Here we go again...

Sometimes I feel like I should title this blog "Everything the Greenies tell you is wrong". Except that, well--I actually do care about the environment. But what bugs me most about many green blogs is that they simply don't make sense.

Today's MSN article about conventional versus soy candles is a case in point: the idea is that burning conventional, paraffin-based candles are more toxic than burning candles made of soy wax. At first glance, this seems plausible--after all, paraffin is derived from petroleum, and we all know how it feels to be stuck behind a diesel truck inhaling the noxious fumes.

But then, ask yourself: what exactly is wax? All waxes are collections of long-chain alkanes and esters, varying only in the details of structure and the lengths of the chains. Soy-based wax, for that matter, doesn't even exist--it has to be manufactured, from soybean oil, using the same hydrogenation process that produces trans-fats.

(And here, I must digress for a moment on the lovely irony that the very people who say that eating trans-fats are terrible for you, would advocate burning them)

In other words, the chemical composition is more or less the same, and if we're talking about combustion, the end products are--wait for it--exactly the same. In other words, you'll get a lungful of chemical smoke no matter what you burn. In other words, if you want to avoid toxins in the air, don't burn stuff.

The only valid point the article makes is that there could be lead in the wick. According to some, 30% of candles have a lead wick (lead in the center of the wick). That would be very bad. But the study that the statement was based on makes no distinction between the usual paraffin candle and the plant-wax based candle. So to assume that all 30% of paraffin candles contain lead wicks, while all plant-wax based candles do not, is still a logical fallacy.

Ex-president Bush was often criticized loudly for ignoring the science and sticking to his agenda, especially on environmental issues. This just goes to show that the knife cuts both ways...

Unintended consequesces

This post is about cats.

The first cat is the one in the photograph, hours after I picked her up off the streets of Philadelphia. She is one heck of an unintended consequence of my living there.

The other cat story is "Operation Cat Drop", or WHO screws up big time. In a nutshell, in the 1950s, DDT, seen as the panacea against malaria, was applied everywhere there was a mosquito. The end result was that the WHO had to airlift cats to jungle villages in Borneo.

In retrospect, perhaps the connections should have been obvious. But because life as a whole is so interconected, it is hard to figure out which connections make the difference between plans working out, and plans failing miserably. I don't think, short of developing a time traveler, it will ever be possible to foresee every consequence of the things we do to the environment.

However, what we can do is drop the thinking, as much as we like it, that one single cause is the source of our misery, and one single thing can fix it. Ultimately, we can't know everything, and there will be cases where doing nothing is far worse than doing something, as uninformed as the action may be. But for the majority of non-emergent cases, accruing the knowledge of as many connections as possible will help us make better decisions about how to go about doing what must be done.

The other thing we can do is stop trying to "fix" things. Plans for adding changes to an environment usually go more wrong than letting the environment come back to balance by itself. For example, the forest fires in the western part of the US cause as much damage as they do, because more people live there, and because the US Forestry service once made it a point to put out every single fire, despite that the trees in the West evolved in such a way that they required fire to manage their growth. With their growth running rampant, a lightning strike would be like tossing a match on a pile of tinder.

The environment cannot be "fixed" like a car. If you fix your carbeurator, you don't accidentally ding your boss's car, and dinging your boss's car doesn't give your secretary a flat. Unfortunately, this is much the way biology works--or seems to, until we realize that there are connections between the cars that we just haven't seen yet.

The best we can hope for is to minimize our influence--stop polluting inasmuch as it's possible, quit meddling in the affairs of the forests, cease changing the course of rivers, desist with taking the life on this planet for granted. Conservation is essentially a conservative effort, in that the best thing we can do is as much nothing as possible--we don't cut down forests, we don't pollute. Of course, this isn't possible, as people have to eat, food must be shipped, money must be made, life must be lived. But minimizing our impact on the environment is something we can all make an effort at--and should. After all, who can resist doing nothing?

Delusions of Goodness

One of my favorite scenes is what I call the "Chemical Corridor" down the New Jersey Turnpike. It's captivating in its utter unnaturalness. It jars with every sensibility of mine in terms of aesthetics, stands against everything I believe in (to be addressed on Friday) in terms of natural products and nature, and is just inherently alien. I'd love to photograph it; alas, I've never been in a car standing still long enough to do so.

The Chemical Corridor is where many of the so-called "natural flavorings" are developed. It houses some of the largest companies which manipulate molecules to give you an experience of food which lies in conjunction with your expectations--fries are crispy, cookies are crunchy, chocolate is chocolate-y, and strawberry-flavored anything tastes like strawberries (source: Fast Food Nation). It is the heart of everything synthetic and unnatural.

Which begs the question of what exactly constitutes "natural"? On a molecular level, the vanillin in a vanilla bean and the vanillin extracted from waste wood are EXACTLY the same. The reason why genuine vanilla extract sells at a premium over the vanillin extract? Because it comes from vanilla beans. The example that Schlosser gives in his book concerns almond flavoring--extracted from the pits of peaches and apricots, it has trace amounts of cyanide. Mixing clove oil and amyl acetate, on the other hand, has no cyanide. But the first is a "natural" flavoring, and eagerly consumed, whereas the second ends up in cheap almond-flavored...stuff, for want of a better word.

Another issue with the terms "natural" and "unnatural" has to do with the connotation of purity, wholesomeness, and health. I'm staring at an advertisement for an all-natural body wash (we're going to ignore the fact that deriving some of the ingredients from plants is hardly a natural process) that uses safflower oil as the main cleanser. It has, as a side-by-side comparision, the chemical sodium lauryl sulfate, a chemical that is frequently used in soaps and shampoos. It lists the pros of safflower oil and the cons of SLS, and it's pretty obvious, at first glance, which one is better for you.

After a second glance (this ad really rankled me, and you'll soon see why) it becomes quite obvious that safflower oil is not, in fact, the main cleansing ingredient, as SLS is in conventional soapy products. It is, in fact, merely the agent by which the cleaning agents are carried. And there is nothing to substantiate the claim that someone with sensitive-enough skin wouldn't react to cleansers derived from coconut oil. Lastly, there is nothing to keep you from using the body wash to clean your garage floor, as SLS is. It wouldn't be very cost-effective, but you could, if you wanted to.

Of course, advertisers have to make the product look good--they have to sell a "lifestyle". When you get right down to the molecules, it really doesn't matter where it comes from--you take enough, it'll kill you. Tea tree oil is an effective mold-killer but it's also toxic to cats. I also find it smirk-worthy to note that nobody objects to drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes--the latter pours at least 60 carcinogenic compounds down your lungs. And the greens profess to be irked that the fumes from an occasional bleaching of the toilet bowl are irritating to the lungs....

The point is, "natural" is all in our heads. Sure, cleaning agents might be derived from plants, but does the "privilege" of coming from a plant necessarily make a molecule any more "natural"? The Green Guide recommends using plant-based ethanol as a stain remover--ethanol is ethanol is ethanol is ethanol. It's what gets you drunk; whether it comes from plants or distilling vodka doesn't matter a hoot, the molecular formula is still C2H5OH, and it still works the same way.

Maybe natural products are better for us. But first we have to quit deluding ourselves when we pick up a $5 bottle of all-natural spray cleaner, and realize that what we are paying for is the privilege of knowing that everything in that bottle was somehow derived from plants. It does not mean that the products are necessarily any safer, and it does not mean that the product is necessarily any better for the planet than, say, sodium carbonate (washing soda), which simply dissolves into comparatively simple ions. Let's take a good hard look at what's in the bottle first, before patting ourselves on the back.

The Case Against Organic

Chemicals are everywhere. Since the dawn of time, we've used salt to preserve our meat, and later, saltpeter. Lye (sodium hydroxide) was once used to make soap--if you read the cautionary warnings, suddenly your average shampoo, laden with "chemicals", doesn't sound so bad. We've been making use of opium for five thousand years, and magic mushrooms ever since someone mistakenly added them to his soup.

So when the Greens declare a war on chemicals, what exactly do they mean? Gram for gram, the most deadly poisons are found in living creatures. Take jellyfish, for instance--we all know they sting, and that their stings hurt. But when they start "blooming", when massive numbers float through the oceans in packs, they can do serious ecological damage, on the scale of industrial disasters. I would be hard-pressed to seriously consider a ban on jellyfish, though.

This is not to say that pesticides and herbicides are, by any means, harmless. Organophosphates are NOT fun things to play with. But let's examine what chemicals have allowed us to achieve, and then ask whether we are willing to do without them, before we decide to ban them altogether (I know there is no serious talk about banning the use of pesticides and herbicides, but the most dedicated Greens probably wouldn't mind).

One of the main areas that Green folk like to stump about is organic farming, which is farming without any synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers. "It tastes better" and "It's healthier" are the usual claims; I've never been able to discern much of a difference. And maybe that has to do with the fact that I don't live in, say, California, so the spinach that was fresh off the organic farm has been sitting in the back of a semi for three days, so that by the time it reaches the store it tastes the same as the conventional spinach, grown closer to home (and therefore has no need to sit in a semi for three days). But regardless, it's hard to be against organic farming, until you think about what it means for your wallet:

Until the advent of modern farming (my definition of it can be found here), farmers were largely at the mercy of drought, plague, flood, hurricanes, earthquakes--anything that upset the growing process could be considered a natural disaster. The weather, alas, is neither predictable nor controllable, and that's doubly true now that global warming is such an issue. The fact that we have such an abundance of food and that it costs so little to the consumer, is testimony to the power these chemicals have that enable us to grow so much food at such low prices (farm subsidies help, too). Giving up chemicals would require giving up cheap food. And if you thought prices were high now...

Chemistry has played a role in EVERY aspect of human life, from the indium in your LCD screen that lets you read this, to the semiconductor that makes up the processor, to the tanning process that gives you a soft leather jacket, to the wine you drink and the clumping agent in the kitty's cat litter. Unless we're willing to go back to the Stone Age (because bronze involves smelting, and therefore charcoal, and therefore cutting down trees), we had damn well better come up with a much clearer definition of what we mean when we say "let's get the chemicals out of our lives".

And before I get reamed for this: I am not trying to say that organic farming is bad for the planet, or that pesticides and herbicides are good. Even I don't believe that. But when you start looking at the bigger picture, things get complicated--what if food is priced beyond the range of the poor? Maybe that's not a big deal in the US, where the deal is "food or gas", but it can be a big deal in poverty-stricken areas of the world, where there is no question--everything must go towards food. I am trying to point out that without a clearer definition of what we mean by "chemicals", the logic ultimately takes us to an illogical conclusion.

Chemicals: morally neutral

The story of penicillin is an interesting one: Alexander Fleming discovered that a mold had contaminated his bacterial culture (legend has it that his lab was so dirty, it wasn't actually a culture). By serendipitous luck, he realized that there was a ring around the mold colonies around which no bacteria grew. Upon filtering the broth, he found that it could kill bacteria, wasn't toxic to mice, and had a broad range of activity, at miniscule doses.

The idea that World War II was the best thing that could have happened to the world has been tossed around by those with a historical bent. It wasn't until the Second World War that, given the success of sulfa drugs, penicillin's possibilities became recognized. By 1943, production was 800 million units of this drug by growing up massive cultures of mold and isolating it from the culture--being able to eliminate infected wounds and pneumonia was probably a powerful morale-booster (source: Napoleon's Buttons).

And then things went wrong. Or rather, they didn't go wrong: life happened. Doctors forgot that bacteria have been around for 3.5 billion years--and if they could survive the PreCambrian Extinction, the KT Collapse, the fall of the dinosaurs, and our nuclear testing, a molecule from a mold that they most likely evolved with over the course of the last 2 billion years would merely baffle them, at best.

Drug resistance to penicillin illustrates the premise that chemicals themselves are morally neutral. They are "good" or "bad" only depending on how we use them. A molecule of DDT has no more of a moral code than a brick. But apply it cautiously, or ruthlessly, and people either praise it, or loathe it depending on what value is at stake.

It therefore makes no sense to malign chemical additives, pesticides, and herbicides because of what they are. But that does not grant free license to contaminate our waterways with mercury and pour sulfuric acid into the air. Just because the molecules are morally neutral does not mean we can afford to be.

And here the problem lies in the fundamental "good" and "bad" of the whole Green movement. Just where do we draw the lines, what are the goals, how can we achieve them in a meaningful way? Any one aspect of the Green movement (fewer pollutants, less greenhouse gas, clean water, clean air, no GMOs, organic foods) ultimately fails to see the big picture, and usually fails to consider the social ramifications of what each one recommends.

For instance, if organic farming were to become the mainstay of food production tomorrow: yields of organic crops are usually lower than conventionally-grown produce (usually about 20-50%, depending on the crop, the farmer, the region, the weather), so an organic farmer would need to produce more in order to get the same amount. He must therefore spend more time tilling his fields with a motorized vehicle, adding more greenhouse gases to the environment than the conventional farmer. Now, of course, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the organic farmer most probably does less harm than the pesticides sprayed by the conventional farmer. But how much more, and if your goal is to reduce greenhouse gases, then the organic farmer loses out.

What the Green movement needs first is to define what it wants to achieve in no uncertain terms. Then it needs to look reality squarely in the eye and accept it for what it is.

And the reality is this: we like our bread soft and unmoldy after a week in our pantry; we like our pet's food in conveniently stored and handled packages. We like that our cars don't rust and our pet don't have fleas, that cleaners work without too much elbow grease and hassle. Chemicals, while they can do a lot of harm, can't be blamed for everything, not when the choices we make concerning them are so selfish when it comes to our own time, energy, and money. These choices lie with us, not with the chemicals.

Environmentalism: chemistry edition

There is no question that environmentalism is important. But there is little consensus as to what it means to be environmentally conscious, what the impacts of our actions are, and where the ethical boundaries lie. There is even less consensus as to a definition of "reasonable lengths" one should go to in order to be "green".

These are big questions--I could probably blog for the rest of my life answering them (giving my version of the answers). However, having learned that it's better to be able to digest what you've chewed off, I've arbitrarily decided to focus on chemistry and environmentalism instead.

I say "arbitrarily" but my decision was based mostly on National Geographic's latest edition of the Green Guide. I love the National Geographic Society--that they can make the public aware of issues in countries like Myanmar (recently Burma) speaks to the immense power of photographs, and the prowess of the photographers they hire. I'll be frank and say that their articles are somewhat lacking for completeness, in that many of them do not cover the topics in the detail that I would like, but that's excusable, because nobody does, and it's a magazine, not a book.

But what irks me the most about the Green Guide is not the incompleteness, the logical fallacies, or their not thinking through the ramifications of their actions (or doing so in such a limited fashion that they fail to see the bigger picture--systems biolgoy, anyone?). It is, rather, that the language used assigns a moral standard for things that are "morally neutral" (a wonderful turn of phrase by J.K. Rowling). They imply that chemicals are bad for the environment, which is most likely true. But they also assume that natural products are good, which is most assuredly NOT the case.

This week I will be expounding on this dichotomy, in the hope that I might get some of you to think about the Green movement differently. I wholeheartedly encourage embracing the Green movement (in part because I no longer have to feel like the only twenty-six year-old in the Western World without a car*). But the messages that some of the groups tout are...not exactly doing the Green movement any favors.

To be discussed this week:

1) Chemicals are morally neutral
2) The extent to which we rely on chemistry
3) Natural as better--or not
4) Unintended consequences of greenery (strictly involving chemicals)
5) What it means to be green, the chemistry edition.

*Yes, that was meant in jest.