The Clean Air Machine

Did you notice how hot it was this year during the dry season? Remember the heat waves that killed so many people in North America and Europe last summer? When I was a kid growing up in Colorado, tornados were unheard of. We thought of them as giant whirlwinds that caused problems in Kansas? Now they are common around my old home town. A while back, I watched a Discovery Channel documentary on global warming and climate change. It was scary seeing what’s going to happen to us in the next fifty years. According to the show, extreme weather events, fueled by continuously increasing temperatures, will ravish the planet. It was the first time I had seen anything so clear and accurate presented to the general public. I was already aware of the facts, but to get them, I had wade through long, dull reports from scientific organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) One report showed that by the year 2000 the average global temperature was already higher than anytime during the previous 1,000 years. In the last fifty years alone the temperature has risen one-half degree Celsius (almost a full degree Fahrenheit.) For the next century we can expect an increase of somewhere between 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and 5.8 degrees Celsius (10.5 degrees Fahrenheit.) How many people died of heat stroke last year? How many will die if the average temperature increases by another 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit,) or even half that? What kind of temperature will your grandchildren experience when they are your age?

Why is the average global temperature increasing? Here is a clue: in the year 1950, the world produced 10,577,000 new automobiles, but by the year 1999, annual production had reached 59,766,000, a six-fold increase. There are more than one-half billion automobiles burning fossil fuel in the world today. I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of big numbers, but consider this, and do the math yourself. Every time you burn a tank of fossil fuel, your car spews 45 kilos (100 LB) of carbon out the exhaust pipe and into the atmosphere. How much is that per week for your car? Per year? Now that you have the number of kilos or pounds of carbon your own car emits each year, multiply that amount by 500,000,000 to get the approximate amount of carbon that motor vehicles worldwide spew into our atmosphere annually. I hope you have a calculator with a screen that will take really big numbers.

Now, think about this. Each atom of carbon that goes out your exhaust pipe ties up two atoms of oxygen — that stuff we breathe — and forms carbon dioxide, the primary gas responsible for global warming. You could think of the carbon dioxide layer as a blanket surrounding the earth that holds in the heat, instead of allowing it to dissipate into space. Is it any wonder that the average global temperature increased by 0.48 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years. What will happen in the next fifty years?

So what is the solution? We could quit using fossil fuels, and switch to a cleaner form of energy, like hydrogen, for example. The technology is there; only the will is lacking. Breaking our addiction to fossil fuels would have the appealing side affect of promoting world peace. But it isn’t likely to happen. Too many big corporations are making too much money with fossil fuels. Maybe we should invent a machine that will just suck in the carbon dioxide, and pump out oxygen, an atmospheric scrubber. Then those big corporations could buy up the patent on the machine and lobby the government to pass a law requiring car owners to pay for cleaning the carbon out of the atmosphere and replacing it with oxygen. They could keep on selling us fossil fuels and then turn around and get richer still, selling atmospheric cleaning services and oxygen. Unbeknownst to the mega-corporations, such a machine already exists, but the inventor refuses to sell the patent. Her name is Mother Nature and the machines are called “trees.”

Trees are made of carbon. Remember that carbon dioxide is made from one atom of carbon and two of oxygen. The tree breathes in carbon dioxide, seizes the carbon atom, makes it into wood fiber and releases the two oxygen atoms back into the atmosphere. Hey, maybe tree owners could sell oxygen and atmospheric cleaning services to car owners. Now that sounds like something that might work.
As a matter of fact, the Costa Rican government has already thought of it. The program is called “Environmental Service Payments,” or “PSA,” its acronym in Spanish. Under PSA, the sale of fossil fuels is taxed and the revenue used to pay people who protect forests or grow trees in plantations. Country wide, over 375,000 hectares (926,000 acres,) belonging to more than 5600 property owners, are under protection and receiving incentives from PSA. Just within the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor — a swath which extends 70 kilometers from the Savegre River to the Terraba River and, from the coast, 15 kilometers to the Tinamastes Ridge — over 6000 hectares (14,820 acres) are being protected under the program.

But capturing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen is not the only service provided by Mother Nature. Most of what She does is taken for granted, but without her beneficence we would be in big trouble. In his visionary book, Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawkin lists nineteen services, provided to us by natural environments; services that we cannot provide for ourselves. When you read Hawkin’s list below, think what earth would be like if Mother Nature didn’t carry out these indispensable functions.

1. production of oxygen
2. maintenance of biological and genetic diversity
3. purification of water and air
4. storage, cycling, and global distribution of freshwater
5. regulation of chemical composition of the atmosphere
6. maintenance of migration and nursery habitats for wildlife
7. decomposition of organic wastes
8. sequestration and detoxification of human and industrial waste
9. natural pest and disease control by insects, birds, bats, and other organisms
10. production of genetic library for food, fibers, pharmaceuticals, and materials
11. fixation of solar energy and conversion into raw materials
12. management of soil erosion and sediment control
13. flood prevention and regulation of runoff
14. protection against harmful cosmic radiation
15. regulation of the chemical composition of the oceans
16. regulation of the local and global climate
17. formation of topsoil and maintenance of soil fertility
18. production of grasslands, fertilizers, and food
19. storage and recycling of nutrients

Some of these vital functions are obvious. For instance, Costa Rican law has long prohibited cutting down forest or moving earth anywhere near a natural spring or water source, the reason being that the free flowing water is at risk of drying up. The forest and the earth beneath it is like a sponge that captures water from precipitation, retains it, filters it, and slowly releases it, providing a steady flow to natural springs, even during the drier parts of the year. The bigger the sponge the more water it will hold. When the forests are gone, the water quickly saturates the upper layers of soil, and the rest rushes over the surface, downhill and into creeks, streams and rivers. The rapid run-off erodes away the fertile topsoil and floods the waterways, much like rush hour on the freeway. Little water is retained for drier times. Within 40 kilometers of Dominical, at least a dozen communities regularly experience water shortages as a direct result of deforestation. Many have already begun to reforest the denuded areas where the trees that once protected their water sources were long ago felled and the land planted to pasture. These people pray that their efforts to regenerate the forest will rejuvenate the springs from whence that precious liquid once flowed freely. There has been talk of extending PSA to include the protection of freshwater sources. In other words, everyone’s water bill would increase slightly and the money would be paid to the owners of forests that blanket watersheds. Number 9 on Hawkin’s list, “natural pest and disease control by insects, birds, bats and other organisms,” is a promising candidate for environmental service payments, that already has a precedent in Costa Rica. The case in question involves a large citrus plantation and a national park. The management of the citrus grove noticed that the orange groves located nearest the park didn’t require any insecticide, whereas those farther from the natural forest required a normal amount of chemical protection. The reason was fairly obvious. The biologically diverse and protected park environment harbored a large variety of natural enemies—those mentioned by Hawkin—of the citrus pests, thus providing a natural pest control service. A deal was struck between the company and the park whereby the citrus producer paid the national park an amount of money equal to their savings from reduced insecticide purchases. This was a one-time deal, but it offers food for thought and opens the door to future environmental service payments of a similar nature.

I am going to add a couple more services to Hawkin’s list. Number 20 is: providing esthetically pleasing surroundings for the enjoyment of humans. And, number 21 is: providing natural habitat which harbors a diversity of wildlife that is a major tourist attraction. Who knows; at some point in the future, hotels may make service payments to the owners of natural environments that provide tropical beauty and shelter a multitude of wildlife that attracts large numbers of visitors to our area.

In actuality, the forests that provide the services described in these examples are all eligible for environmental service payments under the present program. But, at this time, only users of fossil fuels contribute to the fund. We can expect to see a mandatory contribution from water users in the near future. I am not aware of any serious intentions of requiring payments from fruit farms or tourism businesses, but both themes are often discussed by environmental groups and government officials. Chances are we will see many more contributors to the program in the not-to-distant future.

Costa Rica is the only country in the world that has actually put the concept of environmental service payments into practice. The program will continue to grow, and the world will watch. And when other countries begin to see the light and create their own environmental service programs, Costa Ricans will be proud that their tiny country was first to recognize the need to provide monetary incentives that encourage people to improve the environment rather than degrade it. Sustainable development only becomes possible when we provide incentives for the right things.

Last night while I was working on this article, my wife Diane called me into the TV where the program 20/20 was talking about hydrogen cars and other alternatives to fossil fuels. The program seriously questioned the wisdom behind a clause in the US tax law that classifies the very largest of the SUVs, the monster gas guzzlers, as “trucks.” Since trucks are considered to be work vehicles, those who purchase these big SUVs receive a $25,000 tax break. Hmmm, sounds like somebody is interested in boosting petroleum sales.
Like I said earlier, having a healthy planet depends on putting the incentives in the right places. Costa Rica pays incentives to those who create a healthy environment while at the same time, other countries extend big monetary benefits to those who pump carbon dioxide out of the back end of luxury gas guzzlers. Maybe that’s one of the reasons so many people like living here.

Article courtesy of Jack Ewing