OP-ED Green's quantatative side

Author: Richard Wolfson

"Buy an SUV instead of a car," says Bill McKibben, and you'll waste so much energy that "it's like you've decided to leave your refrigerator door open for the next seven years." Shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, you say, and we can replace it with wind turbines. Both of these statements sound reasonable, and both would garner nods of agreement from Middlebury environmentalists. Both statements are also quantitative, explicitly in the first case and implicitly in the second. Could you justify either statement?

Being an authoritative environmentalist means being able to grapple with quantitative issues. "How rapidly are we humans raising atmospheric CO2 concentration?" "What's exponential growth and how does it affect our projections of future environmental conditions?" "What percent of species are threatened with extinction?" "What's the imbalance in global energy flows and how does that drive anthropogenic climate change?" "How much power is available from wind, and how's that compare with our total energy consumption rate?" "What change in stratospheric temperature should we expect from an enhanced greenhouse effect, and how's that provide evidence for anthropogenic global warming?" "At what rate is sea level rising, and how's that compare with historical rates?" "What's 'tipping point' behavior, and how does its mathematical description differ from 'normal' behavior?" The list of quantitative environmental questions is endless.

The College community is rightfully proud of its commitment to the environment. We're green in so many ways, and we're activists who inspire others beyond the small world of the Champlain Valley. We're even aiming to become carbon neutral by 2016 (By how much must we reduce our carbon emissions? What's Middlebury's greatest source of carbon? How do our other sources compare?). Yet I'm not sure we're always willing to be as quantitative as we might be. Last year's Environmental Studies colloquium series featured a session on the many voices that need to be heard in the environmental movement. Missing was the quantitative voice. We need that voice, not only to sound - and to be - authoritative, but also to help guide our own environmental decisions. Wind and solar photovoltaics are great for the environment, but understanding Middlebury's electrical energy mix quantitatively shows that they can't help much with carbon neutrality. Buying local chicken reduces our carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, but, as a recent ES colloquium showed, we can't do that without exhausting the local poultry population (How many free-range chickens are there in Addison County?). And switching to hybrid cars will help the environment in many ways, including making a significant dent in our carbon emissions. But only a quantitative assessment can show that hybrids alone won't get us to "80 percent by 2050" or to 350.org's goal of an eponymous atmospheric CO2 concentration. Understanding all this requires quantitative thinking and the quantitative voice. It's a voice we environmentalists should use proudly, forcefully and often.

(Richard Wolfson is professor of Environmental Studies and the Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics.)