For years, we’ve heard the term “sustainable development”. I understand it to mean development that consumes renewable resources at a rate less than nature’s ability to replenish them.

Many environmentalists criticize the term as an oxymoron, claiming that economic policies based around concepts of growth and continued depletion of resources cannot be sustainable, since that term implies resources remain constant.

‘Environmental sustainability” is another buzz term.

The antithesis of sustainability is degradation. In environmental terms, degradation occurs when nature's resources (such as trees, earth, water, air and habitats) are consumed faster than nature can replenish them, when pollution results in irreparable damage or when human beings destroy or damage ecosystems in the process of development. Some of the major causes of such degradation include: overpopulation, urban sprawl, industrial pollution, waste dumping, over-fishing, invasive species and a lack of regulation.

A recent editorial in the Times & Transcript led me to a new term “sustainable transportation”.

With all the talk about climate change and global warming, we tend to think the cause is limited primarily to industrial pollution and the greenhouse gas emissions released from the burning of coal and oil to generate electricity. In fact automobiles, trucks, buses and planes account for something in the range of 30% of our carbon emissions.

Jet aircraft pollutants account for more than 10% of global greenhouse warming. Aircraft emissions linger in the clear, cold, calm of the stratosphere and modify earth’s atmosphere about 100-times longer than when they are released near the ground.

There are more than five million civilian aircraft flights in the world every year and nearly 2,800 military flights. A recent report from the British Government calls jet travel a “risk to the planet” and urges travelers to take the train. It estimates that if trips of less than 400 miles could undertaken by high speed trains rather than jet planes, 45% of all flights could be eliminated.

Contrails, the high altitude smoke or vapour that trails a jet aircraft are an important part of the problem. A National Science Foundation study estimates that in heavy air traffic corridors across the USA, “cloud cover created by contrails has increased by as much as 20 percent” since the jet age took off in the 1960s.

As the Times & Transcript pointed out, trucks are a major source of road degradation in New Brunswick (tell me about it). They are also major polluters. Trucks account for less than 6% of miles driven by highway vehicles in the United States but are responsible for 25% of smog-causing pollution from highway vehicles and 6% of that nation's global warming pollution.

The automotive industry has made steady improvements in the area of fuel efficiency, and promises more to come. Automotive engineers have cut the weight of cars by half in the last 25 years and the miles-per-gallon rating of passenger cars has improved 39 percent in the last ten years. Unfortunately, fuel consumption has increased by 19 percent over the same period (sounds like a by-product of Stephen Harper’s Clean Air “intensity” strategy).

The tons of carbon dioxide produced by burning gasoline are a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Trucks, cars and buses contribute an estimated 60-70 percent of urban air pollution.
Coal-fired electric power plants in the United States are responsible for 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The U.S. plans to build 72 more of them.

China is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants, nearly half the world total expected to come online in the next eight years. India could add 213 such plants, according to Future Pundit. In Canada, oil sands production is the biggest source of new greenhouse gas emissions and the Americans want us to increase production fivefold to wean them off Middle Eastern oil.

So what can be done about it all?

For the most part, we use two basic kinds of fuel: liquid fuels (oil and natural gas/propane) power our vehicles and heat our homes. Coal, hydro (water power), natural gas, nuclear, wind and solar are used to generate electricity.

Renewable sources are either intermittent (the wind doesn't always blow and the tides are periodic) or localized (the sun doesn't always shine) so we have to develop more effective means of electricity storage to offset the notion that only coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear can provide reliable "baseload" power.

I suspect it will be easier to find clean, renewable sources of electricity than to find clean, renewable liquid fuels. In the absence of effective storage mechanisms, the most obvious clean source of electricity is nuclear but a massive buildup of nuclear power would be very expensive and it would create a security risk. Nuclear waste is not clean and we still haven’t found a way to permanently dispose of it.

That said it still seems logical to shift our energy use from coal and oil to electricity. We'd probably need greener liquid fuels like ethanol, liquid natural gas (LNG) and gasified coal to bridge us to an electrified economy.

Fully electric vehicles and an electrified, cross-Canada, high-speed rail system would get gas-guzzling-cars and trucks off the road. Electricity generated with clean fuels and renewable resources would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Truck-trailers on the back of high-speed electrified trains connected to regional warehouses would reduce wear and tear on our highways. Short-haul air travel replaced with high-speed rail transport would reduce the impact of aircraft-induced emissions. Houses sealed against the cold and heated with electricity or clean, renewable fuels would be warmer and more fuel efficient.

A pipedream, maybe but if we don’t start moving in that direction, we may be choking on greenhouse gases in the next twenty or thirty years or swimming on Lutz Mountain.

To read more on the sustainable theme and green energy thinking, read my Atlantic Insight's
Go" n Green is New "Blow'n In The Wind" Theme Song of This Generation

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com