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.

            For a class about sustainability, the environment and climate change, to not address one of the largest storms to ever hit New York City and certainly one of the most intense and surreal experiences of my entire life would be wrong. The week of Sandy was truly an alternate reality. My house was not destroyed, my family and friends survived physically unscathed and the city remained in at least relative order compared to the immense chaos I would expect from an event as cataclysmic as this, so honestly my loss of power and water for a week seems trivial to even talk about. Yet in reality, it wasn’t.

I constantly found myself immensely bored and unsatisfied and did little the entire week. Nearly everything I would normally do was at least in some way connected to, and often dependent on power. I would look to my laptop or an electric guitar for pleasure and distraction; gone. Browse the internet? Not without an internet connection I wasn’t. Even when I forced myself to simply break down and read a book (and I realize how sad the reality that my only time to turn to this was out of desperation) my natural schedule had me awake at night, and while reading by candlelight sounds like a novel and romantic idea, in reality the dim light got old quite fast.

Once I was able to put my first world problems aside however there was definitely brilliance to that week. Being in such an intensely changed world certainly makes one reexamine what they take for granted and how in many ways surreal their world may be. My house was in the blackout zone but was merely a few blocks from power and, luckily, my parent’s garage. I was able to take their car out to run errands and see friends, and my experience going to a friend’s house uptown was truly surreal. I entered my car in a world that looked straight out of a post apocalyptic film; the streets were eerily quiet and dark, there was garbage and destruction all around me. I hadn’t showered in days and had seen few signs of life that night; except for an occasional beam of flashlight light moving by inside of a window.

When I got out of my car on 73^rd and 1^st however, it was truly like I had entered another world; either having travelled to a world of the future from the dark ages or coming back from a dark apocalyptic future to see a period of high and extravagance before society’s collapse. Life had not been affected in the least. My friend’s parents made jokes about me being a refugee as they sat in their well lit apartment knowing full well they could go and grab anything from their fridge whenever they wanted, could turn on the TV and find infinite distraction or even simply use the bathroom or wash their hands without worrying about their water usage.  When I washed my hands there, I found myself using only drops of water and even being able to take the elevator instead of taking to the stairs was an incredible feeling.

All of a sudden, the luxury of my everyday life became apparent to me. When I hear people across the world simply can’t understand the American way it is not that they are in some way wrong or backwards, the fault is on us. The grandeur of things we find so basic is remarkable on a global scale. Even though I live on the second floor I had probably used the stairs instead of the elevator on at most a handful of occasions. Truly the thought just never even crossed my mind; if I have an elevator why not use it. Similarly if I want to take a 40-minute shower and I can, then why not. My issue is less even with the wastefulness of these actions, but rather with my complete ignorance to the wastefulness.

Now I am not going to try to say I am a completely changed man after 5 days without power, but honestly it did make me see things a little differently. Maybe I can in fact deal with a little less pampering for the sake of the environment and a better future. Also I think it gave me a new understanding of education and of the point of this class. Although changing people’s actions is important, I really think it is secondary. It is far more important however, to make people self-aware. Maybe in a year I’ll forget all of this, but even it I do it’ll stay somewhere in my brain, subconsciously influencing me towards more grounded, rational actions. But one can’t only live in the future and in hypotheticals – for now I am simply more grateful for what I have and finally have some appreciation for it. And for now I still take the stairs.

Seong Im Hong

November 5, 2012

Sandy, Katrina, Global Warming

I don’t know if global warming caused Sandy— doubtlessly, this will be discussed in detail later in the course—but we do know that storm surge, or, storm pushing roiling ocean waters onto land, is exacerbated by the rising water levels. (NYT, “Are Humans to Blame? Science Is Out”) The water caused unbelievable damages. On Sunday afternoon, I packed the barest amount of clothes and my laptop, believing that the evacuation would last for a day, just as it did last year when Hurricane Irene caused evacuation around the dorms. After the storm, however, I found myself stranded in Long Island for more than a week without power. When I walked around, I saw trees uprooted in front of houses and branches poking through windows like an arrow through a torso. I read about the damages done in lower Manhattan and Staten Island. One of fellow Macaulay scholar lost his childhood home.

For long we have said time and time again that Global Warming is a long-term problem that is often left on the back burner. But with Hurricane Sandy, can Global Warming be brought to the center of the political discourse? Hurricane Katrina didn’t do much to bring global warming to the table, as far as I can tell, but it also didn’t hit a politically powerful area like New York City, and certainly not during a volatile period like now, right before the elections. Already, I see op-eds linking Global Warming with the damages due to Hurricane Sandy and possibly to the hurricane itself.

(And of course, FOX denies Global Warming, as usual.)

But besides wondering what we could do and what could happen as a result: we already know what we can do to prevent a future disaster like this from happening. Greenhouse gases are doubtlessly causing the oceans to rise by melting glaciers. Yet, we have ways to deal with greenhouse gases—according to study “Recovery of Methane from Gas Hydrate Intercalated within Natural Sediments Using CO₂ and a CO₂/N₂ Gas Mixture,” for example, we can sequester greenhouse gases by using it to dehydrate Methane Hydrates. This is also a valorization/green engineering process, in which we use unwanted byproduct to our activities as a source for valuable energy source (methane). I’m not sure if this process itself is financially viable, but it’s a start. Surely with enough money pumped in the research, we can fine-tune this process to produce not only energy but also reduce greenhouse gases and prevent further tragedies like flooding due to storm surges.

On October 4^th, we talked in class about Mayor’s Advisory Panel on climate change. In 2009, the panel announced that with global climate change, there will be more intense rainstorm that lead to flooding. The last bullet point I wrote under the topic is this:

• Flooding (lower Manhattan).

When I wrote those words down, it was probably with a sense of boredom and detachment. Well, yes, flooding will happen. Ocean levels will rise, and when storms come and go, the waters will get to land more easily. That makes sense.

Until this week, I had not realized how bad a flood could be. I am used to the comforts of modern life, including electricity and Internet on demand and mobility powered by the city’s electricity and MTA. Storm-related tragedies (nor inconveniences, but actual “I-lost-my-house” tragedies) were a thing of fiction, much like doomsday predictions of crazy preachers or the film The Day After Tomorrow. It is not anymore. It probably isn’t to many New Yorkers anymore.

We already had a taste of what would happen if we let greenhouse gases pollution go unchecked. It is up to us to decide what to do with this knowledge. I hope that we do the right thing.