August 22, 2006
Book Review: Dune’s vision of ecological futility
Dune’s fortieth anniversary was last year. For anyone who’s read it, the resonant central image of the series is the desert of Arrakis—planetwide and populated only by the Fremen, a ferocious tribe that survives by clinging to every drop of water, and by shai-hulud, the great sandworm. The story’s full of political intrigue and an astonishing cast of characters, cultures, and histories rivaled only by The Lord of the Rings. But Dune is also an environmental exploration, and that’s what I want to talk about.
By the way, this posting is full of spoilers, so stop now if you don’t want to see discussion of some major plot points in Dune. It also only covers the first three books of the Dune Chronicles. Frank Herbert wrote three more after this, and his son co-wrote three more after Herbert’s death.
Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), and Children of Dune (1976), by Frank Herbert.
While Tolkien resisted critics’ attempts to find political lessons in Lord of the Rings,1 Frank Herbert hoped that Dune would help develop some planetary consciousness in a public that was (and is) unfamiliar with the idea that human agency has global effects. Actually, in the universe of Dune, the Atreides’ manipulation of Arrakis’s ecosystem affects the whole planet and politically realigns an entire galaxy.
A major plot point in Dune, and here I’m speaking of the first book particularly, was the revelation that the Fremen had a secret 500-year plan to shift Arrakis’s desert ecosystem into something a lot more hospitable to humans, with surface water, green plants, and the like.2 In Dune Messiah, Paul Atriedes’ ascension to the Imperial throne made it possible to vastly accelerate that plan. And in Children of Dune, Leto II, Paul’s heir, came to realize that the unintended consequences of this terraforming would be the extinction of the sandworms and exhaustion of the galaxy’s only source of the vitally-important drug melange (which the sandworms produce).
It’s impossible to read Dune without being impressed that billions of fates turn on the ecological management of Arrakis. But Dune is not Silent Spring (published three years before). There’s no discussion in Dune of non-intentional effects on the planet, through pollution, construction, overharvesting of melange, etc. Herbert’s ideology is that of the steward, not the conservationist. In fact, at the end of Children of Dune, Leto II decided that to save human lives (long-term), it was necessary to radically accelerate the conversion of Arrakis’s environment, driving the sandworm straight into extinction and giving himself a political stranglehold on the only Imperial stockpiles of melange.3
For Frank Herbert, planetary ecology was something to understand, but it was also something to husband, use and, if necessary, destroy. This kind of stewardship ethic is popular in political discourse today, where it is both attractive and extraordinarily dangerous. Pretty much every character in Dune makes management decisions based on a desire to properly steward Arrakis’s primary natural resource, melange, but all except for Leto II make catastrophically wrong choices leading only to violence and destruction. In particular, Alia (sister of Paul and regent during Leto II’s infancy) attempted to irrigate Arrakis, not appreciating the threat to melange production. This ultimately led to political destabilization and contributed to her fall. Alia and others failed because they either couldn’t see or wouldn’t confront the Big Picture—the full environmental and political consequences—implicated in natural resource stewardship. Only Leto could see the Big Picture and properly husband Arrakis’s ecology. But Leto had superhuman prescient powers.
This is the source of Dune’s overall skepticism. The only person who could effectively husband Arrakis’s resources without destroying himself or, worse, the human race, was basically a superhero. Everyone else—even those with the very best intentions—failed.
The real world doesn’t have a kwisatz haderach—a superbeing like Leto II. Thus, Dune can be read as a polemic against interference with planetary systems. In the absence of complete understanding, unintended consequences are rife.
The characters most idolized in Dune are the Fremen, who typify human honor and dignity throughout the series. Fremen accepted the brutal realities of Arrakis and comported their lifestyle to the planet rather than vice versa. As Arrakis transformed, so did the Fremen, becoming soft, avaricious and cowardly. When we transform our environment, what is left of us?
1 Tolkien’s foreword to Lord of the Rings famously denied that LOTR was allegory for World War II or the beginning of the atomic era.
2 This plan was actually developed by an off-world “planetologist” who came to live on Arrakis and became a Fremen himself. I mention this because “planetologist” is a great word and deserves revival.
3 It’s a brutal political calculus; this is the kind of thing Herbert is famous for and to understand it, you’ll have to read the book.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 13, 2006
Getting to know you: Tech policy and the class action
It’s become fashionable in the tech policy community to self-identify with environmentalists. You see it most when people talk about cultural environmentalism. But as a very green friend of mine told me on his way to Lawrence Lessig’s class, the analogy doesn’t seem very productive in its current form. Terrestrial environmentalism, after all, gains its strength not only from aesthetic concerns, but also straight human health issues. Cultural environmentalism, on the other hand, seems untethered to meatspace concerns and so comes off as very ivory tower.
Earthjustice has these great ads. I can’t find one now, but they have normal folks standing in t-shirts that say “plaintiff.” I love the ads because they encourage the viewer to consider how he himself is harmed when we drill in ANWR, or poison rivers, or drive Hummers. They take the issues out of the ivory tower and bring them to ground.
Last month I got a notice from AT&T that they had “clarified” their privacy policy to make it “clearer” that they own all my data and will use or release it as they see fit. Made me mad, but since my DSL was part of a six-month package, I can’t drop AT&T without incurring termination charges. Every one of AT&T’s customers is in the same boat, more or less. So I’m damaged by AT&T’s action, but lack the wherewithal to do much about it on my own. This is a great opportunity for a well-fought class action. I, and most of AT&T’s customers, would probably care less actually recovering our damages in this case than just sending a signal to AT&T that this kind of thing has very real costs.
The net policy arena is full of these small-damages, widely-spread kinds of claims. Vigorous class action prosecution could really defuse egregious corporate behaviors that don’t quite cross the threshold of unlawfulness. And it’s not just privacy policies—class actions are a potential mechanism to get companies to take security of customer information seriously, too. This year C and I have received three notifications that laptops with our personal information were stolen from various corporations entrusted with that infromation. Knock on wood, our actual damages from this are very slight—but each one of these breaches involved hundreds of thousands of people. Classic class action stuff. And increasing tiering of the net could give rise to class action type relief as well.
I imagine there is some private litigation going on in these areas. But there is an obvious space for one of the big ideology groups to step in and inject some high level coordination, as well as impressive resources and skill, into moving things to the next level. EFF? CDT? ACLU? Think about it.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 25, 2006
WorldChanging on Green Computers
An exhaustive posting over on WorldChanging on greening computers.
While they do a good job on flagging most of the major problems with computers, I think they give short shrift to one really big one—the fantastic amount of energy it takes to manufacture a computer. All that advanced chemistry, die-cutting, silicon-etching, etc., takes a huge amount of energy, and even though computers seem relatively efficient in the household (our iMac draws less than 180 watts), they are not efficient products when you look at the big picture. According to one recent study, when you take the cost of production into account, then over their lives computers are “probably the most energy intensive of home devices aside from furnaces and boilers.” Williams, “Energy Intensity of Computer Manufacturing,” 38 ENVTL. SCI. & TECH. at 6173 (2004).
This kind of energy profile can also dim the allure of hybrids. All those exotic materials and advanced construction aren’t cheap, and a “dust to dust” energy analysis reveals startling things.
There’s no easy fix to this kind of distortion in energy economics. The fact of the matter is that energy is very cheap—probably cheaper than it should be—so costs of production can be “hidden” even from the most eco-minded purchaser. Prius owners should be aware of it, though, before crowing too loudly.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2006
Nuclear power an option?
Nuclear power has long been an interesting dividing line between the environmental and technical communities. As a rule, environmentalists hate/oppose civilian nuclear power, and techies like it. Personally I have always thought it irresponsible to create waste so potent that it threatens entire ecosystems, unstintingly, for several tens of thousands of years.
Then last week C and I saw Carol Browner (Clinton’s EPA Administrator, now at the Albright Group) speak at Stanford’s Business school; after the talk, speaking with the audience, Browner forthrightly endorsed nuclear energy as a necessary component of a national climate change remediation strategy. C and I were surprised; Browner’s environmental call to arms had been so strident that I assumed nuclear power would rank somewhere around burning the Irish for fuel on her list of energy supply strategies.
Now comes Patrick Moore’s recantation in the Post, citing nuclear power as superior in many ways to wind, hydro, and certainly coal while dismissing the safety and waste-disposal issues as essentially solvable (via Slashdot, where the techies are rapidly approaching Gloat Factor 5). Re waste, Moore had this to say:
Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
I want to emphasize my understanding of nuclear waste: nasty. So nasty that I’m not sure a thousand-fold reduction is really all that helpful. So nasty that I’m not convinced recycling the rods will correct any more problems than it creates. So nasty that DOE commissioned a major report on how to warn future civilizations about the stuff. (Ed: That’s the source for the diagram accompanying this entry.) The images/reflections in that report are haunting; if something’s changed that makes such contemplation unnecessary I want to know about it.
Climate change is a Real Big Deal, and something Must Be Done. Risk is typically involved when you set out to tackle huge challenges. But widespread use of nuclear energy means biting off quite a level of risk in this author’s opinion. It would have been nice to have averted this Hobson’s choice somehow.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 04:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Tribally-owned wind farm
Catherine pointed out that public ownership of wind farms is an active issue in the Environmental Justice community. In many cases, the places that are rich in wind are poor in many other areas, so monetizing wind energy could be very important.
Enter the Rosebud Sioux Wind Turbine. It’s an awesome 750 kW wind turbine on the Rosebud Sioux reservation, creating power for the community and selling some back to nearby Nebraska and South Dakota utilities. And get this—phase 2 of the project is a 30 MW wind farm. Check out photos at NativeEnergy.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 11, 2006
Who should own wind farms?
Lining Rt. 20A through central N.Y. last week, were maybe a dozen placards urging the reader to reject a proposal from EcoGen to put wind farms through the area; they included a URL to saveupstateny.com. The proposal, it seems, is to put a number of turbines in Prattsburgh and Italy; opponents complain about noise, hurled ice (!), and general unsightliness. They are also claiming that the turbines will not generate local electricity.
Now, wind farms are a necessary part of sustainable power generation, and most of the problems with them can be ameliorated with proper siting—that is, local government needs to step up and get involved at the front end. Now it turns out that Tom Golisano, the primary underwriter of saveupstateny.com, is backing off of his outright opposition to the farms and is urging local governments to go one step further—into actually owning the farms themselves. Wired News is reporting that Golisano has dropped his opposition to wind farms per se, but wants to see them “done right.” To that end, he is going to the affected cities and towns and telling them that EcoGen will pay at most $300,000/year to erect the farms, but cities running them themselves could make up to $9 million/year.
Publicly-owned utilities have been around the fringes of U.S. energy policy for quite some time; right here in the Bay Area I know that Palo Alto owns its own water, electric, gas, and sewer systems. There’s also been a ton of talk about municipally-owned fiber networks for Internet delivery. The counterargument has always been based on efficiency—private actors > state actors when it comes to providing these kinds of services.
Is Golisano right? That’s a question for an energy economist. But even if he’s wrong about the virtues of public ownership, I suspect Golisano is doing a public service by giving Plattsburgh, Italy, and the other wind-rich municipalities a little bit of extra bargaining leverage with EcoGen. Maybe they’ll get more than $300,000/year, now that the threat of municipal ownership is on the table.
Oh, and these things really ought to generate at least some local electricity. Do you know how much energy we lose in long-distance transmission?
Posted by Rob Courtney at 10:52 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 04, 2006
Smart disassembly
When I was in New Haven, Cynthia and I talked a little bit about industrial ecology—so important, but so hard to actually bring about. Well, probably in response to WEEE, Nokia is moving along on this with an astonishing concept phone that can be entirely disassembled in about one second. The idea is that you use special shape memory springs that pop the phone apart when heated with a certain laser. That’s clever design, kids. Check it out over at WorldChanging.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 04:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Climate change NGOs and Industry
Two interesting threads at WorldChanging and Treehugger yesterday, with an important question: If I’ve got a little cash, and I want to support a credible NGO working on climate change, who should I make the check out to? There’s been a few responses so far, but not much, so if you’ve got someone in mind, please speak up. But it’s notable that this conversation is about attracting individual contributions, not large-scale support from industry. To what extent is that going on in the climate change advocacy community?
When I was at CDT, it was clear that a major part of that organization’s success was its ability to reach out to industry as well as the civil liberties crowd (of course, that did lead to complications some of the time). Seems like the climate change advocacy community needs a similar bridge-builder. I’m not the only one who’s noticed, of course; when C and I saw Al Gore speak here on campus a few months ago it was extremely clear that he knew how important industry support was too. The audience was peppered with top Sil Valley execs (I spotted Vint Cerf from Google), as well as execs from some of the major environmental groups, like NRDC, Sierra Club, EarthJustice, etc. It was announced that these groups would be starting a major Sil Valley initiative to get buy-in from the industry—but I haven’t heard anything since. Updates would be welcome.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 07, 2006
Design like you give a damn
Were I more virtuous, I would have listened to To The Best Of Our Knowledge’s “Design Like You Give A Damn” when it aired on KQED Sunday night. Instead C and I ended up watching the Oscars. The show concerns green design in all its many forms, with an emphasis on green architecture. I don’t see a mention of William McDonough, whose work I know best, but I view that as a plus—need to learn as many design philosophies as possible. We’ll be listening to the online stream tonight. If you were to listen too, we could talk about it tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be modern?
Posted by Rob Courtney at 03:11 PM