Seminar Three | Fall 2012
Professor Alexandratos
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Weekly Response 12: Alda Yuan
Alda Yuan
Professor Alexandratos
MHC 200
Week 12 Response
As to the debate, both sides did a great job of parsing words and defending their positions in a way that made it very hard to argue against. They used a strategy of giving in on certain points in order to take a stand on the more defensible ones. Interestingly enough, the result was that they ended up with positions that sounded so close together that had this been a real debate over a legislative matter for instance, a compromise could easily be reached. That to me says that the debate was carried out in a more constructive and meaningful way than most people go about the process of hashing out a dispute.
In general, nuclear power, whenever it is brought up, always causes controversy and heated discussion. It is hard to have a balanced debate for something so wrought with emotion on both sides of the question. It is hard additionally because there is a lot of evidence, both sensational and otherwise that each side can cite. For those who advocate in favor of nuclear energy, there are certainly a slew of studies and data supporting the position that it can solve all of our most pressing problems. Not only is it more efficient than fossil fuels, adopting nuclear energy on a large scale can drastically cut back on carbon emissions within a fairly short amount of time. The other side has only to point to incidents like that at Three Mile Island or of course, Chernobyl in order to generate support and muster up sympathy for their arguments. Just because it is a fairly obvious plea to emotion does not mean the argument possess no merit and just because it is mentioned so often does not mean that it does not remain a valid argument.
Indeed, it is important to note that nuclear energy, whether harvested to power homes or used to level cities, can be a real threat to human life. It is certainly valid to compare our plants and safety regulations favorably to those in place in the Soviet Union and Japan but at some level, these do not address the real problem. The real issue is that there will always be human elements we cannot account for and accidents we did not see coming. Airtight lines of reasoning can their loopholes, foolproof plans can be foiled, fail safes can themselves fail. But most of the time, a breakdown along these lines will not have catastrophic consequences. Despite the many mechanisms in place, it is nonetheless possible for one small mistake to harm the lives of a huge amount of people. Of course, in most instances, it will be calculated that the odds of such mistakes occurring are low. And indeed, it might very well be but even low odds have to be considered when the costs could be so high.
Despite this, I am of the opinion that nuclear power can be a useful alternative, but only if it is thought of and designed to be a temporary solution to the permanent problem of high energy demand from countries both developed and otherwise. While it is true that other methods, like the retrofitting of homes, can be used to something of the same effect, they lack the concrete financial incentives of allowing private companies to help build, run and oversee nuclear plants. This is one area in which I think bureaucracy would be a boon. Having a variety of supervising committees and groups providing oversight will help to ensure maximum safety.
Old facilities like Indian Point should be phased out in favor of newer plants, ideally in areas as far away from population density as possible. This of course also becomes a monetary issue, as all things will. But if we are to indeed employ nuclear energy, no corners can be cut and no shortcuts taken for the potential costs are too high.
Week 12 — Demetra Panagiotopoulos
When I think about all the ways that it could go wrong, nuclear power terrifies me. Why? Because fission is a process that unleashes potentially catastrophic amounts of energy, and because it’s being put in the hands of human beings. People—whatever their accomplishments—are just people. And I have trouble trusting them. Nuclear power could work out really well in a better world. (Ahem, like in France). And it could work just as well here, too, once people get over their carnal American need for profit and start doing/spending whatever it takes to ensure people’s safety. As long as private investors have a stake in this, the corporations that build and operate nuclear power plants will always have their eyes on the short-term bottom line. They’re operated by trained and qualified engineers, but a corporation-esque board of trained and qualified engineer-directors is what makes decisions for them. A long-term overhaul would clearly cause a drop in the stock value, so instead of pushing forward for reform, the power plants only nudge through the standard level of maintenance and repair that regulators expect. They’re still businesses run by businessmen. We can do better than that.
I chose to argue for keeping the Indian Point Power Plant open because, theoretically, it could work out. I truly believe that it could. But I still wouldn’t want to live near it. Because, like the city’s subway system, it’s old and outdated. Because it’s not as securely built as a 21st-century reactor could be. And, most of all, because I don’t trust the American way. Can we get things right? Yes. Will we? I don’t know. And not knowing makes me afraid.
Maybe nobody noticed, but in my argument, I chose not to overly focus on the economic advantages of nuclear power. Because money is not the bottom line. Corporations might see things differently, but that’s too bad, because corporations are not people. They are groups with a specific, highly self-centered and self-interested goal. What do they value? Do they have a conscience? It all depends on the people involved. But, because of their size and their capital, they inherently have more power—they have a greater capacity to do good or cause damage than individuals alone can—and that’s why they can’t be allowed the same freedom in their decision-making as individuals.
The bottom line is quality of life. Having more money does not automatically equal a better quality of life. In America, people often have more than enough to spare, and it seems to me that this surplus capital can go three ways—people can invest it, save it, or waste it. What are we doing with our surplus capital? Are we just going spend it without thinking, causing as much damage as we can unintentionally manage until we run out of fuel? Will the profits from Indian Point wind up more often in the accounts of wealthy investors, or will they go into reinforcing our current clean energy technology standards and researching even better alternatives?
Nuclear power comes with inherent risk, but the long-term cost to the environment—and to the humans directly and indirectly involved with it—is much smaller than the cost of mining, deforestation, fracking, oil refining and whatever else humans do to suck the last vestiges of fossil fuels from beneath the earth’s surface. It is, by far, a cleaner option, when done properly. And when done properly, it’s safer. Whether we choose to make it work is up to us. Whether we choose to take advantage of its potential and enforce the best possible standards is, as I stated in my debate, up to us.
‘Tis a Time for Reflections: Gasland and Emotional Engagement
Seong Im Hong
November 26, 2012
‘Tis a Time for Reflections: Gasland and Emotional Engagement
I missed class on Monday before Thanksgiving due to oversleeping, so wasn’t sure what to write about. Hence, on Thanksgiving after dinner, I watched Gasland by Josh Fox, the documentary that was mentioned while we were talking about hydrofracking. It was a bit long but definitely fascinating and powerful. (Robin, my foster mom, found the documentary so convincing that she got up midway through to shut off our gas-operated fireplace.) Looking back, there were many things that made this movie powerful—the visuals were striking, as was the narrative the director used to give the documentary a sense of flow and purpose.
One of the most powerful effects, however, was the use of personal stories. There was story of a woman whose father died of Pancreatic cancer after he spent a whole summer drinking from a contaminated spring. (The companies told them of the contamination months after it actually happened.) There were stories of towns across America that complained of water contaminated enough to be flammable and allegedly be harmful to people, causing migraines and dizziness. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. Maybe those maladies were incidental and/or were actually caused by the nocebo effect, kind of like the so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome. But the flammable water, at least, is an indicator that these complaints ought to be taken seriously.
By emotionally engaging the viewers, Fox definitely helped to put this issue on the table. With this documentary, he helped to redistribute this concern toward hydrofracking from the bourgeoisie New Yorkers (I’m still hung up on the implications of that Mark Ruffalo video, sorry!) to all Americans, whether they are celebrities in New York or they are those strapped for jobs in Nevada. As the film says toward the very end, my land is your land through the intricate network of streams and rivers that connect us all to each other. Even if I lease my parcel of land to hydrofracking, we are still affecting those who live outside those arbitrary boundaries.
And this (not your land is our land thing, but the whole emotional engagement bit the paragraph before) made me think: the greatest thing I learned from this class is to be less skeptical and a bit more engaged.
I remember that in the very first journal, I criticized Professor’s choice in comparing McDonald’s burger to rainforest after showing us the nasty vomit clip from Supersize Me. I still think that was a very deliberate emotional engagement/manipulation, but I understand now that if we think of the first lesson as part of an arc rather than an isolated class, the comparison was an effective “hook”. How else do you engage a class of 20-or-so 20-or-so-year-olds and leave a lasting impact with a required seminar class? Obviously, I didn’t have the benefit of hindsight then, so in the very beginning, I was a bit miffed by the emotional aspect of the lessons. (Oh Professor, could you ever forgive me for such sins?)
I can think of various moments throughout this year when I realized my growing tolerance/acceptance of emotional engagement. (I don’t know why I had so much trouble accepting the role of emotion. I suspect, though, this may be a result of my search for an identity. The easiest way to be something is to NOT be the opposite. In this case, I may have mistakenly thought emotional engagement the opposite of logic. But I’m not sure if they are truly opposites. And even if they are, they are better served together than separately.)
For example, I read the New York Times feature on Rachel Carson a couple of months ago. I remember reading this paragraph:
Carson knew that her target audience of popular readers included scores of housewives. She relied upon this ready army of concerned citizens both as sources who discovered robins and squirrels poisoned by pesticides outside their back doors and as readers to whom she had to appeal. Consider this indelible image of a squirrel: “The head and neck were outstretched, and the mouth often contained dirt, suggesting that the dying animal had been biting at the ground.” Carson then asks her readers, “By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished as a human being?”
I think if I were reading this same paragraph a semester ago, I would have responded with distaste. Pshaw, I would’ve thought, emotions are cheap tools!
When I read it a couple of months ago, though, I was surprisingly more tolerant to the slightly purple hue to Carson’s prose. Emotions may be common tools, but they certainly don’t have to be cheap when it’s tempered by facts.
And, I think, this is the greatest and most lasting lesson I will take from this class so far. I may forget what RCRA stands for in another decade[*], but I doubt I will forget the value of emotional engagement any time soon.
[*] Just kidding—Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, 1976!
Getting the Last Word: Debate about the Debate Assignment
Seong Im Hong
Nov 19, 2012
Getting the Last Word: Debate about the Debate Assignment
Call me petty, but I want to get the last word in on the debate about the debate assignment. (And even if Demetra never hears this argument somebody else would know.)
Taxing residential areas a “green tax” is great, but this is a flawed system based solely on the whip. To have an effective system of encouraging citizens to be more environmentally conscious, policy makers should employ both the whip and the carrot. It sounded to me that the “whip,” or the tax, would hit families equally as hard regardless of how good they are about their energy. If this is so, the policy makers should consider their goal: is it to raise tax revenue for investment in green energy, or to herald a shift in the citizens’ habits that may continue even after a total shift to green, renewable energy?
With just the tax in effect, there is nothing stopping the citizens from changing their energy usage habits to be more conservative. What if there are tax cuts offered to those who consume less than the district’s average energy consumption? That way, citizens who do not feel like they can afford the tax can take control of their home to reduce their energy consumption. (They can, for example, unplug their appliances when they are not in use.)
(I italicized “take control of their homes” because I think this is a key step to developing green habits: I think citizens have a sort of… learned helplessness, almost, when it comes to dealing with issues that are bigger than any single one of us can handle. I talked about this before when I was trying to make sense of the Andy Kushner quote, but I think the idea is relevant again: we have learned to seek freedom from responsibility in perceived helplessness in the face of giant organizations and giant problems like ridiculous campaign bills, banks’ reckless behaviors, and global warming. Companies have been consolidating for years and years to the point that we as individuals cannot help but feel small and insignificant when we stare at their true size. We have become removed from corporations and large organizations (the U.S. government included, I suppose) to the point that we really ought to have corporation-money-units to help us fathom how much exponentially bigger everything is. And instead of demanding to have a say in how our society is run, we just shrug and say, “Oh well,” probably because we’re not really in any discomfort. Yet.)
Of course, employing the whip and the carrot to encourage taking control over what comes up to be the grand total of $5 tax per year isn’t going to change the world. Like Demetra said, there won’t be a paradigm shift—if people chose to unplug their appliances, it will be to pay less rather than out of actual concern for the environment. I agree with that. However, can that small change in attitude (a perception of control) change anything if there are many of these perception shifts? I think it maybe, maybe, maybe can, and here’s why:
(I’m about to get a bit radical and theoretical. Bear with me.)
There is a term, microaggression, to describe commonplace act of aggressions that act to subtly put down/subjugate a group of people. Microaggression can have a tinge of racism (i.e. “I can’t believe you’re black! You act like a normal person!”) or sexism (i.e. “Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich! Haha, this is totally a joke!”) or homophobia (i.e. “I can’t be homophobic! One of my best friends is gay!”).
I think microaggression can extend to non –isms and –phobias. I think that how we react to the world is effected by what we expect out of it from past experiences. And this sounds crazy, but Messianic Moments are supposed to be kind of crazy: maybe supporting a culture of some level of personal control over large institutions (like the IRS) can lead to a more proactive culture.
Wow, that sounded kind of libertarian, too.
Obviously, we do need taxes to support large institutions (i.e. EPA) whose full-time job is to combat other large institutions (i.e. Exxon-Mobil). But we also need to remember that we as a collective are employing those large institutions. But how do we draw the line between personal control/choice and sacrificing for the greater good? Obviously, we can get the two to meet by educating people about why, for example, global warming is bad. But that will take time. Generations, even. So how what do we do meanwhile? I don’t know.
(And that is why I want to be a doctor/scientist, not a policy maker.)
Is it Worth the Risk?
This debate was surprisingly interesting to me. I had a huge organic chemistry exam the next day, so I assumed my mind would have been fuddled with that and not concentrating on the debate. That wasn’t the case; either my brain needed a desperate break from anything organic or the debate was genuinely interesting. I like to think it was the latter.
I entered the debate already knowing that I was going to side with Ben and Dan. Every time I hear the word ‘nuclear’ I can’t help but think ‘extremely harmful.’ But Simon and Demetra brought up some good points that I didn’t know about. For example, they mentioned that 25% of our energy here in the city comes from nuclear energy. So 25% of our energy comes from Indian Point, a nuclear power plant that had to shut down multiple times in order to fix something that could potentially cause huge harm to millions, as Ben and Dan said. I understand that a good chunk of our energy comes from this plant, but if it continuously has to be closed down, is it worth it? One day it may cause damage before they’re able to close it down, such as during an earthquake. What will happen then?
Another thing that bothered me throughout this debate was how the con side very easily disregarded the effects nuclear waste can have, because the amount created is so small. And if the nuclear power plant is created and functions correctly, it won’t cause any damage at all. I mean, how many times have we heard that? I feel maybe it would have been best for them to go into more detail here. From what I’ve read online, as of now this country has around 60,000 tons of radioactive waste. This is not the 1 kg Demetra and Simon mentioned. If we use even more nuclear power than usual, there will obviously be more nuclear waste. We tend to only worry about the consequences of our decisions only after the decision has been made, which I’m afraid will probably happen in this situation. Do we know what will happen if much more nuclear energy is used? I feel there will obviously be more accidents occurring, along with successes. It will cost more money to make sure everything is safe and sound, and in the past companies always preferred the cheaper option. What will guarantee that the nuclear power plants that will either be redone or created will actually be safe? The government? I assume many companies will not like that idea. What is their definition of ‘safe’ anyways?
I understand from what the class was discussing after the debate that once we tap into the nuclear resources under the water in the oceans, we’ll have an unlimited amount of nuclear energy. I find that weird, that something in the Earth can be unlimited when we’re so used to its resources being limited, but I’ll take your word for it! Still, it produces waste that we have not figured out how to reuse. I’ve read that France is in the process of doing that (of course) while we were stopped thanks to Carter! J I feel if we are going to continue with this energy source, we need to figure out how to make it 100% clean, which means using its wastes. But even then, I feel it is a waste of money to figure out how to properly use nuclear energy over trying to figure out solar energy. We should first do the latter, then try and use other sources of energy. But only when we’re sure we are not going to be in an energy crisis. I agree with Ben and Dan that we should close down Indian Point and work on finding greener energy. With no nuclear power plant, it will force the city to find another energy source, thus having them work harder on finding a greener solution.
Week 11 — Demetra Panagiotopoulos
PlaNYC seems like a good start towards sustainable development. That’s not to say that our job will be over once it’s completed. Even if PlaNYC’s goals are reached, the general population would still be nowhere near achieving 100% sustainability in our lifestyles. But it’s a start. It’s far better than not having any plan or policy at all. Changing habits this ingrained and widespread is a painstakingly slow process, but baby steps are better than complete immobility.
The plan is very vague about how the city will go about achieving its goals, which could be both an advantage and a disadvantage. For one thing, it leaves plenty of options open. So when it comes to reducing greenhouse emissions, shrinking combined sewage overflows, and combating traffic congestion, we can do whatever it takes to reach these ends—without being bothered about the specifics of government policy. Right? Hopefully. Or the ambiguity could lead to long legal debates about which specific technology or course of action would be best for each case. These debates would have to happen at some point down the line, of course, but the fact that they aren’t already resolved means that we have even more opportunities to go wrong—to choose low-cost convenience over investments in sustainable development, to compromise rather than push forward. We have many choices—but once we begin to walk a certain path, it’s hard to opt out of it, as our current situation demonstrates. We need to be careful and stay involved.
One example of this ambiguity that particularly troubles me is the pledge to pursue “cleaner, more reliable power”. What does this mean? Does this mean investing in mechanisms for fossil-fuel burning plants—researching techniques to make energy production more efficient, filter out wastes more effectively? Does this mean building new nuclear power plants, or upgrading and maintaining the old ones? Does this mean resorting to solar energy, or to fracking? How would the government of the city go about executing any of these options? The stage is set for a prolonged and heated tussle over one of the most urgent questions that faces the city today.
Another thing that bothers me is that plaNYC says absolutely nothing about curbing growth. Growth is nearly always used as a positive term these days—for cities, for people, for economies and industries. Growth is a goal. But why does it have to be? Why do we continue to see all growth as desirable? When something begins to grow out of control, it’s called a tumor. Population growth is not the problem. The problem comes when the powers that be expand production exponentially and then use marketing to turn humans into consumers. How are we going to lower our greenhouse emissions while simultaneously increasing the power supply? We’re not quite at the stage where that can be done, yet. (And why do we really need to increase the power supply if we already have a surplus?) How are we going to reduce transportation congestion and make sure that everybody lives within a 10-minute walk of a park while coevally adding a million homes? And who’s going to live in those million homes? Are they going to be affordable enough to attract people from the more crowded, poorer areas of the city, or will they only attract newcomers—more affluent people from outside of the five boroughs? What will those homes do, overall, for the city? And where will they be squeezed—into new, completely undeveloped lands, or into preexisting neighborhoods? How will they meet their energy consumption needs?
PlaNYC tries to tackle the issues of economic, social and environmental equilibrium all at once. It’s not a perfect plan. PlaNYC is only a small first step. It leaves us with plenty of choices, and each one addresses at least one of the three goals of sustainable development to a certain degree. Finding the balance is tricky, but, in the long run, sustainable development is most definitely worth the work and effort that needs to be invested in it, especially in growing cities like New York.
Eric Kramer Weekly Response 12
I thought the debate was very interesting and engaging. Ben and Dan did a great job backing the case to shut down the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant while Simon and Demetra did an equally impressive job of saying why the plant should remain open. After listening to the intense discussion and reflecting on it for a few days, I think I support the use of nuclear power and believe the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant should remain open. I do believe however, that changes should be made to the facility to improve safety and security measures to help reduce the chances of incidents.
I am particularly wary about the human element of it all. I was told in my intro to psychology class that the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters were caused by mistakes (poor judgment) made by sleep-deprived workers. More alert workers would not have made these mistakes. I think more measures should be taken to ensure employees are doing well psychologically and that they are alert. Perhaps installing random alertness/reaction time tests on the computers the employees are working on in the wee hours of the morning.
It was mentioned in the debate that the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant was rated the second worst nuclear facility in the nation. I was curious to see what was rated the worst, so I looked into it. As of 2012, Indian Point is now considered the worst and most dangerous nuclear facility. Second on this list is San Onofre in California. The third most dangerous facility is in Limerick, Pennsylvania. Interestingly, two of the three most dangerous nuclear facilities are located on the East Coast in fairly close proximity to one another.
Although I support the use of nuclear energy now, I am hopeful that we can develop safer, alternate forms of energy that would eradicate the need for nuclear power. I keep hearing and believing that our future lies in solar energy. We need to start harnessing the renewable power of the sun to provide our energy. Basically, the reason I support the continued operation of Indian Point is that I do not see any particularly feasible alternatives. That being said, I do agree that we should employ retrofitting to new homes. Why not try to limit our energy consumption? We should be looking to limit our energy output regardless of what type of energy we are relying on.
Going back to the point of sleep-deprived workers, sleep deprivation is becoming a huge problem. It seems that people are becoming less and less efficient and are suffering from health problems stemming from sleep deprivation including depression, diabetes, and hypertension. I am currently doing an internship where we enroll patients in studies in the emergency department of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, and I recently proposed a study looking at these possible problems stemming from sleep deprivation. Hopefully, this study will be implemented and correlations can be found in the emergency department population between these health problems and sleep deprivation and whether or not people are aware of what is happening. Many people think it is possible to work at maximum efficiency off of 5 hours of sleep a night, but in reality, you really need 8 hours a night.
The President’s Dilemma
When I was younger, I always thought that being the President must have been the hardest job in the world. I can’t say that that opinion has necessarily changed, but I do know that I became somewhat more enlightened before I reached that same conclusion. My 8 year-old self was concerned that there was basically a list of things that the President had to deal with during his term and that he wouldn’t be able to figure them all out. His people would be unhappy as a result. So basically, as my 19 year-old brain can now fathom, this President must have been missing a framework of some sort. My fear was that building policy would mean starting from scratch. But in the modern age, there always seems to be a list of things that ensures success. Finish A. Fix B. Improve C. Everything good is guaranteed by ticking off a few checkboxes.
As one might imagine, the wariness of my youth never went away. Instead of only worrying about building a framework, now I worry that the one we already have in place is flawed or incomplete. This, of course, still leaves us with the problem of making a new list. As such, looking at the main foci of a Greater, Greener NYC leaves me with the same concern. I’m not saying that Land, Water, Transportation, Energy, and Air aren’t great goals to work on, but perhaps there are other headings that could be worked on instead. In fact, if we could succeed, then I’m sure we would be well on our way to a better New York City—just perhaps not the best. Thus, this still brings us back to the President’s Dilemma (maybe I could coin this term!) except with added texture: which of the things on our list is most important to deal with at the moment? It all comes back to intrinsic vs. instrumental value.
I’m starting to feel repetitive. I must’ve mentioned those two terms at least 7 times in the last ten responses for this class. But that’s why we started talking about it from the very beginning, I suppose—the controlling power of instrumental value is one of the foremost problems of society’s mentality. But as such, the goals of Greater, Greener NYC reach a crucial fork in the road in this regard. The reason why we call them is goals is that we hope to get to the proposed level, but it’s not a requirement to do so. This leaves us with the obvious of funding—which of the five headings will be given more money? Which will have more emphasis? It’s inevitable that we will reach some goals faster than others, but the reason for this could necessarily be because we are more concerned with things like building more houses rather than creating cleaner air. Environmentalists might realize that the future is at stake and opt to focus on the latter, but the truth is that one has the potential to make money (in the present!!!) while the other will simply cost money (in the present!!!).
And yet, we’re still avoiding the question of the future. It’s a great point that the interests of the future should be equally as important as those of the present, but the rise and fall of money is cyclically shorter than bouncing back from our environmental impact—if that’s at all possible. Essentially, we should make those headings that pertain directly to the environment more important. The environmental problems we cause are (for all intents and purposes) permanent. The problems we leave for the future will be there for that generation to take care. The short-term interest in fiscal matters cannot be the controlling factor in our decisions. Otherwise, someone is going to have to be there to pick up the pieces.
Weekly Response 11: Alda Yuan
Alda Yuan
Professor Alexandratos
MHC 200
Week 11 Response
It is very assuring to hear that New York City has such a far-reaching plan in place and that its government is continually working on it. As we have seen in this class and as I have noticed from the news, it is often the penchant when undertaking such projects to set goals and yet take no steps until the target date approaches and it becomes too late to make an impact. The fact that such a large and commercial city is taking these steps is especially heartening for it indicates at least something of a shift in values of the government officials that has proceeded through time.
The preservation of the watershed in order to reduce the necessity of constructing a costly water treatment plant was no doubt fueled largely by the fiscal benefits. Nevertheless, this instance of forward thinking became a boon to the environment as well as the city. And even if it was an effort triggered by purely a instrumental outlook, it has at the very least led to different ways of thinking in the city’s management of our natural resources, in a way that can be considered more in line with the mantra of avoiding “killing the bees.” This is simply a more eloquent restatement of the idea that people need to consider the ramification and consequences of their action. Something that might seem a small loss today may turn out to be a big detriment in the future when the details are better understood. As always, the arguments cycles back to the division between intrinsic and instrumental.
Somewhere between this parsing of terms and words lies the difference between intrinsic and instrumental viewpoints. Instrumental value is forever stuck with the body of knowledge accessible at the present time. The only things that have value are the ones, which has benefits or foreseeable benefits. But this a judgment is confined and limited by the time and information available to you at any given point. The idea of intrinsic value encompasses and goes beyond this limitation. In saying that that everything has value, we regard the parts of the whole as well as the whole itself to be of significance and worth the effort to understand and study.
As to the logistics of the plan, it seems to me at once both ambitious and flawed. Ambitious simply because there is a plan and because it recognizes that all the factors must be improved at once if there is to be improvement overall. Besides, it is much more than the majority of the world or even the majority of the country is willing to attempt or even discuss. And indeed, many of its aspects are laudable. Most impressive to me was the effort on Staten Island to extend the natural drainage system. Here is an example where natural processes are adapted and engineered by human ingenuity to maximize benefits for all. This is a great example of green engineering and demonstrates what humans can achieve if they direct their intelligence and resourcefulness toward the right avenues.
On the other hand, the lack of publicity about this plan seems to be a flaw. For instance, I had no idea that this was an ongoing process before this class. And yet, I knew of many of the individual components of the plan, such as the 2nd avenue subway. Perhaps there are difficulties of which I am unaware but I cannot imagine that it would too difficult for government officials to communicate to the public that these efforts are all part of a comprehensive plan that will help to ensure New York City’s environmental health. This would help make average citizens more conscious of the situation, which should be a major end goal. For environmental efforts can not perpetually be imposed from the top down. The necessity of the undertaking must be accepted at all levels if we are to claim success.
PlaNYC
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.
