From the Notebook

             Many people used this sentence figuratively, but here I am using this sentence literarily.  The population growth and development of technology made us feel that the world becomes smaller and smaller, but the impact of population growth and technology development tells us that the earth is a small place.

            In the wake of Copenhagen climate conference, there was a scandal of data tapering by scientists, and there have been constant arguments against the danger of global warming.  But while it might not be so obvious by looking at the temperature changes in global scales (as temperature fluctuates often), the disappearance of glaciers and ice bergs clearly indicated that the climate change of the earth is warming up.

            Some people had argued that the warming trend started from the end of Ice Age and human activities might not be the cause of the warming.  While it is possible that human activities might not be the only factor for global warming, it is difficult to argue that it is not an important contributing factor, and that we should not do everything that we can to stop the trend.

            Further more, global warming is just one aspect of environmental impacts that human activities generated.  To start with, pollutions of fossil fuels especially from coals had been a serious issue for many years, and there are indications that high concentrations of carbon dioxides in the atmosphere had increase the acid level of the oceans which will harm the growth of marine life.  In addition, the process of extract fossil fuels from the earth and ocean often will result in pollutions and disturbance of the eco system in the environment. 

            In the same manner, mining for metals and other industrial materials also polluted environment and have negative impact on the eco system.  The need for lumbers accelerated deforestation, and demands on agriculture and fishing industry also impacted eco systems in the environment. 

At the same time, industrial and consumer wastes also exploded, and disposal of wastes become more significant as they are piled up and left more impact than before.  These are all signs that as the populations grow and as technology developed, the impact on the environment is felt more and more.  Finding solution for these would require social changes as well as technology development, but the right path will also have profound impact beyond environment.

  Population growth during the last century had been significant, and the impact of it has started to be more apparent (especially in many developing countries where growing trend continue), and we should start to pay attention to this problem before it becomes too late.  For example, in China, in order to control the drastic population growth (as the results of Chairman Mao’s blind ambition to grow population), the government has adopted strict measures to reduce population growth that infringed on human rights.  

As a long term approach, more education and independence of women will be able to reduce the drastic population growth, and improve the quality of life in the developing countries.  As women get educated and work out side of homes, they will delay their ages for giving birth and will have less children.  As they are more educated and financially well off, they will provide better education and support for their children, thus the over all results will be reduced population growth, and with better quality of life.

Fossil fuel focused energy policy not only jeopardized environment, it also becomes the source for instability, suppression and corruption.  Politics always is closely linked to economy.  One of the important reasons that industrial countries can maintain peaceful coexistence is because that the source of wealth is not directly related to territorial control.  However, in the case of oil reserve or mines for natural industrial materials, territorial control will provide the source of the wealth, so it is not co-incident that many oil rich or mineral resource rich countries are either controlled by repressive regime or experiencing multiple wars.   Thus, change in energy policy not only could solve global warming problem, it will help to change global political environment and maintain world peace as well.

In the time of global recession, the environmental concerns had been off set by economic concerns.  But are the concerns for environment in conflict with economic concerns?

At shorter term, there are times that there are choices to be made between environmental concerns and economic concerns, but the economic concerned had often been exaggerated.  For example, reducing carbon dioxide emission had been a testy subject in Copenhagen meeting.  But low carbon dioxide emission has mostly been related to higher fuel efficiency, which means economic benefit as well.  Even in the case of using renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, geothermal energy etc., the initial investment can be justified by long term savings.

In a long term perspective, it is a matter of necessity.  No matter what people say about the oil reserve on earth, it is obvious that there will be an end of oil supply sooner or later, and no one would like to find replacement when the time come.  It is the same with other natural resources.  Therefore, renewable energy and more development in material science to replace nature materials with human generated materials are necessary for the future.

On the other hand, social behaviors and economic models also need to be modified in view of the environmental impact.  The movie Wall-E had painted a very dark picture for the future on earth.  But it does not have to be that way.  Mass consumption provided by mass production does not necessarily best serve the consumers.  For example, in United States, fast food based on quantity had generated significant percentages of population that are obese, which contributed to higher health care cost, and reduced quality of life.  At the same time, demand on quantity naturally put more pressure on agriculture and food processing and manufactures, which lead to more environmental impacts.

As I will write more in detail in my later posts, modernization does not necessarily means mass production.  Mass production is directly related to machine’s lack of ability to make judgment thus unable to adjust according to different circumstances.  The new age of development is intended to solve this problem so that diversity and human factors will become dominating concerns again. 

In fact, some of the problems is generated sole because the misconception about technology.  For example, in many of the existing buildings (especially in business or office buildings), the architectural concept is man-made space basically isolated from the nature, and as far more remote with outer environment as possible.  The designs of most of buildings seemed to intentional avoid to be in direct contact with the outside, so that no natural lights and natural ventilations are considered as resources which results in human discomfort as well as waste of energy.

 As for principles of energy consumption, I believe more focus should be on renewable energy, not just clean energy.  To say it is a small world is to treat the earth as a system with boundary, not as a vast void that the impact cannot be detected.  For this reason, renewable energy would be a better choice. 

For example, nuclear energy is similar to fossil fuels in one important aspect, because they both put additional heat to the heat balance of the earth.  Nuclear energy releases energy from nuclear materials, and fossil fuels release solar heat from ancient time deposited on earth. The addition heat added to the heat balancing system of the earth will contribute to temperature increase on earth, as usable energy generated by nuclear energy often is a small portion of the total energy released (low efficient of heat transfer seem to be inevitable), from the global scale this factor should not be ignored.

On the other hand, renewable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal energy, and bio-fuels channel the energy source already in the heat balance system of the earth to be usable energy, no additional energy source is added, so that it would not contribute to temperature increase of the earth.  They are not only renewable, they are less disturbance to the over all environment.

As human activities had made impacts on the global environment, intentional human activities can be used to change the environment in global scale.  For example, in my post “Stop Global Warming - Change the World”, I suggested to lead sea water to desert area in order to change the global environment, other similar suggestions should also be considered.

Technologies are tools that we can use for our benefit.  Although technology development can have negative impacts on the environment, if we are willing, we can use the technology tools and develop new tools to repair damages, and modify our activities to reduce and prevent the damages.   There are many new discoveries in various science and technology fields that presented us more questions than answers, which indicated that there are more opportunities to be explored.  For example, with the help of computer technology, more development in material science, biochemical science can be made to lead us to a new and improved world, and it is possible that there could be more fundamental breakthrough in physics as well.  This is not the time to sit back and do nothing.

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