Eyeing the best way to target climate change
I am suspicious of the fossil fuel industry’s carbon-capture and sequestration proposals, their preferred solution to limit climate change.
Imagine if we adopted that approach to the lead pollution caused by hunting waterfowl and other game in our wetlands.
Taxpayer-supported lead shot capture and sequestration (LSCS) programs in wetlands would let ammunition makers and their customers maintain the status quo.
Waterfowl and other game hunters aim to get their bag limit. They ‘emit’ spent ammunition, especially lead shot, in and around wetlands where they hunt.
In the past, shotgun shells usually contained lead shot. As early as 1894, we realized that waterfowl and other animals ate lead shot from pond bottoms and edges confusing it for seeds or pebbles to retain in their gizzards. Predators, including bald eagles, and scavengers ingested and bio-concentrated lead from their food.
The solution to biological affects of this pollutant was pretty obvious: Get the lead out of ammunition, especially that used in and around wetlands. At least 35 states and the federal government have required use of non-toxic ammunition in and around wildlife refuges and similar areas.
Non-toxic ammo costs more. Hunters had to adjust to its unfamiliar characteristics. Some still complain about the change.
Burning fossil fuels resembles shooting ducks in a pond.
We want to generate electricity and move vehicles. We also emit unwanted greenhouse gases in the process. Those cause climate change, as confirmed yet again in a major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report last month.
This summer’s droughts, severe floods, lethal heat waves, and unprecedented forest fires all bear witness to climate scientists’ warnings over the last quarter-century.
A lead shot capture and sequestration program would require vast efforts to dredge and sift the muck and surrounding mud of waterfowl habitats at great expense with no obvious mechanism to make ammunition makers cover the costs.
In similar fashion, imagine a chlorofluorocarbon, capture and sequestration (CFCCS) program. Just as with industry-proposed Direct Air Capture (DAR) of carbon dioxide, giant CFC collectors would remove the pollutant from the air.
The coolant industry developed more ozone-friendly alternatives. The Montreal Protocol led to the gradual elimination of CFC use. The ozone layer is recovering slowly, as is the United States Senate having ratified the treaty unanimously in 1988.
Fossil fuel companies support carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) initiatives to the tune of $12 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure before Congress. Why not, instead, do what the ammunition and coolant industries did? Just say no to carbon in electricity generation and most forms of transportation?
They can’t.
Most fossil fuel companies, especially coal companies, cannot reformulate their product the way ammunition and coolant industries did. Coal is carbon. Lead shot does not have to be lead. Coolants do not have to destroy the ozone layer. What’s a coal-burning electric company to do? Get somebody else to pay for cleaning up your pollution and keeping you afloat.
In last Sunday’s Dispatch, political columnist Tom Suddes reminds us that because of House Bill 6, “So far, Ohioans have paid stockholder-owned (coal-fired) electric companies a combined $143.3 million in extra charges beginning in January 2020.” They need a bag limit.
Steve Rissing is professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University.
steverissing@hotmail.com