Author Archives: tom hart

Posts by tom hart

Waste and its tragedies

Posted on November 30, 2012 by tom hart

With the visionary ideas of PlaNYC and what we’d recently learned of New York’s preventative water-pollution systems, I had higher expectations for the city’s new solid waste management system. This time, New York needs to follow the example of cities like San Francisco.

It seems that the real issues of waste management in New York have gotten bogged down in politics. I have to wonder how much thought was given to the idea of a “zero-waste” NYC when the city’s new solid waste management system was drawn up. Was the idea considered at all, or did the city government take it for granted that waste is a fact of city life? Instead of exporting garbage to Tarrytown to rot in a high-tech dump, the city could export fertilizer to farmers. Surely the idea could be successfully marketed to this organic-food loving city.

Personally, I find it hard to get “mad as hell”. I’m pretty stoic most of the time, and I don’t usually think of anger as a productive emotion. I’ve also become fairly desensitized over the years to social problems – except for a few special situations, like unfair treatment on an individual level, anger just isn’t my response to these situations. I generally think of this as a good thing, since anger clouds judgment and is generally unpleasant to experience or be around, but in cases of social justice anger might be called for. Besides being stoic, I’m also fairly passive. An angry version of me might feel more motivated to make change; I might be more emotionally engaged. Emotional engagement requires strong emotions virtually by definition.

The presentations we watched on Thursday tried to put a bit of emotional engagement into practice. The study on the towns of Treece and Pitcher presented an example of a community essentially destroyed by, and the EPA’s response to it. With the hazardous results of decades of mining surrounding the town, with a total cleanup cost that might potentially cost more than the monetary value of the homes and possessions there, evacuation may well have been the only conscionable solution. Regardless of individual free choice, a community that includes children has a responsibility to them to provide a safe environment to grow up in. With the developmental risks posed by exposure to lead and other metals, the EPA’s response seems particularly justified. The town stands as an example of the mistakes of the past, and the situations and hard choices we should do our best to avoid having to make in the future.

I have to wonder why only one couple refused every offer of reimbursement for evacuation. I don’t know the financial details of anyone who lived in Treece, but it seems unusual that only two people would be unable to move. It seems likely that they simply decided they were more happy staying where they were than picking and starting anew, which is and should be their choice.

Advertising is entirely based on emotional engagement, although feelings of envy and desire are usually the goal rather than anger or camaraderie. In the case presented by my classmates, however, the goal is to juxtapose the beautiful architecture of the city with the waste that surrounds its operation. I think the idea is clever. A possibly even more effective version might use a great number of unique images from across the city to form the mosaic, allowing more people to connect with scenes from their neighborhood and become engaged with the situation surrounding us.

The Nuclear Question

Posted on November 27, 2012 by tom hart

The question of nuclear power is a fascinating one. Nuclear power is a technology distinctly of the modern era. It fits well into the progression of history – water power gave way to coal power, which is logically followed by nuclear power. Each shows the harnessing of a “deeper” form of energy – first kinetic energy and momentum, then potential energy found in nuclear bonds, and finally the potential energy of nuclear binding. Each step along the way has introduced new dangers and poisons, but has also yielded greater rewards. But nuclear power hasn’t quite lived up to its predecessors in terms of economic revolution. Nuclear facilities have made themselves a significant part of our power supply, but not in the way various fossil fuels have. And with no new power plants since the 1970s, their position in the American power industry has stagnated.

Are the risks too great for the rewards? Although Chernobyl-type disasters are not thought possible with American reactors, the public doesn’t understand this. The real dangers of nuclear power are more subtle, and often poorly explained. Our Monday debate on nuclear power did a good job of going over them – the risks exist mostly in small-scale radiation leaks, the age of the reactors we currently have, and the need for constant vigilance.

So far the United States (and most of the world) has done well in dealing with these problems. Our largest nuclear incident resulted in no deaths. But as infrastructure ages, risks grow. There will come a time when we will have to decommission our nuclear plants and transition to another source of energy, but the question is when. At the debate I wasn’t convinced one way or another that the time to decommission Indian Point is now. It is true that the money of energy production could be redirected towards retrofitting houses for greater energy efficiency, as well as research for solar power. But in the meantime, New York will burn fossil fuels to make up the energy difference.

There are other options for improving efficiency. We could modernize the electrical grid, or encourage more people to move to cities, or make investments in public transit. In fact, it seems like it would be wise to pursue all of them, if we had the money (isn’t this where public works deficit spending would be most useful?). But until that happens, we’ll probably have to choose.

The most important priority seems to be the investment which will have the greatest return in the future, which is probably technology. With greater technology all of our future possibilities are expanded and amplified. In light of that, it’s a numbers game. Let’s assume there is nowhere else in the government’s budget to save money for technology, and assume that 2020 is when we will have retrofitted enough homes to break even in terms of carbon emissions from where we are now. If we invest the rest of the saved money in solar energy research, we need to improve our technology enough that we can make up for increased CO2 emissions from 2012-2020.

This is all short term of course, and I hate to think in the short term. But from what I’ve read in the news lately, we need to start thinking about the short term, because the time of irreversible danger will not be part of the long term for much longer. The time for investment is coming to and end, so we’ve got to do as much as we can with the time and money we have left to us. Soon we will have to implement the best survival and adaptation strategies that we have, however crude or insightful they may be.

PlaNYC

Posted on November 19, 2012 by tom hart

New York City has many admirable goals to improve itself over the next two decades as part of the PlaNYC program. Designed to increase the “liveability” of the city in the categories of land, water, transportation, energy, and air, these goals fit well into the framework of sustainability. They seem to follow and seem to match up well with a conclusion I came to in previous essays – that the city must take advantage of the opportunities presented to it, and renew itself to be better and more efficient.

The city plans to take greater advantage of its resources, as any city might. But rather than develop for industry, the improvements outlined for PlaNYC seem focused on allowing millions of New Yorkers to enjoy the full benefits of the city they live in. Unusable brownfields are to be cleaned and restored – many of them into parks for the city’s residents. Waterways are to be opened, not for commercial fishing, but for recreation. And greenhouse gas emissions are to be lowered by 30%, a goal which, if achieved, would be extremely impressive.

Many of the goals outlined in the plan are simply logical, such as improving the city’s electrical grid and transportation system or building additional housing. But the primary beneficiaries of the improvements will be those who live there, as residents and workers rather than owners or businesses. Creating a city that people want to live in is improvement from the ground up – business and innovation will follow. If New York can become the nicest city in America to live in, by the standards of the general population, it will surely secure itself as the city model city of the future.

Many successes have already been logged in the record book for PlaNYC. Municipal infrastructure and train lines that can function underground are being decked over by housing and business, facilities that can take better advantage of clean air and natural light. In this way the city continues to make more of itself advantageous to more New Yorkers. New train lines focus on decreasing congestion and designing more efficient routes. The city is functional now, and excellent in many respects – but if PlaNYC accomplishes its goals, the city will be on track to become an excellent city for everyone.

I was particularly intrigued to learn of Staten Island’s “Bluebelt” program. This is a prime example of green engineering – engineering waterways and ecosystems to process our water and protect our land. The juxtaposition between the natural-looking drainage system and the vacuum truck was unique, but possibly indicative of trends to come. The system is a mutualistic partnership between humans and nature, as opposed to a parasitic or even commensal one. This matches up perfectly with the lyric from the song we listened to in class: “if you’re after getting the honey, don’t go killing all the bees.”

In reading about science and technology, I often hear about scientists delving into natural processes as a framework for technology. But sometimes we can simply redirect existing systems to suit our needs. Of course, we have learned lessons in what happens when we use introduce formerly remote species into new environments. But our tools have become more subtle since we intentionally relocated invasive species to remove pests or do other tasks for us. Genetic engineering lets us introduce specific traits into a species. GM crops are now common, but I don’t believe we have ever used such organisms for much of a role in green engineering or sustainable development. I expect it won’t be long before our knowledge is complete enough, or our need is dire enough, for us to give it a try.

Rights and Infrastructure

Posted on November 12, 2012 by tom hart

Green engineering is still in its infancy – but it’s not the only example of success in environmental policy. The progression of the debate between the environment and economy, from end of pipe treatment up to sustainable development, has other endpoints.  One of these is the solution New York City enacted to provide clean drinking water without building enormous water treatment facilities – protect the water supply at its source.

This solution, where the city government bought up land in the watershed that supplies its municipal water system, represents a union between efficient market decisions and sound governmental policy. In buying up the land (presumably for a fair price), the land’s owners received a fair compensation for their land, and the government gained control of the land and the ability to ensure the water supply remained pure.

This gives the government monopoly power in the area. No industry or business can move in to the area while the government owns the land, and so the towns that surround the lakes and waterways will remain small and economically underdeveloped. Is this inequitable? Some would say each community has the right to determine its own course of development, and should not be lorded over by some far away and self-interested power. But the owners of the land chose to give up their autonomy (though who will say no when a buyer comes in loaded with cash?) The debate reminds me of issues like colonialism, or indentured servitude. Is it a good idea to sell away your future rights for immediate profit, if immediate profit is what you need right now? Or is it ethically untenable, something we should prevent by law?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, not yet. Regardless, the issue is similar to that of the bridge in New Bedford. Whether ethical or not, the decision to build that bridge forever altered the land- and seascape of the basin, and redirected all future patterns of development. Maybe the problem is simply one of mobility. If people were more free to move about the country, issues of opportunity and development would be less important. How about that as a solution? The city government can subsidize members of communities whose economic development has been hindered to relocate.

In the next session we moved on to the similar, but related topic of hydraulic fracturing. The issue here is closely related to that of community decision-making. If the negative effects of fracking, such as the science shows them to be, are localized, is it the right of the community to accept them? How much of the community must get on board – a simple majority or a super-majority, or must the decision be unanimous? These are all simply questions for how government should be run, but the stakes are much higher when they are intertwined with personal health. Once again, if a community decides to allow fracking, I think the presentation of a subsidy for relocation is a good choice for those who wish to leave.

Policies for a sustainable New York City must these issues into account, but they must also focus heavily on the infrastructure. A city such as this one relies on extraordinarily expansive and concentrated sets of infrastructure to survive and thrive, and responsible, environmentally-sound infrastructure goes a long way towards achieving the goals of health and prosperity. It is a wonderful thing that programs like LEED be put into place to ensure that the next generation of buildings in New York are of the highest caliber.

Macbeth and the Messianic Moment

Posted on November 10, 2012 by tom hart

This week was somewhat unusual. With the change in schedule, half of our first session was taken up by my group’s oral presentation, an adaptation of Macbeth. I’m glad we got the opportunity to do a creative project for our oral presentation. We gave the play a humorous and sometimes silly tone for two reasons: firstly, because none of us are Shakespearian actors, and secondly, because humor allows for a high level of emotional engagement. We tried to make our production relatable and enjoyable in the most reliable way we could. We tried to combine some of the issues we’ve gone over as a class, including voluntary standards and their limited impact, companies like Mobil that falsify their records and fight federal investigations, and the impact of environmental exploitation on a community. I worried that our portrayal of the issues could be interpreted as satirical, but this is certainly not the case.

The audience seemed to enjoy the show, and hopefully the engagement of entertainment brought along with it some engagement of the themes and ideas we presented. This seems to be a risk whenever serious issues are presented in a less-serious manner – there is both a reduction of complex issues to simple statements, and an understanding that what happens in a comedy is not to be taken seriously. The opposite this also has its risks: a serious presentation of issues may be uninteresting or confusing to those with less of a background in the subject. And of course, so much depends on the audience the piece is prepared for. My group members and I trust that the class was able to both enjoy the show and process our points appropriately.

From there we moved back to the idea of green engineering. The 12 principles simply brought the three fundamental concepts of green engineering, that waste is food, we must use current solar income, and that we should celebrate diversity, into greater detail. The principles cover things we’ve already hinted at: guidelines for building energy-efficient products energy-efficiently, and built to be taken apart and have the constituent parts put back into the system.

Next we moved forward with the idea of the Messianic Moment. According to the idea, we must stop being satisfied with our powerlessness, and take action. It comes with the catch-phrase “I don’t know if this is going to work, but let’s try it”. My question is, to what extent are we supposed to know if something is going to work? If we don’t know if something is going to work scientifically, it might be a huge waste of resources, or worse, a danger to us all. For example, a company recently dumped a large volume of iron dust into the ocean to try to spur the growth of plankton, which ultimately trap carbon dioxide and sink to the ocean’s bottom when they die[1]. The idea is an interesting one as an example of ecological engineering, but many scientists have called the action rash and not scientifically sound or ecologically safe. But it sounds like the man who had this done was acting in a sense of the Messianic Moment (or at least trying to generate valuable carbon credits).

Maybe the Messianic Moment is more of a mindset for the common man. But is it the feeling of responsibility and satisfaction we get when we recycle an aluminum can, or something more? I like the idea of personal responsibility and connectedness, especially with regards to emotional engagement. But I have trouble seeing the balance point between insignificance and rashness were the Messianic Moment seems to be.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

Koyaanisqatsi

Posted on November 10, 2012 by tom hart

I was expecting something quite different when I began this film. I expected an extensive documentary which sent out to investigate a problem, interviewed regular people as well as representatives of business and government. I expected each point to be concise but well-developed, and to lead together into a decisive closing statement. Instead I saw a poetic vision of the natural earth, of human industry and its excesses. The film was about images and emotions, accentuated by continuous music, rather than ideas, statistics and solutions. It takes the positives and negatives of human influence and organizes them into three dichotomies: natural beauty and human decay, the greatness of human achievement and the fear of human destructive power, and productivity and consumerism. In this way it engages us emotionally in an easy to understand and thought-provoking manner.

The main portion of the film opens upon beautiful landscapes which appear to be from the American southwest. These locales are open and clear and probably more beautiful than any place I’ve yet seen, and seem almost entirely free from human intervention. Our point of view drops down immense caverns, past towering rock spires, and eventually switches to scenes of untouched mountain ranges as clouds flow over and around them. This segment serves to introduce the beauty of the earth free from human exploitation, and what is and will continue to be lost every day as development continues.

Next, the scene shifts, accompanied by ominous music, producing the second half of the first dichotomy. The setting still appears to be somewhere in the southwest, but humans have left their mark. Industrial complexes surrounded by chemical-filled pools (very reminiscent of those set up by Mobil’s near Arthur Kill).  Later we see scenes of abandoned buildings, of poor neighborhoods and poverty. Throughout the film there are scenes of the negative aspects of urban life, with the high summer heat, the crowds, and the congestion. Each of these contributes to the next stage of emotional engagement. Similar to the “problem phase” of MHC 200’s arc, these scenes show us some of our largest mistakes. Industry creates and motivates, but not all of its creations are positive. With production comes waste (barring green engineering) inequality. We’ve built ghettos alongside our financial centers, and waste holding sites along our power suppliers.

Scattered throughout the film are scenes of human achievement and destruction. We create our own hills and mountains in high-rises and skyscrapers, and our own streams and rivers in roads and highway complexes. The film shows us the beauty of these creations, with blue sky and clouds reflecting off the mirrored side of a business building. Later we get bird’s-eye views of the city a night, which, at least to me, are nearly as beautiful as the wonders of the southwest we saw earlier. Still later we see images of highways as cars move about them like red blood cells in an artery. When the camera’s viewpoint accelerates, moving us faster and faster through the streets at night, the neon lights blend together like something from a science fiction movie. In my interpretation, these scenes show the strength and glory of human creations.

They are countered by our ability to destroy. Throughout the film, we see visions of destruction along with our visions of creation. When I see an aircraft carrier with the equation “E = mc2” emblazoned on its deck, I think immediately of the nuclear reactor deep within. At a different point in the film, we see that energy directed purely for destructive purposes: an atomic bomb detonates. Other scenes of destruction haunt us throughout the film. We see military vehicles repeatedly, along with ICBM launches, fighter jet rockets exploding, and other, unexplained explosions. At one point the afore-mentioned scenes of poverty collide with destruction: the demolition of a whole series of decrepit high rises happens before our eyes. Along with the power to create comes our power to destroy. It is awe-inspiring, but also frightening and worrisome. It’s importance must also be understood in the context of the cold war, when this film was made. The growth of our productive forces led directly to our ability to destroy, and exists as a constant threat both to us and the environment. Explosives that don’t detonate can act as mines in the ground for decades. Chemicals within them, as well as weaponry like depleted Uranium rounds, contaminate the environment and create a large risk of birth defects. Nuclear war, more of a threat in the 1980s than today, poses the ultimate risk of a nuclear winter.

The third dichotomy relates to productivity and consumption. On the one hand, Koyaanisqatsi gives us several looks inside the productive and financial centers of our nation. We see assembly lines creating cars and stock markets where new companies find capital. Cars and businesses both create great wealth and productivity in our society, but neither of these things, so well-loved in America, are without their drawbacks. Each is an icon of our current way of living, of individualism, prosperity, and success – but also of consumption and greed. The film proposes a balance with these institutions, but the balance is shifted when we see what many other factories produce. The film focuses in on a hotdog factory and a Twinkie factory, examples of low-quality, unhealthy food. From there the scene brings us to food courts and shopping malls, places of conspicuous consumption and waste. The film seems to linger here with this idea of wasted potential. It shows us the immense infrastructure we have built that is capable of creating marvels, but is instead oriented towards trivial pleasures. We have mined and built upon great swaths of the earth, but largely not for any important reason – just to consume more and more.

The film ends with an explanation both of the title and of the Hopi words sung throughout. Koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance”, which cannot be maintained. This is clearly evident, both from the film and from myriad other expert sources on the environment. The first prophecy, which says, “if we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster,” seems at first glance to be the naïve saying of a pre-metallurgic society. While the Hopi of the past couldn’t have known what environmental problems we of the present face, I can only think of how appropriate the prophecy is in the light of coal mining and oil drilling. These industries have invited disaster in numerous ways, both in terms of toxic chemical release, environmental disruption, and the ultimate threat of global warming. The second prophecy, “near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky,” is less transparent, but these “cobwebs” could certainly be interpreted as carbon dioxide and the any other gases and particulate matter we have released into the atmosphere. The third prophecy, “a container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans,” seems almost prescient in the light of global warming. We have placed those chemicals in the sky, and they do threaten to desertify our land, to melt our icecaps, to destroy our ozone layer, to acidify our ocean and to raise temperatures everywhere.

The first and last scenes of the film are of a rocket taking off. The rocket, built by human ingenuity and manpower, lifts powerfully into the air, soaring off into the heavens. It is finally on the verge of escape from this planet when it explodes. One interpretation of this image is quite dark. We have come too far on ancient sunlight, and altered the environment too much – the only thing left is to wait for our hubris to consume us, like Icarus flying too close to the sun on waxen wings. But there is a second interpretation: Only that we can’t run away from the problems we’ve created, that we need to face the challenges before us.  The second interpretation seems true for now, but the challenges we face grow more dire every day.

This seems to be the overarching theme of the film: we need to make the right choices. We as humans have so many capabilities: we can change the world, or we can leave it be. We can create beauty or we can create destruction. We can direct our industry towards meeting the challenges we face, or we can continue to produce only the purpose of consumption. Until we make the right choices, life will remain “out of balance,” and we will continue to put ourselves and our society at risk.

Green Engineering as Sustainable Development

Posted on October 21, 2012 by tom hart

Because the midterm was Monday and Thursday’s lecture covered “Applying the Principles of Green Engineering,” this response will focus on the article alone. Green engineering is an amazing thing. It seems like the clear “next step” for us to take in terms of industrial development, but it also seems like science fiction.

The three main ideas of green engineering, that waste is food, we should use current solar income, and that we should celebrate diversity, seem like good tenets to not only base an industry on, but a lifestyle. The idea of waste as food should resonate with anyone who recycles or composts. Many people advocate for an end to oil and the rise of green power. And diversity should agree with people both on the surface, and on a deeper level. Most people know about cultural and species diversity, but, as the article detailed, we must also consider the diversity of locale. Each place on this planet has its own unique environment, and its own resources and challenges. We must take all of them into account when determining how to proceed most effectively (and this is sustainable development).

A product that is “commercially productive, socially beneficial, and ecologically intelligent” meets the triple bottom line almost by definition. And the article doesn’t just outline a plan for creating such a wondrous product in the future; a couple instances of actual application are described. I immediately have to ask, “what’s the catch?” Do the products come apart easily, are they scratchy, are they prohibitively expensive? I couldn’t quickly find answers to those questions, but Professor Alexandratos seemed to think they were reliable in those areas. I then asked, “but are they still around? Why haven’t I heard of them?” It seems that DesignTex, which invented the sustainable fabric by 1993, still exists and is still committed to producing a green product through green means.

On the other hand, the Shaw carpet company described later in the paper does not seem to fully emphasize its environmental repute. The main page of their website does not mention ecological advantages; only by navigating to different pages of the site are certain “environmentally friendly” products found. It seems that Shaw does still use the Nylon 6 material advertised in the article, but this information is hard to find and not well-emphasized.

This brings me to yet another question. Why are these systems not the main selling point of the products? I would think such environmental advantages would find an enormous market in the ecologically-conscious portion of our society (the same portion that buys exclusively organic food and drives hybrid cars). I was under the impression that being seen as environmentally conscious was, if not actually useful to the environment, at least trendy and popular. Do these products not have a large enough market to be a main selling feature? If price is the obstacle, I can think of a way we might better spend some of the subsidies we give to oil and gas companies. Barring that, government owned or rented buildings and manufacturing process should make use of these techniques to whatever extent they can.

My main concern now is that this article is 9 years old. Where have we gotten in that span of time? I can’t think of any such ecologically beneficial products off the top of my head, with the exception of organic farming and dry cleaning. Even then, I question to what extent production of “organic” foods and products actually resemble the process described in the article.

Progress and Investment

Posted on October 17, 2012 by tom hart

Now we’re approaching a new region of the arc – the solutions. Things are already beginning to come together. We spent the first section of the class talking about the environmental problems created by people, corporations, and governments. We’ve stepped back through longer timescales and to larger regions, until we reached the problems of global air and water pollution. Here we become even more abstract.

People, and the institutions they create, generally worry about short term before short term. So if one option is cheaper in the short term, then that is what will be done – barring intervention. Taking and processing natural resources is almost always cheaper than recovering materials from waste, and so that’s why we haven’t pursued these processes with greater fervor. Valorization and “closing the loop” will not happen until resources in nature become more expensive than materials recovered from waste.

This will happen on its own eventually, but the transition will be yet another problem that will cause strife and instability amid many others we will undoubtedly encounter over the next hundred years or so. Eventually new industries based on resource recovery will emerge, but we would prefer to start the process earlier so that the infrastructure is in place. We could do his by taxing raw resource production and subsidizing resource recovery. Unfortunately, many important metals and minerals are found primarily in foreign countries. We can tax imports of these materials, but then we are asking other countries to buy them up instead (at least in the minds of politicians).

At some point we need to step up to the plate and make a commitment. This is something we can take advantage of right now, if we are willing to invest in our infrastructure. Many parts of our country are opposed to deficit spending, but its use to increase GDP and invest in our future seems like a good idea in a time of low growth and high unemployment.

This is just one step in the process of creating a sustainable economy, but it would give us a jump-start in the process of sustainable development. With new infrastructure we can increase efficiency and take advantage of our greater understanding of humans and the environment.

If voluntary standards are ineffective for self-interested industry, it seems just as likely that they would be ineffective for self-interested nations. On the international scale, all standards are voluntary, at least until other nations put sanctions on trade or threaten war. International agreements cannot be enforced unless they are tied to some sort of material “carrot” or “stick”. Are environmental agreements ever tied to trade agreements?  It seems that such an arrangement, if it were diplomatically possible, might do more to help than UN declarations.

Sustainable development requires a significant investment, and it seems like it would be very hard for developing nations to acquire the capital (and see that it is put to use). But a nation that is currently developing represents a wonderful opportunity to build an infrastructure that is modern according to our current knowledge and understanding of the environment – it is almost the ability to skip a step in development that first-world nations went through a hundred years ago. Unfortunately it seems like developing nations will have an extremely hard time fulfilling the triple bottom line – economic growth is usually the first priority, along with social stability. Environmental regulations are meaningless if the black market operates freely.

The Grand Scale

Posted on October 10, 2012 by tom hart

After exploring the actions of specific companies and institutions, we’re moving on to the environment itself. The state of a given locale is determined not just by the willingness of nearby companies to shirk the law, but also by the human population, their choice of occupation, the location of their homes, and everything they make. Everything affects the environment in some way, and when those influences are spread over hundreds of years, their effects can be much more significant than we might otherwise expect.

That’s what the New Bedford case study showed us. By beginning the study with the founding of the settlement and chronicling each change that has occurred since then, the study gives a fuller, more complete understanding of the human impact on a particular environment. The study has enormous worth as a lesson on future planning and development. When building a new bridge, we now must consider the change in river currents. In New Bedford, this change in currents essentially destroyed the fishing economy of the east bank of the harbor, and permanently altered patterns of settlement and development over the next three centuries. The location of the city of New Bedford on the west side of the harbor is a direct result of this choice.

I find this historical approach to be fascinating in the implications it has for planners. Every choice will most likely have unforeseen consequences down the road, particularly as populations boom and systems that were once adequate stop being able to handle environmental strain. It is clear the human waste created by the population of New Bedford soon overwhelmed the natural mixing processes of the watershed, but I have to wonder what would have changed had the residents taken advantage of the local wetlands, rather than filling them in. Would the wetlands have been able to cope with and effectively treat a reasonable amount of waste, or would the influx of such new compounds make them unsustainable?

In the next session we moved from water pollution to air pollution, and moved out even further into the grander scheme of things. It is indisputable that climate change is occurring, and incomprehensible that it is not anthropogenic. This issue is the most difficult of all to regulate, because no one owns the air. While water pollution and overfishing affect the grander world, the short term problems created are localized. CO2 production has little in the way of short term or localized effects, but its long term, global effects are enormous.  Coastal cities will need to build expensive walls or dams to stay above water, and some areas may need to evacuate entirely. I read earlier that the island nation of Kiribati is already making plans to relocate its entire population to due to rising sea levels.

Many people have predicted political crises ahead, and I’m inclined to agree. Although the sea will get larger and deeper, oceanic acidification due to CO2 absorption will still probably decrease fishing yields. And droughts across Africa and Asia will make fresh water extremely valuable. What are we to do when the rivers that irrigate the crops of China and India stop being fed by the Himalayan glaciers? And through all of this, the world’s oil reserves continue to be depleted.

I have a friend who comes up with all sorts of doomsday scenarios, like China invading Russia to take control of their oil. Sometimes his ideas don’t seem that far fetched, but I’m a bit more optimistic than that. I expect the ingenuity of our species will carry us through these the times ahead, but it’s not going to be easy. Working on the solutions to climate change would be a significant step forward, at least.

Companies, Government, and People

Posted on October 1, 2012 by tom hart

Now after seeing what happens when companies are given the freedom to do what they want without significant penalties, we’ve moved on to policy with regards to public services and the public itself.

We began the discussion with an overview of trash incinerators. I hadn’t realized that this type of waste disposal was at one point so common, but it makes sense. Incinerators are evidently small and cheap enough to install in every apartment building, and conveniently decrease the quantity of waste for ultimate disposal in a landfill. In addition, ash doesn’t attract rats or other pets.

But over the last half century, health standards have risen, requiring expensive new air filters for them to remain operational. As a result, incinerators have fallen out of favor (and of course this explains the historical drop in lead levels, not the end of leaded gasoline).

But not all of them have been closed – the largest in the US continues to operate under the guise of being a power plant. From the video we watched, it seems that the Detroit incinerator survived due to the side-benefit of power production, as well as being cheaper in the short run for the city. Although a long-run alternative to the incinerator might be cheaper and more productive for Detroit, it would require setting up landfills and recycling programs, and generally disrupt the status quo for a city with few resources.

In addition, the operators of the incinerator certainly stand to lose if it is shut down – and they’ve had twenty years to influence members of the city government. This seems like a situation where the state or federal government should provide loans to invest in a greener form of disposal, but nothing will be done unless the city government decides it wants to make the change.

In a similar vein, the MTA makes little note of studies suggesting a link between time in subway platforms and steel particle exposure. The administrators of the MTA know that even if they convince the NYC government to give them money to improve health standards, announcing this new-found risk of riding the subway could decrease ridership. Such an event , even if it wasn’t economically bad for the city, would decrease revenues to the MTA and ultimately might force them to reduce pay or downsize. So employees to the institution have a vested interest in keeping ridership high.

So government as well as business is susceptible to corruption and short-sightedness, but only because both of these institutions are made up of people. Most people are much more focused on their day-to-day existence than in saving the earth. Even more than that, because each person contributes such in such a small way to the whole of human waste production, it’s incredibly hard to assign personal responsibility to the decision to throw out a soda can or hold onto it the entire walk home.

So the can/bottle deposit is an example of good government. It presents an incentive to recycle, where before it was a matter of personal satisfaction. Although the value of the deposit has gone down with inflation, it is still high enough to be economically viable. We talked about how the destitute collect recyclables from trash cans, but I know from personal experience that some businesses do recycling explicitly for the deposit as well. Something I’m going to look into soon is how much the proportion of cans and bottles that are turned in for a deposit has changed over time.

Comments by tom hart