Author Archives: Reva

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Weekly Post #13: Reva McAulay

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

12.3.12

MHC 200

Weekly Response #13

It’s astonishing that 75% of New York City’s garbage is not residential.  I mean, yes, there is a lot of business and construction and what-not around, but that they create three times as much trash as New York’s 8 million residents is amazing.  Having garbage processed in-borough makes sense in terms of fairness, and not having garbage trucks driving all over the city wasting gas and creating traffic.  However, where it doesn’t necessarily make as much sense is in the case of Manhattan.  If the proposed facility works out that that’s great, but if they can’t find a suitable location, fairness is not enough of a reason to shove a waste transfer station where one won’t fit.  It might be fair to the borough as a whole, but not to the people living there which is what matters more.  If there is a site in another borough where the waste transfer station might effect far fewer people, that would be fair in a different way.  I’m still somewhat confused as to how one station on E 91st St. is going to replace the 22 in Brooklyn where Manhattan’s waste is currently sent.

As for Tullytown, hopefully soon they won’t need to take our trash, although it seems they might miss it (or at least the money that comes with it).  Then again, the radioactive sludge might make up for it.  Hopefully New York will follow San Francisco’s lead and transition towards a zero-waste system.  They’re success is honestly greater than I would have expected possible, but luckily I see no reason why it should work there but not here.  That’s if the government decides to do it, and actually spend the money instead of half ass it.  Putting recycling cans next to every single trashcan would be a nice start.  An even better one would be recycling all plastic/metal/glass instead of the byzantine system we have now.  Adding a citywide composting program would be interesting since that does not seem to be a thing that is even on most people’s radar.  It might take a little while for people to get used to the idea, but it’s not that hard.  The good thing about all those changes is that they just cost money, they don’t bother people.              Fining people who don’t recycle might not go over so well, but they could frame it as a way to recoup some of the costs for the people who do recycle.  Banning non-recyclable products would be even harder (and if they can’t get that in San Francisco, what are the odds here?).  I still think charging for waste pick up would be a more palatable and more effective solution, although it would still be tricky.  Another idea would be subsidizing commercial recycling and/or taxing commercial waste disposal, seeing as that seems to be the majority of the problem.

The ads were great, hopefully we’ll get a chance to see the rest of them.  The government’s ads are usually pretty good but I can’t think of any really attention grabbing ones regarding anything environmentally conscious.  The ones about smoking and the amount of fat and sugar in energy drinks are certainly striking and everybody notices them, but the ones encouraging recycling and reducing you’re energy use are boring.  The ones you guys made are definitely much better; it’s too bad the city doesn’t put the same amount of creativity into theirs.  Showing people that kind of representation of how much garbage this city actually produces might make them think about where it goes and how they contribute to it.  And maybe that would cause more of a change in habits and actions than the bland banners that show how consumers can reduce their energy use.

Weekly Response 12: Reva McAulay

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200 Weekly Response #12

11.26.12

I missed class Monday too, so since I missed the nuclear power debate I figured I’d just write about nuclear power.  Personally I think nuclear power sounds like a good option since its cleaner than fossil fuels but cheaper and more viable than renewable energy.  In all likelihood it would take nuclear and renewable sources to completely replace fossil fuels.  The danger of nuclear power does not really seem that large, as accidents are actually extremely rare. There have only been three ever, and only one was actually what I would consider a disaster.  Three Mile Island had an partial nuclear meltdown that was entirely contained, and if nuclear plants can be operated such that accidents are extremely rare and can be managed to the point of no damage, that seems entirely safe to me.  The Fukishima Daiichi accident in Japan last year resulted in several deaths and some high exposure to radiation, but was not a widespread problem.  Also, there are some ways to avoid such accidents, including not building in earthquake prone areas or designing plants to withstand strong earthquakes.

The Chernobyl accident really was a disaster, but part of that could be attributed to the design of the plant.  So newer plants would be safer, and the likelihood of a similar event would be much smaller. The way this describes it: (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html) it looks like there were additional technological flaws that were responsible for the meltdown, like graphite tipped control rods.  All of the plants designed this way were changed after Chernobyl to avoid these.  There was also a human element to Chernobyl, but that was somebody actively making bad decisions, not an accident. That could be avoided by stricter guidelines or just hiring better people.  The article says that this accident could not have happened in the nuclear power plants used in the US due to the fact that US reactors have to be stable against a loss of water and increase in temperature, and to have a containment structure.

The big problem with nuclear power is that it ends up with all this radioactive waste.  It still might be a good short term solution, but if it were to go on long term there would be too much waste to dispose of safely.  Luckily nuclear power has a set timespan as the government only gives permits for plants to run for a certain amount of time, usually 30 to 40 years.

Ideally, a number of power plants could be built to help transition away from fossil fuels, and then by the time those plants were old enough to no longer be safe, alternative energy would be able to take over.  Because basically, putting in a massive amount of renewable energy right now might be possible but is extremely unlikely because it would require a huge amount of money and research, and nobody seems to be willing to invest in even a moderate amount of solar, wind, geothermal, or hydropower.  Nuclear power is known to work, so governments would be more willing to invest in it.

And as compared with coal, nuclear has the definite side effect of creating radioactive waste, and the highly unlikely side effect of a nuclear disaster.  Whereas coal has the definite side effect of causing a lot of pollution and health problems, and the likely side effect of causing global climate change.  As I said, it would only be a short term solution, but that works since nuclear power plants are only built to work for around 40 years.  After that long, hopefully other types of energy would be ready to take over.

 

Weekly Response #11: Reva McAulay

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200-Weekly Response #11

11.19.12

PlaNYC is a really impressive program, both for being willing to make such a long, extensive list of goals and for actually making progress on them.  Building more parks is great, and honestly I think it doesn’t even matter whether they’re big or small or have grass and trees are not.  Big parks with lots of greenery are around too, they just might be a little further than a 10 minute walk.  Having small outdoor spaces nearby still allows people to get fresh air, be active, and have a little bit of community.  Making waterways safe for recreation has basically the same functions, with the added benefit that if they are safe enough for people, they will probably be clean enough for wildlife as well.  Providing cleaner energy is good, but vague, so it could mean anything from slightly more efficient or slightly less polluting fossil fuel plants to renewable energy sources.  Reducing global warming emissions by 30% in the next 20 years is much more specific, but still doesn’t explain how.  It would probably entail some combination of renewable energy and cleaner vehicles as well as who knows what else.

The bluebelt program seems great.  It provides the same ecosystem services as any other expanse of plants and soil, while also reducing flooding and filtering runoff.  Plus, it’s really pretty.  Continuing to protect the watershed initially doesn’t sound like much of a goal, but its important for it to be part of the plan to ensure that the government is not tempted to stop and sell the land for development or something.  Bike lanes are another multi-purpose goal, in that they protect bike riders’ safety, encourage an environmentally friendly mode of transportation, and make it easier for people to bike ride as a form of recreation.

All in all, the plan seems like a very good mix of public service and environmentally beneficial projects.  It takes into consideration everything from the necessary (housing) to the purely recreational, with things like reducing congestion in between.  It seems highly unlikely that the city will accomplish all these goals by 2030, but nonetheless it looks like they are actually making decent progress, which is what matters.  In 5 years, they planted half a million trees, created new parks, implemented the select bus service, and created new housing.  Now they have 18 more to accomplish the rest.  As I said, this seems unlikely, but on the other hand Wikipedia says that “over 97% of the 127 initiatives in PlaNYC were launched within one year of its release and almost two-thirds of its 2009 milestones were achieved or mostly achieved.” If that’s true, it is a very good sign.  Even accomplishing two-thirds of PlaNYC by 2030 would be great, and presumably the remaining third would be wrapped up soon after.

As for Monday’s presentation: You guys did a great job, and hearing both sides of the carbon tax was very interesting.  However, I think cap-and-trade is something that actually has a lot of merit, probably even more than a carbon tax.  A carbon tax punishes everybody, it just punishes companies that use less carbon less.  Cap-and-trade actually rewards businesses that can operate with fewer emissions than the standard.  And then, it also takes the guesswork out of trying to get companies to meet whatever goal the EPA has in mind.  Finding the level of tax that would get companies to lower emissions to a certain level would be very difficult, and almost certainly involve a lot of trial and error.  Giving out or selling emission permits makes it very easy, and then allows the government to continue to decrease carbon use over time.  It worked well in reducing acid rain, better from both an environmental and economic standpoint than had been expected, so there’s every reason to believe it would work well for this.

Weekly Writeup #10: Reva McAulay

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #10

11.12.12

The history of the environmental movement in the U.S. is fairly impressive.  Rachel Carson was obviously a very multi-talented person who could have done fine without risking so much time on a book that might not have been the success it was.  The first Earth Day also had an impressive turnout in light of how now it’s basically something elementary schools celebrate.

Governer Pataki giving $230 million to create a fleet of buses and cars that run on clean energy was great, but it shows just how expensive this stuff is.  $230 million just to have a bunch of clean fuel buses and cars, so creating the kind of infrastructure to allow normal cars to run on clean fuel must have an astronomical price tag.  That must cost far far more than even the $9 billion dollar water-filtration plant, because it would require more than one building.  (It’s also really weird that you can buy 1026 acres of land for less than $3 million but one filtration plant costs $9 billion).

LEED is fascinating, but unfortunately it seems like the only buildings that live up to those standards are the super fancy ones that make every effort to look entirely environmentally friendly.  It should be something that all new buildings get.  That’s not going to happen unless regular architects and engineers learn how to build environmentally friendly buildings, instead of just the super fancy, super expensive environmental architects.  If we got to the point where LEED certified buildings were only marginally more expensive to design, marginally more expensive to build, and then a bit extra for materials, it would make economic sense to build them in all cases, since the long term energy savings would make up for it.

As for fracking, I am very much against it, especially upstate, but I still think everybody is being a little too hard on them.  There is no reason to disallow people from doing a very safe activity for economic gain if that is what they choose to do.  And nobody should forget that whatever anybody says, fracking is still very safe.  It is not like standard mining that will do serious damage to the environment, one hundred percent.  Fracking has a risk attached to it, but it is a relatively small one.  The question is whether that small risk is worth the economic benefits, which I say it isn’t, but I’m not the dictator of the country so my opinion doesn’t count (by itself).  Also, demanding proof that something is entirely safe is a little unreasonable.  How is anyone supposed to prove a negative? It’s easy to prove that something causes harm, but impossible to prove that there is exactly zero chance of something bad happening.  If every new technology had to be proved safe, there would be no advances made, because cars, airplanes, and cell phones all have never been proved safe.

That said, I think the risk entailed in fracking upstate (loss of clean drinking water for a city of 8 million people) is not worth the benefits (temporary job growth in a region that is not a ghost town like North Dakota).  It’s great that so many people (environmental organizations, citizens, Mark Ruffalo) feel so strongly about it as to make commercials, put on ads, and create and sign petitions to Gov. Cuomo.  It seems to me that public sentiment is against it here.  Also, I would much prefer to see companies spend their money on renewable and clean fuels instead of going to great lengths to scrape the last drop of natural gas out of the barrel.  That seems like a short-sighted strategy, considering that it’s going to run out in the near future while having a leg up on renewables will provide an ever increasing advantage.

Weekly Writeup #8: Reva McAulay

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 250

Weekly Writeup #8

            The 12 Principles of Green Engineering were an interesting if random seeming list of guidelines for how engineers and businesses should make their products.  Obviously they should avoid hazardous products and byproducts, prevent waste ,use an efficient production method, use renewable sources of energy and materials, and consider what happens to products after they are done being used.  But some of the other principles were more interesting, like the idea of using output-pull products.  Output-pull was something I had never heard of before, and didn’t really understand until we learned about the thing where you pull a nylon thread out of a chemical solution and it forms more nylon.   I’m still not sure whether or how this could be applied to anything other than chemistry, and google doesn’t have anything on it except more lists of the 12 Principles of Engineering.  Taking advantage of entropy is another interesting idea that is not obvious at first.  Using as few materials as possible is similarly not something that you would think would make a big difference, but it does make sense because the more materials that are in something, the more work it is to recycle.  And we’ve seen how people barely recycle the easy stuff, like aluminum cans or water bottles, so making things even more complicated to recycle will naturally make recycling even less common. 

            My three favorites of the 12 Principles of Green Engineering were the ones about designing for unnecessary capability, using energy and material flows, and designing for durability instead of immortality.  Using energy and material flows is interesting because it shows how little people consider the idea of reusing anything, even perfectly good energy that is already right there and doesn’t require any transportation or anything.  Using energy flows in manufacturing does not require an entire infrastructure like using alternative sources of energy does.  Nor does it require changing things to reduce the amount of energy it takes to complete the process.  All it takes is figuring out how to use waste energy from earlier in the process to help with a later part, using the waste energy as is.  It shows how little people consider using anything but something new, that minimizing energy use is thought of first before thinking of how to reuse energy that has already been taken out.  The same goes for waste products, obviously. 

            The idea that designing for unnecessary capacity or capability is flawed is great too.  It doesn’t make sense on any level, even a strictly economic one, to spend time, money, and resources to design and build something to do something it will never have to do.  Similarly, people tend to buy the most capable products even if they are more expensive and the consumer will never use its capabilities.  Why buy a computer that has huge capabilities and many special features if you just want to do basic internet and word processing? It doesn’t make any sense, and neither does buying a car that is made to handle off-road driving in terrible conditions, or one that can go 160 miles per hour, if the vast majority (or all) of its use will be driving in the city or on highways and never going over 60 mph.  If people did not demand unnecessary functions, manufacturers would be able to build more environmentally friendly products at lower prices. 

            Similarly, designing for immortality is basically designing for an unnecessary function.  The odds of a product being used for the consumer’s entire life and then being passed down to the next generation is absolutely none for most things, and very small even for things that people intend to use forever.  Certainly things that are meant to be disposable, like Styrofoam cups, don’t need to be made to last forever (unless recycled).  But for most things, people are not going to want to use it forever.  Eventually it’s going to be so outdated and out of fashion that nobody will want it even if you give it away for free.  Going back to computers and cars, only basic computers even need to be particularly durable, since the people who buy them might actually hold on to them for awhile.  A really fancy computer will probably only be used for a few years before it’s obsolete.  Cars need to last a while because they tend to be re-used, but even those will eventually be retired because they don’t have up to date safety features or gas mileage.

Koyaanisquatsi Paper

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200

10.29.12

The problem with discussing a movie like Koyaanisquatsi is that it is very difficult to remember.   Normally, the parts you remember in a movie are the plot, some important dialogue, and maybe a few key visuals, especially in action movies.  This movie had none of those things, and there were so many shots of different scenery, most of which were very brief, that it was hard to remember any individual one.  Similarly, as a not musically-inclined person, I was not able to remember any piece of the music more than a few seconds later, especially because it had very little if anything in the way of melody.  It seems that the only real way to remember a movie like this is to remember the emotions or thoughts it invoked.

My first impression was that someone had set a computer screensaver to music.  Admittedly, this is in no way the film’s fault as it had been made many years before the invention of the screensaver, but it still diminished the emotional impact of the movie for me.  Pictures of nature are everywhere, so seeing them on a small television screen is nothing special.  This, again, is not the movie’s fault, because I’m sure seeing it on a big screen would have at least some of the impact of seeing such views in real life would.  I found the scenes from the latter two-thirds of the movie to be more interesting than the first third, which was mostly the slow movement of such nature scenes.  Initially it was because I thought the nature scenes chosen for Koyaanisquatsi were far from the most impressive sceneries in the United States.  I’m not sure whether the Midwestern desert and rock formations were chosen because the director liked them or because he wanted to portray a sense of time, but they didn’t appeal to me all that much, so watching them for close to half an hour got boring.  The images of industrial plants were much more interesting, because they were more dynamic and colorful.  Things were happening, and explosions are fun to watch.

The city scenes were generally more interesting because they were time lapsed.  This meant the movie actually was showing something the viewer had never seen before.  Time-lapse offers a way of seeing changes and patterns in something that you see every day but only in isolated fragments.  In addition, they were the only parts that held any sort of emotional quality.  Several of the scenes were so hectic as to make me feel somewhat anxious or claustrophobic.  I suppose many of the other things might have had a similar effect on people who aren’t as used to rushing crowds as I am.  If somebody was used to quiet serenity, then the film might succeed in showing nature as calming and soothing and urban areas as hectic and unfortunate.  There were some scenes that were just brilliant though.  The still shots of people posing for the camera, particularly the one of the group of women all dressed in orange, was genuinely creepy.  The factory scenes succeeded in showing the repetitiveness and futility of just manufacturing endless amounts of things nobody needs.

The music, however, gives the viewer a stronger indication of what feelings the scenes were intended to invoke.  The first part, with the long, sweeping, unchanging views, has slow, calm music.  This is replaced by fast, repetitive music that seems to foreshadow change and impending doom and that comes with sped up footage of moving clouds and waves.   Then the music stops, and the nature is replaced by a large industrial complex.  The fast, repetitive music comes back in as the screen shows machines and explosions.  Then the music slows down and becomes much calmer as the picture switches over to people lying on the beach.  This sets up a contrast as the camera pans out to reveal that the people are lying in front of a huge nuclear power plant.  Then there’s more repetitive music binding together a parking lot full of cars, some old war tanks, US Air Force planes, rockets, and explosions.  Sad violin music is the background for broken down old buildings, huge piles of rubble, people sitting on stoops in streets full of garbage.  The violins are joined by loud vocals as huge buildings and bridges are demolished and cranes fall over.  Creepy music goes with the creepy stills of people posing, and loud and fast music goes with the time lapses of people rushing and factories operating.  Angelic-type vocals play over the image of a TV combining current events with consumerism, the sum of which gradually gets more and more disturbing.

I agree with one of the points that was clearly made in the movie, but not with the one that I think was the primary message.  Throughout the whole movie, humans and nature are entirely separated.  The only times humans are shown interacting with nature is to destroy it.  That seems to imply that humans are incapable of enjoying nature or of preserving it.  The message becomes not that humans should live with more contact with nature, or that humans should stop destroying nature, but that humans are only capable of destroying nature while being generally incapable of creating anything good.  There’s no way a human population of any significant size, let alone the size of ours, to avoid leaving a mark on nature.  Yet every mark on nature is portrayed as bad.  This is a problem for which there is literally no solution other than the nonexistence of large human populations.  That is pessimism of the highest order: framing a situation in such a way as to eliminate all possibility of a good outcome.  Yes, maybe there are things that should be changed about society.  But there are also many good aspects, and focusing solely on the bad ones is a very limited, and ultimately fruitless, way of looking at it.

Part of the Koyaanisquatsi website says that it intends to question the “vastly promotive, over-the-top positive” view of technology that comes from the producers of technology.  The one that promises “a glowing wonderland of unlimited opportunity is promised by the good life of the technological order” (http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/aboutus/aboutus.php).   I don’t doubt that that is an accurate description of how technology is portrayed by producers of technology, in ads and commercials and various other means of making people believe that they need to buy the latest of everything.  Nor do I doubt that it is often portrayed that way by people unconnected with the business of inventing and manufacturing and selling technology.  There are plenty of movies, books, political campaigns and who knows what else that promote the limitless possibilities of technology.  The problem is that art is not, and should not be the same as business and political propaganda.  Businesses and politicians show only their side of the story, and only bring up alternative views in order to dispute them.

Art, on the other hand, is supposed to be more reflective of reality.  Everything has good and bad sides.  Even a movie with a very heavy handed message saying that war is horribly will usually show some small good sides, like the heroics of some people involved.  Koyaanisquatsi really did not seem to grant more than a tiny bit of attention to the beauty and accomplishments of technology, and it is hard to tell if those were intentional.  The scene of the space shuttle quite clearly shows the disaster that comes with technology, that comes of overstepping the boundaries of nature.  It foreshadows the potential failure of technology.  And yet what of the brilliance of being able to visit other planets and to see the Earth from the outside?  The movie tries to paint even the best pieces of technology as awful and that makes all of it seem disingenuous.

The message I do agree with is the idea that technology is not a cure for all of the world’s problems.  Technology will not cure the environment, end war, or end starvation (that takes economics).  I even agree with the judgment Koyaanisquatsi puts on technology and consumerism.  I don’t like them much either.  I just don’t think they are inherent parts of humanity, at least not to the extent Koyaanisquatsi depicts them as.

Weekly Writeup #7: Reva McAulay

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #7

10.22.12

The differences between optimizing the existing solution, re-engineering the solution, and re-defining the problem seem rather vague, but I guess its just a matter of how much work it takes.  So optimizing the existing solution is anything that keeps the bulk of the process intact, while re-engineering the solution changes most of it.  And re-defining the problem means coming up with an entirely different solution.

The three design principles of cradle-to-cradle make it seem a lot easier than I’m sure it is.  Using current solar income is very do-able, just a little more expensive.  Celebrating diversity doesn’t seem like a challenge at all, as its actually probably the easiest and most efficient way anyway.  The really tricky one is turning waste into food, as there are still lots of kinds of wastes that no one knows how to re-use, or at least not without enormous cost.  In this case, it is almost certainly easier to create processes that produce easily re-usable wastes than to try to convert dangerous chemical wastes into inputs for another process.  The easy ones, the wastes that we already know how to re-use at a low cost, are unfortunately also mostly the less harmful ones.  Except for plastic, which is easy to re-use but for some reason often is not.

So if cradle-to-cradle engineering is technically viable, why isn’t it everywhere?  Again with the economics.  Or, probably more accurately, the lack of forethought amongst the people who make business decisions.  There are plenty of success stories of companies that, to a limited extent anyway, made environmentally-friendly decisions and benefitted from it.  For instance, when HP decided to start developing non-lead based solders for no other reason than that they knew lead was toxic, they had a working non-lead solder already in place when the EU banned lead in electronics(http://www.businessandsociety.be/assets/ee902e549915b8586e8a8daa338e073e.pdf). So basically when everyone else was scrambling and spending lots of money to figure out how to follow the EU’s restrictions, HP already had something that didn’t have any side effects and was cost-efficient.  It’s always better to be ahead of the game, whether you’re expecting government regulations or the eventual limited supply and high prices of fossil fuels.

While a number of people are saying that the government should step in and fund cradle to cradle processes if businesses aren’t willing to do it, I don’t think that is the solution.  The government should be funding cradle to cradle manufacturing, but they have a very minor role in the manufacturing of the huge amount of stuff that gets made every day.  There’s no way the government could afford to subsidize every industry that should be using these principles. In any case, businesses should decide that it is worth it to implement them without government support.  If no one can or will take the time to make cradle to cradle cost efficient on a grand scale, it will never catch on the way it should.  What the government should do is fund research on how to make it cheaper, and ensure that it is used in the industries the government can have more control of—say, electricity.

Random noticing of the day: glancing through the Wikipedia article on Cradle to Cradle Engineering, the Chinese government is listed as one of the major implementers of Cradle to Cradle engineering.  Not to knock China here but I think if the US government is falling behind China’s in environmentally friendliness, there might be a problem.

 

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

10.18.12

MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #6

There seem to be a couple of running themes in everyone else’s responses this week.  One, that environmental sustainability is impossible, and two, that the Civil Rights movement and indeed every other issue in history has not been all that successful.  I disagree with both those points.  Environmental sustainability is very possible, just not immediately.  It doesn’t need to happen immediately.  The world is progressing towards it, and that’s good, even if the progress could be faster.  To say, oh, it’s impossible and will never happen so we should not even try just slows that progress. Everyone who cares needs to do things to facilitate progress to make up for the people who don’t care, and if some of the people who care don’t do anything because they think it is futile, that just swings the balance in favor of the care-nots.  And I bet most of the people who are saying that progress is impossible because people don’t care are not doing anything about it themselves.

As for the second point, the Civil Rights movement has been extremely successful, and anyone who doesn’t think so has expectations that are too high.  Sustainability might be a more technically difficult problem to solve, but in getting people engaged it has similar roadblocks, and engagement is ultimately what makes or breaks it.  For Civil Rights, the problem was that it affected other people, not the people who had to make the changes.  For the environmental problem, the issue is that it will affect people at some point in the future.  The world moves slowly, and the change between 50 years ago and today is enormous.  If sustainability changed that quickly we would be in a far far better situation than we are in now.  If sustainability changed that quickly, it would not even be a pressing issue today.

Emotional engagement is a strange point to agree or disagree with.  It’s obvious that they way people are, no change will take place without emotional engagement.  The only people who do things for the environment are the ones who are emotionally engaged.  I guess the arguable point is who should be doing the emotional engagement, and whether it should be a substitute for or addition to educating people on the facts.  Emotional engagement is only good if its based on solid evidence, and if the solid evidence is widely known.  Otherwise it could be seen as kind of manipulative.  (Then again, what part of elementary school isn’t manipulative?).

Emotional engagement isn’t, though, the ultimate solution to sustainability.   It can make people reduce their waste and buy more environmentally friendly products, but emotional engagement is never going to make lots of people decide to fundamentally change their lifestyle away from the ‘constantly increasing GDP’ model.  Or I don’t know, maybe it will, but it would take a deeper, longer term, more pervasive kind of emotional engagement than just getting people scared or riled up or virtuous.  Its probably the kind of thing that takes a generation or two to change, starting with kids (and here we come back to elementary school and the manipulative aspects thereof), like in the Civil Rights movement.  A couple generations from now could consist mostly of people who don’t buy the same amount of things we do, who don’t upgrade and replace everything constantly.  That would really be sustainability.

Unrelated to anything else, this closing-the-loop business is really cool.  Not like NASA/Space race/man-on-the-moon cool, but still pretty cool.  It’s got people figuring out ways to do things previously thought to be impossible, and it’s not so esoteric as biochemistry and finding a magical cure for cancer.   All it needs is a little Space Race, Iron Man, this is the future of the human race marketing.

Weekly Writeup #5: Reva McAulay

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

10.10.12

MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #5

Learning about the process of global warming was very useful, because generally people discuss the causes and effects of global warming without explaining how it works or the evidence for it.  Then if they do explain it, they give an overly simplified description of the process—for instance saying Carbon Dioxide reflects heat back towards Earth when it really absorbs and transfers heat.

It’s comforting to know the United States is no longer the biggest emitter of Carbon Dioxide.  Only not really, because at least we can do something about the United States.  I’m not sure if there is anybody outside China who can do anything about China’s Carbon Dioxide emissions, and if there is its not random Americans.  But at least its not entirely our fault.  Unfortunately the biggest problems are all things no normal person has control over.  The government and industry have to fix their own stuff but waiting for other people to do something is grating even if they actually do it.

As someone who hates hot weather, knowing temperatures could rise 7 degrees during my lifetime is terrifying, in the most literal sense of the word.  Now, 7 degrees is not enough to kill people (only old people and babies…) but it still freaks me out because it reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode where the Earth moves closer to the sun and the incredible heat causes lots of people to die and water to run out.  Obviously 7 degrees (probably) won’t cause that, but the idea still gives me that terrifying image of endless oppressing heat.

The main thing I took away from the New Bedford case study was that some really bad things can come out of people with the best of intentions, or, okay, average intentions, who just don’t know something.  People really did think the river would clean itself within a few miles, its not like today when most people know that they are doing things that are bad for the environment but choose to do them anyway.  But the result is exactly the same, unfortunately.  Building a new bridge is something most people, smart people, today including myself would never imagine could have such a serious effect on a river. Which is scary because its impossible for everyone to know everything, and there are still things about the environment that nobody knows.  The smaller capacity of the Southern Ocean is something nobody knew, not even the scientists who study this stuff.  Its impossible to prepare for the future and its impossible to prevent making any mistakes, but at this point I think our knowledge and understanding of the world is enough to decide to stop polluting everything.

Weekly Writeup #4: Reva McAulay

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Reva

Reva McAulay

MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #4

10.1.12

Learning about the history of New York City’s waste was oddly enough the hands down coolest thing we’ve learned about so far.  There were so many weird historical events that could be seen in the trash records, not to mention the amusing idea that somebody has been keeping quite detailed records of what New Yorkers throw out for an absurdly long period of time.

The experiment about the air quality was also very interesting.  It shows how the results of a study can be so unexpected, considering that it seemed to be aimed towards comparing the air quality of two different neighborhoods but instead discovered that subways put dangerous steel dust in the air.  I can’t say I’m outraged either, this is not a case of blatant disregard for environmental consequences or government regulations like the Exxon Mobil thing.  Steel dust coming from steel on steel friction while braking is not exactly a crazy idea, nor is the idea that said steel dust would make its way into people’s lungs.  It’s impossible to eliminate pollution, and the MTA is only polluting subway tunnels, so only people who choose to take the subway are affected.  It’s just one of the risks inherent in every life activity, like the risk of getting hearing damage from the loud noises or falling off a platform.  If people care enough to kick up a fuss, the MTA will undoubtedly fix it, albeit probably in the cheapest and easiest manner even if it is less effective or flawed.  My guess though, is that, like the hearing damage, even if people knew they wouldn’t so much as pay a few bucks or take a few delays to get it fixed.

With a little bit of digging I was able to come up with some anecdotal information about the old-school soda bottles that had a deposit from the bottling company to encourage consumers to return the bottles so they could be washed and reused.  Apparently using plastic bottles and aluminum cans is cheaper, which is a shame since they are not reusable and often not recycled either.   The voluntary recycling of glass bottles paid 2 cents on a 5-cent bottle.  (http://voices.yahoo.com/coca-cola-cost-then-now-7162898.html?cat=37).  When the first deposit law was passed in 1972, a six pack of Coke cans cost $0.69.  That’s eleven and a half cents per can, meaning a five cent deposit would get you back close to half the cost of the soda.

Obviously, the deposit carries a lot more weight when its half the price of a beverage rather then a tenth or 1/20 of the price.  The additional fact that Michigan, of the ten-cent bottle deposits, has a near 100% recycling rate (compared to New York’s 75%, http://www.bottlebill.org/about/benefits/waste.htm) indicates that lawmakers should consider upping the deposit.  Not to mention putting in deposits in the 39 states that don’t have any at all.   On the plus side, New York added water and non-carbonated drinks to the deposit bill in 2009 in spite of stores complaining about having to accept cans, and bottles and drink companies complaining that the deposit raised prices and would reduce sales.

In the meantime, at least the mayor excluded incineration from the list of possible new waste-to-energy propositions, so we don’t have to worry about ending up in a Detroit-like situation.   Because basically every goal of the city is to avoid being like Detroit in any way.  But that still leaves somebody to figure out a cost-effective way to turn garbage into energy, one that is preferably still cost-effective after recycling and composting remove lots of NYC’s garbage.

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