It's a word that has gotten a lot of attention in the past 10 or so years. We have finally discovered that we have the power to essentially use-up the world's resources. Of course none of us want that, but Jason Clay offers a "solution" (PS - I love TED) :
I see some problems with this philosophy though. I appreciate the progress he is making, and I agree that we need to address this issue of diminishing resources and growing population, but I don't think the solution is as simple and neat as Dr. Clay believes. Here's the way I see it:
Private Business is a competitive environment. Without short-term profits, a company will struggle and die at the hands of companies who will sacrifice long-term access to resources for short-term competitive gains. For example, Company A has an idealistic CEO who leads his company in the direction of sustainability. He says, "We will no longer support any environmentally or ecologically detrimental suppliers, and we will conduct business in a manner that will conserve as many natural resources as possible." Sounds great...
Meanwhile, Company B - a similar company - has a more traditional capitalist serving as CEO who's goal is to drive out competition, and maximize profits for expansion and reinvestment. He knows about Company A's new goal of sustainability, so he decides to fight fire with fire.
Company A may be able to make a great marketing campaign to promote their new commitment to sustainability, but being that they are bound to have larger materials costs since they are no longer buying from "traditional" suppliers, their profits will likely falter. Meanwhile, Company B launches a marketing campaign promoting their lower prices, and then puts a little side bar about their new "green" packaging (mostly just marketing fluff, but the consumer doesn't know any better). Company B has lower costs, and sells their product for a significantly lower price, plus they too have some interest in saving the environment. What happens next? Since this is hypothetical, there's not a right answer, but I'm putting my stock in Company B.
My point is that companies will not buy into this 100% sustainability if they will lose money from it. That's just Econ 101. It doesn't matter if the resource you are taking from the land will be gone in 75 years; if you are a well-run business, you will have already foreseen this, and redirected your investment into another channel by then. We have made some gains in environmental awareness in the past decade, but those have been far outweighed by increasing population, and the boom of industry in the developing world. Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I have very little faith in Dr. Clay's solution.
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
August 16, 2010
May 7, 2010
Stop all the Asian Crap...I mean Carp!
This may be a little-known issue here in Tennessee, but it's gotten $78.5 million in tax-payer funding, and the attention of the White House to boot:
Asian Carp are invading the Great Lakes!
Rather than get into the specifics of this singular situation, I'll leave you the above link to check it out for yourself, and I'll address the more global issue of the spread of invasive species:
I grew up in Memphis, where Kudzu has become a dominant force in the ecosystem. While Kudzu is not native to the Americas, it has found a thriving environment with little natural competition here in the southern US. It swallows telephone poles, trees, fences, and sometimes houses, and while it may be cool to look at, this sort of invasive plant is clearly harmful to the natural ecosystem that it invades, and of course, this is just one example.
Since people began traveling, they have spread countless non-native plants and animals. It's impossible to tell how many natural ecosystems have been altered or destroyed by humans in the course of history, but it is now becoming something that we can do more quickly and unintentionally than ever before.
We have the ability to cross any continent, any ocean, and even go beyond our terraform in very reasonable lengths of time, and as we are beings in need of other supporting life-forms, we tend to bring some of our favorite animals and plants along whenever we travel or migrate. Global trade has only increased our ability to inadvertently ruin a foreign ecosystem by bringing in invasive species, and now that we have recognized this problem, action needs to be taken.
We are realizing more and more as humans that we are coming to the point in history where our actions could physically end the world. I'm not just talking about a nuclear holocaust, although that is a valid possibility, but also our continued disregard for maintaining stable ecosystems on the earth. Species variation is a key aspect of balance in the world as we know it, and while understanding the way the world works could lead us to the ability to recreate or restore ecosystems, we are destroying life on this planet faster than we are learning about it. The focus of science and engineering since the industrial revolution has been relatively micro in scale, and by that I mean that we try to invent new ways to improve our individual lives at that very moment. We tend to shrug off researching and understanding the long-term effects of what we may think are revolutionary, beneficial inventions.
I hold out hope for humanity though, and I think the more we can learn about this world, the more we can do to ensure its continued ecological health. In the mean time, we need to continue to move our public policies in a direction that is in favor of environmental improvement, including, the prevention of the spread of non-native invasive species.
Asian Carp are invading the Great Lakes!
Rather than get into the specifics of this singular situation, I'll leave you the above link to check it out for yourself, and I'll address the more global issue of the spread of invasive species:
I grew up in Memphis, where Kudzu has become a dominant force in the ecosystem. While Kudzu is not native to the Americas, it has found a thriving environment with little natural competition here in the southern US. It swallows telephone poles, trees, fences, and sometimes houses, and while it may be cool to look at, this sort of invasive plant is clearly harmful to the natural ecosystem that it invades, and of course, this is just one example.
Since people began traveling, they have spread countless non-native plants and animals. It's impossible to tell how many natural ecosystems have been altered or destroyed by humans in the course of history, but it is now becoming something that we can do more quickly and unintentionally than ever before.
We have the ability to cross any continent, any ocean, and even go beyond our terraform in very reasonable lengths of time, and as we are beings in need of other supporting life-forms, we tend to bring some of our favorite animals and plants along whenever we travel or migrate. Global trade has only increased our ability to inadvertently ruin a foreign ecosystem by bringing in invasive species, and now that we have recognized this problem, action needs to be taken.
We are realizing more and more as humans that we are coming to the point in history where our actions could physically end the world. I'm not just talking about a nuclear holocaust, although that is a valid possibility, but also our continued disregard for maintaining stable ecosystems on the earth. Species variation is a key aspect of balance in the world as we know it, and while understanding the way the world works could lead us to the ability to recreate or restore ecosystems, we are destroying life on this planet faster than we are learning about it. The focus of science and engineering since the industrial revolution has been relatively micro in scale, and by that I mean that we try to invent new ways to improve our individual lives at that very moment. We tend to shrug off researching and understanding the long-term effects of what we may think are revolutionary, beneficial inventions.
I hold out hope for humanity though, and I think the more we can learn about this world, the more we can do to ensure its continued ecological health. In the mean time, we need to continue to move our public policies in a direction that is in favor of environmental improvement, including, the prevention of the spread of non-native invasive species.
May 4, 2010
Hey! You got oil in my Gulf!
Since one of my first posts was pertaining to the coal-mining disaster in West Virginia, I find it fitting to say a little something about the recent oil leak that BP and the US Government are working on stopping in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is a horrible environmental disaster, and while it is not likely that humans will die as a direct consequence of the spill, it is extremely likely that people in the area, and possibly along the whole East Coast will feel the consequences of this disaster. I wish I were more experienced in the exact way that a deep-water oil rig works, but from my basic understanding, a leak has developed in the pipeline that brings oil from under the sea floor, and to the top of the rig, where it is transported to refineries, etc. This leak has been directly channeling oil from underground and into the sea for the past few days, and because of its depth (about a mile down), it has been very difficult to fix.
So, now the problem is two-fold: fixing the leak before it gets worse and simultaneously cleaning up the oil that has already escaped. Here are a couple interesting news stories related to the topic, if you feel like knowing a little more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100504
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-03-how-risky-is-the-dispersant-strategy-for-addressing-the-gulf-spi
Okay, so this is a big deal, but what does it mean for the oil industry in America, or even abroad? I think nothing. They will have to be careful to guard against this kind of failure in a deep-water rig again, but it's unlikely that our government will be able to (or even want to) cut back our domestic oil supplies. Personally, I don't think we should stop drilling anywhere just because of this accident, but it may make it a little scarier for some people who don't want off-shore drilling a few hundred feet from their back-yards.
Of course, oil drilling has brought us an amazing age of new technologies and transportation, so for that, it is assuredly an advancement, but it's never that simple. No engineer can design a perfect machine that will never fail, never break down, and never have an unforeseen problem. James Carville had a good point the other day on CNN. He said that no matter what kind of fuel we are using - coal, oil, nuclear, hydroelectric - we have a chance of disaster, and the more we use that kind of fuel, the greater our chances are for something to go wrong. There is no known perfectly safe, perfectly clean, perfectly unobtrusive way to produce energy on this earth. We can only keep improving our processes and looking for new advancements, but I feel confident that we will.
This is a horrible environmental disaster, and while it is not likely that humans will die as a direct consequence of the spill, it is extremely likely that people in the area, and possibly along the whole East Coast will feel the consequences of this disaster. I wish I were more experienced in the exact way that a deep-water oil rig works, but from my basic understanding, a leak has developed in the pipeline that brings oil from under the sea floor, and to the top of the rig, where it is transported to refineries, etc. This leak has been directly channeling oil from underground and into the sea for the past few days, and because of its depth (about a mile down), it has been very difficult to fix.
So, now the problem is two-fold: fixing the leak before it gets worse and simultaneously cleaning up the oil that has already escaped. Here are a couple interesting news stories related to the topic, if you feel like knowing a little more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100504
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-03-how-risky-is-the-dispersant-strategy-for-addressing-the-gulf-spi
Okay, so this is a big deal, but what does it mean for the oil industry in America, or even abroad? I think nothing. They will have to be careful to guard against this kind of failure in a deep-water rig again, but it's unlikely that our government will be able to (or even want to) cut back our domestic oil supplies. Personally, I don't think we should stop drilling anywhere just because of this accident, but it may make it a little scarier for some people who don't want off-shore drilling a few hundred feet from their back-yards.
Of course, oil drilling has brought us an amazing age of new technologies and transportation, so for that, it is assuredly an advancement, but it's never that simple. No engineer can design a perfect machine that will never fail, never break down, and never have an unforeseen problem. James Carville had a good point the other day on CNN. He said that no matter what kind of fuel we are using - coal, oil, nuclear, hydroelectric - we have a chance of disaster, and the more we use that kind of fuel, the greater our chances are for something to go wrong. There is no known perfectly safe, perfectly clean, perfectly unobtrusive way to produce energy on this earth. We can only keep improving our processes and looking for new advancements, but I feel confident that we will.
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