Gateway Pacific Terminal: Conflict Resolution

On a topic like coal ports, it takes a certain kind of agility to bridge the gap between two opinionated groups and their entrenched mental models. Just Google "Gateway Pacific Terminal" and you will arrive at pages like these:

Gateway Pacific Terminal - Frequently Asked Questions

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Frequently Asked Questions about plans for Gateway Pacific Terminal, a port facility that will create hundreds of new jobs and millions of dollars in taxes.

Gateway Pacific Terminal - RE-Sources.org

www.re-sources.org/home/Gateway-Pacific-TerminalShare

For now, you can continue to find information about the massive, dirty coal export proposal for Cherry Point at this page. But for the most updated information, ...

We start to see a pattern like this one, dominated by increasing alienation:

Soon the gap in beliefs, language, and means of justification becomes so wide as to make mutual understanding virtually impossible.

I admit to being guilty of this myself. I watch the scoping process like one might watch a scoreboard, celebrating with the high anti-coal turnout at the Oct. 27th meeting and gritting my teeth at the strong pro-coal showing on Nov. 29th. Yet I have to agree with the observations posted in this blog by Bellingham Herald's John Stark:

"Lots of people in Whatcom County are supportive of Gateway Pacific. You might not like that, but it is awfully hard to deny.

"Demeaning the character or the intelligence of those people is a dubious political strategy. It strikes me as morally dubious too."

We have to be careful that the tactics we choose do not demean our own intelligence.

It has been my opinion that the role of logic in a debate like this is not to overload one's audience with facts, but to bring them (and ourselves) from the place where they are, by statements which they can accept within their own mental model, to a place where we both agree.

To that end, I am challenging myself, in the next two weeks, to speak with at least three people or organizations representing a pro-terminal stance. I will seek to enter the conversation with no other agenda than to understand where their mental models originate.

I suspect I will find their views to be quite logical and based on the current realities of our economic system. Norm Becker here cites an article by Dr. Ted Trainer of South Wales, which outlines the kind of fundamental changes our entire economic system would have to undergo in order to survive without growth. First of all it details how the two cannot be compatible: a sustainable economy and the one in which we operate today.

Secondly it states why environmentalists have such a hard time communicating the need for radical change to the public at large: "The reason [being] of course that if they spoke up against the pursuit of growth and affluence in a society that is fiercely obsessed with these goals, they would quickly lose their subscribers."

I argue that a society does not need to be fiercely obsessed, but only merely concerned with the goal of growth so far as it underlies basic well-being, to keep the status quo in place. It is little wonder that labor unions, politicians, or the unemployed might support a coal terminal, given that little else in the way of employment will be available in the next 10-20 years.

I would like to say that all the "dirty" jobs projected at the terminal could be replaced with "green" jobs in the near future. Yet from my experience with a green startup, I will admit that our facility boasts only 8 full-time positions at maximum operations. Even if I find the numbers surrounding the coal terminal somewhat dubious, I know our company cannot possibly hope to compare to their promised employment.

In the business of transforming business, we might forget that many of our assumptions rest on the world "as it should be". Regardless of how necessary that vision is for the world to continue in any shape or form, it overlooks much of the world "as it is".

Third, Dr. Trainer paints a picture of what the zero-growth economy would look like, and yes, it is very different from the one we have now. In my view, we may arrive at his end goal faster if we go by increments instead of by complete revolution, because of people's natural disinclination for change.

Lastly, he shares his idea for how this transformation may be brought about.

So to answer my original question: "What can concerned citizens do?" I propose talking to our neighbors. Let's meet them halfway and see what positive energy comes from that interaction. Results will be posted on my return.

Gateway Pacific Terminal: An Unexpected Twist

We've talked a lot about globalization in the last week: whether it's good or bad, should it be limited, how should it be harnessed, etc.

There's an unexpected consequence of a globalized coal market, described in this NPR podcast. Opening trade routes to China could actually precipitate a switch to cleaner fuels in the US. Here's how it works:

Montana and Wyoming, prevented by their landlocked location from shipping the desired quantities of coal overseas, are currently unable to tap into markets where coal captures a 400% premium over domestic sales. Alter this scenario by constructing two major export terminals, and it makes sense for these US states to ship all their coal overseas. Domestic users of coal-fired energy must then either reduce their consumption by switching to natural gas, or pay the higher price (illustrated below).

Image Credit: Jason Welker, welkerswikinomics.com

Considering that US coal exports would satisfy only 3% of China's demand, yet might lead to precipitous drops in domestic consumption, it's difficult to say whether the effects will balance out. Since coal is already losing its edge to cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas, it could be that higher prices once and for all end an era of US coal consumption. It could also be that the coal-based Chinese economy we help usher in more than cancels any gains from foregoing a fuel that was about to be phased out anyways. It depends how you look at the situation.

As Jason Welker points out, it looks pretty well if you think only locally. It's when you examine the global repercussions we've seen, that things become more complicated.

(An interesting facet of globalization: it assumes that the free flow of goods across international boundaries achieves the highest state of efficiency by allowing each country to specialize where it is most productive. It also assumes, however, negligible losses in the transit of these goods. The costs of a coal-export terminal, of shipping, and environmental pollution do not factor into the equation.)

I hesitate to throw up my hands on the presumption that the situation is beyond my comprehension, but I don't hesitate for long. I've already encountered the difficulty of predicting whether exporting coal now would cause reserves to run out sooner, or merely facilitate the tapping of costlier reserves. This unexpected twist is just one more loop in the system that makes the true environmental outcome so hard to foresee.

Norm Becker features this article in his latest post, which posits that economic theory is sadly lagging behind economic reality. It acknowledges that through most of human history, connections between local economies "were tenuous and intermittent." It further argues that today's society calls for a much more reality-based, empirical approach. I completely agree. I also think it unfortunate that this call comes at a time when empirical approaches are the hardest to execute. How do you experiment with something like a coal port? How do you draw conclusions when large systems don't always mimic small systems, when unforeseen factors are constantly creeping in?

Speaking of the hard-to-foresee: the NPR podcast also points out that if Mongolia were to simply upgrade its rail lines to supply coal to China, the US export terminals could be rendered completely unprofitable, never to ship "a single lump of coal". While I normally think of large corporations as having the system on their side, it's strange to imagine they may be banking so much on flimsy barriers to entry. Now do I chuckle to myself and say, "Let SSA Marine take the hit" - or do I flag this as one more reason Bellingham should refuse to have this coal port built?

I wish it were that simple.