V.I. Energy Office spokesman Don Buchanan usually proselytizes about the importance of saving energy, but in his remarks Wednesday to the Rotary Club of St. John he spoke about what will happen if we don’t reduce consumption.
“Multiple individuals acting independently and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen,” Buchanan told the half-dozen members gathered at the Westin Resort and Villas Beach Café for the weekly meeting.
He was quoting Garrett Hardin’s essay “Tragedy of the Commons,” but said that while the essay concerned population, it also applies to the sustainability issues facing the world today.
“The human race is doomed if it does not begin to follow intelligent principals instead of falling for propaganda and advertising,” he said.
Discussing what happened when a Swiss community used a common piece of land for grazing cows, Buchanan said it worked fine when each resident had only one cow. However, when people began to add more cows to their herds, the land couldn’t support the increase.
“This is easily transported to fisheries and global warming,” Buchanan said.
Bringing his remarks to a local level, he said that consumers balk at paying more to the V.I. Water and Power Authority for sustainable energy such as wind because it is not in the best interest of their pocketbooks to do so, even though it’s better for the environment.
“Maybe we’re using too much energy,” he said.
There are three approaches to solving energy issues, Buchanan said. For starters, people can take individual responsibility by doing things like recycling, turning off lights and unplugging chargers.
Second, pressure from peers can convince others to reduce energy consumption.
Last, and the option that’s more difficult, governments can regulate energy usage. However, the world is vast and people in places like China are more concerned with using their polluting heat source to warm their food than stopping global warming.
Still, change is possible, Buchanan said. In an earlier era, people dumped excrement out into the street. That doesn’t happen anymore, but he said people still putt four gallons of fossil fuel pollution into the air on their drive between Christiansted and Frederiksted, St. Croix .
Buchanan also spoke about extinction of various species. With a graph in hand, he pointed out how species went extinct once humans showed up.
“Do we want to destroy the world?” he asked.
