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FSM - Testemunho completo de Fritjof Capra sobre Energia e Sustentabilidade - em inglês

De: - EXCLUSIVO - EcoAgência de Notícias
Data: 27-jan-03
Hora: 21:41:23

O físico austríaco Fritjof Capra lotou hoje (27) a Quinta Sala do Fórum Social Mundial. Mais de quatro mil pessoas acompanharam o depoimento sobre Energia e Sustentabilidade apresentado no final da tarde na orla do Lago Guaíba, no Acampamento da Juventude. Antes de entrar no conteúdo científico da sua palestra, Capra fez considerações políticas sobre o seu otimismo com o "novo Brasil que está nascendo". Ao citar e elogiar parte da história de vida do presidente Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, Capra foi interrompido por gritos de "Lula, Lula, Lula".

A seguir, a íntegra do depoimento, em inglês.

Energy and Sustainability

Youth Camping, World Social Forum

by Fritjof Capra

Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 2003

ecological sustainability

I shall make a few comments about energy and sustainability. A sustainable community is usually defined as one that is able to satisfy its needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations. This is an important moral exhortation. It reminds us of our responsibility to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world with as many opportunities as the ones we inherited. However, this definition does not tell us anything about how to build a sustainable community. What we need is an operational definition of ecological sustainability.

The key to such an operational definition is the realization that we do not need to invent sustainable human communities from zero but can model them after nature’s ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its ways of life, businesses, economy, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

This definition implies that the first step in our endeavor to build sustainable communities must be to become “ecologically literate,” i.e., to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life. In the coming decades the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy — our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly.

We need to teach our children, and our political and corporate leaders, the fundamental facts of life — that one species' waste is another species' food; that matter cycles continually through the web of life; that the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun; that diversity assures resilience; that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.

Ecological literacy is the first step on the road to sustainability. The second step is ecological design. We need to apply our ecological knowledge to the fundamental redesign of our technologies and social institutions, so as to bridge the current gap between human design and the ecologically sustainable systems of nature.

Design, in the broadest sense, consists in shaping flows of energy and materials for human purposes. Ecological design is a process in which our human purposes are carefully meshed with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world. Ecological design principles reflect the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life. To practice industrial design in such a context requires a fundamental shift in our attitude toward nature, a shift from finding out what we can extract from nature, to what we can learn from her.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in ecologically oriented design practices and projects, all of which are now well documented. Let me now just concentrate on one important ecodesign area — energy. energy from the sun

In a sustainable society, all human activities and industrial processes must be fueled by solar energy like the processes in nature’s ecosystems. Because of the critical role of carbon in global climate change, it is evident that fossil fuels are unsustainable in the long run. Hence, the shift to a sustainable society centrally includes a shift from fossil fuels to solar power.

Indeed, solar energy is the energy sector that has seen the fastest growth over the past decade. The use of photovoltaic cells increased by about 17 percent a year in the 1990s, and wind power has grown even more spectacularly. It increased by about 24 percent a year during the 1990s, and in 2001 wind generating capacity increased by an astonishing 31%.

Any realistic solar energy program will have to come up with enough liquid fuel to operate our airplanes, buses, cars, and trucks. Until recently, this has been the Achilles heel of all renewable-energy scenarios. During the last few years, however, this problem found a spectacular solution with the development of efficient hydrogen fuel cells that promise to inaugurate a new era in energy production — the “hydrogen economy.”

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity and water — and nothing else! This makes hydrogen the ultimate clean fuel. Several companies around the world are now racing to be the first to commercially produce residential fuel cell systems.

In the meantime, Iceland has launched a multi-million-dollar venture to create the world’s first hydrogen economy. To do so, Iceland will use its vast geothermal and hydroelectric resources to produce hydrogen from sea water, to be used first in buses and then in passenger cars and fishing vessels. The goal set by the government is to complete the transition to hydrogen between 2030 and 2040.

Two months ago, European Union committed itself to spending over 2 billion euros over the next 5 years for research into sustainable energy projects with the central focus on hydrogen fuel cells. The EU has set a goal of obtaining 22% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

At present, natural gas is the most common source of hydrogen, but separation from water with the help of renewable energy sources (especially wind power) will be the most economical and cleanest method in the long run. When that happens, we will have created a truly sustainable system of energy generation, using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, producing electricity from hydrogen, and ending up again with water.

hypercars

Closely connected with the shift to renewable energy sources is the redesign of automobiles, which may be the ecodesign branch with the most far-reaching industrial consequences. It involves design ideas so radical that they will not only change today’s automobile industry beyond recognition but may have equally sweeping effects on the associated oil, steel, and electricity industries.

Physicist Amory Lovins and his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute have synthesized these ideas into a conceptual design they call the “hypercar,” which combines three key elements: It is ultralight, because the standard metal auto body is replaced by a body made of strong carbon fibers embedded in special moldable plastics, which cuts the car’s weight in half. Secondly, the hypercar has high aerodynamic efficiency; and thirdly, it is propelled by a “hybrid-electric” drive, which combines an electric motor with fuel that produces the electricity for the motor on board.

When these three elements are integrated into a single design, they save at least 70-80 percent of the fuel used by standard cars, while also making the car safer and more comfortable.

Hybrid cars can use gasoline or a variety of cleaner options. The cleanest, most efficient, and most elegant way is to use hydrogen in a fuel cell. Such an automobile not only operates silently and without any pollution, but also becomes, in effect, a small power plant on wheels. When the car is not used — in other words, most of the time — the electricity produced by its fuel cell could be sent into the electric grid and the owner could automatically be credited for it.

Toyota and Honda were the first to offer hybrid cars with fuel efficiencies of 50 miles/gallon (18 km/l). Similar cars, achieving fuel efficiencies of about 80 miles/gallon (3o km/l), have been tested by General Motors, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler, and are now heading for production. In addition, fuel-cell cars are scheduled for production within the next three years by eight major automakers. the transition to the hydrogen economy

We are now at the beginning of a historic transition from the petroleum age to the hydrogen age. I can say this confidently for three reasons:

1. The emissions from burning oil already have a devastating impact on the environment in terms of air pollution and climate change, which will increase with increasing energy consumption.
2. Global oil production will peak within the next two or three decades, and from then on the price of oil will steadily rise.

(3) The last remaining oil reserves will be concentrated in the Middle East, which is politically and socially the most unstable region in the world. This means that oil from the Persian Gulf will become uncompetitive with other energy sources because of the high military costs of protecting its steady flow. In the United States, the military costs of protecting each barrel of oil have already been higher than the cost of the oil during the past 10 years, and with the new policies of the Bush Administration these costs will continue to increase.

Taken together, these three aspects of the economics of oil make it clear that oil will eventually become uncompetitive, compared to hydrogen, and thus no longer worth extracting. As the ecodesigners like to point out, the Stone Age did not end because people ran out of stones. Similarly, the Petroleum Age will not end because we will run out of petroleum. It will end because we have developed superior technologies. The technological and political context of the transition to hydrogen is still unclear, but we should realize that evolutionary changes of this magnitude cannot be prevented by short-term political activities.

The transition to the hydrogen economy will have profound social and political consequences, as countries gradually will become independent of imported oil. It will fundamentally change U.S. foreign and military policies, especially in the Middle East, which are currently driven by the perception of oil as a "strategic resource."

This perception is false. Even now the United States has the technologies to completely free itself from its dependence on Persian Gulf oil. A rapid shift to the hydrogen economy would make it possible to shift American foreign policy from the current focus on extraction of oil and other natural resources to a new focus on ending world hunger and homelessness, and on restoring the natural environment instead of destroying it. Such a new focus would dramatically increase world security and would be the best anti-terrorism policy. The shift to the hydrogen economy in the United States should therefore be financed by the Defense Department which has plenty of money to do so.

The hydrogen economy will also be extremely important in the developing world where lack of access to energy, especially electricity, is a key factor in perpetuating poverty. Villages around the world will be able to install renewable energy technologies — photovoltaic, wind, or biomass — to produce hydrogen from water and store it for subsequent use in fuel cells. The goal ought to be to provide stationary fuel cells for every neighborhood and village in the developing world. Fulfilling the energy needs of the developing world with renewable resources and hydrogen will be the only way to lift billions of people out of poverty.

In addition to producing electricity, hydrogen fuel cells also produce pure drinking water as a by-product, which will be a significant advantage in village communities around the world where access to clean water is often difficult.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that today the transition to a sustainable future is no longer a technical nor a conceptual problem. It is a problem of values and political will. As we say here in Porto Alegre, another world is possible.

Roberto Villar Belmonte - roberto@ecoagencia.com.br - © EcoAgência de Notícias, janeiro 2003 - http://www.ecoagencia.com.br .