Seminar Three | Fall 2012
Professor Alexandratos
Office Hours: Monday and ThursdayITF: Karen Gregory
Contact: Karen.Gregory@gmail.com
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Response #8
Tom, Tom, Haley and Seong’s presentation left me impressed, amused and thinking. First of all, I enjoyed their individual performances, I found the video to be entertaining throughout. I especially liked the ways in which they had adapted the original Shakespeare text to fit their project, definitely an interesting and unique means of getting their points across in the time allotted. The ways in which they switched roles with limited actors, found extras, and maneuvered around the constraints was well done. The only problem I had with the presentation was the length of the video, which I think could have been shortened, if not for the required length of the presentation. I would have liked to have heard more from the presenters in person, with a more active discussion with the class. Alas, you cannot always get what you want. The greater point of the movie, to me, was the corruption of the government and business leaders who can play a large role in the welfare of the environment. I liked that the group had selected to focus in on a lumber company, as that industry is probably the most commonly known and depicted violator of environmentalism in media. Historically, many movies and television shows, as well as a large amount of attention from news media have focused on lumber companies tearing down trees for personal gain or profit. A trope that comes to mind is a group of protesters (most often hippies, or “tree-huggers”) chaining themselves to trees in a forest as the large corporation’s bulldozers come in to rip out the trees from their roots. This video highlighted the man behind the bulldozers, and gave a unique perspective on the corruption of businesses from the eyes of the man in charge himself. There have been protests and organizations attempting to bring awareness to the status of our ecosystem and the forest areas for decades, so I enjoyed seeing a theatrical adaption of Macbeth to gain a new outlook on the issue. The portions of the film that were dedicated to faux-real interviews of people affected by the lumber industry was reminiscent of media we have seen in class, and definitely added to the power of the presentation in hearing how companies are affecting American citizens for the sake of a dollar. This had me wondering, is another dollar really worth the suffering of the animals in their ecosystems, or the way it can affect humans who live in those areas? I do not believe so, as there are many alternatives to what we saw Tom D. do in the video. For instance, Haley’s main character showed an initiative that has been seen from the aforementioned “tree-huggers,” but even as I type it out I can sense the negative connotation that is attached with that phrase. Perhaps it is time that we change our perspective and not consider tree-huggers to be bad, but maybe we should all be tree-huggers. For the sake of our ecosystems.
Week 8 Response – 12 Principles of Green Engineering and the Messianic Moment
I actually quite like the 12 principles of green engineering. They are to the point, they assess everything that needs to be considered, and they provide an easy to use yet strong framework for green engineering. These principles remind me somewhat of the goals of LEED, simply a more formal and established realization of these concepts. This list should be printed on a aesthetically pleasing poster and hung in every engineering department and lab, for they display the future and the direction we need to be moving in as a society and within the world of engineering.
For such a short list of ideas and concepts, the 12 principles are successful in essentially covering the environmental issues we discussed in class. They incorporate an emphasis on sustainability through balancing economic and environmental needs through examining issues on a greater scope than is presently done. I think Number 6 is particularly important, “Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.” While many seem to view environmental endeavors as unnecessary or coming at too high a cost, those who think that are simply missing the point. “Investment” is a great word choice for that is why environmentalism must be stressed; our actions now are investments for the future, not for the present. Number 11, “Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial “afterlife,” touches on a similar idea.
A fundamental reason as to why I so enjoy these principles is their basis in reason. Number 8, “Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., “one size fits all”) solutions should be considered a design flaw,” is a good example of a principle that is based on common sense. The “one size fits all” mentality it addresses often means doing something the easy way rather than the right way. On top of that, when implemented in conjunction with the “recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition” concept of Number 6, an engineering project with a special purpose is far more likely to do its job in an effective manner than an off-the-shelf solution. I would love to see these principles become the basis of legislation, with tax incentives or something similar given to manufacturers whoes products abide by these principles. The 12 principles will undoubtedly be second nature sooner or later in the future, and seeing them applied across the board would mean great things for the world and the environment.
The concept of a messianic movement is also absolutely worth talking about, for while I never knew a formal name for the idea I think it is remarkably important when striving towards such a difficult goal as sustainability. The truth is that small actions can make a difference and it is easy to forget sometimes what kind of impact one person out of billions can really make. The “keep at it” attitude associated with messianic movements is also essential, for sustainability will not be an overnight success, but when we get there it will be worth it. When humans are able to bring ourselves to a sustainable point, the world’s focus can move to even greater issues and will likely cause a technological boom. Sustainability is not impossible, and while it may be difficult to see an end in sight, persevering on this initiative is essential to the continued existence and health of the human race; sustainability is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of survival.
Perseverance and Messianic Moments
At this point along the arc of the course, clearly it is the responsibility of every individual to do his or her part to mend the environmental issues and to restore the Earth’s equilibrium. The realization that we all must do something and can do something is essential to taking on this individual responsibility. Each person must also realize that our lives and society must be balanced and conservative with regards to the environment. That is, we must practice limits and produce and use according to necessary rather than wasteful capacities.
A notion about society brought up in class instantly caught my attention and greatly interested me. That is, humans are constantly concerned with moving upwards and improving and advancing, sometimes at the cost of vital and limited resources. With this improvement and advancement, such as with cars, comes the want to make bigger products with greater capacities and capabilities. I do not wish to imply that improvement is wrong or should not be a constant presence in society. Rather, I mean that certain types of improvement are better than others. Specifically, those that require humans to use resources that we should not use liberally and that move the environment towards increased imbalance are among the advancements that are detrimental to the society, the economy, and the environment.
The key is that we must not create or engineer products to capacities to which we do not need. Similar to the conversation in class, why do we need cars that drive at up to 120 miles per hour when the speed limits in several areas are half that amount? What is the purpose of preparing extra large portions of food that people eventually throw away? Why do we need three-ply bathroom tissue paper when two-ply can suffice? To me, small changes to the wasteful items and processes we use everyday are what can save us from an irreversible environmental crisis. It is at this moment, when we realize that we can take effective action, that we have, as Tony Kushner put it, a messianic moment.
Even after having such a messianic moment, however, many of us may still fear the great responsibility of undertaking the issues of the environment. One must remember, though, that no matter how overwhelming the issue seems or appears, if we persevere, we are bound to see positive results, given that the changes to our lives are reasonable and make sense in terms of environmental sustainability.
It is of much relief to know that there are frameworks and guidelines to follow to persevere in environmental sustainability. The framework through which to view the environmental sustainability is the cradle-to-cradle design, which essentially denotes that we should make use of waste, a variety of renewable energy resources such as solar energy, and different methods of production. To remain faithful to this framework for environmental sustainability, engineers, manufacturers, business owners, politicians, and consumers should pay attention and adhere to the twelve principles of green engineering, which convey that we should try to create as little waste as possible. If we do create waste, we should try to create little waste and, if possible, be able to use that waste as the reactants or starting materials for other products.
Personally, I believe that all of these principles are important to the wellbeing of the environment and humans. In addition to adhering to these principles, we must continuously engage ourselves emotionally to the issue and remain in the mindset of environmental sustainability. That is, if we forget our goals and the intrinsic value of what we are doing, we will lose focus and fall into old, destructive habits.
In our efforts to stay true to the principles of environmental sustainability, it is key to remember that we can make what seems impossible, possible. It is simply a matter of believing in ourselves that we can do something about the environmental crisis and then actually putting our beliefs into action.
Sherifa Baldeo
Symbiosis
Symbiosis
The world has become such a diverse place over its lifetime, from simple one-celled bacteria to humans. That must mean that something has been right from the start, which is the idea of having absolutely no waste. This has been accomplished as dead organisms provide the nutrients for new organisms to grow, which is the foundation of how we have come to evolve into smart and efficient creatures. This idea, which I think is an extremely simple one, can be and should be utilized in the corporate world, as it will only advance technology and efficiency in ways that we could never imagine possible.
Ever since the industrial revolution, many people have been thinking of how to improve the current situation, how to make things more efficient. When a system is so flawed from the foundation, such as based on coal power, a huge problem arises. It becomes extremely hard to change the foundation on which corporations were built upon. However if these corporations realize there is an exponential amount of money to make by redefining the problem, progress will be made. Instead of having to create waste and paying to dispose of it, these companies can utilize waste to make new products, minimizing costs, increasing profits. This is definitely the basis for success, as it is precisely this system that has allowed many species to arise and thrive throughout the world.
There is a lot of work to be done for cradle-to-cradle production to be entirely efficient, however we can start by having corporations slowly phase into using renewable energy. Solar energy, for example, is a prime example of a type of renewable energy source that can provide power to homes and factories. Although it may seem more expensive than using oil as a source of energy, our oil repositories will run out soon and then oil prices will be much higher than the price of implementing solar energy. This will provide the framework for future development. With green engineering, we will be able to close the loop that has been destroying the world, and possibly even reverse some of the damage that has been done.
Once this destructive loop is closed, we will all be able to celebrate biodiversity. The basis for how well an ecosystem is the amount of biodiversity that single ecosystem encompasses, which is something that we can increase only after sustainable growth and development begins to occur. Once renewable energy is utilized and no waste is generated, corporations and the environment will be able to live in harmony. There will be some costs to this shift in ideology, however the benefits will indeed outweigh the risks as time passes.
We are currently parasites to the world that we live in, using all of its resources and dumping toxic wastes into it. However, after this paradigm shift takes place, we will be able to live harmoniously with Earth. With this healthy relationship, the Earth will thrive like never before. Ecosystems will be able to diversify while the business world expands and generates profits in ways unseen just decades ago. Corporations will be able to evolve from a primitive creature into something far more advanced, utilizing its waste to make something new so that no waste is generated at all. This future needs to come sooner than later, and we must learn to develop a mutualistic relationship with our home.
William Arguelles – Opinion Paper 7
William Arguelles
Spiro Alexandratos
Seminar 3
October 24, 2012
Opinion Paper 7
Seeing as I’ve gotten these opinion papers down to a formula at this point, I feel almost obligated to continue with the general theme of “find the bad guy.” I don’t want you to think this means I don’t appreciate everything else you teach in class however. It’s just easier to form an opinion on a person or a company then RCRA or general philosophies like “cradle-to-cradle.” I guess it’s my own personal bias, because I’m just more interested in people’s thoughts and actions then societal policies and philosophies as a Psych major and I cannot resist seeing the world in the classic “good versus evil” bias. I don’t know why I feel this is relevant to anything, and I apologize for that, I just felt weird cause I keep focusing on this one element. I guess it’s my own little “theme” to the course, so at least I can say I got something out of this class!
Anyways, my opinion! This week I think we finally covered a good guy, William McDonough. So I guess that makes the scoreboard 6 people destroying the world to one guy trying not to. Apparently, according to the video you showed in class, Macdonough has created the ultimate fabric of pure 100% sustainability; a fabric that’s so wonderfully made you can eat it and drink the runoff. I feel like I’m being hyperbolic, but seeing as he described it like it was the most revolutionary thing since bread, I think it’s actually fairly accurate summary.
McDonough described the process in a few steps. First he stated that there was a lot of problems with current manufacturing in mills, with massive runoff of chemicals and hugely expensive filters that didn’t catch 100% of the pollutants. So what McDonough first did was identify the chemicals he couldn’t use, and it was a staggering 7,309 chemicals. What McDonough then used was the 38 chemicals left and made these magically and incredibly clean shirts that are edible and environmentally friendly, while also being implied to be cost efficient and desirable (i.e. people would buy them).
When I saw this in class my initial thought was, “oh my god this is the greatest invention since bread. These shirts are like the shirts of the future, I want one.” And then I thought a bit more, perhaps a bit more cynically, and came to some problems with it. If these shirts are really environmentally friendly, cost effective/efficient, and apparently delicious, why do we make any kinds of shirts that aren’t these? I mean, I’m not an economist, environmentalist, or a chef, but even I can see that a shirt that is so sustainable and cheap it becomes a viable food source is at the very least an incredibly profitable novelty item and at best a third industrial revolution. It’s a product (and production process) that covers the basic needs of food, shelter, and water and seems to be roughly neutral in terms of pollutants and energy, why haven’t these factories appeared everywhere, making millions and millions of shirts to feed/cover the starving masses of the world? Most companies have to deal with environmental fines and bureaucracy around dumping hazardous chemicals when they make anything, be it shirts or tacks, why wouldn’t the company want to make a product that needs no regulation, infinitely marketable, and completely sustainable?
So seeing all the pros to these magic shirts, and I use magic because they truly sound like something out of a science fiction or fantasy novel, why are these shirts not the most common thing in the world? My guess is that the shirts aren’t as cheap to produce as he sold them as, or that it’s still more profitable to make the inferior inedible shirts we wear today. My gut reaction was that some corporation is keeping McDonough down, but after doing a little cursory research, I’ve learned that isn’t the case.
Apparently, McDonough is an almost messianic figure in some circles of the green movement. He’s beloved by pop culture icons like Cameron Diaz and John Mayer and the wealthiest people in the world like paypal founder Elon Musk and Virgin Mobil CEO Richard Branson, making him a kind of “green movement” power broker for the world. In an interview, he offhandedly remarks that if he felt like it, he could just call up the CEO of Gucci and have them start working on making the fashion industry more green and sustainable. Which just brings up more questions, mainly, Why doesn’t he do that? Why not make your magic fabric into magic Gucci purses. People are used to paying hundreds for Gucci, so even if it’s highly expensive to make the fabric, you still have a wide room for a profit margin. Why isn’t this a thing? Which brings me back to my main problem with William McDonough; If he truly is this super powered messiah figure that the six or so articles I read painted him as, why haven’t I ever seen these magic shirts?
I don’t really have any answers for this, except that maybe McDonough is actually just an ordinary man who has had some very good ideas and isn’t actually superman or the green messiah we apparently were waiting for. Maybe, just maybe, we can’t just throw all our hope behind this man, whose highly secretive solutions might not be as feasible as he’s promising us they are. Maybe we should actually consider that while he’s doing great work, McDonough is still outnumbered by companies who don’t seem to care at all. Maybe McDonough wants to get rich by solving this issue, so he’s purposefully withholding information so he’s the only one who knows his solutions.
Or maybe McDonough is wizard Jesus whose come to save the world from the environmental and energy crises with magic shirts made from a secret recipe of 38 chemicals and spices. I’ll let you decide which one is true.
Week 7 — Demetra Panagiotopoulos
Emotional engagement, along with a general paradigm shift, are necessary for people to convert to more sustainable lifestyles because of the personal sacrifices people will have to face. People today say that they care about a cleaner environment, but what will they do to attain it? Will they only buy food that’s in season, or organic food if they can afford it? Will they boycott all companies that slip past environmental and labor regulations by exploiting overseas labor? Will they become part-time activists, slow the growth of their economies? Will they pressure their families and employers to recycle? How much, in short, are they willing to change? How much do they care?
The people who care the most are the activists. They are the researchers, the consciousness-raisers, the ones who bring their own recycling bags to events which they know won’t be providing. They’re emotionally engaged, and make it a point to fight for sustainability in their lives and the lives of others, even if it’s not terribly convenient. They are of critical importance in catalyzing change because they give people an alternative set of behaviors to mimic—make people stop and think, “Why am I following the crowd I’m following, when I could be following this one instead?” Unfortunately, only a minority of people are like this. Most people will cede that they care but excuse themselves from making change a priority of theirs by saying, “I’m too busy”. They’re too busy to care too much; they have emotional engagements elsewhere.
Why, then, do some people care more about sustainability than others? My guess would be that many people don’t see it as their personal problem. They don’t see it as their responsibility to care or do anything, because responsibility has still not been clearly relegated. It’s everybody’s responsibility to care—we all share this planet together. But because it’s such a collective responsibility, people feel comfortable ignoring it completely and focusing only on the personal duties in their immediate lives. They’re not emotionally engaged because they don’t see how the political can also be highly personal; they don’t feel that they can make a significant difference; they do not see the consequences of their inaction. Of course, they might simply not care, or feel safe in assuming that “progress” will eventually set the important things (whatever those are) right again.
This is why we need a shift in the way of thinking, a widespread change in values. As long as people value what is cheap, quick and easy more than they value something of quality and substance—that costs more in the short run but less when the long-run costs of production are accounted for—they will not care enough to change. As long as people think only about what they want to buy next, and not what it takes to make it—they will not care enough to change. As long as people feel that the consequences are minute, distant, and not their fault—they will not care enough to change. Until they feel that it is their personal responsibility, as denizens of this planet, to live on it without compromising the ability of future generations to do so, they will not care enough. It’ll always be one of the last things on their list of problems to tackle—until ignoring the problem becomes so painful that they have to do something about it, until the situation gets so bad that they begin to see things that scare them.
For a country that claims to have great faith in the power of the individual, we don’t seem to have much faith in ourselves. People go about their lives without making even the smallest, easiest eco-friendly changes because they feel that their choices don’t matter. They feel that one person is too small to make a difference. That’s not true. It’s a cognitive distortion, it’s a logical fallacy, it’s wrong. Everybody’s actions make a difference. Humanity is made up of individuals, and the sum of our individual choices, accumulated over time, reveals what we care about and impacts everybody. So how do we empower people to make the positive changes in their own lives that will benefit everybody? How do we make them realize that caring is worth it in the end? How do we make them believe that, by making more sustainable choices, they can impact the world in a good way?
Response #7
For the past few lessons, the lectures have turned opened up to a brand new, exciting portion of our semester’s arc. Recently we have focused on the ways in which we can change the negative influence us humans have on Earth, as well as fixing already existing problems. I enjoyed the organization of last week’s lesson, starting with the definition of a word we already thought we knew. A directly expressed distinction between our passive and active knowledge of vocabulary is important in clarifying definitions that compound with other words we are not familiar with. Engineering is applying science to design or develop structure, machine, apparatus or manufacturing processes. It was interesting to see that the class, one composed of majority native English speaking HONORS students, failed to easily come up with an accurate definition. I am disappointed in myself and the class. Tisk tisk. Green engineering is directed toward improving local and global environmental quality. And now back on track, cradle to cradle we learned is assessing the life cycle and impact of a chemical in a process, but more importantly we learned that natural systems operate on the sun’s limitless energy which drives the Earth’s biogeochemistry to sustain productive, regenerative biological systems. Technical systems designed to operate by the same rules approach the effectiveness of the closed-loop cycling of living systems in which almost no waste is unused. Which comes to the idea that we should potentially be investing in solar income, as well as the potential to use more sources of alternative energy. The ideal I came out of the class with had to be changing our perspectives. A paradigm shift is necessary for the population of the Earth, if we are going to waste less, and keep the intrinsic value of the Earth alive. What we consider waste in this country is completely different from what the citizens in places of Guyana consider waste. Especially here in New York, for example, I find that many people who I encounter that are on a “diet,” do not change the ways they eat, but rather just buy a full meal, and throw out half of it. This is an extremely effective means of controlling portions, because one is just reducing the portion in half. The problem here is that if someone in a rural Kyrgyzstani village saw a picture of my friend throwing out half of a Chipotle burrito, they would probably cry from frustration. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In this scenario I have created, to us New Yorkers, a cheeseburger with ONE bite taken out is trash, but to a huge population of the world, that cheeseburger is a luxury.
The Necessity of Sustainability
Despite the short and impromptu nature of the last lecture, we’ve begun to encroach into the specificities of approaching sustainability. In fact, stepping from the general to the specific actually left me feeling quite positive (or at least more positive than before) about the possibilities of the future. The cradle-to-cradle framework, in my opinion, delves deep into the heart of what true sustainability ought to be. As The Principles of Green Engineering notes, most companies think sustainability refers to reducing resource input and waste output by increasing the efficiency of current machinery and technology. However, this seems no different than the end-of-pipe and/or pollution prevention schemas that we talked about in a previous lecture. “Reducing the human footprint” completely sidesteps the possibility of taking away that footprint. As the entirety of this course has shown, this approach spells out disaster for our future—to the extent that it doesn’t attempt to solve the real problem. There is little recognition of the central flaw in the system as a whole.
It reminds me of the discussion that we had about corporations and the great influence they have on our economy. I still firmly believe, however, that such power necessitates some form of moral responsibility. The detrimental effects of corporations’ actions are compounded by the lack of motive to willingly reverse them. This might bring us back to the issue of sustainability, and balancing cost effectiveness with environmental health, but the hands-off approach that corporations usually take towards their environmental impact goes beyond just fulfilling the needs of their consumers. It becomes a violation of their responsibility. Relying on only off-the-pipe or pollution prevention methods is something that should incrementally stop being tolerated by the government. The closer we get to the future, the more our environmental situation becomes even more unmanageable; it is best to get started now, so the future doesn’t suffer as grotesquely. Sustainability must be mandated.
However, while this may be an impossible statement to fathom at the moment, I think that the only way that it could become possible is if there is a collective change in mindset. I value the fact that knowledge provides us with an exact representation of the problems we create, but the mere idea that we cause harm to the environment stems from our selfish desire to fulfill only our own needs. That’s not to say that other animals don’t do this very same thing, but just like corporations are the superpowers of mankind, humans themselves are the superior usurpers of the world. If we are to ever seriously consider “stooping down” to the nature that we have taken over, we have to have a collective shift in mentality achieved only through intrinsic value acceptance.
Doing so would be key to having public policy necessitate sustainability. If everyone were to write to an assemblyman, councilor, or senator begging for the preservation of the environment, it would become absolutely impossible to proceed with policy without the word ‘sustainability’ coming up. It’s a whole package as far as I’m concerned. If we can start teaching our children from the very beginning of their educational lives that the environment is worth it, then I daresay that our future will become much more receptive to procuring cradle-to-cradle technology. We have to start focusing on convincing people of the importance of sustainability. The question is: where do we start first?
Weekly Writeup #7: Reva McAulay
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.
People Make Things so Difficult
So while looking through my notes at this very moment, I saw the graph you had up in your PowerPoint that had investments as the x-axis, and benefits on the y-axis. The smaller line was “optimizing the existing solution,” while the bigger line was “re-defining the problem.” Science has shown time and time again how we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole with every passing day if we do not put in lots of money into green engineering. Yet big companies (the ones who cause the most environmental issues, though we do our fair share as well) insist on just changing what they already have. You’ve already mentioned in class that it will take billions of dollars for a company to change up the system that they already have into a green-friendlier one. I understand that, but they’re going to do it anyways. Whether it’s right now or in a few years, they’re going to have go be green before it’s too late. So why waste money now? Why “optimize the existing solution” or “re-engineer the problem” when they can just “re-define the problem” from now and actually save money doing so?
The BP Commercial you showed in class reminds me of Mitt Romney. The commercial clumped together solar and wind energy with gas and oil, even though those two are completely different. Two of them are obviously cleaner and less risky than the other two. During the last debate, Romney was discussing how, unlike Obama, he would put money into green engineering but not take jobs away from coal miners. He was pretty much trying to make everyone happy, but it’s just unrealistic. It’s so contradictory to have both sources for energy. I understand that we don’t want to take away jobs from people right now, especially in this economy where the likelihood of them finding another one is quite slim, but isn’t this natural? What happened when the car was created? Horse carriage owners lost their jobs. What happened during the Industrial Revolution? Agricultural workers lost their jobs. This happens, and during these recent times and in the (hopefully) near future, we will begin to switch into more green energy jobs. We have to, or else the hole that’s already been dug will be so much deeper with no way out.
I just now decided to look up William McDonough and learn more about him. Using the very reliable Wikipedia source, I learned that Fast Company Magazine criticized him for “…unwilling to share cradle-to-cradle specifications with suppliers, though he continues to promote it.” I assume from this line and from the ones before it that McDonough seems like a man who is making groundbreaking achievements when it comes to green engineering, but he’s being too protective over the knowledge. He’s not sharing all of it with others, as if he’s a child and wants to have all of the credit, which I find quite pathetic. Also, he even wants credit for things he didn’t even achieve himself. Quite a lot of scientists, according to the article I was reading, don’t seem to like him, but have to deal with him because he’s now the face of cradle-to-cradle, he’s the face for environmental sustainability, even if he really didn’t do as much as people think he did. I find that quite sad, and feel disbelief over the fact that even environmental sustainability is being turned into a competitive business when it shouldn’t be. I feel like doing that to it will only halt the process even more.
Link to the article: http://www.fastcompany.com/1042475/green-guru-gone-wrong-william-mcdonough
