Mirror, mirror, on the wall: What's the greenest plan of all?

Wired magazine has a list of ten green "heresies": suggestions for fighting global warm that go against the typical green mindset.

My thoughts (in italics) on a few of their "Inconvenient truths" (with summaries borrowed from the New York Times):

Shun organic milk. It takes 25 organic cows to make as much milk as 23 industrial ones, Joanna Pearlstein reports: “More cows, more cow emissions. But that’s just the beginning. A single organically raised cow puts out 16 percent more greenhouse gases than its counterpart. That double whammy — more cows and more emissions per cow — makes organic dairies a cog in the global warming machine.”

Definitely a case of juggling priorities... sometimes what may be best for the planet may not be best for one's health. But what they don't talk about here is how all the pesticides, hormones, etc. used for the conventionally-raised dairy cows affect the environment. They also ignore the benefits, including higher yields, from intensive multiple crop agriculture as compared with the standard monoculture model used on most American farms. And key to this discussion, as they mention, is whether agricultural products are consumed locally or shipped long distances.

Farm forests. Rapidly growing young trees suck up carbon dioxide, but mature trees absorb much less, and when they’re allowed to die and rot, their carbon is released — which means that an old-growth forest can be a net contributor of CO2 to the atmosphere. Matt Power suggests clearing out the oldest trees to make room for seedlings, landfilling the scrap, and turning the usable wood into furniture and houses that will lock in the carbon. “It won’t make a glossy photo for the Sierra Club’s annual report,” he writes, “but it will take huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere.”

Again, they ignore the benefits of old growth forests for maintaining biodiversity. Smarter forest management has to be part of the solution here, mixing old-growth and new growth in a way that produces a net positive effect on reducing CO2 release into the atmosphere.

Don’t sweat the A/C. While Thoreau’s spiritual descendants in New England may deplore the “wasteful” air conditioners in the Sun Belt, the Yankees are the ones with the big carbon footprints. Heating a typical house in the Northeast with fuel oil produces 13,000 pounds of CO2 annually, Mr. Power notes, while cooling a similar house in Phoenix produces only 900. Nationally, heating American’s homes produces eight times more CO2 than cooling homes.

Wow, this one surprised me, but I feel a little better about living in Vegas now! (Except for the water (lack of) part...)

Don’t go back to nature. A cabin in the woods isn’t as green as an apartment in the city. “Urban living is kinder to the planet, and Manhattan is perhaps the greenest place in the U.S.,” Mr. Power writes. “A Manhattanite’s carbon footprint is 30 percent smaller than the average American’s.”

Not sure about the cabin in the woods, but urban living definitely trumps suburban living (on many counts :-).

Accept genetic engineering. “California-based Arcadia Biosciences is already peddling genes for nitrogen-efficient rice that the company reckons could save the equivalent of 50 million tons of carbon dioxide a year,” Spencer Resiss writes, and adds, “What some greens deride as Frankencrops are also the only serious hope for biofuels.”

Again, there is a price here. Our choice to depend on a few, human-engineered crop varieties is not a smart long-term strategy for avoiding famine. Mother Nature will kick us in the rump hard at some point...

Embrace nuclear power. “Every serious effort at carbon accounting reaches the same conclusion: Nukes win,” Mr. Resiss writes. “Only wind comes close — and that’s when it’s blowing.” He also notes, “One of the Kyoto Protocol’s worst features is a sop to greens that denies carbon credits to power-starved developing countries that build nukes — thereby ensuring they’ll continue to depend on filthy coal.”

I have to agree with this one. One article I read reached this conclusion: storing or disposing of nuclear waste is a manageable problem given the relatively small amount that is produced by nuclear power plants. Climate change is a problem that is multiple orders of magnitude more challenging.