PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Rob McClung

Leave Nothing but Footprints

One of the typical activities of any scientific society is the sponsorship and organization of scientific meetings. Meetings, congresses, and workshops are wonderful venues for the dissemination of scientific knowledge both within the scientific community and to the public. Our students need to learn to effectively communicate their results through talks and posters, and these same talks and posters contribute to our ongoing education. One has to keep abreast of the field both in one’s area of immediate research interest and in a broader context.

At meetings, we renew our relationships with old friends and make new ones. Meetings afford opportunities to meet with collaborators, work on manuscripts, and plan new projects. In my experience, face-to-face discussion is simply more effective than conference calls and can be much more fun as well. Of course, one or two meetings or seminar trips per month is overkill (on the body as well as the planet), as those of us living on a plane can attest. Thus, we need to balance the strengths of all communication forms: phone, e-mail, wiki, webcast, and RSS feed, as well as scientific meetings.

In my inaugural letter in the last issue of the newsletter (1), I reminded you of our upcoming meetings: The Pan American Congress Plant and BioEnergy Symposium and Plant Biology 2008, both to be held in Mérida, Mexico, from June 22 to 25 and June 26 to July 1, 2008, respectively. Registration opened for both meetings in early December (http://www.aspb.org/2008), and no doubt you will receive a number of e-mail reminders of this. As I said in my last letter, I hope to see many of you in Mérida. Let me assure you that both meetings will be excellent, and Mérida (2) is a fantastic venue! I intend to spend some time in the region after the meetings.

But is anything in life that simple? As I sat down to consider this letter, I could not help but remember a question that Larry Smart, the representative for the Northeast Section, raised at the Society’s Executive Committee meeting during a discussion of the sites for future Plant Biology meetings, including Hawaii in 2009. Larry asked if we had considered the carbon footprint associated with travel to distant locations. The answer was yes, sort of, but not rigorously.

I thought I should take a closer look. There is a profusion of sites on the web offering to calculate the carbon footprint of your planned trip to Mérida or anywhere else, for that matter. One such site (3) told me that my flight from Boston to Mérida (one-way) will be 3,084 km. Assuming I fly economy class (that is a safe assumption—I am not very tall, so it is not especially uncomfortable, and I am frugal, as befits a New Englander), my journey will consume 246 kg (326 liters) of fuel. The energy content of this amount of fuel is equivalent to that of 3,254 kW-hours of electricity, enough to light six 60W light bulbs continuously for one year.

That much fuel contains as much carbon as a typical tree about 13 meters tall. In terms of global warming, though, it is even worse than that sounds, because the total warming effect of the airplane emissions (CO2, NOx, which catalyzes the formation of ozone, a greenhouse gas, and water vapor) is about three times greater than the effect of CO2 alone. This analysis is quite complex, and the factor actually can range from two- to fivefold, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (4). As an aside, I should note that the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore (5).

To return to air travel, business class apparently costs about 1.5 times as much in terms of fuel consumption, because one occupies a larger portion of the airplane (still quite a bargain, compared with the fare differential). Obviously, the calculations are imperfect, and many of the assumptions (for example, the site’s calculations are for travel in a Boeing 747, which is not used for this particular route, occupied at 80% capacity) are unlikely to be met. For instance, that site assumes a direct routing, and I am likely to fly via Houston (3,700 km one way).

However, a detailed and accurate calculation is not the point. The point is that each of our activities comes at a cost of energy consumption, and there are climate change consequences to the use of that energy. Whoever first said “take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints” did not anticipate carbon footprints. Perhaps the camping mantra of “tread lightly, and leave nothing behind” is more appropriate.

There is no small irony in our Society hosting a meeting on biofuels, with the laudable goal of addressing the need for a sustainable and renewable supply of energy, that requires almost all of the 500 anticipated registrants to fly great distances to participate. This inescapable irony has yielded considerable recent criticism of the UN-sponsored conference on climate change held in Bali December 3–14, 2007 (6), in both the traditional media (7) and the blogosphere (8). One possible route to bringing the scientific portion of the meeting to a broad audience with almost no carbon footprint is to broadcast live and/or archive the talks along with the posters and abstracts. Even questions could be contributed by webcam or e-mail. After all, our primary goal is to get the knowledge out and to expand participation. Other societies, including the Ecological Society of America (9) and the Society for Conservation Biology (10), have taken significant steps to try to offset the impacts of their members’ travel to conferences. The ASPB Executive Committee will further discuss how the Society can reduce its carbon footprint at its February meeting.

In spite of this, I still plan to attend ASPB’s meetings in Mérida. Plant biology’s past and potential future contributions to global well-being cannot be denied. Norman Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his incredible scientific contributions to human food supplies, which we now refer to as “the green revolution” (11). In the context of energy and global warming, it is important to remember that plant biology has the potential to make a significant positive impact on our energy supply.

I encourage you to take a second look at Rick Amasino’s final president’s letter in the September/October newsletter in which he discussed energy, biofuels, and carbon offsets (12). Rick cited Department of Energy estimates (13) that cellulosic biomass could provide a carbon-neutral source equivalent to about 10% of current U.S. fossil fuel use. To quote Rick, “At first glance, the cellulosic biofuels’ slice of the overall energy pie might appear small. But given that addressing a problem of this magnitude will require a portfolio of approaches, a slice that comprises 10% of the pie is a major contribution.” Is there a future peace prize in the biofuels field? That remains to be seen. But certainly there is the opportunity for plant biology to make a significant impact in the effort to develop a sustainable energy supply while minimizing adverse environmental consequences.

Figure 1. Summary of U.S. energy production and consumption from 1949 through 2006. Source: Department of Energy Annual Energy Review, 2006 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/contents.html).

Figure 2. Summary of U.S. energy production and consumption by energy category in 1971 and 2006. Source: Department of Energy Annual Energy Review, 2006 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/contents/html).

The other side of the coin—sequestering carbon, recharging underground aquifers, buffering soil erosion and fertilizer runoff, providing pollination, and maintaining biodiversity—is collectively known as ecosystem services. Restoring forests has already won the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 2004 to Wangari Maathai for her Green Belt movement (14). So our next challenge is to restore nature’s biocapacity to produce food, fiber, and now fuel by moving the green revolution toward sustainability. We must focus on solutions that can deliver returns in both the direct and indirect ecological products of nature, even if that means we give up a slight advantage to maximize a particular output. Prairie hay biofuel (15) may offer one such example and perennial wheat another (16). It is easy to adopt a posture of despair and cynicism in the face of problems of enormous scale and consequence. After all, what can one person do? Perhaps individuals cannot do much, even if they modify their energy consumption patterns. Collectively, though, many people can accomplish a great deal. In response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, the United States reduced total petroleum consumption by about 20% (Figure 1). One aspect of this response was the adoption of cars with improved fuel efficiency, which increased by about 70% from adjusted miles per gallon (mpg) of 13.1 in 1975 to 22.0 in 1987 (17).

The subsequent 20 years have seen complacency and a slight reduction in fuel efficiency to 20.2 mpg in 2007. Over that interval, engineering improvements were simply misplaced. For example, from 1987 to 2007, vehicle weight increased about 25% (oh, those SUVs!), but average engine power rose 90%, from 118 to 223 horsepower, powering a 27% reduction in the number of seconds required to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph from 13.1 to 9.6! This is simply mad. But we all have choices: Compare your neighbor’s 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee four-wheel drive at 11/14 city/highway mpg with your 2008 Toyota Prius (hybrid electric) at 48/45 city/highway mpg (18). Crude oil prices hovering around $90 per barrel should provide some urgency to consumer demand for improved fuel efficiency. Collectively, we can have considerable effect. So drive your hybrid (or better, take the bus) to the airport on your way to Mérida.

As scientists, we have the opportunity and arguably the imperative to accomplish much more than simply acting as responsible citizens contributing through the collective power of changing consumer demands. We can set examples in the use of renewable energy and of energy-efficient behavior for society. We can also urge our academic, government, and industry employers to strive for maximum energy efficiency and use of renewable sources of energy. Of course, we can influence government directions and priorities through the ballot box, which is front and center at this time in the U.S. election cycle when living in New Hampshire!

We are scientists, and we can and should use our talents to provide the innovations that will be necessary to yield a greener economy. The ideas, vision, and energy of Norman Borlaug effected a revolution in cereal productivity. Biofuels, if we define them narrowly, may not provide the equivalent of a second green revolution, but the discussion can broaden to include other natural services and contribute in a major way to sustainable land use. Ten percent of our current energy need is not that different in absolute value than the 20% reduction in petroleum consumption that occurred in response to the oil crisis of the 1970s (Figures 1 and 2). Plant scientists must not lose sight, either as individuals or as a society, of our potential to improve the human condition. I view the meetings in Mérida as one of many investments we need to make toward increased energy production from biofuels. The goal is worthy. Our responsibility is to nurture that investment.
See you in Mérida, and if not, see us online!

Rob McClung
c.robertson.mcclung@dartmouth.edu

I thank Andy Friedland (Dartmouth College), Larry Smart (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry), and Justin Borevitz (University of Chicago) for helpful conversations and comments.

REFERENCES

1. Rob McClung, “A Time of Transition (President’s Letter),” ASPB News 34 (November–December 2007): 1; http://www.aspb.org/newsletter/novdec07/01presltr34_6.cfm)
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merida_mexico
3. http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mf.html
4. http://www.ipcc.ch
5. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007
6. http://unfccc.int/2860.php
7. E.g., Robin McDowell, “More than 10,000 jet into Bali for global warming conference,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer (December 4, 2007); http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/342281_bali05.html
8. E.g., Scott Kirwin, “Carbon Footprint of UN Conference,” The Razor (Novemer 21, 2007); http://www.therazor.org/?p=916
9. Peggy Swisher, “Walking the Talk,” Convene’s Green Pages (November 2007); http://archive.pcma.org/conv/nov07/Green%20Pages%2080.pdf
10. http://www.conbio.org/projects/carbonoffset
11. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/
12. Richard Amasino, “The Energy Pie (President’s Letter),” ASPB News 34 (September–October 2007): 5–6; http://www.aspb.org/newsletter/septoct07/03pl34_5.cfm)
13. Department of Energy, “Biofuels for Transportation” (July 2007 version); http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/transportation.shtml
14. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004
15. D. Tilman, J. Hill, C. Lehman, “Carbon-negative biofuels from low-input high-diversity grassland biomass,” Science 314 (December 8, 2006): 1598–1600.
16. See Wes Jackson, The Land Institute; http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2007/03/15/45facffb6ccd6
17. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.htm
18. http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/basicinformation.htm