Calls for Offshore Drilling and More Nuclear Plants May Be Ill-Advised

Panic over rising energy costs is something we can’t afford.  It would be easy to panic about energy supplies when faced with the 33% gasoline price rise in 16 weeks such as I documented here in the Detroit area.  Panic doesn’t put one in the mood to make sound choices, however.  Now conservatives, some of whom stand to make a lot of money if their advice is followed, are telling everyone that we in the US need to start drilling for oil on our continental shelves (link) and in previously forbidden parts of Alaska, and that more investment in new fission-based nuclear power plants is needed (link).  I believe that, once again, those with profit motives are going to try to play on the fears and desires of average citizens in order to become richer.  Fortunately there are many more who have opposed increased oil drilling and more nuclear power plants (link), and with good reasons. 

Iraq Provides Illuminating Insights on Decentralized Solar Power

Rebuilding Iraq’s economy could go faster with solar power.  A radio story on Iraq this morning cited the fact that banks there have video surveillance systems, among other security measures, but that the systems don’t work when the power is off, which averages a significant part of each day.  Banks, obviously, are a key part of reviving the Iraqi economy, but while banks are being re-established in neighborhoods where violence has declined, their security is still an issue due to daily power outages.  This presents an obvious opportunity for solar power systems, even if they only power the security systems.  It also brings out the question of why, in a country with a lot of dry weather and little cloud cover, solar power isn’t being pursued with vigor in all its forms. 

Will Nanotechnology Provide Us Black Houses That Generate and Store Electricity?

Mass-produced nanotechnology-enhanced products hold great promise in the pursuit of sustainability.  Nanotechnology is unfamiliar territory – such a (relatively) new area of science that it appears we’re still learning what we don’t know.  How, for instance, can you assemble something that is orders of magnitude smaller than any available tools?  We have not yet developed nanobots or nano-scale machines capable of manipulating materials effectively in any quantity.  Moving particles around with electric or magnetic charges, for example, is not an easy thing to do, nor does it lend itself to mass production.  It appears we won’t be able to produce nanomaterials in useful volumes for some time to come if we have to wait for nano-scale tools to be developed.  Mass production is needed both to supply the needed quantities and to lower the cost so the technology is affordable.  So where might this take us?

Will People Read a Blog That Doesn’t Take Extreme (or Hilarious) Positions?

Is the blogosphere an intellectual desert, or does it just often appear that way?  Surfing the blogosphere, I find my way to a lot of places.  If I just ramble I find a lot of dreck - inscrutable personal journals and obscure personal pursuits, for instance.  Why people make their personal thoughts public is beyond me.  If I concentrate more on finding things that look interesting, I find some extremely funny stuff, and I find childish, extremist rhetoric.  Since my blog fits in none of the above categories, I wonder how it has come to be viewed as often as it is.  Is it just my friends and acquaintances coming to visit? 

Alternative Power Sources are Coming, But Not Before Fossil Fuel Costs Reach Greater Heights

Alternative power sources have been in the news for years, with many exciting developments, but won’t be available in time to prevent much higher fossil fuel costs.  If you “google” terms like “solar cell developments” or ”wind power trends”, or just pay attention to the daily news, you will see glowing accounts of new developments in alternative energy sources.  New developments in alternative energies have been trumpeted to the world for decades, but we see few effects on our daily lives (or bills).  This is understandably frustrating, and even more so when fuel costs are rising as they have recently (in my area a 33% increase in a 16 week period in the spring of 2008).  So why is it taking so long for all these wonderful ideas to become “real”?

Will Globalization Be Slowed By Rising Energy Costs?

Energy is the backbone of our civilization, and the clear enabler of globalization of business and our great agricultural and manufacturing productivity.  Cheap energy has allowed us to be comfortable and prolific, increasing the world population rapidly during the past century, and making my enjoyment of the apple on my desk, which came from several thousand miles away, possible.    This is just one of the myriad benefits of globalization that would never have occurred without cheap energy, and I admit to enjoying it.  Unfortunately, the era of cheap energy must come to an end, but how might that come about?

Economic Boom in Developing Countries Puts Farmers in Other Countries at Risk

The economic boom in developing countries is putting farmers and whole communities at risk in less developed countries hungry for cash.  The Chinese economic boom is becoming SE Asia and Africa’s boom (link) as China struggles to feed its booming industries, but not without problems.  The demand for input by companies in China is putting smaller, remote economic regions at risk as food farming is replaced by single-crop agrobusiness farms.  How is this occurring and what does this mean in the long term?

If the Bees Disappear, Can We Make Our Own?

Humans are a creative lot.  Having seen many articles and references to the declining bee population and the phenomenon of bee colonies becoming sick and dying off, it suddenly occurred to me: if the bees for some reason are no longer pollinating our crops, can we create tiny flying microbots to do the job in their stead?

Gas Price Increases Prove It Again: Cost Is What Will Drive Consumers Towards Sustainability

Fuel economy has been important to commuters like me for some time.  I work 35 miles from home and spend a lot of money on gas, so the run-up in fuel prices has been of great interest.  I spent a lot of time evaluating options before buying my current vehicle, the number one consideration being achieving a reliable 30 miles per gallon or  more.  Hybrid gas-electric vehicles have become pretty common, but other new technologies have lagged as far as development and introduction, and finding an inexpensive and maximally-efficient vehicle has not been easy.  Back in early April I wrote in some notes, off the top of my head:

How Might Nanotechnology Change Human Culture?

Mass media, enhanced by technology, has a big impact on American culture. A prime example can be seen in how mass media instigates fears that changes the cultural mindset and people’s behaviors. In my lifetime I have seen a big shift in American culture relating to the fear we all feel sometimes involving possible violence, catastrophes, illness and epidemic, and other themes.  I have always believed that most of this increase in fear is related to the increasing penetration of mass media into our lives, along with the globalization of communications and the rise of sensationalistic journalism, in which ratings drive profits and are themselves derived from arousing people’s emotions and thereby capturing their interest.  Fear has often been used to control masses of people in history, but the effectiveness of new communications technologies in instilling it has been profound.  Future developments could make even more striking changes in our culture.

Technological advances have enabled mass media to penetrate our lives ever more deeply. Radio, television networks, and now the internet have driven fears into our lives that have deeply affected our behavior.  The change is evidenced in many areas of life, including, for example, the number of people who allow their children to play outside unattended, and the number of parents who struggle to keep their children continuously involved in supervised sports and other activities, for fear that a child predator could kidnap or harm them, or that they could fall under negative influences.  Since media technology is such a powerful force in our society, and is advancing at a rapid rate, especially in miniaturized electronics and electromechanical technologies ranging down to nanotechnology, I want to conjecture on where it all might lead in the next few decades.  The impact of any new technology is ultimately cultural, so how might nanotechnology affect us in North America (and, by extension, the rest of the developed countries)?

Will Climate Change Worries Encourage Positive Changes?

Whatever is behind climate change, concern over it may do a lot of good.  The furor over climate change has been interesting to follow.  The two sides, proponents and deniers, have battled hard and dug deep for science to support their cases.  In terms of popular support, it seems the proponents have been coming out ahead, and the deniers have been dragged down by unsupported assertions, bad science, emotional rhetoric, and the revelation that some of the most prominent have been paid by the oil industry.  That’s not to say that the proponents haven’t had their own problems with questionable science and extremist speech and action, too.  Whether we really have a serious problem with global warming or not, however, may be less important than the actions the issue is motivating in policy change, cultural understanding, and individual choices.

Back to the Future – Where Might We Be in Thirty Years?

Where will we be in, say, thirty years?  I know I get distracted by more current events, and stray from my purpose in this blog, which is to address issues around achieving a sustainable world situation, and how we might live and improve in the next two to ten decades.  This entry is an attempt to get back to my original intent, and  I hope to paint a relatively hopeful picture of where we may be in a few decades.  So how might we expect things to go, and where might we expect to be in the future?

In Matters Such as Global Climate Change, Politics and Arguments are Inevitable

Who can you trust?  Reading some of the global warming-related sites, it is easy to see that a majority of articles and arguments are from people with “an ax to grind”.  Some are “warmers” or even “members of the eco-Reich”, while others are “deniers”, and sometimes the political rhetoric and blind conservative hatred for global climate change proponent Al Gore and others are palpable.  Is all this flap and fury necessary?  Where is it coming from?  Must it continue to cloud or color the science involved?

Extreme Publicity is Part of the Way Societies Change

High profile publicity may shock, offend, and dismay people, but it is part of the process of change.  While pundits and climate change deniers may freak out when frightening publicity like “An Inconvenient Truth” appears, it is a key factor in getting a lot of people thinking, learning, and moving.  Later, when things didn’t turn out so badly, people can point to the publicity and say “See? It was all BS.  Nothing happened.”  Was the extreme publicity part of the process that mitigated the problems and made them not as bad as initially predicted?  Where would we have wound up without it?