Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Move over, Al Gore
Menlo Park teen spreads the word about global warming

by David Boyce

If scientists are curious about the existence of a public-speaking gene, the genome of 15-year-old Taylor Francis of Menlo Park might be a good place to start an investigation.

Taylor, one of 250 graduates of a three-day seminar in Tennessee in December led by Al Gore, gave a presentation at the Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley on May 15 that included slides familiar to anyone who has seen the Al Gore documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth." This was his 13th talk in the Bay Area.

Before a packed chapel of Priory students in grades 6 though 12, the high school freshman, without notes, gave an energetic and polished 35-minute multimedia presentation filled with inconvenient truths, and was rewarded with at least a half minute of sustained applause.

A particularly inconvenient truth may be that the United States has a major role in warming the planet by producing 30 percent of all greenhouse gases, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Taylor homed in on this fact in his presentation: "We caused it; it is our responsibility to solve it," he told the Priory students. "The (poor nations) didn't cause the problem. The richer nations use the most energy."

"Global warming is a social justice issue," he continued, adding that disproportionate impacts — insect-borne diseases, drought, flooding, food shortages — are expected to have their greatest impact in the developing world.

"We're going to see major suffering," he said. "Long term, generally when species do stupid things, there are consequences."

The solution, he said, begins with the individual. "Everything we do every day contributes to this problem. Everything you do every day can contribute to solving this problem."

Taylor's remarks seem to have resonated with Julian French, a sixth- grader at the Priory and a resident of Mountain View. "It's the first problem in the world that's going to take everyone on the planet to rise up and do their best," he told the Almanac. "It's going to hit and it's going to hit hard."

A two- or three-degree rise in global temperatures may be the extent of it if we act now, Taylor said. If we don't change our habits, scientists predict the planet will a reach point of no return in 15 years leading to catastrophic increases of six to eight degrees, he said.

If we act now, he said, "we'll solve the problem, we'll avert the worst-case scenario, and it will open up a lot of opportunities for business."

What to do?

Step one, Taylor said, is replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. He cited a familiar statistic: If everyone in the country replaces one bulb, it will result in energy savings equivalent to taking a million cars off the road.

"I'm definitely changing my light bulbs," Leslie Barkman, a Priory sophomore from Redwood City, told the Almanac. "I didn't really know that (global warming) was that big of a problem."

Alternative fuels such as ethanol are another big step, Taylor said. In the Midwest, corn converted to ethanol can, in a 10 percent solution, extend gasoline with little or no impact on vehicle performance. While ethanol emits carbon dioxide, its CO2 was absorbed from the atmosphere recently rather than millions of years ago as is the case with fossil fuels.

U.S. drivers burned 140 billion gallons of gasoline in 2004, according to the U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Meanwhile in 2005, total ethanol production was 4 billion gallons, made from 1.4 billion bushels of corn grain — 13 percent of the U.S. crop — the Energy Office said.

Ethanol production, using 2004 figures, would have to jump to 14 billion gallons — a 250 percent increase involving a much greater percentage of U.S. corn — to convert all gasoline to a 10 percent ethanol solution.

In part because of its impact on food stocks, "corn-based ethanol is a really, really, really bad idea," Taylor told the students. Cellulosic ethanol is better, he said. It's made from grasses that grow in harsher soils and its production requires about half the energy needed for corn, according to a 2003 study by the National Commission on Energy Policy.

One student asked if new fuels would force everyone to buy new cars. "We really need to shift the whole basis of our transportation system, so that in many ways, our fuels won't be compatible" with existing cars, Taylor replied.

Teens can also have an impact with the $245 billion they spend each year, he added. He recommends recycling, buying locally produced products, and favoring products that use less packaging.

INFORMATION

For more information or to contact Taylor Francis, a freshman at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, go to www.taylorfrancis.org.