Saving the World

Nobel prize-winning physicist Jack Steinberger, 92, and John Flannery

How can we expect the United States to save the world when it’s not able to remain open to do its business?

When you have to pay your bills past due and owing, do you get to negotiate and say, well I’ll pay if you, Mr Landlord, change your policies and, oh, reduce my rent?  Not very likely!  You live in the real world rather than the tea-induced fantasy factory that’s stymied the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, and put our nation at risk.

In this dystopian context, we have to ask what our government is doing that’s really important, is it doing anything to “save the world,” whether it’s anticipating what we do when we’ve exhausted our fossil fuels as an energy source or how we protect against the annihilating force of a targeted nuclear weapon.

I had the opportunity to listen and talk with Nobel prize-winning physicist, Jack Steinberger, 92, about “saving the world,” although his characterization was more modest, like his manner.

Jack won the Nobel Prize in 1988 “for the neutrino beam method and the double structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino.”  In other words, he’s real smart.

Aside from its terribly adverse effect on the world’s environment, Jack says of our dependence on fossil fuel that it begs the question, what do we do when our fossil fuels run out?  Jack estimates that we have a depleting inventory of oil (lasting 30 years), gas (for about 35 years) and coal (for 60 years).  “How are we going to keep planes in the skies,” said Jack, “when these fuels are gone?”

Jack’s prescriptions are straightforward: 1. Reduce our birth rate, 2. Reduce our consumption, 3. Increase our energy efficiency, and 4. Explore the use of thermal solar energy.

Thermal solar is Jack’s preferred response to the unsolved challenge, how we store energy from renewables in those times of the day or season when there’s no wind or sun to generate power.

“The Solar Energy Generating System (SEGS), working since 1985 in California, with a huge production capacity,” Jack says, “is one example of what works and is being used right now.”

It’s a parabolic mirror that reflects the solar radiation to a focal point, where glass tubing containing fluid is heated, and this heat is stored for months at a time, providing not only peak power but also baseload power generation that can displace coal- and natural gas-fired power plants.

Parabolic Mirror – Solar Thermal

Jack was hopeful when he heard our newly minted President Barack Obama speak in Prague, on April 5, 2009, saying, “we must confront climate change by ending the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.”

By September 2013, however, we are still waiting for initiatives that might accomplish this objective.

As recently as this past weekend, a self-described Cold War bomber pilot, writing in the Post, in a brilliant example of Orwellian newspeak, said “nuclear weapons are instruments of peace.”

Jack was quite encouraged in April 2009 when the President took a different tact, promising that he would confront “the spread of catastrophic weapons” that could erase the world “in a single flash of light” and committed his Administration “to seek[ing] the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Jack concurred, “I think there is absolutely no way but to get rid of them, and America is the one who must lead the way.”

When Obama gave a second speech in Berlin this past June, however, he said we have more nuclear weapons than we “need,” but then pushed further down the road any comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and any fissile material cutoff treaty.  The Department of Defense released a report that now we must maintain a deterrent, rather than the President’s earlier promised commitment to disarmament, and we must use our nuclear arsenal to “deter” not only Russia but China as well.  One step forward, two more backward.  Nor is Congress any help.  Many object to any reduction in the nuclear arsenal.

“I can’t imagine using a nuclear weapon,” said Jack, “can’t imagine a war, so we have to solve this problem.  As long as we lead, others will follow.  But we are not leading.”

Perhaps it’s a lot to ask our government to “save the world” when it can’t guarantee that it’s open for business.  But saving the world is more than an aspiration; it’s about our very survival.