Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Weaning Off Fossil Fuels Robert Redford writes: American rooftops can be the Persian Gulf of solar energy. After Australia, no developed nation on Earth gets more annual sunlight than the United States. In addition, wind is now the fastest-growing energy source worldwide and one of the cheapest. But wind and solar power generate less than 2% of U.S. power. We can do better. We can increase auto fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. The technology to achieve that goal exists now. Phasing in that standard by 2012 would save 15 times more oil than Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is likely to produce over 50 years. We could also give tax rebates for existing hybrid gas-electric vehicles that get as much as 60 mpg and invest in mass transit. These measures would keep energy dollars in the American economy, reduce air pollution and create jobs at home. The benefits of switching to a mostly pollution-free economy would be considerable, and the costs of failing to do so would be steep. Prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels would guarantee homeland insecurity. If you are worried about getting oil from an unstable Persian Gulf, consider the alternatives: Indonesia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan. If we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge. Big challenges require bold action and leadership. To get the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf, we must treat the issue with the urgency and persistence it deserves. The measure of our success will be the condition in which we leave the world for the next generation. Weaning our nation from fossil fuels should be understood as the most patriotic policy to which we can commit ourselves. (12/03/02) The Emerging Worldview Donivan Bessinger, MD writes: All things and all actions are interconnected in a web of various types of relationships. Our view of the relationships between those things, and our view of the forces acting on them, inevitably influences our formulation of ethical problems and determines our proposal of solutions. Our ethics is determined by our worldview. In the light of knowledge first available only in the twentieth century, most of it new in the last half of the century, a new worldview is gradually emerging. It is a systems-based view of our physical reality, informed by the sciences of complex phenomena, quantum physics, ecology, psychology, physiology, and by an evolving theory of evolution. Just as our theories of reality control the design and thus the result of scientific experiment, so also does our view of reality control our arguments about what is ethical and what is not. These developments must force a re-examination of ethics theory. Our understanding of human nature also determines our view of phenomena around us. We live in a world which still has many conflicting views of the relationship of humans to physical reality, and of the nature of the human person. In the previous volume, we contrasted various types of worldviews. On the one hand, mythic worldviews describe physical and psychological truths primarily using the symbolic language of the unconscious. The scientific (reductionist) worldview seeks to describe those realities in purely objective and cognitively precise language. That contrast, or "conflict between science and religion," can still generate acrimonious and angry debate with each camp accusing the other of denying truth. In one sense (broadly construed, I grant), each camp defines the human in terms of only one half of human nature -- the unconscious or the conscious. In actuality, individuals and organizations blend these ideological ingredients in different measure to create a very wide range of points of view. If we are to surmount such differences, we will need to come to a common view of the world, or at least develop an ability to analyze and understand one another's worldviews. A common worldview does not imply (nor is it desirable to have) uniformity of opinion on all matters. It implies an ability to understand a common philosophical language in debating the ethical issues of the day. (12/03/02) 8:07:05 AM

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