Hardly Green
A review of Peter Huber's
Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists
Basic Books, 2000
Inventing a movement
What to say about a book that is so bad that one wonders how it ever got published? The biggest problem is dividing the world into two groups (a false dichotomy) the Soft Greens and the Hard Greens. The Softs (named after Amory Lovins soft energy paths) are the mainstream environmentalists, who in Huber's world all think alike (and here Huber repeats the biggest myth of all, claiming that the environmental movement is a monolith where everyone thinks exactly alike). The Hards also all think alike, but instead of a stereotype they are a fabrication. The Hard philosophy is simply Huber's personal beliefs preceded by a "we" instead of an "I" While Huber does provides some examples of Softs (Al Gore in particular) the only Hard that Huber can find is the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt. Starting with the first sentence of the book (page XI) TR is incorrectly described as a conservative: "As a political movement, environmentalism was invented by a conservative Republican." But TR was not a conservative, he was a progressive. And when it was politically expedient he left the Republicans to run as a Bull Moose, a move that probably gave the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Huber consistently presents an extreme view of the world. Softs still talk about the great outdoors but have abandoned conservation and are obsessed with invisible things like dioxin, global warming or cyanide spills. This would come as very big news to The Nature Conservancy, The Audubon Society, Sierra Club, and almost every other major environmental group. Hards, on the other hand, are obsessed with conserving green, apparently secure in the knowledge that if enough land is preserved all will be right with the world. Softs are liberals, and even neo-Marxists, Hards are conservatives Huber apparently believes that all conservatives are Hards (even if he can't name a single living Hard) but this is nonsense, while environmentalists tend to be liberal many conservatives also hold views Huber would classify as Soft (see for example Republicans for Environmental Protection). Softs worry about a scarcity of genes, but Hards know we can make new genes in the biotech laboratory (pages 108-109). In reality, environmentalists worry about the loss of biodiversity, and as far as I know the biotech people are simple moving genes from one organism to another, not making new ones. Softs live in two dimensions (the surface) and want to tear up green to put up solar energy facilities and high speed rail lines. Hards, on the other hand, live in three dimensions, leaving more of the surface undisturbed. They get their energy from deep underground, and move about in airplanes. But solar facilities are located in deserts, not rain forests, and mines and wells often have severe impacts on the surface, with tailings, acid drainage, and spills (See Watkins for a recent look at the effects of mining). While airplanes fly in the sky, they require airports to land and take off. Softs are obsessed with what their computer models tell them. Hards are worried about what they can see. But once again this is nonsense, no environmental concern is based solely on computer models, not even global warming. Softs are Earth worshiping pagans, Hards (page 204) "accept the traditional Judeo-Christian teaching, that man and nature are not equal. Our interests in nature are aesthetic, not moral." I haven't met anyone who worships the Earth, besides whatever religion they belong to people worship their superior(s) not their equal(s). Finally, Huber cant't resist throwing in some ad hominem arguments (page 193, for example): "Some Soft Greens who have made cameo appearances in this book recycle their wives as readily as they recycle their glass bottles. Perfecting humanity is easier, it seems, than perfecting oneself."
Equally disconcerting is Huber's failure to address the real political opponents of green. No mention is made of efforts in Congress to close national parks, or of lawsuits against the designation of new national monuments. While mentioning the term "wise use" several times (page 89) and incorrectly attribute it to Theodore Roosevelt (it was actually Gifford Pinchot who coined the term) he seems not to have heard of the "wise use" movement. According to the leaders of the movement, preserving land is "Trashing the Economy" (Arnold and Gottlieb). They wrote (page 5) that: "Some [laws] made it impossible to use the resource-rich federal lands that compromise one-third of our nation's area-700 million acres. Other laws expand this surprisingly socialistic government-owned land-base by condemning private property to create federal nature preserves, thus removing it from the tax rolls." The "wise use" movement has even called for allowing logging and mining in national parks. Huber also does not appear to have heard of the "free market environmentalists" even though he shares many of their views (see the comments Joseph Bast made at the Amazon.com site) The "free marketeers" think preserving land is a good idea, but only if it does not evolve the government.
But why bother?
A second major problem with the book is the large number of factual errors, plus a number of questionable claims made without adequate documentation. At one point Huber even admits to making up data (page 9): "Where did I get all these numbers? I made them up. I could have dug up real ones from the extent, Hard Green literature, and they would have read much like the ones I invented. But why bother?" We are told once again (page 4) that The Limits to Growth predicted we would "run out of gold by 1981; mercury by 1985; tin by 1987; zinc by 1990; petroleum by 1992; and copper, lead and natural gas by 1993." And (page XVIII) that "Scientists are all but unanimous-on the inevitability of global cooling-in 1975." In fact, very few if any scientists predicted any global cooling. On page 19 he wrote that "Alcohol is a poisonous externality for bacterial; that is why they excrete it into our wine and beer." But my wine and beer were made with the help of yeast (a fungus) not bacterial. On page 34 he allows that "Recycling aluminum cans probably saves some net energy." In fact, recycling aluminum saves 95 % of the energy needed to make it from raw materials. On page 129 Huber informs the reader that "Bacterial in fact thrive on our sewage; the main reason not to dump it in rivers is that it breeds so much slimy new life. We just prefer the comparatively lifeless river to the the biologically fecund swamp." Of course dumping sewage into a river actually turns it into an open sewer, the thriving bacterial use up all of the oxygen (killing the fish and other life), spread diseases, and create smelly gases. And on page 115 Huber claims to have found the solution to global warming. Landfills! That's right, we can counter the carbon dioxide going into the air by burying carbon in landfills: "About two-thirds of what we put in landfills is carbon based. . . . By mummifying carbon we simply complete the carbon cycle. For a society that is consuming 70 quadrillion BTUs of fossil-fuel energy every year, there is only one honest way of "recycling" carbon wastes, and that is to put them back where most of the carbon we use came from, deep underground." But Huber does not tell us how much of this is fossil carbon and how much is recent, nor where he got his numbers from. On page 49 Huber writes that "A nuclear reactor of U.S. design was never supposed to lose all of its coolant and melt down, but one did. Its concrete containment structure wasn't expected to withstand the heat of meltdown, but it did." But three mile island suffered only a partial melt down, not the complete melt down that was predicted to melt the floor. On page XVII Huber writes that "There's a model-quite a credible one, in fact-that purports to prove that a steady dose of low-level radiation, like the one you get living in a high-altitude locale like Denver, or at some suitable distance from Chernoble, actually improves your health, by impelling your cells to shape up." This sounds very interesting, but Huber does not even give the name(s) of the author(s) so that those of us who are more skeptical can check it out for ourselves. Huber also refers to a number of writings without giving any hint as to where they were published (I stopped counting at six, when I was about one-third through the book). (The citation is given for some works, but how Huber decided which ones to include in the end notes is unclear.) For example, on page XVII he notes that "In a classic 1972 essay, nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg coined the term 'trans-science' to describe the study of phenomena too large, diffuse, rare or long term to be resolved by scientific means. They are epistologically 'scientific,' and yet-for strictly practical reasons-unanswerable by science." Huber makes several more references to this essay, but never tells the reader where it can be found.
Two more great divides
Huber's views on the government and the free market are just as extreme as those on Softs vs Hards. The government can't do anything right (page 90): "The one thing big governmement is capable of doing well is doing nothing, which happens to be the paramount objective of conservation." By this semantic trick, claiming that conserving land is doing nothing, Huber is able to allow the government a role in conserving land, a view that is not shared by other free market extremists. Everything good (except conserving large areas of land) comes from the free market. For example, Huber seems to credit the free market with inventing his favorite Hard technology, nuclear power (page 149) "Nuclear power, the capitalist's most despised invention. . ." But nuclear power was developed by the federal government, first as part of the program to developed nuclear weapons and then promoted through such programs as Atoms for Peace. Huber's arguments are most convoluted when it comes to efficiency, an argument which he spreads over several chapters and which features frequent repetition of the same ideas (argument ad nauseam). According to him, efficiency promoted by Softs or required by the government actually increases energy usage, while that developed by the market is always good . Huber starts off comparing energy efficiency with diet foods, which he claims are also more efficient (diet foods are in fact deliberately less efficient, having fewer calories per unit) Huber claims that diet food has led to more weight gains, and energy efficiency has led to more energy use. At lest on energy use he is wrong, simply because, as noted below, he failed to take into account the size of the economy (omitted evidence). A few quotes will give you the tone of Huber's argument. (page 62):
The Softs were wrong. Completely, laughably, ridiculously, preposterously wrong. For what it's worth, Hard is far more efficient than Soft. But it's not worth what the Softs say it's worth, for the simple reason that "efficient" has almost nothing to do with "frugal." This is true for food, and it is true for energy. The whole gigantic myth to the contrary is no more or less a case study in wishful, credulous, anti-scientific propaganda.
Page 196:
Government-prescribed efficiency programs are a distraction at best. They promote a false illusion of green progress. Efficiency imposed by government edict promotes nothing but inefficiency. It does not save wilderness.
page 198:
Government "efficiency" edicts are never efficient. It is the free market that is efficient. The Hard technology of modern capitalism is very efficient. In itself, Hard technology does not reduce consumption. It makes us richer, not poorer, and thus permits us to consume more.
pages 69-70:
With diet refrigerators for our diet sodas, we have gained power plants and coal mines, too. The United States consumed 71 quadrillion BTUs of energy in 1975 and 91 "quads" two decades later, a gain of a quad a year, the arrival of all that wonderfully Soft efficiency notwithstanding. . . The most striking thing about the overall trends is that if you chart them over time you simply cannot discern the energy conservation movement at all. With only minor dips and blips here and there, the curves are all quite smooth and steady. They just keep rising, decade by decade. Judging from the curves, Lovins never exhorted us to conserve energy, and we never responded: Nothing changed at all.
But if the size of the economy is factored in a very different picture appears; efficiency is working (Thurow page 177):
While natural resources are used in industrial production, technology developments have reduced their usage and increased their effective supply. Take any raw material, plot its usage relative to the gross domestic product, and one finds much less use per unit of GDP. In the last twenty-five years, energy consumption per unit of GDP is down by one-third and it would have gone down twice as fast if energy prices had not fallen to the lowest levels in human history. Copper consumption per unit of GDP is down 31 percent. In the last fifteen years water consumption per capita is down 25 percent.
The other great divide in Hard Green is between rich and poor. Rich is always green, while poor destroys green. But there is a disconnect between cause and effect in Huber's world. SUV's don't require roads to drive on, and filling their gas tanks has no connection to oil spills. Jungle may be cleared by a poor farmer so he can feed his family (pages 152-153), but apparently never by a multinational company so it can make profits. Using wood products is not connected to clearcutting, and throwing away aluminum cans does not lead to bauxite mining. Elephants may be poached to provide meat for a poor family (page 152), but never for ivory to sell to the rich. Rich people don't build vacation homes, or change natural green into the artificial green of golf courses. While richer people do have fewer children, it is probably not because they invest in quality over quantity as Huber claims but because of access to birth control and a changing economy. In a farming economy children are an economic asset, they can tend livestock and help with the crops. In a high tech economy children are a financial burden, they probably won't start making more money then they consume until after they finish college. But the real reason wealth is green is that after a person becomes rich enough "he pours his wealth into green." Of course some people put their money into conservation (including many who are not rich) or into other good works, others don't. Some simply continue to accumulate wealth. Others put up huge buildings they name after themselves, or spend their money to run for president. Finally, so people put their money into actively opposing green.
We can go it alone
For all his love of green, Huber seems unwilling to admit that humanity is dependent on nature for it's survival. This apparently has to do with his religious beliefs; if we are dependent on nature that makes us equal (or even inferior to) nature. But this is nonsense. Thousands of people, for example, are dependent on pacemakers but I'm sure none of them feel inferior to the devices. Once again Huber makes essentially the same argument several times in the book (argument ad naseum). (page 81):
We can go it alone. We need energy, nothing more, and know how to get it from many more places than the plants do. We don’t need the forest for medicine; as often as not we need medicine to protect us from what emerges by blind chance from the forest. We don’t need other forms of life to maintain a breathable balance of gas in the atmosphere or a temperate climate. We don’t need redwoods and whales at all, not for ordinary life at least, no more than we need Plato, Beethoven, or the stars in the firmament of heaven. Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks, harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains, which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with olestra, pine, and plastic. Humanity can survive just fine in a planet-covering crypt of concrete and computers.-
page 80:
We have no more practical reason to conserve nature than we have to conserve cows. We can subdue at will and replenish at will too, with transgenic mice and cloned sheep.
page 161
Cows may be utterly essential to human survival in rural India, but nature as a whole is not essential to all of humanity's. The destruction of nature is an aesthetic disaster, but not a utilitarian one. Modern man can, in all likelihood, go it alone.
page 169:
However much Soft Greens may deny the fact, we have risen above nature. Not just to the point where we can destroy nature where we chose, but to the point where we can probably survive just fine in the ecological rubble.
The measure of all things?
Hard Green would appear to eliminate the hard decisions. But it does not. For one thing, Huber only looks closely at three areas of human activity; food production, energy production and long distance travel. Other activities that affect green such as housing and recreation are simply ignored. And Huber does not consider all of the options in the areas he does look at. While high tech cows may be better than traditional ones, no cows at all would clearly be even better for the green. Should the amount of green preserved be the measure of all things, as Huber argues? I think not. Although I like green as much as Huber does, there are many other factors to consider including sustainability, pollution, fairness. What good does protection a river do if their is a cyanide spill upstream? What is a trip to the grand canyon worth if you can't see the other side? And simply preserving green will not be enough to solve our environmental problems. Realistically, there is already as much green as there is going to be for the foreseeable future. While some areas may be restored, others will inevitably be lost.
References
Arnold, Ron and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Free Enterprise Press, 1994
Thurow, Lester C., Building Wealth: The New Rules for Individuals, Companies, and Nations in a Knowledge-Based Economy, HarperCollins, 1999
Watkins, T. H., "Hard Rock Legacy", National Geographic, March 2000, pages 76-95.
Other comments
Hard Green is Hard To Take by Caroline Pufalt
Greener Than Thou by Mark Hertsgaard
Review by Herman Daly in The American Prospect (April 24, 2000).
Review by Jim Kunstler
Review by Tom Gogola in Salon
"Galileo's Retort: Peter Huber's Junk Scholarship" by Kenneth J. Chesebro (The American University Law Review, Vol. 42 No. 4 (summer 1993) pages 1637-1726) is a highly critical look at Huber's earlier books, especially Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom. Chesebro also takes a look at the Manhattan Institute, the think tank that supports Huber, and at why Galileo's Revenge was more popular than better written books on the same subject.
JUNK SCHOLARSHIP IN SEARCH OF JUNK SCIENCE by: William F. Gallagher is a summary of Chesboro's article.
For a conservative alternative to Huber's nonsence see The Greening of Conservative America by John R. E. Bliese (Westview Press, 2001).
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Written by Jim Norton
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