PATRICE GREANVILLE—In terms of sheer labor inputs, and engineering difficulties, the Carretera Austral is in a class comparable to the “near miraculous” projects recently seen in China. We wonder indeed how long it would take the Chinese to build this highway across impossible fjords, glaciers, ocean expanses, and all. With their advanced machinery, proven skills, and legendary tenacity, who knows, maybe they would get it done in less time than anyone in the West would expect. Ironically, the “Carretera Austral” Project was pushed against all naysayers by Augusto Pinochet (the road was originally called Carretera Austral Gen. Augusto Pinochet), and may eventually serve to whitewash the dictator’s innumerable crimes. Cynics claim Pinochet saw the project as a gigantic, bottomless pork barrel opportunity for his family and hangers-on. In any case, the ecological price of “developing” this fragile and precious environment is unquestionably bound to be high, perhaps prohibitive, even if the region is only kept as mostly a tourist reserve. The German documentary featured on this page suggests as much: the red tide (“marea roja”) that killed hundreds and possibly thousands of whales, a mind-boggling number for an animal whose numbers remain fragile in the global oceanic ecosystem, is a tragic reminder that the human footprint should not be extended thoughtlessly.
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PETER KOENIG—These “green” investments have not even come close to a zero-carbon balance. To the contrary. The production of “green investments” used generally hydrocarbon, which lowers the energy efficiency drastically. This is clearly demonstrated in the low energy efficiency of electric cars, on average 35% to 40%, versus cars using straight petrol or gas-based energy.
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N. CUNNINGHAM—From devastating wildfires to rising methane emissions, Earth’s vital signs are continuing to deteriorate, scientists warn. An urgent global phaseout of fossil fuels is needed, they say, reiterating calls for “transformative change,” which is “needed now more than ever to protect life on Earth and remain within as many planetary boundaries as possible.”
The warning comes roughly a year and a half after a global coalition of 11,000 climate scientists declared a climate emergency, warning that global action was needed to avoid “untold suffering due to the climate crisis.” The new paper examining Earth’s vital signs, published in the journal BioScience, is authored by some of the same scientists who helped spearhead the climate emergency declaration.
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ALASTAIR CROOKE—Proponents of green policies have long warned (since before the 2016 U.S. elections) that the failure of investors to understand the radical impact of a switch from old (democracy spreading) values to ‘Saving the Planet’ has led to a huge overvaluation of fossil fuel-linked assets – based on investors’ assumptions that growth in worldwide consumption of these latter fuels must continue – and that governments will take only baby-steps to lessen it. Yet, a rapid transition to C02-free energy sources, potentially would leave behind a mountain of ‘stranded fossil fuel assets’, which would have to be written off because their underlying real value has evaporated.
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GAVAN McCORMACK—In such an ecological hotspot, teeming with life at the juncture of forest and sea, Japan’s government, in consultation with the US government, insists that a huge new military facility must be constructed for the US Marine Corps. So strategically attractive is this site, overlooking the East China Sea, that the Pentagon planned, and would have carried out, such a scheme in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War except that it would have had to pay for it itself.
