A ROOM WITH A POINT OF VIEW

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Image credit: MUHAMMED ZAFER YAHSI on Unsplash.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Bob McDonald is the host of a weekly radio science show, CBC’s Quirks & Quarks, since 1992, drawing nearly 800,000 listeners each week.

He is also familiar to viewers who watched him banter with Peter Mansbridge while enlightening us on the science issues of the day.

In The Future is Now, he brings his easy, engaging style to a book that covers everything from solar power and biofuels to wind, nuclear and hydrogen power, along with a host of other energy sources.

The dedication makes it clear where he’s headed: To all who see a clear path to a green energy future.

Just the introduction is filled with information that makes one sit up and go, “Really? Wow!”

To wit: There is as much solar energy beaming down from the sky onto the Earth every hour that humanity consumes in a year.

Worldwide, we consume around 100 million barrels of oil every day. Enough to keep Niagara Falls running for two hours.

When we burn fuel in a car, most of the products of that burning are thrown into the air. Or as McDonald puts it, “Imagine going to a filling station, pumping gas into the fuel tank but stopping at $10. Then remove the nozzle from the car and spray $40 of gas into the air.”

That is not a picture I can get out of my mind easily.

He reminds us of the clear skies that appeared over Beijing and Seoul at the height of COVID lockdowns. No one was going anywhere and “skies shrouded in smog for decades” cleared.

Which is not to say alternative sources of power are without issues.

Batteries for electric vehicles are heavy and take a long time to recharge.

Solar panels are not currently recyclable.

Windmills kill birds and dams flood landscapes.

Many of us tend to think of the environmental movement in India as being more of the activist kind, and not so much innovative. The Narmada movement or the Chipko movement being two prime examples.  McDonald shares two examples that are changing the way the country produces and consumes power. Under the One Sun, One Power, One Grid program, India is incentivizing the installation of solar panels on rooftops and is building some of the largest solar farms on the planet – the Pavagada Solar Park in South India, for instance, provides power for close to a million homes.

He describes a 2014 project in Gujarat that covered canals with solar panels. The panels powered irrigation pumps and retained moisture in the canals by cutting down on evaporation at the same time. The cooling effect of the canals also kept the panels at optimum efficiency as, ironically, solar panels lose efficiency if they overheat. Who knew? The cover also cut down on algae blooms, turning the project into a four-in-one solution.

There are heartwarming passages about how scientists in the pursuit of more efficient energy options that cause less damage to the environment pause to ensure the little creatures that also call the planet home are not endangered.

Co-operation between conservationists and energy developers relocated hundreds of tortoises before the installation of a solar farm in California. Wind turbine blades were inspired by the design of an owl’s wings that give it its almost silent flight and that following a study at the university of Calgary, the startup speeds of these turbines was reduced during migration to cut down the number of birds that die each year.

The book is packed with fun facts.

As is often the case with innovative new technology, it was the military, with its deep financial pockets, that funded research in solar cells for their own purposes: to keep satellites operating in space for long periods of time so they could spy on enemies from above.

Or the reminder that wind power is really, one of the oldest forms of energy known to man – it enabled ancient mariners to cross seas!

And there is an amusing anecdote, which is also a cautionary tale. A journalist colleague at the CBC travelled to the North Pole aboard a Canadian icebreaker. After crunching through ice for days, they were surprised to be met at the pole by a much larger, nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker. The Russian captain invited the Canadians over for dinner and a tour of their impressive vessel. The captain asked his Canadian counterpart how much diesel fuel he burned reaching the Pole. When the Canadian calculated the number of tons of fuel used by his ship, the Russian chuckled and replied, “I think we burned a few grams of uranium”.

Three Mile Island in the US, Chernobyl, Fukushima, those we recall instantly, but there have been others. Smaller ones, meltdowns, not explosions, but with the potential to cause immense harm. So is nuclear power a dangerous thing, to be avoided at all cost? It can be used in many positive ways, and, says McDonald, has the best safety record of any energy production. But bear in mind Albert Einstein’s take on it, which he shares in the book: “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.” And, “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

With alternatives to oil like hydrogen being in the play, the future may indeed be here and now. But we need some help making the most of it.

McDonald quotes University of Alberta’s Dr Arvind Rajendran: “Unless you are doing an aggressive move to renewables, in most reasonable scenarios, it looks like you will still be producing a lot of CO2. If we are to reach net zero, we need technologies that will bring down the CO2, and that is a place where I see CO2 capture fitting in, at least as a bridge for the next thirty to forty years. And going forward, unless we find ways of making chemicals from sources other than fossil fuels, we will need these options to go to net zero.” 

In a back to the future scenario, the focus of urban planners is on walkable communities.

This is really a return to the village concept. Neighbourhoods are compact and diverse so it is possible  to walk to school, be entertained, recreate and shop – all close to home without the need for personal cars.

And then McDonald throws in the most important caveat:

But implementing alternative technologies on a large scale and truly decarbonizing our atmosphere to prevent further climate change will take more than scientific expertise and technical skill. It will require political will, economic investment, and public acceptance. In other words, the science and technology are only half of the equation.”

With many diagrams and line drawings, the book may look like a textbook but the book of immense optimism is also entertaining and enlightening. If only actual textbooks were like this.

The Future is Now by Bob McDonald is published by Viking Canada, $32.95.