Inadvertence and surprise are the two inevitabilities that haunt our modern age, the result of global complexities that keep shifting at unprecedented speeds.
Less than a year ago, oil was $147 per barrel and the world's economies were buzzing with optimistic vitality. Today, oil is below $40 and a global recession could sink to a depression. This unplanned collapse in demand and consumption has probably done more to cut our greenhouse gas emissions than any efforts we have planned. Inadvertence and surprise can arrive with benefits as well as adversities.

If we can tolerate these adversities, inadvertence and surprise will also bring benefits to global financial institutions – especially those in the United States. More international regulation and closer supervision should make them stronger and more reliable servants of humanity's interests. Similarly, an American automobile industry, now facing the humility of bankruptcy, may be reborn leaner and more environmentally responsible, thereby shaping a new standard that could swing all transportation toward a higher level of practicality and efficiency.

Adversity has its way of initiating benefits. The atrocious record of the Bush Administration in the United States became an inadvertent incentive for an Obama presidency, a change that could freshen and calm both American and international politics. Even in Canada, the recent parliamentary crisis precipitated by the arrogant and partisan behaviour of the Prime Minister, could very well create a more conciliatory, cooperative and functional House of Commons.

Inadvertent adversities can point us in the direction of wiser choices. We call this learning. And an optimist would say we are engaged in exactly this process with the multitude of environmental challenges now facing us. We learn what we must do by discovering what we cannot do; we become ecologically smart by first trying what is ecologically imprudent. Think of this as the journey from naivety to worldliness, from foolishness to wisdom. And in our modern age of warp speed and electronic immediacy, we are being instructed at head-spinning velocities. Only the future will reveal whether our learning is proceeding as quickly as our instruction, and whether progress becomes our civilization's salvation or its demise. So here are four examples of adversities that could lead to possible benefits.

Ecuador, disillusioned by abusive treatment from multinational corporations, is drafting a new constitution that would give nature the same rights as humans. The national referendum, if passed, would shift the status of nature from "property" managed by regulation to a "rights-based entity" protected by law (The Guardian, Sept. 24/08). "Natural communities and ecosystems," the document declares, "possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador." People would be granted the legal right to sue on behalf of nature. Constitutional experts are aware that this step from the "anthropocentric" to the "ecocentric" is taking Ecuador into the legal unknown.
Growing, processing, refrigerating and shipping meat for our diet produces huge amounts of greenhouse gases ‹ 18% of total global emissions come from farming animals, more than from all cars, buses and airplanes. This trend has prompted Dr. Rajendra Pachauri of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to warn that an anticipated doubling of global meat consumption by 2050 may make such farming unsustainable (Globe & Mail, Dec. 5/08). Sweden is now considering a "sin tax" on pork and beef. And the Sterdsel project in the Netherlands is one of many that is combatting greenhouse gas production by processing the manure of its 3,000 pigs into methane and then electricity ‹ 25% is used to run the farm, the rest is sold to the grid. The leftover slurry makes a perfect soil supplement to replace CO2-producing chemical fertilizers. But the real message, however, is eat less meat.
The manufacture of cement accounts for about 5-8% of all human carbon dioxide emissions. Making one tonne of traditional Portland cement produces about 3/4 of a tonne of CO2. E-Crete is a new kind of cement that produces only 10-20% of these emissions. Replacing just 50% of the old type with this innovative geopolymer would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost a billion tonnes in 10 years. Invented by an Australian company, Zeobond, E-Crete is easily made by adding alkali and gravel and sand to fly ash and slag waste. Tests indicate it could be as strong and durable as traditional cement (New Scientist, Jan. 25/08).
Nuclear power comes with radioactive wastes and extreme costs. But even some serious environmentalists think such plants may be necessary if we are to meet our total energy needs. The solution could be the Hyperion Mini Nuclear Reactor, invented in 2003 by a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, Otis Peterson. About the size of a telephone booth, with no moving parts and no required operator, it has a core of uranium crystals surrounded by an "atmosphere" of hydrogen isotopes that react in "an internal, self-regulating balance". Designed to be buried and only serviced every five or six years, just one Hyperion would generate enough steam to produce 27 megawatts of electricity and power 25,000 homes. These $30 million devices are apparently so simple and easy to build that 4,000 of them – which could supply 20% of America's power – could be constructed in three years.

Every solution to every problem, however, arrives with its own surprises. This inadvertence leaves us with no recourse but to choose as wisely as we can and hope that the adversities will be outweighed by the benefits.