Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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18 UCW AUGUST 19-25, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Are you an epicurean? The answer to this question reveals something about you, something about the English language, and something about the power of propaganda. Next year, North Carolina and the nation will enter a momentous election year. Print, broadcast and online media will be replete with messages designed to attract us to a candidate, repel us from his oppo- nent and shape our perception of issues ranging from tax reform and education spending at the state level to trade, immigration, economic policy and foreign affairs in races for Congress and the White House. To the extent you can define the terms of a debate, you can influ- ence the outcome of that debate. The story of Epicurus illustrates the point. A Greek sage and teacher of the Hellenistic Age, Epicurus urged his followers to focus on the basic issue of how to live a good and contented life. Reacting to the turbulent times within the Greek world after the death of Alexander the Great, and to what he consid- ered to be the wrongheaded and unfounded teachings of Platonists and Aristotelians, Epicurus developed both a natural philosophy that grappled with issues of existence and cosmology as well as an ethical philosophy that taught his followers how to find contentment in the midst of strife and disorder. The main lesson of Epicureanism was that human beings need not be unhappy. There was no need to fear the gods, because they were found in a perfect, higher plane of existence and did not interfere with human affairs. There was no need to fear death, Epicurus taught, because it is no more than the cessation of life and thus could not be experienced in pain or regret. And far from being beyond their grasp, human beings could indeed find contentment. It did not lie in material wealth or sensual pleasures, Epicurus taught, but in contemplation, friendship, benevolence and self-control. It did not take long for Epicurus and his school to make powerful enemies. Rival philosophical schools and nervous government officials scorned the teacher's reclusive ways and subversive ideas. For example, Epicurus took the radical step of inviting women and slaves into his company, which shocked the larger society. Surely there was something nefarious going on, his critics said, and they spread unfounded rumors about the Epicureans' atheism, debauchery and excess. In actuality, Epicurus urged his followers not to consume strong drink, not to value fine clothes or great feasts and to practice sexual modesty. But the rumors grew into extended philosophical and religious arguments, and then into anti-Epicurus propaganda in the following centuries. It worked. Let's go back to my initial question. Are you an epicurean? The name of Epicurus survived into the Latin and Germanic languages and eventually into English in the form of this term. But its primary definition bears a meaning that is whol- ly opposite to what the philosopher once taught. Used as a noun, as either "epicurean" or "epicure," it means "a person devoted to sensuous pleasure." Used as an adjective, it means "devoted to pleasure" or "furnishing gratification of the senses." But for Epicurus, pleasure was about avoiding painful ideas and resisting wanton lusts and worldly temptations. So over time, the propa- gandists who disagreed with him transformed his very name into something he would have viewed as an epithet. Don't believe claims that language doesn't matter, that words cannot do harm, that they are "just words." Politics is replete with "facts" that are not so, but that frame the debate on consequential matters, such as the assertion that tax cuts have no effect on economic growth (or the contrary claim that tax-rate cuts often "pay for themselves" in future economic growth, which is true only in rare circumstances). Repeat errors or lies often enough and they become true to future generations. That is why it is so important to confront them, repeatedly, from the very beginning. Oh, and don't try to look up Epicurean.com on the Internet to find out more about his philosophy. The site is an "online magazine for food and wine lovers." Defining Terms Shapes Debate by JOHN HOOD JOHN HOOD, President of the John Locke Foundation, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly. com. 910.484.6200 Dear EarthTalk: There's a lot of talk about the potential for renewable energy sourc- es like solar and wind. But cheap, abundant coal is still going to power the world for a long time. How can we harness the energy from coal without emitting our way into a much warmer future? — Sally Ristau, Erie, PA Today coal still accounts for some 40 percent of world- wide electricity generation. The International Energy Agency predicts that global demand will continue rising to record levels, topping nine billion metric tons annually by 2019. And despite efforts by China to moderate coal consumption, China still accounts for three-fifths of this short-term "demand growth." Meanwhile, India and other countries in Asia are also ramping up their coal use, offset- ting declines in Europe and the U.S. "The world is not going to stop using coal ... so we have to change how the world does use it," says Eric Redman, an outspoken advocate for realistic clean energy solutions and co-chair of the Seattle-based Summit Power Group. He says that the key is in teaching the world how to utilize carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies, which take carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions out of smokestacks and reuses them or stores them in forms so they won't enter the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change. In October 2014, Canadian utility SaskPower launched the world's first full- scale "clean coal" plant in Saskatchewan. Named one of National Geographic's "10 Energy Breakthroughs of 2014 that Could Change Your Life" and winner of the 2015 "POWER Plant of the Year" award, the Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 3 CCS project has now exceeded expectations, capturing 135,000 metric tons of CO2 in less than a year. The plant is on target to absorb as much as a million metric tons of CO2 annually. And in June 2015, SaskPower opened its Capture Test Facility, a lab that lets researchers test equipment, chemical innovation and engineering designs in a highly controlled environment. Other companies are also using the facility to develop and test CCS technologies for potential use in their own power plants. Other promising CCS technologies in the works include coal gasification, where- by energy from coal is converted into a gas that can be burned as CO2 is removed, and the Polaris Membrane System, which uses a specially- designed membrane to capture 90 percent of the CO2 emitted from a coal-burning power plant. These technologies are indeed promising, but cost still remains the main obstacle to making CCS mainstream. "It is obviously cheaper to dump something in the atmo- sphere [for free] than to pay the capital and operating costs of capturing and sequestering it," says Summit Power's Redman. "There are very few mechanisms cur- rently available to help pay those costs," he says, adding: "Globally we've so far spent on carbon capture and seques- tration less than one percent of what we've already spent on renewable energy, so naturally we are not yet very far down the CCS cost curve." And while many environmentalists shudder to think that we will continue to burn coal at all, we may not have a choice. "I think most climate experts would agree that the maximum realistic deployment of renewables, efficiency and nuclear power will not, by themselves, allow us to limit atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 450 parts per million by mid-century," says Redman, adding that CCS is both nec- essary and ultimately inevitable. "But we need to move more rapidly." CONTACTS: IEA, www.iea.org; Summit Power, www.summitpower.com; SaskPower, www.saskpower.com. EarthTalk® is produced by Doug Moss & Roddy Scheer and is a registered trademark of Earth Action Network Inc. View past columns at: www.earth- talk.org. Or e-mail us your question: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Safely Harnessing Energy From the Editors of E - The Environmental Magazine The forward-thinking Canadian utility SaskPower is pioneering carbon capture and storage (CCS) from its coal-fired Boundary Dam power plant in Saskatchewan.