I went to a short lecture given by Tom Evans from the Department of Geography about GIS (Global Information System) and how it is linked to sustainability. While the lecture was enlightening, it was also very boring and it was informative, but offered no room for criticism.
GIS is used to map land resources, design and plan structures and gardens that reflect the landscape, infrastructure planning, and much more. When combined with GPS, it adds time to a space-based program and can track travel patterns, which can be used to map a person's route and use it in research, it can be used to map simulation models (such as the expansion of rubber plantations in Laos), track deforestation, have an early famine warning, drought warning, or predict food shortages and see where aid would be needed, and it can also be used by volunteers to track environmental changes like Sudden Oak Death. Lastly, it can be used to interface with cell phone network to make an alert system for victims of disasters, like the earthquake in Haiti.
Again, the lecture was purely informative, so there is not much to criticize or comment, except that it was horribly dull. One question I had was if these were being implemented now, and if they weren't, why?
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Thomas Friedman's Hot Flat and Crowded
Thomas Friedman came to IU to discuss his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. He is a New York Times columnist and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book The World is Flat. His new book, Hot Flat and Crowded is a "green" book, meaning that it's about the recent environmental crisis and how we are "losing our groove" and "how we get it back".
He started out by talking about where the US is now and showed a picture of a billboard in an unnamed country that claimed that the United States is contributing absolutely nothing towards green innovation, which he claimed was untrue and that "innovation is exploding in the US today". However, he claimed that our "booster rocket" (that is, the Capital) is "cracked" and our "pilots" (meaning the government) are "fighting over the flight plan". He claimed that we have had a values breakdown in the last decade and that we have "lapsed into situational values where Mother Nature and the marketplace have hit a wall" and they are actually directly related to each other and if we take care of one, the other will follow. He also claimed that oil was a kind of leech on freedom and every country that has oil does not have adequate human rights or democracy. He cited Lebanon as an example of one of the few countries that does not have oil and is a democracy.
He also said that we are living in an age of Energy Technology revolution, and yet 1.6 billion people have no regular conenctions to an electronic grid and are "energy poor". We are also suffering from a biodiversity loss, meaning that we are losing a new species every 20 mins. Three other "problems" that are highlighted by his book are Energy and Natural Resource Supply and Demand, Petrodictatorship (meaning the tyranny of the oil contributors, companies, etc.), and Climate Change.
However, he stated that these are not problems, but opportunities. They all have the same solution, which is abundant, cheap, reliable energy and that the United States must be at the head of the green revolution. "Green is the new red, white, and blue" and we are not have a green revolution right now, only a "party". The idea of "green" needs to disappear and be replaced with the every day. It is not a "green building" it is so commonplace that it is simply a "building". We need to have a revolution where it's messy and is more "revolutionary" and in this revolution, "price matters". One way to do this is to "change your leaders, not your light bulbs". To start this green revolution, we either need a Democratic China (or a democracy that works) or a Banana Republic (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Thomas Friedman had some very good points and was very inspiring. It does seem true and practical that as long as the "green" solution is more expensive or inconvenient than the not so green solution, it will never catch on. I have had personal experience where I've seen recycling and other green solutions become popular because they were able to save a customer money. Freidman even commented that many times at book signings, he usually gets a few people that are bursting to tell him their ideas for green inventions. I don't want to rain on Freidman's parade, but it takes a lot more than ideas to power a "green revolution". Right now, people are just too apathetic or are so indirectly influenced (or see themselves indirectly influenced) that they are not driven to help the environment. What we need is some way to convince people that they are influenced and it does matter what they do, and I haven't seen a solution, not even from Friedman.
His talk was very good, though. He was humorous and intelligent and knowledgable, but he did make a very bad joke in very poor taste. He referred to Mother Nature and the market as "autistic"and said that they had "no feelings whatsoever". As a public speaker and a columnist, Friedman shouldn't even had considered making this joke or comparison. It nearly ruined the speech for me and he should definitely have apologized.
He started out by talking about where the US is now and showed a picture of a billboard in an unnamed country that claimed that the United States is contributing absolutely nothing towards green innovation, which he claimed was untrue and that "innovation is exploding in the US today". However, he claimed that our "booster rocket" (that is, the Capital) is "cracked" and our "pilots" (meaning the government) are "fighting over the flight plan". He claimed that we have had a values breakdown in the last decade and that we have "lapsed into situational values where Mother Nature and the marketplace have hit a wall" and they are actually directly related to each other and if we take care of one, the other will follow. He also claimed that oil was a kind of leech on freedom and every country that has oil does not have adequate human rights or democracy. He cited Lebanon as an example of one of the few countries that does not have oil and is a democracy.
He also said that we are living in an age of Energy Technology revolution, and yet 1.6 billion people have no regular conenctions to an electronic grid and are "energy poor". We are also suffering from a biodiversity loss, meaning that we are losing a new species every 20 mins. Three other "problems" that are highlighted by his book are Energy and Natural Resource Supply and Demand, Petrodictatorship (meaning the tyranny of the oil contributors, companies, etc.), and Climate Change.
However, he stated that these are not problems, but opportunities. They all have the same solution, which is abundant, cheap, reliable energy and that the United States must be at the head of the green revolution. "Green is the new red, white, and blue" and we are not have a green revolution right now, only a "party". The idea of "green" needs to disappear and be replaced with the every day. It is not a "green building" it is so commonplace that it is simply a "building". We need to have a revolution where it's messy and is more "revolutionary" and in this revolution, "price matters". One way to do this is to "change your leaders, not your light bulbs". To start this green revolution, we either need a Democratic China (or a democracy that works) or a Banana Republic (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Thomas Friedman had some very good points and was very inspiring. It does seem true and practical that as long as the "green" solution is more expensive or inconvenient than the not so green solution, it will never catch on. I have had personal experience where I've seen recycling and other green solutions become popular because they were able to save a customer money. Freidman even commented that many times at book signings, he usually gets a few people that are bursting to tell him their ideas for green inventions. I don't want to rain on Freidman's parade, but it takes a lot more than ideas to power a "green revolution". Right now, people are just too apathetic or are so indirectly influenced (or see themselves indirectly influenced) that they are not driven to help the environment. What we need is some way to convince people that they are influenced and it does matter what they do, and I haven't seen a solution, not even from Friedman.
His talk was very good, though. He was humorous and intelligent and knowledgable, but he did make a very bad joke in very poor taste. He referred to Mother Nature and the market as "autistic"and said that they had "no feelings whatsoever". As a public speaker and a columnist, Friedman shouldn't even had considered making this joke or comparison. It nearly ruined the speech for me and he should definitely have apologized.
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