I ran into George Ardenfriend in the old neighborhood a few years after we both graduated from Madison High School. He went to Antioch College; I stayed in Brooklyn. Our meeting took place at a gas station while George filled up his sports car. At the time gas cost less than fifty cents a gallon and no one seemed to mind the extravagantly absurd mileage our motorized steeds got.
He and I got into a discussion of how much oil was left in the ground. I took the position that there might not be a whole lot left and we needed to find ways to preserve what we had. George argued the opposite: the sooner we used it up the sooner we would be forced to live without it. Only then would we try to figure out what to do.
He had no faith in humanity’s ability to curtail our profligate ways in exchange for an uncertain future. I came to call this the “Ardenfriend Principle,” now applicable to our panoply of environmental problems.
It wasn’t until 1973 and the embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that Americans began to view oil as a finite resource. Later we learned that there was more than enough in the earth’s crust to keep internal combustion engines going for a very long time.
There is an old saying, “Let George Do It.” If something needs to be done and no one wants the responsibility, it’s passed on to an unspecified person, the fictional “George.” All too often people, as with nations, know something needs addressing, something difficult and with potential repercussions. Better to have someone else do it. On President Harry Truman’s desk there was a sign that said “the buck stops here.” How nice to believe that it really did.
I have often thought of the real George, gone now to an early Florida grave, and the Ardenfriend Principle. Most recently it was when 170 nations met at the fifth U.N.
Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to come up with a solution to the overwhelming glut of plastics world-wide. Nothing was adopted as leading petroleum producing nations led by Saudi Arabia torpedoed all plans that might impact their economies.
This international failure was preceded only by days at another international conference on mediating climate change. Again, the Saudis were instrumental in blocking any real progress. I think I can safely predict that the incoming administration will not be supportive of new (or old) and meaningful initiatives, even if many in Congress might be ready for change.
Many pundits believe that once in power Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris Accords, in themselves questionable as to their effectiveness in moderating climate change.
Not all nations are opposed to significant international agreements. Most vociferous are less wealthy and non-industrialized nations that rightfully feel they are victims of those countries that create the vast majority of our environmental problems. In the forefront are the island nations in the Pacific who are rapidly losing the battle against rising seas.
This deterioration of the earth, manifest in so many ways, is most difficult for the young who will face a harrowing future. Does this mean more and more of them, at least in
this country, will choose to not have children of their own? Demographics indicate this is the case, and has been for a number of years for a variety of reasons, climate change included.
In a 2023 column in The Washington Post, Professor Peggy O’Donnell Heffington of the University of Chicago wrote, “… I’m used to hearing young people’s anxiety and even anger about climate change. One of the most striking trends is the number of students who have told me they feel robbed of the ability to have children, cheated out of parenthood by decades of climate denial and inaction…”
Will these same students feel differently about parenthood as their lives progress? Will any of them devote themselves to finding and advocating for solutions to these vexing problems?
Michael J. Koren, a journalist and expert in climate matters, wrote in The Post in 2024, “As the painful effects of climate change are felt, and pressure for action builds like water behind a dam, it may wash away some of the old order, and something new will be built in its place. That’s not without enormous risk. But it also carries enormous potential.”
While Koren agrees that the future will irrevocably alter life on earth, he is also optimistic about our ability to slow if not reverse it. He cites a Pew Foundation study that two-thirds of Americans want actions to combat climate change. He expresses hope that as greener alternatives become more economically viable the public will demand more solutions from corporations and businesses, leading political leaders to enact more assertive policy.
Koren has another reason for hoping that the future is not the rapid downhill ride to disaster that many predict. He and his wife have a brand-new baby girl.
I want to believe there is truth in what Koren writes. To know we will have to wait. At the moment, the jury is out on just how much of the public is clamoring for green power. I live part-time outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, ranked among the sunniest states in the country, where I have always been intrigued by private and public commitment to solar power.
The state does not mandate that new residential or commercial construction requires alternative power, but it does currently offer a number of incentives to do so. As I drive around my own community of La Tierra Nueva, I cannot say that I see a proliferation of solar power on either homes or property.
A measure of how complex creation of green power can be is the current conflict between residents of El Dorado, a large, well-established community in Santa Fe County, and the efforts by Virginia based AES Corporation to build a nearby 680-acre solar power and battery-storage complex with the power to be used by PNM, a regional electricity provider.
At a contentious and unusually long public meeting held by the county’s planning commission speakers, mostly older, raged against the proposed project. They were concerned with potential wildfire risk from battery malfunction, the unsightliness so near to their homes, the possible rise in residential insurance costs, and reduction in the value of their properties. This is not to say the residents of El Dorado at the meeting oppose the concept of solar power, only not so close to their homes. AES points out the closer the source generating power is to the recipient, the more effective.
The state and county would undoubtedly like to see the project happen as it gives a boost to their goals for climate reduction by 2045, and the president of the regional Sierra Club, and the Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce have endorsed the project.
My guess is it will be given the green (so to speak) light as will several other projects being planned to serve New Mexico’s future power needs, much of which is now generated by polluting coal-fired plants. It’s ironic that the state’s single largest source of revenue is from fracking for oil and gas with its profligate use of water, and the damage it does to the physical environment.
As I was writing this essay I took a break and looked at the international news on-line. There was an extraordinary photo, an overhead view of Aleppo, Syria, the first large
city seized by the rebels. There were dark blotches on the top of most multi-story buildings. As I enlarged the picture it confirmed what I had thought: Each roof was covered
with solar panels.
There are reasons why so many of the people of war-torn Aleppo generate their own electricity. And there are reasons why we don’t. They didn’t let George do it. All too often we still do.
