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Tuesday, 04 July 2006 14:14 |
By DAVID FORBES
BLACK MOUNTAIN ?? Lacking a response from the federal government, individuals and local communities will have to conserve and become more self-sufficient to adapt to dwindling oil supplies and climate change, writer and retired teacher Jean Franklin said in a presentation at the Black Mountain Public Library on June 5.
?®I
personally have given up on the federal government to be able to really
deal with this problem,?∆ she said. ?®That leaves us with individual and
family and community response ?? and there are opportunities there.
Actions that any one of us take at these levels help all of us.?∆
Franklin, a retired English teacher who also writes a column in the
Asheville Citizen-Times, was joined by her husband Dr. Carl Franklin,
a retired physics teacher and metereologist, for the presentation. The
couple owns and operates Black Mountain Books.
The presentation, sponsored by the Black Mountain Friends of the Library, drew about 50 people.
Jean Franklin
termed the threat posed by climate change as possibly the most dire
that society faces ?? and one that it is ill-prepared for.
?®We are basically speaking to you as two United States citizens who
have read some books and articles and believe that we Americans are now
facing the problem of our lives,?∆ she said. ?®We don??t think our
children are prepared for what lies ahead. We care about this problem
and we also struggle with the costs involved with trying to fix it.?∆
Moreover, she said, climate change, conservation and peak oil ?? as well
as related issues like coal mining ?? have generally been inadequately
covered by the mainstream media, thereby increasing most people??s lack
of awareness of the two issues.
?®We see hurricanes, we see the Iraq war, which may or may not have been
over oil, we see all this ?? but these issues are poorly or barely cover
at all,?∆ Jean Franklin said. ?®How many pieces have you seen on peak
oil? Or coal mining and mountaintop removal? Even global warming has
been murkily covered.
?®For example, Al Gore has just produced a movie on it, but the media
story is: Is Al Gore running for President? Conservation is barely
covered at all.?∆
In the United States, she added, the average American uses 57.5 barrels of oil a year.
?®Europeans use half that much and Californians use about 60 percent of
that,?∆ Jean Franklin said. ?®They got burned by the Enron problem ?? they
have stringent conservation measures.?∆
While half of the average American??s oil usage is out of the
individual??s control ?? being used by infrastructure or large industry ??
the other half is more easily reducable.
?®Those are used by basically three things ?? food, house and your car,?∆
Jean Franklin said. ?®Food is the biggest cause of this ?? we use about
10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food. Go into
Bi-Lo or Ingles ?? every food product there is the product of petroleum
products. The chemical cocktail that plants are fed is based on
petroleum, as the pesticides ?? and then you have the truck that is used
to transport them to the store.?∆
Because food is the largest individual use of energy, she said, one way
individuals could help conserve is by buying more local foods.
?®If you buy from the tailgate market, then that food has not been
transported and handled and processed,?∆ Jean Franklin said. ?®Its not
nearly as much of a fossil fuel use.?∆
Cutting down on the use of fossil fuels is not just needed to help
avert disastrous climate change, but also because oil supplies are
dwindling, with the world having already reached ?? or about to reach ??
the peak point of oil production.
?®We are already pumping at the maximum, even while demand is widening
as China and India want to buy more oil,?∆ she said. ?®An Exxon-Mobil
report says that before 2010, the world??s output will have peaked ?? and
that??s an oil company??s own sources. But this information is known and
appreciated almost nowhere in the mainstream culture.?∆
Because of the dwindling oil supply, a cultural and societal shift
towards more locally oriented communities is inevitable, Jean Franklin
said.
?®Life is going to become much more local ?? centered around small
communities surrounded by farms that can feed them,?∆ she said. ?®The
poor and people living in suburbs will be hard hit as food becomes
costly. Black Mountain is not that bad a place to be. Atlanta is not a
good place to be because you have to drive a long way to get anything.?∆
That shift will have to be led by individuals and communities, she
added, because the federal oil policy focuses on ?®securing the oil
fields of the Middle East and encouraging heavy consumption at home.?∆
However, she did note that the Southeast in particular has a problem with another fossil fuel as well ?? coal.
?®We??re addicted to coal too ?? and we??re not getting off easy there,?∆
she said. ?®The majority of our power comes from coal-fired plants ?? and
as a result, we have the country??s unhealthiest air. Ten of the
nation??s 25 most unhealthy cities are all in the southeast. In the
mountaintop removal method, the mountains are simply blown away. They
turn the mountains into big white deserts. If we had coal in these
mountains, you??d be seeing the same thing here.?∆
In separate remarks, Carl Franklin explained how the use of fossil
fuels are contributing to rising temperatures around the globe. By
putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere he said, light ?? and
thus heat becomes increasingly trapped, leading to rising temperatures,
more powerful hurricanes and increased sea levels.
?®There is absolutely no debate about this within the scientific
community ?? none,?∆ he said. ?®The 10 warmest years we??ve had on record
have been in the last 15 years. The sea level has risen eight inches.
This is all caused by global warming. Legitimate scientific
organizations have all said that this is a problem. They all say that
it is happening, that humans have an effect ?? and that the results may
be terrible.?∆
In contrast, he noted, ?®much of the mainstream media depicts this issue
as more fifty-fifty, as if there??s still a debate on this or as if
there??s serious doubt. There??s not There have been over a 1,000
peer-reviewed articles in the last decade on this. Zero of them have
said that global warming is not a problem. This is not a scientific
debate anymore.?∆
Energy companies have, however, funded non-scientific studies and
advertising campaigns claiming that the issue is still being debated,
Carl Franklin said.
?®The earth is going to tell us ?? that??s the bad news,?∆ he added.
In later remarks, he noted that there is growing interest among many
American citizens on this issue and that there are steps people can
take to begin radical conservation.
?®If you replace all the light-bulbs in your house with 10-year
lightbulbs, you??ll cut your energy consumption in half,?∆ he said.
?®There are steps we can take on this and they can start right here ??
that??s the good news.?∆
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