Biology Professor Sees Energy Consumption at Ecologcial Crossroads

By Peter Grennen

Jeff Dukes's profession allows him to explore the natural world to his heart's content. But he never imagined how much it would force him to consider nature of another sort--human nature. Now, faced with mounting evidence of environmental damage caused by reckless consumption of fossil fuels over many years, he is appealing to humanity's nobler instincts in an effort to return our planet to ecological health.

A terrestrial ecologist with a doctorate from Stanford University, Dukes recently joined the UMass Boston Biology Department after doing postdoctoral work at Stanford and the University of Utah. Among his scholarly projects is an ongoing inquiry into the causes of ecosystem imbalances--and restoring equilibrium in these systems.

Increasingly these days, this work must take into account the human sphere of activity. The distinctly human longing to explore the globe--often relocating plants in the process--has at times devastated the environment. "Introduced species have had a major impact on our forests and have knocked out entire species," Dukes explains.

Ecosystems become more vulnerable to such attacks when certain by-products of human ingenuity--like automobile exhaust--outstrip the earth's ability to process them. "Carbon dioxide buildup is changing the planet faster than before, and we're using resources faster than was thought," says Dukes.
If attitudes toward energy consumption are at the heart of the problem, the solution has to involve the art of persuasion--and another of Dukes's projects may well do the trick here: Using published data in a series of calculations that measure loss of solar energy from photosynthetically fixed carbon atoms in oil, coal, and natural gas, he set out to determine how much ancient plant matter is needed to meet our energy requirements today.

When the number crunching stopped, Dukes had some startling results: He estimates that about 98 tons of prehistoric plant material went into every gallon of gasoline we put into our vehicles. And as if that figure were not eye-popping enough, he offers another way to interpret the data: "Every day, people use the fossil-fuel equivalent of all the plant matter that grows on land and in the oceans over the course of a whole year," he says.

The study, which appeared in the November issue of Climatic Change, is a way of quantifying the unsustainability of society's energy-use patterns in the face of consumer indifference to the problem. "Fossil fuel has accumulated for millions of years, but we are clearly running through it quite fast," Dukes says.
Sobering conclusions all--with dire implications for our long-term survival. But Dukes has no desire to be alarmist; he is content if his work prompts humans to do what they do better than any other species. "I'm hoping that it will make people think," he says.

Dukes's future world of right-thinking people will have an energy mosaic that includes wind and solar power, as well as fuels harvested from the earth's current plant matter. But however energy needs are met, it must be with an eye toward the welfare of the entire planet. "By minimizing energy demands and carefully selecting energy-capture and -generation technologies, we can limit human impact on other species," he predicts.

A desirable outcome, to be sure. For if the species Homo sapiens ever does learn to curb its fondness for wretched excess, it may find it can live quite comfortably in its own atmosphere after all.

Image: Jeff Dukes, terrestrial ecologist and professor of biology, has unveiled startling new research on the earth's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. (Photo by Harry Brett)

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