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Friday, March 7,2003
-Oregon Daily Emerald
Commentary
Editor in Chief:
Michael J. Kleckner
Managing Editor:
Jessica Richelderfer
Editorial Editor
Pat Payne
Editorial
Fuel cell program
funding, support
should continue
to be a priority
It may be a good idea to check the weather in Hades.
Given the newfound embrace of cleaner-burning hydro
gen fuel cell technology by many auto makers, including
the Big Three—and more surprisingly, by at least one oil
company—it just might be freezing over down there. It is
a pleasant surprise to hear that GM and Shell Oil have
gone to Capitol Hill to stump in favor of fuel cells.
It’s even more surprising to us that a Congress and
White House often seen as deep in the pockets of the oil
industry would give vocal support to getting a car on the
road that requires no oil whatsoever. Both Reps. Ron
Wyden of Oregon and House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt have expressed vocally their support for fuel
cell technology. And it floors us that President George W.
Bush, the scion of oil money and an oil man himself,
would give a moderately large chunk of federal money —
$1.2 billion — to research fuel cell technology.
This is great news indeed. For once, all of the forces that
have helped to pollute this country are doing something to
help in at least one small but significant step.
A fuel cell works by combining hydrogen and oxygen to
form water vapor. When this happens, it also builds up a
small electric charge. The goal of those developing fuel
cell cars is to get enough of a charge to run the car. The
positive benefits to the use of fuel cells are almost limit
less. Unlike petroleum, which even in the most efficient
engines still results in toxic gases being released into the
atmosphere — not to mention the danger of a pipeline
break or tanker spill — the emission from a car using fuel
cells is nothing more than water. While fossil fuels are be
coming scarcer and scarcer as well, there is a limitless
supply of hydrogen and oxygen, two of the most common
elements on earth.
The one problem is that while hydrogen and oxygen
are everywhere, another element needed for the process,
at least right now, isn’t. To make current fuel cells, it takes
3 ounces of platinum. Problem: At current prices, plat
inum is $680 an ounce.
We urge President Bush to continue the funding that
he has allocated to the fuel cell program, with an eye on
making fuel cells able to compete on an even level with the
internal combustion engine with regards to price. And we
applaud the efforts of Wyden and others to make this a
priority. We suggest tax breaks for every company in
volved in making this happen.
The world has labored under petroleum power for far
too long. This new technology may be the means to finally
break the global addiction to the oil pump. Our hearts
(but not our globe) are warmed.
Butterflies and nature-wise
Five years ago, I found a book called
“Encounters with the Archdruid.” It told
the story of a legendary conservationist
and “three of his natural enemies” — a
mining engineer, a dam builder and a re
sort developer.
The legend was David Brower. I was
delighted to read that he grew up in
Berkeley, a few blocks from where I
had lived. He was a young expert on
butterflies who graduated high school
at age 16. Then, he dropped out of col
lege at age 19 and spent the next
decade scaling the
Sierra Nevadas
and other peaks.
Oh, and he joined
a local hiking soci
ety called the Sier
ra Club.
World War II in
tervened. Brower
joined the Army
and served as a
captain in the 10th
Mountain Division.
He trained thou
sands of soldiers to
climb and cross the rugged terrain
they would face in Europe. As a com
bat-intelligence officer, he was part of
the Allied advance through the Apen
nines in Italy. For this, he was award
ed the Bronze Star.
He came back to America, welcomed
by a wife and young child.
The world was changing rapidly. Many
people confused rapid changes with
progress. Nobel Prizes were awarded for
discovering the uses of DDT and the
frontal lobotomy. In 1952, the year
Brower took charge of the Sierra Club,
America detonated the H-bomb — the
“super,” as scientists naively dubbed it.
We were swiftly engineering the path to
our own destruction.
The natural world was no less
threatened. Miners, dam builders and
developers were leaving no mountain
unturned, no river unwrecked and no
island untouched.
As Brower would later say, “I am not
blindly opposed to progress. I am op
posed to blind progress.”
John McPhee, the author of the book,
remarked that here was a man “who
wanted — literally — to save the world.”
With this ethic, he led the Sierra
Club for 17 years, turning it from a local
hiking club into a national force of
77,000. But Brower didn’t just lead peo
ple. He led causes. Causes beyond most
people’s imaginations. Like National
Parks to protect the California Red
Philip
Huang
A different light
woods or the North Cascades. Or a
Wilderness Act that now preserves 105
million acres as forever wild.
With the Sierra Club, he made us
see how wasteful and destructive dams
could be. He stopped several, includ
ing one that would have flooded the
Grand Canyon. With Earth Island In
stitute, which he founded, he became
an advocate for environmental justice,
bringing social issues such as toxic
dumping and environmental degrada
tion in poor communities into the
green consciousness.
His maverick personality and radical
stances eventually forced him out of the
Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. In
other words, he told people what they
preferred not to hear.
“You are villains not to share your ap
ples with worms,” he’d say. “Bite the
worms. They won’t hurt nearly as much
as the insecticide does.”
He simply shaped the way we look
at the natural world because he al
lowed the natural world to shape his
way of looking.
As a youthful lepidopterist, he once
Steve Baggs Emerald
tried to aid butterflies in their transfor
mation. He widened the split in their
chrysalis. He had interrupted the flow
of fluid from the abdomen to the wings.
So the butterflies emerged with extend
ed abdomens, and wings stayed
clenched and shriveled. They ran
around until they died.
“I have never gotten over that,” he
said to McPhee. “That kind of informa
tion is all over the country, but it’s not
in town.”
So he preached the principles of con
servation, preservation and restoration.
He spread his message at the Universi
ty’s famed Public Interest Environmen
tal Law Conference for 18 years. He nev
er made it to the 19th — my first. Land
Air Water, the environmental law stu
dent society, honored him with last
year’s conference theme, “Global CPR.”
And every year, the group presents the
David Brower Award to an outstanding
local environmentalist.
Bite the worms. And save the world.
Contact the columnist
at philiphuang@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily represent
those of the Emerald.
Letters to the editor
Black reparations necessary
for social justice
In reference to “Pay one group, pay all”
(ODE, March 3): Wealth is largely genera
tional and accumulative. I’m not saying
that it’s impossible to break that cycle.
Oprah Winfrey did it. Colin Powell did it.
Everybody should be able to do it. But soci
ety has taken steps to make sure that
blacks are systematically denied these op
portunities. A major example is the dispro
portionate number of blacks being denied
access to the suburbs with redlining and
blockbusting.
Salena De La Cruz’s argument takes an
individualist approach to reparations with
remarks such as, “Why should I have to pay
a fine for something I had no part in?” In
stead, reparation is directed toward the sys
tem. Reparation calls for the federal govern
ment to address the past and take steps to
eliminate the effects that still remain today.
Reparation is not the federal government
handing out fat checks to descendants of
slaves, as De La Cruz stated.
Another miseducated point De La Cruz
makes is that the “Union soldiers who died
during the Civil War (were) trying to free
these slaves.” The Civil War was over the
difference in economy between the North
and the South. Slavery was intertwined with
the economies of both the North and the
South. If the Union army was truly fighting
to end slavery, then it wouldn’t have taken
the Civil Rights movement a hundred years
later to finally end disenfranchisement. We
must think about reparations in terms of
schools, social services and equal access to
the American freedom, democracy and jus
tice we love to preach.
Jasmin Thana
sophomore
history and ethnic studies
Iraqi conflict targets
defiance, not oil
Professor Remington’s letter to the editor
(“Bush rhetoric hides oily motivations,” ODE,
Mar. 3) unabashedly regurgitates the popular
“It’s all about oil” conspiracy theory regarding
war in Iraq, an idea adhered to by such men
tal marvels as those who believe the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, were achieved by remote
control airliners and a mysterious satellite
death ray to administer the final coup de
grace on the Twin Towers.
If we merely desired Iraqi oil, we could
have taken it all 12 years ago, when similar
theories last circulated around campus. We
could have had it any time since, by work
ing with France, Russia and China to weak
en and circumvent the sanctions on Iraq.
There are far less expensive ways to obtain
oil from Iraq than a war. Were he allowed,
Saddam Hussein would gleefully sell us
every drop.
Could it be that Hussein’s documented
addiction to weapons of mass destruction
and his 12 years of U.N. defiance really are
relevant facts here? Could the discussion of
military action for more than a decade be
because it’s long overdue? Recall that for
eight of those years, an individual more in
terested in “freeing Willy” than foreign poli
cy occupied the Oval Office.
Dr. Remington: I found your letter rather
disappointing coming from a fellow physi
cist whose past correspondence to the
Emerald encouraged free thought unen
cumbered by the chains of blind ideology.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a band of religious fa
natics judged our country while encum
bered by theirs. I politely suggest you not
judge our current government based
on yours.
David Mason
seventh-year graduate
physics