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About benflikshteyn

My name is Ben Flikshteyn and I am a student at Macaulay Honors College at CUNY.

Posts by benflikshteyn

Weekly Response 13

Posted on December 2, 2012 by benflikshteyn

New York City has shown that it can be forward thinking and revolutionary. PlaNYC contains a list of noble goals with the environment in mind and progress is in full swing. The city’s water treatment system is preventative, revolutionary, green, and smart. It is an elegant environmental and economic solution to the problem of water purity. Hopefully this forward thinking nature can be applied to solid waste management as well.

As it is, the system is extremely inefficient. Garbage must be trucked around the five boroughs, causing traffic and wasting fuel, until it is finally dumped in one neighborhood that has to suffer the smells for the rest of the city. This reminded me of the Hunger Games in which each “district” has a specialty. The people are essentially enslaved and must do the one task that their district is designated for. Is Tullytown, then, the garbage district?

The truth is, there really is not a good place to put trash. Waste is inherently a bad thing. It comes from something useful and, to earn the name waste, is now useless. “Zero-Waste” seeks to break this paradigm and close the loop. Composting and recycling can easily use most of what we consider waste now. Why should we invest in large eyesores of facilities to bury our trash if we can use it? As for poopy diapers, I do not think any form of recycling would utilize those. Maybe cloth is the way to go.

I really enjoyed the mosaic advertisements that Jackie and Joe put together. They were very interesting aesthetically and I think they would do a great job of making tourists aware of why littering is such a big problem. However, I think they have an even better use. Instead of zooming in on the pictures within the monuments and saying that there is a waste problem in our city, the message could be positive. The advertisements could promote zero-waste policies. They would feature these famous monuments and show how, at least in pictures, they can be made of garbage. This can apply to other things as well. For example, a picture of an agricultural field that zooms in to reveal trash being composted.

The case study in Treece was very disturbing. Usually we see environmental problems occur when corporation can simply sweep their pollution under the rug (or more accurately, some body of water). In this case, there were literally toxic monuments to the destruction done in Treece. Neither environmental nor social concerns were considered at all. The result is a ghost town, toxic even to visit, with one unfortunate couple that decided to stay put. It is a little odd that only the Buxby couple could not afford to move. It almost made me wonder if this was a Scooby Doo type scenario in which the couple, seeking solitude, engineered the pollution of the town to drive out all the other people. More likely, they were just mad as hell and were not about to be forced out of their home.

I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. I really do mean this to some extent. After some time in this class, when I went to vote this year, environmental issues were on my mind. However, the movie this quote comes from, “Network”, has this the other way around. Before action or solutions, it says that there must be anger first. I do not think that anger is necessarily the emotion to incite change, but emotional engagement is necessary. It is not anger, but passion, that will make change.

 

Weekly 11

Posted on November 19, 2012 by benflikshteyn

PlaNYC is very laudable for its recognition of the major issues facing us, its inclusive understanding of the triple bottom line, its clear statement of goals with deadlines, and in light of the action that has been taken already.

PlaNYC was created in response to challenges posed on New York City by a growing population, shifting climate, and aging infrastructure. It both asked and answered the question: “What do you want New York to be like by 2030?” This question is excellent because it begs participation by everyone and is not focused on just one aspect of life. One of the best things about PlaNYC is that housing and recreation and quality of life are as important as environmental goals. Not only this, but they are paired with those goals inherently. For example, one major goal is to make travel time much faster for New Yorkers. This is economically important because of increased efficiency, socially important because of a growing population, and environmentally important in reducing congestion on highways. Another good example is the effort to have a park be within 10 minutes from any given New Yorker. Trees are obviously good for the environment and the quality of life is improved across every neighborhood as parks are built (especially on converted brownfields).

The goals and clarity of purpose that PlaNYC has is good in itself but unsubstantiated without the progress it is making. Thankfully, there is progress. One of my favorite aspects of the plan is the decking over concept. In this, buildings are constructed over existing eyesores or areas that can be subterranean. I cannot get the image of the Jetsons out of my head where the people live in stilted domes high above the Earth. In that reality, it is because the Earth is too polluted to sustain life. Hopefully in our scenario, it is forward thinking use of space to create environmental homes for the growing population. I especially like this idea because no matter how many brownfields we convert to usable lane, there is a limit to the amount of space available. There are also multiple parks and recreation centers that have sprung up as a direct result of PlaNYC, causing me to be optimistic about meeting its goals. I only hope that it will not stop with these tangible ones and continue to combat carbon emissions and global warming.

The success of PlaNYC lies in participation and smart engineering. Because the goals are all so relevant to New Yorkers, there must be a lot of support for it. Hopefully, as the people benefit from new trains and parks, they stay on board as we combat carbon emissions. The smart solutions PlaNYC contains ensure that the economy and the environment are not locked in a trade-off but are both supported to the end of benefiting New Yorkers. Finally, the government can extend both a responsible hand in tending to the environment and ten to its peoples’ goals as well.

Another great example of that type of thinking is the Bluebelt in Staten Island. This is a natural system that bypasses the problems of combined sewer overflow. It provides the water drainage system any city needs in order to avoid combined sewer overflows without sacrificing the wetlands that it is built on. It takes in the run-off, diverts the overflow throughout parks, filters the water as it goes through the wetlands, and keeps this clean water within the ecosystem.

Fracking Frackers

Posted on November 12, 2012 by benflikshteyn

This week, we discussed two very separate concepts, water filtration and fracking. They do not have much to do with each other, but there is a very important overlap that I will discuss.

When the EPA began to mandate water filtration systems, many cities had to pay huge amounts of money to put them in place. New York City took initiative and came up with an alternate method to circumvent the huge costs of building filtration infrastructure. It bought up land around water sources upstate and set up monitoring points for water quality along its path to the city. This solution cost only 1.5 million dollars versus the potential 16 million that a filtration system may have cost. However, other cities did not follow this example because they did not have the same financial pressures as New York City. They simply yielded to EPA regulations. It worries me to think that, if New York had the funds, it may have gone that route as well. The point here is that many environmental problems have cost effective and green solutions that go unnoticed. It was not the forward thinking environmentalism of New York City that led to this innovative solution that continues to provide some of the cleanest drinking water ever. It was an immediate fiscal threat that jolted the city into action. The outcome was good but this does not bode well for future action.

Fracking is a process by which natural gas is extracted from bedrock by drilling horizontally and pumping in fracking liquid until the increased pressure fractures the rock. Unfortunately, the fracking fluid contains chemicals that are known to be dangerous and the process is not completely undestood from an environmental perspective. People living in areas where fracking is done complain about headaches and other illness. Those who defend it can only say that there is no proof of any causation. This is a misallocation of the burden of proof. The impetus to prove safety should be on the companies that want to engage in fracking. Instead, they do not even fully disclose the contents of their fracking fluid. I understand the notion of company secrets but when lives are at stake there is no room for uncertainty. If fracking continues while studies are done, the consequences can be terrible. The companies will have major liability to affected locals. They should learn a lesson from New York City here. Instead of taking the risk of paying massive fees later on, they should find a compromise. Perhaps until the study is done, the companies should only be allowed to drill under land they own upon which no one lives (similar to New York and its reservoir system). This is very important because they cannot actually guarantee that their pipelines are completely secure and filled with cement. Unfortunately, like New York City, without a fiscal incentive up front it is unlikely that any fracking company will discontinue drilling or reveal the contents of its fracking fluid. Without such an incentive, a better solution may never be reached. Job growth in those communities can wait two years especially because guaranteeing safety for the locals is the right thing to do because private profits cannot come at social costs. Most importantly, US law needs to mandate proven safety before any action by these companies. This will even provide an incentive for these companies to fund the safety research themselves. This is good because, “the EPA, God bless them, tries these two year studies often.”

These companies are prepared to deal with the consequences of their actions but refuse to take preemptive measures. This is short sighted and, as evidenced by New York City’s water purity solution, often times a less efficient solution. Attacking the cause of a potential problem, rather than the symptoms, is an important part of environmental engineering. Making cars that are easier to recycle, buildings that have zero energy impact, and clothing that lasts and is not damaging to the environment are all great examples of this trend of forward thinking that must be adopted and in the end may even prove profitable. All we need is incentive.

Koyaanisqatsi

Posted on October 30, 2012 by benflikshteyn

“Koyaanisqatsi” is not a film in the traditional sense. There is no discernable plot besides the eruption of modern times across natural landscapes. It is an artwork created to provoke questions and answers both, from the viewer. Perhaps it is because of the class in which this film was assigned but the main message I perceived was one that championed nature and sustainability over technology and excess.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word meaning a life out of balance. As the film develops koyaanisqatsi is featured as the opposite of sustainability. The film begins with images of nature, shifts to the destruction and use of the original Earth, and finally showcases the manmade environment that replaces what was once there, for better or for worse.

The origin of the word koyaansqatsi is particularly important in regards to this theme. Native Americans have always been very respectful of nature, making sure to use all that it has to offer efficiently and sparingly. For example, when they hunt they use every part of the animal they absolutely needed to kill. This origin is explored early in the film as the camera glides over Lake Powell, home to the Hopi tribe. The Hopi Indians used this lake and the red sand rocks for shelter, living in small nooks they carved. The canyons in the lake served as buildings and the animals in the area were food and clothing. This harmony of mankind with nature, however, is unfortunately short-lived.

Nature is processed and regurgitated. The red rock formations are now skyscrapers. Animals are anonymously slaughtered and pumped out of machines as frankfurters. The areal views are now of cars zipping along chaotic, intertwining highways. From up close, the movement of cars seems very ordered, confined by the white paint and speed limits. However, from a more removed vantage point, there is chaos. The multiple roads and weaving cars become apparent. This begins to hint at a sinister, hidden element of human organization. At first it seems that humans are investing energy to order nature, decreasing the entropy of the universe, bringing balance and organization to a chaotic natural world. After all, an assembly line takes effort and lead to products that are combinations of many parts. However, there is a tendency towards entropy that is actually accelerated by human activity. “Koyaansqatsi” features footage of industrial parts being manufactured where flames erupt off of newly smelted metal. Buildings are demolished to make room for new buildings that will be demolished for yet newer ones and so on and so forth. When the film shows parking lots full of identical cars, perfectly lined up, there is a focus on all the different colors scattered randomly. This scene quickly fades to reveal a line of tanks preparing for war. Though the tanks are similarly manufactured they hold so much potential for destruction and disorder. Perhaps, then, the mechanization of nature is not the story of a beast being tamed by man. “Koyaanisqatsi” begins to suggest that mankind is a virus, spreading over a healthy planet, and making it sick.

One of the major consequences of this shift from original nature to the man made replacement is captured in the acceleration of tempo in the footage and music. In stark contrast to the opening of the film, with its droning cry “Koyaanisqatsi” and slowly panning camera, the cinematography is now in fast forward and the music is a cacophony of staccatos on the violin and cello. This faster pace is representative of the increased rate at which humans use nature in the infrastructure of modern times. The metallic copy of the natural world operates in larger quantities and at higher speeds. Here, Koyaanisqatsi is observable. There is an imbalance between the rate at which the Earth can provide and the rate at which humans consume.

The fast-forwarded footage has another effect that accentuates the imbalance. The film shows people shopping, eating, driving, and taking escalators, all at high speed. The way these people tumble through the world, making their way through narrow areas, is reminiscent of flowing blood cells. This suggests that the Earth is a living organism that relies on its cells to circulate and, as biology dictates, use a minimal amount of energy. The main point is that koyaansqatsi, a life out of balance, paints a picture of a sick planet whose cells are leeches, tainted by the spreading virus of modern times. The planet is no longer in balance with the Earth’s capacity to provide.

“Koyaanisqatsi” proceeds to pervert the notion of the Earth as a living organism into an image of the Earth as a machine. The camera floats around a city peeking into windows and watching car lights streak across the roads at night. Suddenly, the skyline appears to be a motherboard of a computer. Each building looks like a microchip. The people inside, flickering their light switches on and off, are electrons zipping along the processor. The music becomes dark at this time, highlighting the tragedy of mechanization. At this point, the humans have successfully converted the organic, natural, living Earth into a machine.

There is actually a moment in which “Koyaanisqatsi” appears to praise human achievement through music. Once the cityscape emerges the music sounds like the background track of a show like “Modern Marvels” or “How it’s Made” or the overture to some fantastical movie. The cascading flutes and airy strings back up an angelic quire as the camera zooms around capturing the tumult of the urban environment.

However, the hustle and bustle of modern times starts to reveal images of excess. Soon the film is saturated with frames of people eating and shopping endlessly. “Koyaanisqatsi” questions if the golden era that mankind imagines for itself is substantiated. It asks why we have replaced nature with a metallic version sustained by the very nature we uprooted. There is a beautiful shot of steely glass windows perfectly reflecting drifting clouds that directly juxtaposes these two worlds against each other. The angelic voices, now tooting for ten minutes, appear more haunting than glorifying. The film questions the assertion that technological advancement and expansion is inherently good. It shows that the apparent positive is really unnecessary excess and contends that using the planet at the rate that modern times calls for is unsustainable.

The film mocks this way of life by ridiculing the human desire for excess. In one scene, assembly lines spew out thousands of frankfurters. In the scene immediately following this one, people exit escalators in huge numbers, like hot dogs in a factory. In fact, “Koyaanisqatsi” seems to find fault in technological advancement and human proliferation in general. The final scene, of a rocket taking off into space and crumbling in the air, summarizes this feeling well. The rocket represents the failed attempt of mankind to create a beautiful but artificial world that feeds off of nature. This attempt leads to koyaanisqatsi. Human ambition and meddling throw life out of balance.

I do not agree with this message. Human involvement has definitely contributed to koyaanisqatsi but this does not mean technological advancement and some degree of luxury is totally incompatible with nature. Though humans should not remake the world using nature as fuel, they do not necessarily have to leave it in its raw form. There are sustainable ways of creating a balanced planet. Solar energy and green engineering are perfect examples of human activity that can actually enhance the planet and reinforce the balance. The denouement of “Koyaanisqatsi” does show images of introspective and remorseful humans. The pilot, the factory worker, and the commuters all seem cognizant of the state of their world. To me, this is a sign that change is possible and imminent.

 

 

 

 

Weekly Response 7

Posted on October 21, 2012 by benflikshteyn

The remarkable thing about the environmental crisis we are facing is that the answers are clear and available. Some of them are so common sense and obviously beneficial that I am surprised they have not been entirely adopted. Green engineering is a the path mankind needs to go along but first it must overcome the inertia of a shirt-sighted, profit minded world.

Green engineering is based on three tenets that radically warp how we deal with development and waste but are totally logical intrinsically. Solar income is an underutilized resource. There is essentially an endless spherical battery floating in the sky that we are not taking advantage of. The argument that it is too expensive to harness this energy is misguided. The movement to solar will have to happen at some point, whether it is before we run out of oil or not. Any time spent not utilizing the sun as a resource adds to a pile of money and time that has been wasted. The sun supplies energy that can be used to convert useless matter into useful matter and sidesteps the need for unclean fuel sources.

This segues into the second tenant. Waste is food. Green engineering seeks to close the loop, transforming the linear relationship of resource to waste into a circle of recycling and valorization. During the black rock forest trip, I came across a toilet that did not flush. Instead, it allowed any material going into it to fall down a chute into a composting pit. All this waste went to provide nutrients for crops in the area. This is not the most elegant example of waste as food but it is the most direct. Applied to a more urban area, plastic bottles can be melted down and reused. Perhaps buildings can be outfitted so that wastewater from dishes and restrooms is routed to a rooftop garden.

The third tenet, which is the least tangible but the most important philosophically, is appreciation of diversity. People who claim not to care about biodiversity can shrug many of the problems that the environment faces. These people need to be made aware of the benefits of wetlands, the good that can come of mosquitos, and the knowledge that the intricate equilibrium nature has cannot be fully understood but must be respected. There must also be respect for local diversity. Each environment faces its own problems and has its own challenges. Urban areas specifically have unique challenges that environmental initiatives need to take into account in order to catch on. Green engineering is the path we need to take. Hopefully society realizes the benefits in time.

 

Weekly Response 6

Posted on October 18, 2012 by benflikshteyn

We have spent so much time in class climbing the arch, with a great list of problems as the steps on our staircase. Looking down, to continue the metaphor, I feel a sense of acrophobia. The pile of problems is as towering as landfills are set to become in the coming years. It feels daunting to think about descending all of these steps. It is so much easier to just not look down. However, there have been times in history where this has been true and, led by some brave, vertigo-free few, mankind was able to overcome.

We mentioned such an occurrence in class. The civil rights movement is a rather recent period of American history and is a great example of a deeply engrained problem. This makes it a good comparison with the environmental issues we are facing. The separation of whites and blacks was thought of as natural before the civil rights movement. The thought was that it was fine for blacks to be mistreated for the sake of an ordered society. This fallacious logic is the same that permeates the thinking that keeps unsustainable development in place.

Humans are so concerned with the short term that it seems to be an inherent quality. Some environmental problems have already begun to affect us and still people are unresponsive. This shows how events taking place even within one’s lifetime may seem too distant to incite action. Most people perceive a trade-off between solving environmental problems and living comfortable lives. This seems logical at first because if there were a way to reconcile profits with sustainability, why would we have ignored it thus far? The answer is that many costs are hidden. I breathe in steel dust every day on the subway but I cannot quantify this the way I budget my spending on clothes and food. Landfills grow and the Earth heats up but, until doomsday, the price of shoe is more important.

It does not have to be this way. There are simple methods of reconciling human utility, in the sense of happiness, with environmental sustainability. Harnessing solar energy and closing the loop are the correct paths to move ahead along. By closing the loop we eliminate the idea that the Earth has resources to be processed and regurgitated as “waste”. Everything can be useful and by tapping into these mislabeled resources we can have access to so much more while consuming at a slower rate. Solar energy can help fuel this system, providing the energy needed to reverse chemical processes without using up terrestrial resources. There is essentially a floating battery in the sky that we are not even using.

I am now embarking on my final metaphor. The reason that these changes have been so slow is because there is a high activation energy in this reaction (to all the problems we have learned about). The immediate effects of closing the loop and investing heavily in solar power are diminishing profits for corporations and higher prices for consumers. Nash equilibrium keeps both parties from waning to pay the activation energy and move forward. So how can mankind be urged forward to a smarter existence? A catalyst is needed.

These can come in the form of government intervention or consumer awareness. The problem with government intervention is similar to the problem with it during the civil rights movement. No amount of legislation was powerful enough on its own to desegregate America. There had to be a shift in attitude by a nation. Consumer awareness can be spread by legislation. Creating taxes based on environmental impact would monetize the costs of unsustainable behavior. However, because of globalization and a competing worldwide economy, such taxes would have to be implemented across the globe all at once. This is certainly possible but unprecedented.

Weekly Response 5

Posted on October 10, 2012 by benflikshteyn

I really appreciated the historical approach that the New Bedford ecological study took to tracking the changes in an isolated space. First of all, the approach was unique compared to the other scenarios we have studied. It is the only one that has shown concern about something as removed as the events in a small harbor town centuries ago. This teaches us many important lessons. It shows us the benefits of tracking the development of an area in order to understand the exact cause and affect relationships involved in its ecology. It also teaches us to think ahead when we make decisions today.

The study split the development in New Bedford into four distinct period of environmental consequence. I was surprised to learn that events from so long ago, such as the erection of a bridge, had such a drastic effect on the environment through shifting currents. It was also interesting to learn that ideas that people had from different eras translate into lasting effects on the environment. This is evident in the filth theory that people had and how they believed that sewage could be infinitely and immediately dissipated in water. The New Bedford study marked the negative environmental and public health effects that were brought on by this misconception.

This is relevant today in context of something like the superfund. The superfund is a project to clean up designated areas and prepare them for beneficial use by private or public entities. Because this process is expensive, the costs to taxpayers are large and must be weighed against the benefits. Furthermore, the polluters are often unknown and thus cannot be made accountable for the funds spent on cleanup. Taking a historical approach to each specific area, as the New Bedford study does, could help mitigate these issues. Detailed environmental accounts should be kept for every area because, as the study taught us, we cannot always know what will be significant and not in the future.

Going along this line of thought, the New Bedford study teaches us to think about our actions in the long term. We have seen how actions have serious repercussions not only after just a few centuries but after just a few years as well. The historical approach shows us how we, today, are affected by decisions made by the generations that directly preceded us. Bringing this to the forefront of thought may change how we think about maintaining the earth for our future generations. Personally, I would have liked for the people of New Bedford not to dump sewage directly into the waterfront. Also, the realization of how quickly things like dumping PCBs turn around and harm our grandchildren or even our children can make us more wary of environmental damage.

This thought can be extended beyond keeping tabs on our failures, but also planning for success. The window for action against global warming is though to be closing within 50 years. However, the New Bedford study has shown us that this is enough time to take initiative and affect the environment. Solar power, and wind power, is an excellent step. The New Bedford study also revealed how the environment can be changed incrementally through a combination of factors. This idea will help make people feel like they can have a concrete influence by conserving energy and voting for green alternatives.

Down in the Dumps

Posted on October 1, 2012 by benflikshteyn

Ben Flikshteyn, MHC 200, Professor Alexandratos, 9.29.12, Weekly Response 4

It seems as if out of sight and out of mind is a common attitude when it comes to waste disposal. We have seen dredged soil from the Hudson buried in Texas. We have seen incinerators that put garbage into the air versus leaving it visible. Even landfills are not without problems. It is impossible to predict if they will leak, or hold. For example, an earthquake near San Francisco easily toppled the buildings on landfills. However, because these waste products are hidden from our sight we do not feel pressure to deal with them. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how much we can hide and bury and launching things into space is not yet viable. Fortunately, by analyzing what we throw away we can avert, or at least delay, the problems with our waste management strategies.

My favorite part of class this week was tracing the technological advances New York has made, by digging through its trash. Across the years 1905, 1939, 1971, and 1989 much has changed and much has stayed the same in the city’s trash. Food has made up a steady percentage of waste but ash has fallen form a colossal 80% to almost nothing. Conversely, paper, plastic, and metal compose growing amounts. The most staggering shift, however, is the appearance of a miscellaneous category in 1989 that takes up almost 15% of trash found in landfills. Disposable diapers, a luxury item, make up a tremendous amount of waste that must be dealt with. They are hardly the most necessary or most useful things we throw away and yet they are discarded en masse.

It so baffled me that we could allow so much waste to be generated for a product that used to be made of reusable cloth that I began trying to invent an alternative. I was toying with designs that have a layered diaper so that most of it can be reused, only disposing of the dirtied portion. I watch a show called “Shark Tank” in which inventors try to sell their business ideas to a group of “sharks”, or investors. This week, the episode featured a brand called FuzziBunz. A woman cited the same facts about the miscellaneous category that we learned in class and had the same reaction that I did. She invented a diaper that is extremely easy to wash (parents do not have to touch the soiled portion at all) and has priced it so that it actually saves parents an average of 2,500 dollars in diaper costs. Her product, along with imitations from competitors, has sold $40,000,000 in the last twelve years and is catching on.

This is an example where humans are overcoming the tendency to ignore what they bury. Diapers may be a dirty little secret, hidden under the title miscellaneous, but by studying what goes in to landfills solutions are uncovered.

This type of problem solving can be applied to many of the other things we throw away as well. Glass and plastic have become more mainstream materials, adding to the chemical complexity of landfills. It would be excellent to remove these from the equation. The five-cent deposit on plastic bottles is a good idea but it is out of date. Five cents was worth a larger percent of the total price of the drink when the return policy was implemented. If it were to be adjusted for inflation, many more people would save their bottles. Although it may seem to raise the price of drinks, causing concern among beverage companies, if the deposit were larger people would be sure to return the bottles and, knowing this, be unbothered by the extra cost as it is only temporary.

On an unrelated note I am thinking about starting to wear a mask on the subway or at least shelling out $200 dollars to get my bike fixed. Between the  steel in the air and what I’ve heard about the tuberculosis outbreak, the subway is becoming a scary place.

Weekly Response 3- Capitalism versus Government

Posted on September 24, 2012 by benflikshteyn

One thing that often surprises me is the sheer lack of respect for government policy that many polluters display. We often speak about government intervention as a last resort end-all solution to environmental issues. For example, when discussing the pollution of Rio de Janeiro there was an inherent regard for the power of government. In our discussion we mentioned how with the Olympics and the World Cup approaching, there could be major progress. The government chooses to bring these events to the country and will thus clean up for them. However, we may have overestimated federal power. These global events also push people to stop polluting and the debris in the Rio de Janeiro was mostly from local sewage and trash. In other words, there were no giant corporation cutting corners and dumping large amounts of pollutants into the environment.

The point is, when it comes to government versus capitalism, the government has much less power than we may think. The action taken against Mobil for the pollution of Arthur Kill and the dragged out lawsuit perfectly exhibit the impotence of federal action. Mobil dumped oil and other wastes into open air ponds, directly against EPA regulation. I found it ridiculous that the government caught them three separate times and all Mobil did was to continue to pollute. Even more ludicrous is that, when told not to dump into open-air ponds, Mobil began to pollute Arthur Kill directly. This smart aleck reaction shows just how little regard a giant corporation like Mobil holds for the government. Mobil even faked test results to maintain its barge cleaning business and avoid a multimillion-dollar clean up. The root of this immunity lies in a hallmark of capitalism itself, incentives.

Though reprehensible, Mobil’s actions are totally understandable and logical. As a corporation Mobil functions on basic incentives. The barge cleaning business is so profitable that no amount of reasonable fines can approach profits. Invoking the wrath of the EPA means nothing if a ten million dollar fine is the worst possible outcome. In fact it is only worth it for Mobil to fight the lawsuit on the off chance that all they end up paying are lawyers fees. In the context of how the government currently deals with giant polluting corporations, capitalism will always win out over federal goodwill.

In order to really stop pollution, the government must work on the level of capitalism and harness the power of incentives. A great place to start would be to equalize fines to the price of avoiding them in the first place. If a corporation can pay x amount of dollars to prevent themselves from pollution and risk paying a fine of the same amount if they are caught polluting, there is no reason for them not to invest in an environmentally sound method of waste disposal.

Alternatively, the government can try to implement incentives on a more personal level. Instead of operating solely in fines and forced cleanups, perhaps jail time for offenders with knowledge that they are breaking the law would dissuade most companies through their CEOs. This presents many logistical problems however. Between wonky test results, neither faked nor accurate, and lobbying by rich companies, there are many obstacles to moralizing the issue of pollution.

All the obstacles to effective government intervention put more pressure on society. It is difficult to boycott products based on the environmental decisions of their makers. However, as long as companies know that this is not remotely a step that people would take they can continue to pollute without fear of major repercussions.

Unrelatedly, I just want to discuss how awesome the sediment core experiment from the central park lakes is. The scientists stuck a tube in the ground and pulled out a timeline. I can imagine the slightly varying colors of the many layers. I like when these metaphysical ideas such as time can be captured in very tangible, earthly fragments.

Rio 2016

Posted on September 20, 2012 by benflikshteyn

Just saw this floating around the internet with the caption Rio 2016 haha. http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/5410135_460s.jpg

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