This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
By Hans G Ehrbar
Last Tuesday I attended the "unconventional fuels" conference at the Institute of Clean and Secure Energy of the University of Utah. Unconventional fuels are shale gas, tar sands and oil shale.
The business people, scientists and state employees participating in this conference know that the carbon trapped in Utah oil shale, if released to the atmosphere, will make the planet unlivable for humans. I tried to understand how they can sleep at night. At least seven denial strategies were evident:
(1) It is not necessary to mention climate change because Utah regulators will only look for "criteria pollutants" and water. Federal CO2 regulation was a concern, not the CO2 itself.
(2) Downplay the potential of renewables so that it seems there are no alternatives. One presenter called solar panels a "niche market."
(3) Confuse local pollution with global greenhouse gas impacts. Professor David Pershing, a member of the institute who just recently became the university's president, said the environment was one of the ICSE's core concerns, namely contamination of aquifers and seismic issues. If you manage to get the CO2 into the atmosphere without earthquakes, smog and dirty water, you can call yourself "clean."
(4) Play one fossil fuel against another. When asked about global warming, Pershing said that natural gas has a lower carbon footprint than coal. A producer of oil from oil shale can call himself "ecological" if he uses less water than other processes.
(5) Pretend that baby steps are enough. Fuel switching from coal to natural gas is the mildest thing imaginable. Renewables require a re-engineering of the entire energy infrastructure.
(6) Claim that Utah is too small. Utah tar sands are only 1 percent of the extent of the Alberta tar sands. Don't mention that the energy content of Utah oil shale is about 100 times that of Utah tar sands.
(7) The conference itself was part of their denial strategy. It had the purpose of opening the work of the ICSE to public discussion. Comments from the audience concerned about future generations were welcome. In this way they can congratulate themselves for being open to debate, as if global warming were still debatable.
These are the thought processes by which decent people justify making big sums of money or accepting grants for doing something destructive of our future. It is difficult to say "no" when such an "opportunity" arises. They all think and say pretty much the same thing, having learned from each other how to navigate this dilemma.
When someone at the conference came up with an especially eloquent excuse, there was general applause.
The ICSE receives much more grant money than the Sustainability Institute or others at the U. trying to research and mitigate climate change.
Atmospheric sciences are running their climate models on the leftover cycles of ICSE's supercomputer purchased from grant money for modeling combustion processes, a sad commentary on how our society addresses humanity's greatest ever problem.
When I mentioned this in a conversation, an ICSE scientist replied that all the good researchers were going into renewable energy, and a good researcher was worth much more than money.
Pershing showed a new advertising movie, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," about how modern the University of Utah has become. Apparently he did not realize how damning it is for the university that the biggest challenge to humankind ever, global warming, was completely absent in this clip.
For the students it is a warning about how seriously deficient their education will be.
Hans G Ehrbar is an associate professor of economics at the University of Utah. He lives in Salt Lake City. His views are his own and do not represent the university's.