Greenwashing to physics, a short leap to caring where your stuff goes and comes from

Today I’m going to attempt to bridge a couple of ideas that might at first glance seem unrelated to each other: greenwashing and the first law of thermodynamics. I made the leap between these ideas recently while reading Natalie Angier’s book, “The Canon, A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science,” and this is your invitation to follow.

In a chapter on Physics, Angier breaks down the laws of thermodynamics for the benefit of those like me who haven’t thought about science in formal ways since elementary or middle school. Then she blows the laws up again to apply them on a planetary scale, which is where the bridge to greenwashing happened for me. Still with me? Here we go:

Thermodynamics

The first law of thermodynamics is difficult to state succinctly. At least my two scholarly references, Angier and Wikipedia, seem to have difficulty. In its simplest form, the law is about a cycle of energy:

For a thermodynamic cycle, the heat supplied to a closed system, minus that removed from it, equals the net work done by the system.

Embedded in the first law of thermodynamics is a principle that is key to my application of the law here today: The law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another, yet the total energy of a closed system remains the same.

Angier offers the example of a child on a playground slide. The child climbs to the top of the slide, using potential energy in the ascent. The child then sits at the top of the slide, takes a deep breath, and lets go, trading in the stored gravitational energy for the thrill of kinetic energy, along with the inevitable sideline seat warmer of heat. If you added up the kinetic energy of the descent and the energy transferred by heat to the slide, the child’s bottom and the air molecules she rushed past, the sum would equal the gravitational energy with which the transaction began.

The planet

So now you’re bright and shiny with refreshed knowledge of thermodynamics: in a closed system energy is never lost, just recycled. Now consider that the sun and Earth are effectively a closed system. The energy we have is what we’ve got. Here’s Angier again: “For the time being, the energy derived from solar radiation or its chemical composted, or meteorological offspring – coal, wood, wind currents – or from the manipulation of matter on Earth in nuclear power plants or fusion rings, will have to suffice.”

Here’s the leap, ready? Physics states in no uncertain terms that the energy we have here on Earth and streaming in from the sun is what we’ve got. So when we make something, whether it’s a biodegradable tote or a styrofoam clamshell, a Prius or a Hummer, we use part of the finite store of energy that we’ve been granted.

Now, in a sensible world that would mean that we would conserve, or at least value what we create. But as I explored in my post on greenwashing, our economic systems put tremendous pressures on us to overcreate and over consume, and then throw it away and buy more new stuff. It’s the economy versus inexorable laws of physics, and our lives hang in the balance. Who knew a dry subject like physics could be so juicily dramatic?