practical purposes limitless in supply, insofar as methanol can be derived from natural gas, whose proven reserves worldwide are easily quintuple that of oil. Also advantageous is that methanol is distributed in liquid form, which means that methanol can use the existing distribution network in place for gasoline. Even underground tanks that held gasoline can be easily converted to hold methane.

Hindenburg Airship

Hydrogen as a fuel is championed because, theoretically, it can be derived from totally renewable sources, such as solar energy. Hydrogen, moreover, creates absolutely no air pollution when it burns. Finally, hydrogen fuel is the optimal fuel to use in a fuel cell since it will cause the slowest degradation of the elements of the fuel cell. The disadvantages of hydrogen are that it must be transported and stored under extreme pressure, up to 2,000 PSI. Two somewhat related consequences of this are an entire new distribution and storage infrastructure must be built, an undertaking of massive, nearly incalculable expense, and since hydrogen is highly flammable, an explosive hazard is created and an infrastructure must be created to counter and prepare against.

In reality fuel cell powered cars will eventually be built using all fuels. Some will be hybrids using combustion engines. Some will use fuel cells that tolerate various fuels. Some will use hydrogen generated and stored by the personal home fuel cell power units of the car owners. What fuel will prevail for cars using fuel cells? Don’t bet against gasoline. Don’t be surprised if several fuels occupy niches in the car market, either.

For homes and buildings fuel cells are already here. Check out the General Electric “HomeGen 7000″ fuel cell home powerplant (www.gepower.com/microgen/homegen_prod_desc.html). About the size of a refrigerator, less expensive per month than your utility bill, runs on propane! For buildings and for utilities, fuel cell powerplants are beginning to make economic sense. The potential for home and commercial building power systems using fuel cells, particularly in the United States as utility deregulation rolls out through the states, is probably much higher in the short run than that for automobiles. The heat produced by fuel cells, which is a liability in an automobile, is used for thermal co-generation in home power systems and is an asset. In the automotive market fuel cells are in competition with smart new hybrid vehicles and combustion engines that are themselves undergoing massive increases in efficiencies. By contrast in the utilities market fuel cells are competing with an under powered energy infrastructure and imminent percentage energy price increases in the triple-digits.

Fuel cells have been around a long time, over 100 years, but the materials cost along with the complex manufacturing process has limited development. New concerns about air quality as well as the availability of petroleum-based fuels has spurred their recent development. Their adoption around the world is inevitable, because of the convenience and independence they will give power consumers, as well as their ecological benefits, and, at last, their technological and economic viability. But they will not proliferate overnight, and where they show up first will surprise a lot of people.

It would be ironic if the first place we see fuel cells
widely used is to power consumer electronic portables and micro-devices, where their convenience outweighs any cost considerations, and the global energy and ecological impact of their adoption is negligible.

The next place fuel cells are likely to be widely adopted will not be in cars, but in home power systems. The ongoing cost of fuel and maintenance for a home power unit that uses a fuel cell is about the same as the average utility bill. This is going to change dramatically in the wake of utility deregulation and home power units using fuel cells will become a compelling investment overnight. Don’t forget their purchase may be subsidized for the homeowner or commercial building owner in the form of tax incentives, to boot.

Further irony might be found in the likely fact that the last place we’ll see widespread adoption of fuel cells will be onboard automobiles, since it is regarding tomorrow’s cars that we’ve all heard about fuel cells. Or in the likely fact that when and if these fuel cell powered (and hybridized with an internal combustion engine) electric autos do hit the road, most of them will run on ordinary gasoline.

EMAIL TO THE EDITOR

—–Original Message—–

From: ALAN DIKA

Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 5:13 AM

To: ed@ecoworld.com

Subject: fuel cells

Emailer: How much energy does it take to make a fuel cell?

Editor: We don’t know, but what you refer to is embodied energy, i.e., the total BTU’s (or equivalents) necessary to manufacture a fuel cell. “Renewable” energy, or any type of energy, cannot be evaluated solely on the energy output vs. energy input ratio during its useful life. The ultimate positive relationship between energy input and energy output with an energy device must take into account not only net BTU’s produced during the device’s useful life, but also the quantity of BTU’s expended to make the device. Also remember that a fuel cell doesn’t “make” anything, it is a conversion device; in the case of a fuel cell, hydrogen is converted to electricity.

Emailer: How much energy does it take to reform products to become useable hydrogen?

Editor’s reply: Again you are talking about devices that have some amount of “embodied” energy, which must be included in the efficiency calculation of any energy conversion or energy generating device. Fuel cells depend on hydrogen, which either must be reformed (refined) from fossil fuels, or extracted from water using electricity.

Emailer: Do we really reduce pollution, or do we move the source from the tail pipe to the coal burning power plant and natural gas burning manufacturing facility?

Editor’s reply: In the case of electric motor vehicles that use hydrogen fuel cells (or batteries or hybrids that use fossil fuel driven electric generators, for that matter), they are only moving the source of the pollution, not necessarily reducing pollution. Even vehicles powered solely by on-board photovoltaic cells to produce electricity would only be moving the source of their pollution, since photovoltaics must themselves be manufactured, and hence have embodied energy that requires its own generation. The idea of totally pollution-free energy is a myth.

Emailer: I’m all for fuel cells if they ultimately do less harm to the environment than the alternatives. I just haven’t heard any arguments about the issue, so I’m hoping you can point me to a source.

Editor’s reply: It is our goal with EcoWorld is to post credible quantitative information as to the ultimate efficiency of energy alternatives. We are hopeful you might point us to a source.

Emailer: It really seems that reducing consumption is the best way to save our planet- unlikely as that might be.

Editor’s reply: EcoWorld would posit that improving efficiency, via whatever method of energy production, in a pollution-free process is enough. Improving efficiency is better than reducing consumption, and equally feasible, we would say.

To visit ESRI you fly into Ontario International Airport, in the heart of Southern California’s great “Inland Empire,” that endless stretch of huge cities that follow the Santa Monica Freeway into the desert. Once on the ground, I rented a Geo Metro and navigated East on the 10 Freeway, driving cautiously amidst the SUVs and 18 wheelers that thundered down the road over the great desert turned oasis now called greater Los Angeles.

Driving from Ontario, Redlands is the biggest town before the desert really begins to open up. The downtown lies just south of Interstate 10 and is framed by red mountains that have steep rock strewn faces and peaks that rise to startling heights. Art Deco, Adobe, Victorian, and southwestern heritage architectural styles were all apparent in the buildings of the old downtown. ESRI is located on an extensive campus a couple of miles west of downtown Redlands. ESRI, or “Environmental Systems Research Institute,” is the world’s leading manufacturer of mapping software. They manufacture Global Information Systems software used by virtually every major corporation and government organization worldwide.

The ability to store map data on a computer has increased productivity in many industries including transportation, communications, energy and resource extraction. The ability to overlay and edit map data quickly has also revolutionized our potential knowledge of the world’s ecosystems. ESRI has become a $340 million company (ref. www.esri.com) with 2,600 employees worldwide (1,600 of them in Redlands), by marketing its software to the above named industries, among others. But behind the scenes ESRI quietly gives away its software to organizations that are working to preserve and restore species and ecosystems.

Jack and Laura Dangermond founded ESRI in 1969, initially building a consulting business. But their own software for geographic database management continued to develop until eventually, in 1981 they launched the ARC Info software, followed by the ARC View IMS software. This advanced software allows information from any map projection to be converted to a common spherical standard. This means, very simply stated, that any scanned map image can now be scaled and projected to overlay with any other scanned map image.

The logical extension of this sort of software was the topic of an article by Adam Gopnik in a fall 2000 issue of the New Yorker Magazine called “Street Furniture.” Apparently the City of New York has commissioned, and largely completed, “The Map,” a GIS database that has collected every bit of map detail for the entire city, down to some of the street furniture. This level of detail can be integrated with other data sets at greater scales, yielding marketing data along with information useful for construction, resource extraction, and restoration.

Charles Convis, ESRI’s Coordinator for the Conservation program, has worked with thousands of conservation groups around the world, providing them with free GIS software and support. Convis is well suited to the task of identifying and supplying conservation groups with computer services; before joining ESRI he spent ten years traveling internationally, mostly in Africa, working through various agencies to give computers and computer skills to local conservation groups. In Botswana, in late ‘86, the government was not able to identify poachers who were repeat offenders, which crippled their attempts to effectively stop the poaching. Convis helped the Kalahari Conservation Society with anti-poaching databases, in the Okavango Delta area. How’s that for adventures in programming?

Using databases in the ’80s and ’90s, especially after the spread of cheap and powerful PCs, was a boon to efforts to preserve the environment and species. Along with helping enforcement efforts, they were invaluable in providing a means to track and manage populations of wildlife and domestic stock.

The new tool that has only made it to PCs in the last few years is GIS. Having not just a database engine, but a spatial database engine is of obvious use to environmentalists, who are concerned with the geographic dynamics of ecosystems. GIS software, invariably manufactured by ESRI, is now integral to the mapping and cataloging of environmental data and is heavily used by the United Nations, the World Resources Institute, the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund, U.S. Geological Survey, the EPA, CIA, FAO, EcoWorld and the list goes on.

Smaller organizations also use GIS software from ESRI, such as the Arizona based Wildlands Project, which researches and maps the most feasible wildlife corridors. Until GIS software came along, it was very hard to integrate preservation efforts. Since only a finite amount of land can be preserved each year, having GIS software has made land acquisition
for wildlife corridors much better targeted. In the far reaches of Namibia, Laurie Marker and her small organization, Cheetah Conservation Fund, struggle to preserve habitat for the cheetah, using GIS software to track the movement patterns of the big cats. The Society for Ecological Restoration, lead by Steve Gatewood, supports restoration efforts in over 2,000 locations around the world. Again, this work is greatly assisted through the use of GIS software. But surprising challenges still remain.

“We still don’t have a good baseline data,” said Convis, “we have global scale biome maps with margins for error of hundreds of miles.” While some biomes do not have clearly defined borders, such as those between the Sahara desert and the Sahel, others are fairly precise, such as in areas where the elevation changes rapidly from mile to mile. A distinct mountain ecosystem can fully emerge in one or two horizontal miles, meaning that biome maps that scale to the hundreds of miles have no value in managing ecosystems. “Global warming may include subtle changes such as a climate zone moving a few miles up a mountainside, but in the process extinguishing whole ecosystems.”

Not only are biomes still poorly charted, but there still are diverse classification systems. “There are international classification systems for plant and animal taxonomy, but there aren’t any single international standards yet for taxonomic databases,” said Convis. Using GIS to overlay the various classification systems could greatly assist efforts towards a single international standard. As you can see, if the GIS database of the world’s ecosystems was The Map of NYC, we’d still be trying to figure out when a street becomes an avenue, and whether or not a big statue should be called street furniture or have its own category. Long ways to go, folks.

Both Charles Convis, and President Jack Dangermond, who I’d met earlier in the day, seemed nonchalant about their company’s premier role both in GIS software and their laudable policy of giving the software away to people who are working for environmental and conservation organizations. As Charles said about ESRI’s conservation philanthropy, “Our environmental
services group does billable work too. But we often give away software because we feel it’s the right thing to do.”

Nonprofit groups often have a difficult time getting access to state-of-the-art computer tools. Having GIS software allows nonprofit groups to also compile spatial geographic data for use in policy analysis and dialogue, and allows non-profits to join forces and pool their information using another great force for democracy, the internet. ESRI has sponsored the Geography Network, where hundreds of participants, including the World Wildlife Fund and the National Geographic have contributed online map data. This “spatially enabled html” said Convis, “matches GIS tools with the capability of the internet to reach people worldwide.”

There is a lot more to report on ESRI, but suffice it to say we are lucky that the programmers who invented and sell the global standard for geographic information software also decided to give it away when in support of conservation efforts.

After a pleasant afternoon as a guest at ESRI, I got back into my Geo Metro and drove up Interstate 10 back towards Ontario, through the sprawling watered desert cities of the Inland Empire. To the distant west, the urban center of Los Angeles pulsed with energy that poured across the roiling November skies and washed away into the Mojave Desert. The energy gleamed over the western horizon and its luminosity competed with, then overpowered the setting sun. I got onto an absolutely full Southwest flight and blew off into the night.

Toyota Prius

Much excitement has been generated by the latest generation of Hybrid cars. The Toyota Prius, for example, is a hybrid four-seater that gets 50 MPG and costs only $20,450. We’ve been waiting for hybrids for a long time, and the Prius, with that kind of cost-performance, is a car to be taken seriously. The green generation of automobiles has arrived, and within 20 years, if not much sooner, cars that aren’t green will be collector’s items.

Hybrids, which use a combination of combustion and electric power plants, seem to be the most viable green cars available today. They emit almost no pollution, have high mileage, and use proven, already scaled technologies. In the near future, green cars are expected to be available using fuel cell technology, and over the next twenty years a host of other emerging technologies will compete to create the ultimate green car through advanced hydrogen and methane combustion engines, new hybrid combinations, flywheel systems, etc.

But there is another green car already here, although virtually unheard of in the United States. That car is the Lupo, a small four passenger car produced by Volkswagon that uses a high-technology ultra-clean burning diesel engine and gets 90 MPG. This car was launched throughout Europe in the fall of 1998. Volkswagen pioneered green diesel engines beginning in the early ’90s when they introduced “direct injection” technology, in which fuel and air are pumped directly into cylinders. This innovation decreased fuel consumption of the already fuel-efficient diesels by 15%. Volkswagen engineered not only eye-opening fuel economy into their diesels, but also dramatically lowered emissions.

Volkswagon Lupo

The black soot coming from old generation diesel engines is caused mostly when excess fuel is pumped into the engine. Direct injection technology controls the air and fuel mixture to the engine, eliminating almost all smoke. Nearly all smoke and invisible pollutants that remain are captured by fitting the diesel engine with a catalyst, making Volkswagen’s engines the cleanest burning diesels in the world. The Lupo complies with all of the European Community’s auto-emissions regulations, some of which are quite strict.

Green diesels are not going to go away. The diesel powered car represents 25% of the European car market, and is expected to get to 33% of that market by 2003. With such a big market at stake, competition is fierce to make diesels even greener. Fiat has developed their own direct injection system called “common rail” that is much cheaper to manufacture. In this system the air and fuel pass down a pressurized center pipe allowing minimal distance to every valve off the main pipe. Fiat is licensing this technology to other car manufacturers even as they build it into their own diesels and work on further advances.

Volkswagen is not standing still, however. They remain the world leader in diesel technology and have announced that they expect to produce a four-seat diesel powered car that can get 190 MPG! Moreover, new filter designs introduced at the Frankfurt Motor Show earlier this year will reduce particle emissions by another 60%, putting diesel engine vehicles within striking distance of complying with ultra-low emissions standards.
With so much good press on diesels, why aren’t they available in the U.S.? Finding U.S. press coverage of the Lupo is difficult because there isn’t much press coverage, period. A skeptical article in USA today did lend some insight into the difficulties Lupo might encounter with a launch in the U.S. According to USA Today Columnist James R. Healey, “the lasting impressions are a beastly backache from the cheap seats and maddening frustration from the mechanical compromises necessary to achieve the car’s remarkable fuel economy.” To be fair, Healey acknowledged that he tested a pre-production model and things may have improved.

If the Lupo isn’t a car suited for the American road or the American consumer, that doesn’t mean green diesels aren’t. Their practicality is compelling. They use diesel fuel, which costs less and is cheaper to produce. Diesel is a fuel that requires less investment at the refining end than gasoline, less additives, and hence a fuel with less earth-impact to produce. Diesel power plants are simpler than gasoline power plants and require less maintenance. Has anyone analyzed the maintenance challenges the new hybrid engines may present as these cars age? Compare this to diesel engines, which run for years with almost no maintenance. And mileage at nearly 100 MPG, with the prospect of mileage at twice that level, is an impressive factor even in America, the land of cheap fossil fuel.

Diesels will compete for market share as the four billion (or more) inhabitants of the developing world start to buy more cars. American and Japanese auto-makers who are expecting to introduce hybrids into the Chinese market, for example, should be prepared to answer, point for point, the pros and cons of hybrid cars vs. diesel cars. Volkswagen and partner Bosch have already made arrangements with Chinese authorities to begin manufacturing the Lupo in Shanghai.

Modern diesel engines have come of age. It was the diesel powered Lupo, not a hybrid car, that won the “100 Kilometers on 3 Litres of Fuel” competition. That a diesel was the first vehicle (clean burning to boot) to fulfill this challenge from European environmentalists, and not a hybrid, says it all.

EMAIL TO THE EDITOR

—–Original Message—–

From: grecokraut@anon[mailto:grecokraut@anon]

Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 8:05 AM

To: ed@ecoworld.com

Subject: 2004 VW Passat Diesel?

Ecoworld,

Is it true that VW will reintroduce a Passat with a diesel engine in 2004?

If so, do you know which engine and what level of performance can be expected?

In my opinion, the diesel would be a more logical transition to hydrogen than
the hybrids for a number of reasons. What do you think about this?

Andrew Bavas

–
NOTHING IS MORE DESTRUCTIVE OF
LIFE ON EARTH THAN
THE TOTALLY ANTHROPOCENTRIC
ARROGANCE OF MAN.

—–Original Message—–

From: Justin Kemp [mailto:anon@anon.com]

Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 3:32 PM

To: ed@ecoworld.com

Subject: Diesels in the USA

I have an old mercedes diesel car… its an ‘84 and has 579K mi on it..
runs like new. gets 40mpg.
The reason (partly) why diesels are much less common in the US is
environmental laws. You see the US regulates emmissions by the
particulate emmission… how many particles are emmited per capita of
air mass. The sad truth is that diesels emit “more” than gas cars do.
What you have to look at is -what- is emmited. A diesel emits mostly
water (harmless) and carbon (basic building block of life.. more
harmless) The invisable toxins from a gas engine are far more harmful
than diesel.

Our country has been banboozled by “environmentalist” lobbies that dont
really understand the laws theyre fighting for.

VW is the perdominant proveyor of diesel cars in the us.. Mercedes
Benz has a diesel scheduled for release in the US next year.. But it
will cost 50K +

diesel enthusiest

Justin Kemp

—–Original Message—–

From: Bob Hemmerlin

Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 7:39 PM

To: ed@ecoworld.com

Subject: VW Lupo TDI

Briefly: My name is Bob Hemmerlin, I live near Seattle, Washington. I am frustrated that the US promotes huge gas guzzling cars and is fighting for foriegn oil. I would love to own a Lupo TDI, but there are loopholes to jump thru. I imported a Velorex 435, an 800 pound 350cc car from Czech Republic. Because it was over 30 years old, there was no problem and it is now licensed and I drive it almost daily. It is however, not a “safe or clean” car . The engine is 2 stroke. I find it interesting that the Velorex can be brought in without a blink, but to bring in a VW Lupo TDI presents some problems. Can you direct me to someone; a conversion company….a loophole company…anyone who can help import a Lupo? Thanks, Bob
EDITOR’S REPLY

Bob,

It’s interesting how many emails we get from people in the U.S. who want a car like the Lupo. Why aren’t there more non-polluting, ultra high mileage diesel cars available in the U.S.? What about a diesel hybrid; a car with a diesel powered generator running in-wheel electric motors, that would require no transmission? What about a diesel hybrid with a flywheel peaking system? Fuel cell technology seems to be getting all the attention in the U.S., when clean burning high tech diesels could cut U.S. oil consumption just as well, especially considering the hydrogen for fuel cells has to come from somewhere. We are keeping our eyes open and hope to find more stories of innovation involving diesels in the U.S.

Ed Ring

Editor

EcoWorld

Randy Hayes

Whether or not we have turned the corner is debatable, but the earth has
truly been in the balance. On the margins of this conflict in the trenches
of politics, in the vastness of the oceans, across the length and breadth
of the earth, and in the battle for hearts and minds, the foot soldiers do
contend. Few armies have fought as long or as hard as the veteran troups
of the Rainforest Action Network.

Randy Hayes is the Founder and President of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). This is a group well known by friends and foes alike in the ongoing battle over the fate of the world’s forests. They have won spectacular victories in the effort to convince corporations worldwide to adopt forest-friendly practices.

The Rainforest Action Network’s world headquarters is currently in a fifth-floor suite on the south side of Pine between Battery and Sansome in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. The interior suite seemed almost luxuriantly rainforest-like. The windows of the older building were all opened, and maritime fall air poured in. Most of the florescent lamps were disconnected, and track lighting and other incandescent lamps stood amidst the desks and the plants. It may have been partly because of the ambience, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a rainforest in an office space.

For ten years, until 1985 when RAN was founded, Randy Hayes lived in Oraibi, Hopiland, in the heart of the Hopi reservation in northwest Arizona. A thoughtful man in his forties, with graying hair and serene eyes, Hayes took a moment early in our interview to describe some of his time among the Hopi, who are reputed to have the oldest permanent villages in North America. The Hopi believe that prior to our recorded history, the earth had experienced the rise and fall of a huge industrial civilization, which consumed and wasted the earth and then perished. This cautionary tale, Hayes suggested, can be applied to our own times, and humans have a choice whether or not to allow history to repeat itself.

The Rainforest Action Network is known for direct action crusades to save trees. They have succeeded in convincing many corporations, Burger King and Home Depot among them, to adopt forest friendly corporate policies. Their tactics sometimes include spectacular feats of derring-do, including climbing the outsides of skyscrapers and dropping huge banners with messages demanding change. The giant banner tactic was attempted most recently in Boise Idaho, in a protest action against Boise Cascade, and Hayes smiled as he recalled they had to use their backup plan, inflating a 12 story dinosaur, when the climbers failed to get a banner unfurled. Not only was the dinosaur a great billboard, bigger and fatter than the Colossus of Rhodes, but being a dinosaur, it was a great reminder of the alleged “prehistoric” practices of Boise Cascade.

RAN focuses their efforts, according to Hayes, at “those in the industrial north who have their foot on the throat of the rainforest.” They have about 15,000 members, including about 150 “Rainforest Action Groups,” trained groups of activists. These “RAGs” are typically either 5 to 10 member groups of young college students, or 30 to 40 member groups of long-time activists; many of these groups have been together ten years or more. It was RAN, Hayes acknowledged, who provided nonviolence

training
for many of the anti-globalist groups that protested earlier this year in Seattle, then in Washington D.C., as well as at both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Not comfortable with military metaphors, Hayes reluctantly termed the forces of Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace as “armies” in the environmental movement, “not much compared to Exxon and the like, but within the scheme of the environmental movement the biggest and best we have.”

The largest retailer of wood products in the world, Home Depot, apparently agrees, because RAN pressure recently led them to adopt a no-old-growth policy. Burger King, under pressure from RAN, has recently adopted a policy to no longer purchase beef grown on deforested land. RAN also convinced the largest homebuilders in the U.S., Kaufman & Broad, Syntex, and others, to adopt a no-old-growth wood policy. Countless other victories have made RAN a respected voice in the dialogue between business and environmentalists.

RAN, said Hayes, is currently focusing pressure on the world’s major private banks, trying to convince them to adopt a “comprehensive set of social and ecological policies.” The priority for RAN is to preserve
original rainforest, which still occupies 6% of the entire land surface of the planet. Hayes mentioned several hotspots, including New Guinea, the “Amazon of Southeast Asia,” where to this day, vast stands of original rainforest remain precariously intact.

Hayes mentioned the major world environmental organizations are beginning to cooperate, by overlaying their areas of interest and identifying “high conservation value forests” where they will all begin to
coordinate their preservation efforts. Principal among these groups are the International Union for Conservation of Nature, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth International, Conservation International, World Rainforest Movement, and the Climate Action Network. This cooperation represents a great opportunity, according to Hayes, for much more effective rainforest preservation efforts.

Hayes pointed out that there are only four major forests left in the world; Siberia, the Congo, the Amazon, and the Pacific Northwest of North America. When asked if the people of the south had a point when they
protest it’s hypocritical for northern environmental interests to urge them to leave their forests intact, when the north has already destroyed 95% of their original forests, Hayes had several comments. “First of all, who in the south is doing the protesting?” he asked. Often the voices of protest represent the logging and ranching interests, and their representatives in government. Continuing, Hayes said, “two wrongs don’t make a right, and the industrial north should probably compensate the south for preserving their forest.” Finally, Hayes emphasized that RAN focuses their efforts not at the south, but at pressuring the corporations in the industrial north who provide the demand for wood products without regard for the source.

There are 30 full time employees at the Rainforest Action Network headquarters. After we had talked for awhile, I was introduced by Randy Hayes to Jessica, a Markets Campaigner for RAN, who studies rainforest ecology and the impacts of logging in Africa, Southeast Asia, North, Central and South America, and Australia. Happy to have the time of such an expert, I took the opportunity to learn from her more about trees and efforts to save them. According to Jessica, certified timber sales, where the logging companies have had their practices audited and approved by a legitimate certification organization, only account for a minute percent of the U.S. timber harvest, and an even smaller percent of the world timber harvest.

While there are seven well-regarded international timber certification organizations, there are only two in the U.S., the non-profit program of the Rainforest Alliance called Smartwood and the for profit program of Scientific Certification Systems. There is also the Forest Stewardship Council, which accredits certifiers. About five years ago, timber industry forces organized the Sustainable Forestry Initiative . The problem with this timber industry certification group, according to Jessica, is that nearly all of the existing practices of the timber industry are endorsed by the association.

Jessica noted that environmental awareness among consumers is steadily growing and a majority of the public is now informed and vocal about not wanting to buy wood from endangered or old growth forests. Retailers, especially the Do-It-Yourself stores and home builders, are responding to the message from their customers, and in the past year alone, over 25% of the wood market in the US has pledged to stop buying wood from endangered forests. The old ways of industrial logging in old growth, primary and endangered forests are unjustifiable and will soon be a thing of the past, Jessica stated. Earlier, Hayes had identified Boise Cascade in North America, and Mitsubishi Trading Company in Tokyo, Japan, as the worst enemies of forests in the U.S. and in the World, respectively.

Hayes asked me to ask EcoWorld readers if there is any truth to the rumor that the priceless wood of old growth Central American “Purple Heart” trees is being hoarded. Reportedly, intact logs are being coated with paraffin and sunk in harbors to be retrieved on the day when they are all gone, extinct, and the wood will fetch a higher price than ever. Anybody heard about this?

Armed by RAN with information about trees and how to save them, printed on paper made from agricultural byproducts, left RAN’s offices, buying a fresh Panini sandwich made with San Francisco’s inimitable sourdough bread from a street vendor on the way to my car. Thank God for automatic transmissions. Telephone. Eat. Drive.

San Francisco is a beautiful city, especially in the Fall, but it took me nearly an hour to drive from their offices to the Bay Bridge. I went south down Battery, a direct route from the financial district to
the onramp of the Bay Bridge and one of the only ways to get across Market from the north. It was a whopping 1.5 miles of absolute gridlock on a sunny Thursday in November. Though the air was fresh and clean, I longed for a chance to sit in a grove of redwoods, instead of a traffic jam. Once I finally got onto the bridge, the traffic flowed again and everything was good.

The best thing that ever happened to me was going to Central America to help treeplanters. I was fortunate to have a first-hand look at some of their finest work, when I went there with Stuart Conway, an EcoWorld Hero and co-founder of the reforesting group, Trees Water and People.

“Caben Tres” is a way to sum up Stuart Conway’s driving in the hills of Guatemala, or Honduras, or El Salvador. He took me with him on a whirlwind two week tour of his tree nurseries and watershed protection projects in June 1998. The rainy season was just starting, the civil wars were over, and the roads were filled with sugar cane trucks with trailers so wide they seemed to overhang both shoulders of the road.

Caben tres is Spanish for “three fit,” which was Stuart’s amiable rejoinder whenever I’d ask him if he had to pass on blind curves. We tore through the outback of all three Central American countries in Toyota pickup trucks, from the hot, humid lowlands of Guatemala to rush hour in San Salvador. I guess it just wasn’t our number, because we always got to the next stop in one piece.

When you see so many nurseries and so many lush forested hillsides, so many recovered year-round streams of water held and purified by new forests, so much good work for the earth and the people on it, you can believe it really might not be that hard for everyone to come together and save the earth.

At a park in the heart of San Salvador, I recall standing in a great shadehouse, with huge metal tubes supporting the shadecloth, arrayed like a row of giant croquet hoops. The structure was 20′ high and 40′ wide and nearly 100′ long, and it was filled with baby trees. Many of the trees were seedlings in micro-thin plastic bags (bolsas), which were lined up side by side so when you looked down on them they formed a honeycomb. That place must have held 10,000 trees. Through the mesh you could see a soccer game being played in a dusty dirt field, with the nearby grass reserved for the spectators.

In the mountains west of Tegucigalpa, just upstream from the city of Suyapa, we visited a watershed where the forest was intact. Beautiful tropical pines marched up the canyon as far as the eye could see. In the northwest reaches of El Salvador, near the town of El Coco, we went to another watershed where the forest still existed. Hiking into the heart of this forest, the temperature cooled, and in the moist canyon bottom a running spring yielded water pure enough to drink on the spot. In both of these places, and elsewhere, new forests bordered the original forests. These deforested barren areas were filled with tree seedlings planted by communities that had realized that their water supply (as well as protection against landslides) depended on nurturing healthy and abundant forests.

Our job, besides visiting all of the tree nurseries and watersheds that Stuart had helped establish, was to take all of these projects under the umbrella of his new organization, Trees Water and People, headquartered in Ft. Collins, Colorado. To do that, we visited local foundations, mostly in the capital cities, as well as international aid organizations that had offices locally. Invariably Stuart would launch into a presentation in Spanish that I think I memorized by the time our trip neared the end. Not that I understood much of it, but I think I nodded at the right times.

Stuart Conway has been living half in the U.S., half in Central America for about 25 years now. He and his wife Jennie Bramhall joined the Peace Corps, went to Guatemala for their honeymoon, and didn’t come home for three years. They lived and worked in a small town just south of the beautiful highland colonial city of Antigua. Since then, they return to Central America several times a year, specializing in helping small communities grow trees and protect their watersheds.

Stuart co-founded Trees Water and People (the name grows on you) in 1998 with Richard Fox, a veteran forest arborist, who specializes in North American forest preservation and watershed protection. Both of them moved with their families to Ft. Collins, Colorado, rolled up their sleeves and got their organization up and running. They work along with a small staff in a lofty 2nd floor suite in an old brick and timber building on College Avenue between downtown and the University. Towering Plains Cottonwoods hang huge limbs overhead (Cottonwoods decorate the whole city, and why they aren’t planting new ones is beyond me), and just one block north the main train line intersects the street. If you call them and hear a roar in the background, it’s just a freight train about two hours on the tracks from Denver.

Ft. Collins isn’t quite yet a home away from home for me, but I’ve been there a lot as a volunteer. Have you ever spent an evening calling potential donors on the phone? There’s a lot of ways to build a nonprofit, and that’s one of them. At least I was in a cool room, up in their loft, with a big steam radiator and an old window you can actually open. And books about trees everywhere. It was quite a heavenly spot from which to make cold calls. One guy actually gave us $1,000 after a call. That was a good call.

Downtown Ft. Collins is one of the oldest, biggest little cities in Northern Colorado. There’s really no other good sized towns between Denver to the south (and Boulder’s grown into Denver), and Cheyenne, Wyoming to the north. With a bustling University and some high-tech companies moving in, the several streets of the old downtown get pretty lively at night. We ate once at the “Rio Grande”, a venerable and one-of-a-kind old Mexican bar and restaurant. The Rio Grande has extremely high-ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows, a huge spacious old bar, and a dining room that was half Victorian, half Southwestern. Nicely done. Powerful margaritas. Delicious hot spicy food.

When the folks at Trees Water and People aren’t providing funds and expert assistance growing trees and protecting watersheds in Central America, they are working closer to home, protecting watersheds in the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. This is Richard Fox’s area, and he brings to his work a lifetime of experience in forests throughout America, but mostly in the Rockies. In his time, Richard has had crews of planters where, using a special planting tool, each person could plant up to 1,000 trees per day. I didn’t believe him, but we timed the motions, and I did the math. I guess it’s true. We could have fun with this! One thousand people could plant a million trees a day. A billion trees in less than three years!

Planting trees is only part of the solution, though, and managing a forest and a watershed is complex work that is never done. Richard’s trees and watershed protection has so far enlisted the support of communities throughout Colorado and Wyoming, mostly along the “Front Range,” the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

Trees Water and People have several specific projects they are focusing on these days, one of the most interesting ones is helping a company in Nicaragua manufacture and sell fuel-efficient stoves. Stuart will be down in Central America again in November 2000; two weeks, four countries. Drive carefully, my friend!

Samuel Gruber looks like a cat who’s had a few lives. He is a man without pretense, a man with so much personal credibility you wonder if he was ever young and crazy. This single-minded EcoWorld Hero has been saving sharks for nigh on forty years. Though he’s in his early sixties, in spite of or perhaps because of his lifelong devotion to his passion, Dr. Gruber appears a much younger man.

In September 2000, I heard Dr. Samuel Gruber speak at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, in a beautiful new building nestled in the dunes just south of the Moss Landing marina. Behind us loomed the centerpiece of Moss Landing, and of the Monterey Bay for that matter: the great square lattice and twin 150 foot chimneys of Moss Landing Power Plant. We were right in the middle of the great beach that runs in a gentle 30 mile crescent between Carmel and Santa Cruz, broken only by the Pajaro Estuary, and close by, the small town and harbor of Moss Landing.

Dr. Samuel Gruber

Samuel Gruber is undaunted by a twenty year mortal struggle with lymphoma, not to mention forty years of sorties underwater with sharks in nothing but scuba gear (Doc Gruber, not the sharks). He was also undaunted by the high-tech lights in the high-tech auditorium that nobody could figure out how to dim. We viewed his slide projections, invisible in the light, then in the dark where he couldn’t even see his notes, then in the light, then in the dark, and eventually in an acceptable half-light.

The shark is the apex predator of the oceans, which means ocean ecosystems, just like land ecosystems, will experience a profound ripple effect if sharks become extinct. Sharks, like Redwood trees, come from a much earlier evolutionary epoch, and as such they are completely unlike fish or seafaring mammals such as dolphins and whales. Unlike most fish, sharks have a relatively long life span, about 50 years, and reproduce very slowly, females usually only having one or two offspring, and only every other year. Moreover, sharks don’t reach reproductive age until they are nine.

Today sharks are on the retreat, being killed at a rate far beyond their long-term ability to regenerate. If this rate of shark hunting continues much longer, the population of most shark species will become so low it will be impossible for them to increase their numbers naturally. They will be like the condor, becoming a “welfare species” if they are to survive. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with saving a species that way.

Lemon sharks migrate across the American shoreline regions of the Atlantic from New Jersey to Montevideo, and from Brazil to Bimini. Dr. Gruber tracks them, tagging them with GIS transmitters and noting where they breed and where they travel. Dr. Gruber frequently swims with the lemon sharks at his research station in Bimini, where sharks breed in the mangrove forested swamps. Once recently, Dr. Gruber had to stop his swimming long enough to prevent a multi-national hotel chain from replacing the lemon shark nurseries, situated in some of the choicest mangrove lagoons in all of the gulf stream, with a group of hotels. Instead of a lagoon, they were poised to construct a giant salt-water swimming pool, excavated, cleared of flora and fauna, boasting beaches of imported white sand and swim-up bars, maybe even an artificial wave machine.

Thankfully, there will be no mega-resorts terraforming Bimini anytime soon. But there are other concerns. Doc Gruber’s research station is balanced precariously on wood stilts that will snap in the first hurricane. It’s been a long time since a hurricane hit Bimini. They’re due. Undaunted, and set up in a structure made of matchsticks in the path of hurricanes, Dr. Grubers research station operates year-round, with a staff of marine biologists from around the U.S. and the world. To retrofit this facility to withstand the average hurricane would cost $240K. Any takers?

The Bimini Research Station

In spite of sparse funds, Doc Gruber’s message is getting out, and the world is awakening to the fact that sharks are more than just killing machines as portrayed in the movies and the media. Doc jokes that more people are killed each year by beating up broken soft drink machines, which then fall onto them and crush them (it’s true), than are killed by sharks in the ocean. One might eat a shark steak, typically, with a revengeful relish, as though sharks were fecund vermin, deserving of being stamped out wherever found, like cockroaches. But they are not cockroaches, rather, they are of the same importance as African Lions, Siberian Tigers, Grizzly Bears, Jaguars, highly intelligent, not very adaptable, slow to reproduce, imperiled throughout their range, and at the top of the food chain. They are the apex predators and crucial indicator species for 70% of the earth’s surface.

As we strip-mine the oceans to general exhaustion for food, sharks are subjected to a particularly woeful fate, being caught and mutilated merely for their dorsal fins. They are netted and released, minus one fin, and left to die a lingering horrible death to satiate the appalling yet fashionable taste for shark fin soup.

Doc. Gruber is a true EcoWorld Hero, and someone should buy him some new stilts for his lab in Bimini.

To help Dr. Gruber contact him at:

Bimini Biological Field Station

9300 SW 99 St

Miami FL 33176-2050

Peter Knights co-directs WildAid, which is probably the most under-recognized heroic environmental organization on earth. Somehow Peter Knights went from being a graduate of the London School of Economics to a leader on the front lines of the fight to save endangered species. I don’t know how this man in his mid-thirties got from there to here, and I didn’t ask. But talking with him last week at their offices in San Francisco, it was clear there was not only uncommon courage but great intellectual substance to this warrior for the environment.

WildAid has their offices on the 2nd floor of a 1907 building on the north side of Pacific just east of Montgomery. Including Peter, there is only a staff of five here, but what WildAid does from this nondescript office and with his skeleton staff is nothing short of remarkable. WildAid also has small offices in D.C., Bangkok, Vladivostok and London; their web site is located at www.wildaid.org.

Indigenous anti-poaching patrol, funded by WildAid.

Some jobs in the fight to save endangered species are more, let’s just say, perilous than others. WildAid, has chosen the toughest of the tough as their strong suit; patrolling against armed poachers, and tracking down and arresting international traffickers in body parts of endangered species.

Knights and his colleagues travel the world identifying local police and rangers who are attempting to stop the poachers. He then uses WildAid funds to equip and train the rangers. The work doesn’t stop once a check is written, WildAid also places experts in wildlife security with these anti-poaching groups, who then train them in effective tactics, including non-lethal forms of apprehension. Recently, for example, WildAid co-director Suwanna Gauntlett sent John Gavitt, who had been the Chief Ranger for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, to Cambodia on an assignment to train anti-poaching rangers in that country.

Poaching can reduce a species to extinction within a few short years, if demand suddenly rises and local police power diminishes. That is exactly what happened in the Russian Far East in the ’90s, when Soviet authority waned and lawless elements began to exercise more dominance. At the same time global prosperity, particularly in Asia, caused sharply higher demand for the body parts of tigers. WildAid’s program to equip and train the Rangers in the Russian Far East is largely responsible for pulling that creature back, barely, from total extinction. The Siberian tiger is now thought to be stable and increasing in population. The program is generally recognized as the most effective anti-poaching for tigers in the world.

Endangered species are countless, but WildAid has identified a select few “indicator” species, many of which are apex predators, that if saved can have a cascading positive effect through huge planetary ecoregions. This strategy is especially important when one considers that the extinction of these indicator species will cause a converse reaction, a huge and possibly fatal disruption to the balanced functioning of an entire ecoregion. With that in mind, WildAid has pared their salvation efforts to the following list of animals: Big Cats, Elephants, Rhinos, Apes, Bears, Birds, Marine Mammals, Sea Turtles, and Sharks.

Black Bear in a Cage

It’s impossible to describe in a short report all the work WildAid is doing with all these species. It’s important to note that their direct efforts have rescued many of these species from destruction in several parts of the world. One of the areas where WildAid is fighting a tough battle is against the bear poachers. The gallbladder of a bear is considered a valuable medicine in many parts of Asia, and bears are being killed just for their gallbladder, much as rhinos have been killed just for their horn.

Bear gall is considered so valuable that in China there are “bear farms” where bears are kept in cages and a permanent shunt “milks” the liver produced bile from their gallbladders. These bears often survive for many years, chained, with medical tubes leeching fluid from their internal organs, unable to move in their tiny cages.

Jackie Chan and Peter Knights

Most of the trade in body parts of endangered species would die a withering death if the demand for them, based on a traditional belief in their medicinal and mystical properties, would go away. WildAid has been orchestrating public awareness campaigns in Asia. Joined by famous far-eastern celebrities such as Jackie Chan, and far-western celebrities such as Peter Benchley (who is atoning for his novel “Jaws” which vilified sharks), Knights has conducted widespread television campaigns in Asia under the slogan, “when the buying stops, the killing can stop, too.” These campaigns have reached millions, but by themselves may be too little too late, he believes.

Fins Being Cut Off Shark

The most deplorable of all threats to endangered species has to be that which faces the shark, in all the oceans of the planet. An astonishing 100 million sharks and other species resembling sharks are killed each year by the commercial fishing industry, and most of them are killed only for their fins. In a macabre ritual that repeats itself around the world, the sharks, dead or alive, have their fins removed by knife as they writhe on the decks of fishing craft, and then they are thrown back into the sea, some still alive.

Eating shark fin soup, which can cost $100 per bowl in Hong Kong, is considered a mark of prestige. Even more than the reputed healthful effects, is the gesture that eating this expensive delicacy represents. The fin, in fact, has no flavor, and only yields a noodle-like texture.

WildAid is campaigning for a global ban on shark finning rather than a ban on all fishing of sharks. They hope to bring global attention to this issue. They are working with the government and the fishing industries to reduce shark fishing to sustainable levels. At the same time, they will work on reducing the demand for shark fin soup in Asia.

Knights mentioned this effort as a choice of pragmatism over dogmatism. Knights noted that preventing all exploitation of a species was often not a viable option. While he may have ethical concerns about big game hunting, for example, he would not oppose it in conservation terms if it didn’t impact the species and generated funds benefiting conservation.

As well as campaigning, WildAid focuses on equipping and training rangers in the field. To channel funds as directly as possible, WildAid has 100% of its overhead covered by a grant from The Barbara Delano Foundation. This means that 100% of the contribution made by any individual donor will go directly to efforts in the field to save endangered species. Moreover, the donor can select the projects to which they want to see the funds directed. Only a few nonprofits are as close to the front lines as this one.

Galapagos Patrol Boat Supported by WildAid

I tried to imagine Peter Knights, an urbane Englishman who was absolutely focused on his work, trekking the wilds of Russia with the Rangers, or venturing through the mangroves of the Galapagos Islands in a patrol boat he procured for the Park Services, in search of illegal fishing operations. There aren’t very many people fighting for the environment who can navigate the diplomatic halls of Switzerland as easily as they descend to the violent trenches in the battles for survival of species, at the very ends of the earth.

Ed Ring is Editor and CEO of EcoWorld Inc., publisher of www.EcoWorld.com.

How much water have we really got? It would seem like quite a lot, since the earth’s surface is 71% water. But appearances can be deceiving.

All the water on earth would fit into a cube not quite 700 miles on a side. If that seems like a lot, remember this includes oceans and icecaps. All the fresh water in the world, including icecaps and groundwater, would fit into a cube just over 200 miles on a side. And if you limit your water to lakes and rivers, all of them in the world would fill a cube a mere 36 miles on a side. Since the icecaps are frozen, and groundwater is replenished very slowly, this 36 mile cube, representing all the water in all the lakes and rivers of the world, is all we’ve got

Moreover, only about half the amount stored in Earth’s lakes and rivers is replenished each year by snow and rainfall. This renewable amount is how much humans, plants, animals and ecosystems get per year to live.

It’s not enough. Industrialized, developed nations consume far more water than developing nations, and the world is developing at a pace unprecedented in human history. Throughout Asia and Latin America, standards of living are increasing and with them, per capita usage of water. Currently an American or Western European uses four times as much water as someone in the developing world. What happens when 1.3 billion Chinese, .5 billion other East Asians, 1.1 billion Indians, and nearly 1.0 billion Latin Americans begin to enjoy a lifestyle that approaches western standards? More meat, which requires grain-fed livestock, more showers, more flush toilets, more factories, more irrigated land. There is not enough fresh water on this planet to allow the per-capita consumption of water in the western world to be matched by the rest of the world.

Water scarcity has become a big issue for environmentalists in recent years, because humans have been living beyond their means for decades, and the day of reckoning is not far off. Skeptics contend that water scarcity will never arrive because human adaptation will solve the problem incrementally. These skeptics compare warnings about water scarcity to those dire warnings put forth back in the ’70s that predicted a world running out of fossil fuel; something that never happened and probably never will.

But water isn’t as easily transported as fuel, nor are there alternatives. These crucial differences make the looming water crisis something that cannot be easily dismissed. Regional shortages will become acute in China, Central Asia, North Africa, India and elsewhere, and one can’t just ship a tanker full of water to solve the problem. That we are going to run out of water if current demographic and consumption trends continue is beyond serious debate, the real question is what should we do?

Conservation is the favorite solution of most environmentalists, and it will be necessary. Other means should also be considered. Redistribution may not be an unthinkable option, although thoughtless disasters such as the canal diversions that destroyed the Aral Sea seem to be the rule to date. Getting more “crop to the drop” is another key method to reduce the world’s per capita water requirements. Drip irrigation, concrete lining on canals, pipe transport instead of canal to reduce evaporation are all ways to save water; all very expensive. New crops that require less water to grow are also part of the solution.

Finally, desalinization may be a solution that offers huge potential. Converting sea water to fresh water is not only a technique which could offer virtually unlimited fresh water, but irrigation using desalinated sea water would not degrade the soil since the salt would be completely removed. Floating platforms offshore that used convection energy generated by the differences in water temperature at varying depths could produce their own power to desalinate water. Enough of them might provide cost-effective desalinization and make a real impact on the supply of fresh water.

Providing the world with enough water for everyone to enjoy a high standard of living will require not only conservation, but creativity and the power of capitalist initiative. Hopefully before entire nations become heedless of anything but their thirst.