Review: The Conundrum by David Owen
For as long as there have been humans, there has been the Law of Unintended Consequences, the sad and unavoidable fact that for every problem humans solve, new unforeseen problems crop up. The taming of fire gave early humans light and heat but singed more than a few Neanderthal eyebrows. Humanity’s use of energy changed over the millennia and as wind, water, fire, and the atomic nucleus were mastered. Human life became easier, even comfortable, but at the cost of ever increasing energy use. It is energy use that is at the center of David Owen’s book “The Conundrum”, in which he shows how in our modern attempt to reduce the cost and waste of energy, we may be doing more harm than good.
The premise of “The Conundrum” is that we are paying a terrible environmental cost for the energy we use and that attempts to improve efficiency and otherwise save the planet often have the unintended consequence of increasing consumption overall. What good is it, Owen asks us, if by making cars more efficient, people can afford to drive further and more often? So it goes with lighting and appliances - the less energy each uses means less cost to the consumer and less incentive to conserve, negating any power savings and just making environmental problems worse. Through a series of short chapters on topics ranging from locavorism, high-speed rail, appliances, energy storage, renewable power sources, and the developing world, Owen paints a bleak picture of the road to environmental hell paved with good intentions. However, he does not smugly savor the deflation of so many environmental myths; David Owen is by no means a he-man Al Gore-hating climate change denialist. He has earnestly looked at the problem of energy use and its consequences and has found much in common environmental wisdom that is lacking.
“The Conundrum” is well written and accessible with good pacing (one should expect that as a minimum from someone who writes for The New Yorker.) It lays out the basic facts about energy generation and use in a clear and readable manner without being particularly dry or preachy, always a plus for a book on energy and the environment. It is a bit light on data as a result, but doesn’t suffer unduly for it; “The Conundrum” is not aimed at a data-driven audience unlike, for example, Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Discipline”. In fact, “The Conundrum” is a wonderful, fast introduction to many topics covered more comprehensively and in greater technical depth in “Whole Earth Discipline”.
But where “Whole Earth Discipline” actively embraces technological efforts to lighten humanity’s tread on the planet, “The Conundrum” eschews any notion that technology can help fix what it has allegedly set awry. Owen ends the book with a list of solutions that he essentially admits are draconian, a climate denialist’s worst nightmare of extreme social control, trampling of the individual, and technology rationing which reads like the energy policy of the Khmer Rouge. Owen is under no allusion about how unpalatable his solutions would be to the average First Worlder. While I appreciate his honesty, I question his wisdom; taken at face value, “The Conundrum” presents no realistic hope.
The problem, I think, is in taking “The Conundrum”‘s premise at face value. Owen conflates energy use with its externalities, its social and environmental cost. To some extent this is reasonable; between Fukushima, cheap natural gas, and governmental and industrial obstructionism, we seem to be making no serious progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power barely warrants a few paragraphs, mostly tired old “takes too long to license and build” true-at-present-isms. There is no such thing as a purely technical solution to any problem; technology provides political and social options which then influence technological development. Owen ignores this interdependency, asserts the impossibility of a technical fix, and gets on with his doom saying. There’s some truth there, but the net effect is to discourage people from even trying.
More ominously, Owen seems very dismissive of the poverty and human suffering averted by energy use. He seems to want to wind back the clock to the days before airplanes, cars, refrigerators, and air conditioning were accessible to most people on the economic spectrum (in industrial economies at least); undoubtedly he’d have lamented firewood as being a gateway fuel to our current predicament had he written this a few thousand years ago. Cars are to be made as uncomfortable as possible; making each mile an ordeal will reduce energy consumption, a good and right thing to Owen. Better still that the world’s impoverished millions never own a car (though they’re encouraged to move to a large dense urban area like Hong Kong or Manhattan where they will use much less energy in their nanoscale walk-ups.) While not being an overt classist, he comes across as somewhat bloodless for not taking full responsibility for what he is advocating - human suffering rivaling the worst that 20th-century Communism could whip up. This is baffling since Owen is obviously no frothing political ideologue. However, his myopic focus on reducing energy use (versus protecting the biosphere or averting human suffering from both poverty and climate change) leads him to a very dark place indeed.
Equally baffling is Owen’s illogical and insulting dig at atheists, positing that “[i]f the world is not a Creation but a ‘Randomdom’, why not have fun and tear it up?” Indeed, if one believes one’s eventual reward is in Heaven, not Earth, why not “be fruitful and multiply” and “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” and trash the planet? While Owen probably lives near nice liberal northeastern Christians who believe in tending God’s gift to Man, he seems ignorant of the less nice, less thoughtful Rapture-ready Christians who are more than happy to “Drill, Baby, Drill”. Scripture can be used to justify any behavior; religiosity does not imply a conservationist mindset, especially in America. Sometimes it implies quite the opposite. Regardless, Owen’s argument is stupid and gratuitous; local custom and culture likely play a greater role than religious belief in treating the environment well. Surely there’s a Pew poll which can confirm or dispute this and it’s really unfortunate that Owen didn’t perform the slightest due diligence before slagging off nonbelievers. From the rest of the book, I really expected better of him.
So to sum up, despite its flawed premise and quietly anti-human bias, “The Conundrum” is actually quite good. Take it for what it’s worth, there’s a lot of good information and a lot of surprises. It helps with bigger picture thinking, and provided it doesn’t induce too much revulsion, panic, or despair, it is a great prelude to a “Whole Earth Discipline”.