Technology: A prescription with serious side-affects

Technology is completely integrated in my everyday life.  To give you an idea of how ever-present it is, I will outline my typical morning routine: Wake up to the sound of my alarm on my iphone, hit the snooze button two or three more times until I finally decide to get out of bed and turn on the lights.  The room is stuffy and hot so I'll turn on the a/c while I'm up.  I then go to the kitchen to flip on the hot pot to boil water.  I pour water for tea and instant oatmeal for breakfast.  As I'm eating, I check my email on my laptop.  After breakfast, I'll get changed and head out of my apartment with headphones plugged in, listening to my iphone on the way to class.  This routine requires me to use 5+ different types of technology, from my personal phone and laptop to all of the devices installed in my apartment, just within the first 15-20 minutes of my day.  While all of this is going on I don't even stop to think about all of the technology that went into the creation of my iphone and macbook or the light fixtures and air conditioning unit.

While the American public generally views technology as being a positive force overall, it is important to remember that it can just as easily be turned into a negative one.  In this era, mankind can research and develop vaccines to save millions of lives, or use medical advancements to create biological weapons and wipe out millions.  These examples require certain motivations behind their implementation, but in the case of global warming, our techno-centric way of living has its negative consequences despite how positive we view its role in our lives.  There is a clear correlation between industrialization and the amount of carbon dioxide we end up putting in the atmosphere.  Whether we like it our not, technology is going to play a major role in the progression or regression of global climate change.  It has been predicted that if we continue to consume at our present rates, we may face an unsustainable Earth in our future.  The question we face is: how much am I willing to alter technology's presence in my life to slow the warming of our planet?  Global warming is a collective action problem, so if citizens of the world don't act as one, we shouldn't expect to see any results.

As we face the consequences of global climate change, methods to remediate the damage we've done may be found in future technology.  If this proves to be the case, then we may be able to credit human ingenuity in creating technological advancements to make the world a better place to live.  But we must not forget the negative impact high technological consumption has had on our planet through pollution, increased carbon dioxide emissions and many other planetary repercussions that come with global warming.  Either way, if a technological solution to global warming presents itself, we cannot return to our current state of consumption without harming the planet.   

Technology: Our Savior or our Doom?

As my colleagues on this blog have all mentioned, technology has developed rapidly over the past few decades.  Even looking back to the 1990s when most people did not have computers or access to internet in their homes, now a sizable amount of the population has access to the world wide web on their portable cell phones.  We really cannot even fathom where technology will go in the next five years, let alone the next fifty.  Technology in reference to the destruction of the environment has two different parts to play.

The first part is how the development of technology contributes to environmental degradation.  Since technology develops at such a rapid rate, the Western world has face a phenomenon of technology we bought, but a few years ago, becoming irrelevant and outdated.  For example, the development of cell phone technology tends to lead folks to buy a new phone every two years in the United States.  This is usually encouraged by cell phone contracts lasting only two years, and also by the fact that most cell phones fall apart or stop working somewhere around the two year mark.  That means that any one person who gets their first cell phone at age 20 (thought many get one before that age) and if they continuously have a cell phone until they turn 70, they will go through 25 cell phones in a life time.  This is assuming that no phones get stolen, broken, or water damage during one's life time.  Twenty-five cell phone is a lot of waste, but also involved a lot of production.  A lot of energy goes into the creation of technology, which is then used and abused by the public.

The second part of how technology is involved in environmental issues is that since it is developing so quickly, technology could help us save the planet, or at least make it possible for people to keep living on it.  It really depends on your goal of if you want the planet Earth to survive, or if you only care about  people living on, but regardless technology's speedy evolution could actually solve the mess that human race has gotten every species on this planet in to.

There is no real way to know which way technology will contribute most effectively with.  Perhaps a combined effort of reducing the common person's consumption whilst pouring time, money, and energy into technological development for saving the environment will be a successful tactic.  Or perhaps more and more people will get sucked in to the newest iPhone craze and we are all doomed. Who knows?  The one thing that is certain is technology has and will continue to impact our future.

Technology Depends on Structure

 It is impossible to say anything about technology in the abstract. Some, often referred to as “cornucopians” have tried to argue that technology is inherently beneficial to both the climate and society; while it may cause temporary problems, continued technological growth will eventually solve all the problems it creates. Others have argued that technological growth because it is accompanied by economic growth and consumption necessarily increases environmental impact. I would argue instead that technology is neither inherently beneficial nor harmful. Instead it is entirely contextual as different technologies will interact in different ways with both the climate and society depending upon the social, political, and environmental contexts they are developed and deployed in.
Take GMO crops for example. GMO crops are often touted as technologies which will both decrease poverty and hunger, by increasing crop yields, and decreasing irrigation and environmental problems. While the potential might exists for gmo technologies to provide these benefits, for the most part they have not as many areas that adopt them suffer even worse environmental problems. (For instance, Mexican farmers who have planted GMO maize which produces its own pesticide have seen the development of “super bugs” which are resistant to the pesticide). With the introduction of GMO crops, farmers are encouraged to which to Western style monocroping, which leads to erosion and soil degradation. Further, because GMOs are often patented by a company, farmers are banned from saving their seed and often have to pay high premium for the “rights” to certain crops. This has created a cycle of dependency and debt which turn farmers into corporate vassals. Why in this case is technology harmful? GMO technology is owned and controlled for the most part by corporate interests such as Monsanto, who are concerned mostly with profit. Thus, for the most part they produce GMO crops which are designed to benefit them primarily. For instance, Monsanto makes a series of crops which are designed to be resistant to Roundup pesticide, which they also own.  GMO crops because of the context they exist in.
However, other technological advancements such as improvements in municipal recycling do seem to benefit the environment and society at large. This is because the technologies are utilized as a public service. Further, the internet, while it require the use of electricity, has greatly increased the ability of new environmental ideas to spread. Many environmental NGOs and activist have successfully used the internet to increase the reach of their ideas in ways never before possible. The internet, as concept is relatively cheap and accessible to a large amount of people. Thus it has a larger potential to be a force for environmental and social good.
Other technologies such as appliances, cell phones and other personal items, tend to be harmful to the environment because they are created and used in the context of consumerism. Consumerism encourages people to consume large amounts of stuff, most of which they will throw out in a few months. Further it encourages people to ignore the origins of their products and the environmental harm their production has caused.
Overall, it appears that because much of the technology we use exists within the context of corporate greed, consumerism, and industrial capitalism, it tends to be harmful to the environment. That is not to say that it is inherently harmful however. If you change the social structure in which technology is embedded, you will change its effects.

Technology: a life saving straw?

It's hard to simply make a judgment about technology when we talk about its position in the environment. The invention of light help people to see clearly during night, but it causes light pollution that impacts animals. The invention of car, airplane and trains help us getting much further away places in much shorter time, but they causes serious air pollution and also severe depletion of fossil fuel. the invention of varieties of electronic devices that help us a lot during daily life, but also generate enormous amount of electronic wastes that pollute the environment. The invention of plastic water bottles allow us carrying water with us no matter where we go, but tons of plastic bottles piled up everywhere. Whether the technology is a negative or positive force in our lives depend upon how we are going to use it. It is a tool for us to use not something that will dominate our future. I think the best example of it is the nuclear power plant, where is we use it properly, it can generate enormous amount of energy that supply our energy instead of burning coal to get electricity. on the other hand, the nuclear power also generates hazardous wastes that are very difficult to deal with. For some unstable countries and terrorists, nuclear power has become a powerful weapon to help them strive for hegemony. The whole debate about technology is like the coin has two sides. There are negative aspects of technology though there must have something else that have positive impacts of it.

As the I=PAT equation mentioned, the environmental impacts that we have are decided by population times human affluence and technology. We can tell from this that technology plays an important role in terms of environment. When we talking about environmental protection, we can not eliminate the impacts of technology that it will have over the entire issue. The level of technology determines the degree, the range and the area that we may influence, which under most circumstances, by damaging and over exploiting the resources. This kind of going to the debate of whether the developing of new technologies is compatible with environment protection. Facing with the situation right now, I think technology would work in a more positive way for correcting the mistakes that we made before. If we made changes of our current technologies to make them have higher efficiency, save more energy and pollute less; these all the benefits that we get from improving our technology. If we use technology in a more reasonable and environmental friendly way, technology will have bigger positive force than negative forces. In order to use it in the right way, stronger regulations and policies that aiming at different technologies needed to be done before the technologies spread to the entire world because once it get widely spread, it will be difficult to control people how they will use it. 

To Boldly Go...

Technology is perhaps one of the most uncertain variables in human history.  In 2000, the iPod did not exist, neither did social networking as we know it today.  In 1950, the internet did not exist. The advent of the internet and computers revolutionized communications technologies and infrastructures; it paved the way for globalization and fundamentally changed the way people related to each other. Instantaneous communication became possible.  Woah. Take a moment, and think about that.  Just try to list all the ways modern technologies have changed the way you live your life.  The natural thought, then, is what next? What will be the next internet?  

Before I continue down this particular road of thought, I'm going to take a step back.  Hold the idea of the revolutionary ability - and precedent - of technology throughout history to fundamentally shift the way the world functions, I'll get back to that eventually. Right now, though, let's take a page from last week with a return to author Michael Maniates. In an article written in Global Environmental Politics Volume One Number 3  titled Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? that was in my required reading for this week, a passage struck me with familiarity: 

When we asked our students - who were among  the brightest and best prepared of the many with whom we'd worked over the years - why, after thirteen weeks of intensive study of environmental problems, they were so reluctant to consider as "solutions" broader changes in policy and institutions, they shrugged. Sure, we remember studying these kinds of approaches in class, they said, but such measures were, well, fuzzy, mysterious, messy, and "idealistic" (36, Maniates). 

This struck me, because this past Monday in my International Environmental Politics class, I was one of those students.  Our professor asked us to divide into groups and write out how we thought the Washington DC area would change in fifty years if A) substantial sustainable policies were enforced and B) if life continued as usual. When we returned after a half hour or so, our solutions were modest, showing small changes, but nothing revolutionary - exactly like the students in the Maniates quote above.  Now think back to how I began. Fifty years ago, the internet as we know it, computers as we know them, did not exist. Why couldn't we - a class of students that are the progeny of this modern technological age - come up with more creative advances for the environmental future of Washington DC?

I realized the analytical step I had missed last week in my blog post while contemplating how to respond to this week's discussion question.  Last week, I was - I most definitely still am - guilty of "a privatization and individualization of responsibility for environmental problems [that] shifts blame from State elites and powerful producer groups to more amorphous culprits like 'human nature' or 'all of us'" (43, Maniates).  It certainly is much easier - and palatable - to blame human nature, or society, or normative cultural values on the current state of environmental degradation we face in the world.  It is hard for me to actually internalize and comprehend that I should be taking civic action - moreover that I can take civic action that could influence change in an environmental context. In this same vein of thought, it is easy to consider the small changes that could be made.  Anything more would involve work. It would involve tackling hard problems, hard issues, it would require me to stop pointing fingers and to start doing something about the situation I find myself in.

This brings me back my original point (yes, there was one!) about the potential for technology and the environment.  I want technology to be a positive force in my life - in the life of the world and the environment.   While I will neither confirm nor deny the positive or negative impact of, say, Facebook, on my life I do hope that technology has the potential to help us surmount the environmental challenges before us.

This potential can only be realized if we imagine it, though.  Small advances - higher efficiency cars, sidewalks that generate power for the streetlights at night by people walking on the sidewalk during the day - aren't enough.  We - and I'm very hesitant now in my use of "we", lest I fall back into the trap of individualizing the blame - need to imagine bigger.  We need to throw some crazy ideas into the mix.

At the end of our class on Monday, one of my classmates mentioned a contest she had heard about where a company is challenging universities and colleges to come up with designs for toilets that do not use water.  The winner of this contest will have their design produced, and these super-efficient toilets will be on the market.  This is the kind of innovation we need: groups of people posing problems, and other groups solving them - or at least attempting to.  Much is gained in the attempt of a concrete solution. So think crazy! I've heard of sidewalks that generate the energy to power streetlights at night from the people who have walked on the sidewalk during the day.  What if roads generated energy for cars from the cars that drive on them?  Everything has to be considered possible. We should also look to the natural world for ideas; plants photosynthesize, they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.  What if we could find a way to engineer photosynthesis on a grand scale?  Can you imagine?

Granted, there are many problems that technology might not be able to solve - for example, the overfishing of most of the world's fisheries.  Technology will not re-populate the schools of fish that industrial fishing has devastated.  In that regard, technology has had a negative impact as it also has in the lumber industry - in the destruction of the world's forests. There are also a plethora of variables and factors that hinder technological advances which I do not have the time to get into at this juncture.

My overriding, perhaps 'messy', perhaps 'mysterious' and definitely 'idealistic' hope is that there are problems technology can tackle if we have the creative drive to try.  If we can dare to imagine.

Do it for the Children!

One statement that is reoccurring in environmental legislation and literature seems to always be along to lines of, "a better world for future generations" or "ensuring the future for our children and their children".  It is an alarming idea that someday the Earth may not a suitable place for future humans to live, and one that that has clearly not penetrated the hearts and minds of society.  Americans have grown numb to the notion that we are compromising not only the lives of future Americans, but future generations around the world.

I'm just as guilty as the next citizen in assuming my recycling and energy saving household rituals will somehow slow global warming, and I never find myself thinking that these practices will prove beneficial to future generations.  This is because I, like many Americans, seem to be occupied with remediating the immediate problem.  I don't want my life to be negatively impacted by climate change, so I make small adjustments to my habits and hope somehow that will do the trick.  I realized this after reading an article by Oren Lyons of the Onondoga Nation discussing the American Indian philosophy of making every decision "On behalf of the seventh generation to come".  This way of living seems much more sustainable than our current American lifestyle and has been lost at some point in our history.  Maybe we still think that we hold this philosophy true from the way we constantly throw around language about well-being of future generations, but the fact is we aren't putting it into practice, hence our current climate predicament today.

Michael Maniates is right in criticizing our leaders for selling us short.  They have little faith that the people can understand the scope of the climate crisis we face, so they dull the magnitude of the problem.  The result is citizens putting in what they think is an honest effort to "live green", when in reality we aren't doing nearly enough.

So instead of being "treated like children by environmental elites and political leaders", maybe we need to be reminded that we are, in fact, putting our children in jeopardy by living the way we are.  This is a harsh wake up call that nobody wants to hear, but as Maniates says, "it has been the knotty, vexing challenges, and leaders who speak frankly about them, that have fired our individual and communal imagination, creativity and commitment."  Maybe this realization will shift our values and encourage people to make more conscious decisions while keeping future generations in mind. 

Environmentally Blind

I found the imagery of “living in a bubble” that Mary employed in her post to be very interesting and revealing. As both individuals and as members of an affluent society, it is easy for us be blinded to the realities of climate change. As individuals it is often difficult for us to think in terms of an entire climate system and connect our lifestyles and choices to broad ecological and climate issues. As members of an affluent society it is hard for us to accept that it might be the very conveniences which define our lives might be part of a systemic problem. Further it is most likely that those who are less affluent will bear the brunt of the negative effects of climate change.

            The “going green” manuals that Maniates critiques in his article play into this “blindness” by telling people what they want to hear.  The assumption that going green should be convenient and cost effective for the consumer tends to reinforce our bias toward a narrow individualist viewpoint that ignores systemic problems. For instance in recent years there has been a proliferation of “green” consumer products, such as paper towels that advertise themselves as being green because they are made with more renewable or recycled material. While these items are certainly “better” for the environment, they are still part of an unsustainable consumer culture which produces an astronomical amount of waste. If people are convinced that these products are “green” then their conception of environmentalism is necessarily narrowed. In this way the “its easy being green” books that Maniates  critiques and the green branded consumer products that share their ideology might not just be wrong-headed, but actually detrimental in that they breed complacency and make us “blind.”

            That being said systemic changes, while necessary, are hard to achieve. Our current political system in a stalemate and unlikely to produce effective climate change legislation and consumerism remains very entrenched. There is a point to be made that focusing on greening our own lives on a local or community level is useful because we have the most control over them. However, greening our own lives shouldn’t be “easy” as these books proclaim. It might involve organizing our communities, our families to collectively lower our impacts, conserves and reduce our waste through reuse or mitigation.

ATTENTION: This Game of Catch Up Has Been Indefinitely Suspended Due to Massive Flooding

Living in the United States, there is a brand new fad growing amongst the upper-middle class called "Living Green."  The idea behind the movement is that through small steps that everyone can take, we can finally save the environment from the impending fate that we have forced upon the Earth.

Take short showers! 

Recycle! 

Use reusable bags!

(If you're feeling ambitious) COMPOST!!!

Without even attacking the privileged assumptions that everyone can access recycling facilities or can afford pricey eco-friendly products, this new face of green living is rather problematic.

 This Living Green fad has manifested in reusable water bottles and stores like Whole Foods getting praise for having multiple ways to recycle and being environmentally accountable.  In essence, the (primarily rich and white) American public has finally jumped on the international bandwagon of attempting eco-friendly habits.  But, realistically the USA is trying to play a game of catch up with the rest of the developed world and they aren't even trying.  Most of Western and Eastern Europe has been recycling for decades, drive small cars, locally source their foods, and don't pine away in Capitalist consumerism.  The fact that the US has just begun recycling initiatives is embarrassing.

The even larger irony is that there has been a whole new face of consumerism created around the Living Green lifestyle.  You can buy t-shirts with the recycle sign on it, "Green is the New Pink" is written all over underwear, t-shirts, purses, and sweat pants at Victoria's Secret, and masses are throwing out their old cleaning products, paper towels, and toilet paper, in order to buy new eco-friendly brands.  In true American fashion, the US has developed a way to make money off a movement that is trying to scale back the ecological impact of the sheer existence of human beings on this planet.

I write this article having just finished hearing my friend rave about her new iPhone 5.  While I still don't understand the use of the new iPhone and how it's different from the previous models, one thing I did learn is that the new iPhone has a completely different charger than previous models of iPhones, iPods, and iTouch products.  She explains that the purpose of the new plug is to make the phone more compact and to make space for all the new technology crammed into the little piece of metal, plastic, and conflict minerals.  Why did Apple really create a brand new charging cord? Not because it is smaller, but because it means that masses of people will have to buy the new cord and throw out their old ones.  In a few years it will be impossible to find the old cord and you will have to buy a completely new iPod, iTouch, or whatever else has been developed by then.

So, we stand in a place where it's more popular to claim that you're living green through your wardrobe than to actually critically think about your purchases and their strain on the environment.  Simultaneously, the American government, media, and NGOs feed the American public the message that the little things they do that do not actually inconvenience their lives will make a serious impact in helping decrease carbon emission levels.  As Maniates explained in his article back in 2007, the US is not moving fast enough or trying hard enough to actually help anything.  We're playing a game of catch up with Europe, when even European policies need to be improved.  Meanwhile ecological devastation is in full force.

Maniates is completely correct when he states that we need to up the ante and actually get moving in the United States to make a serious impact and reduce carbon emissions.  But, he fails to acknowledge the reasoning behind these campaigns using the strategy of saying that being green is "easy."  The reasoning is multi-fold, from American apathy, to the (primarily conservative) public claim that climate change is not happening, to the pressure to maintain our Capitalistic consumerist values that have propelled this nation forward over the the past century.  These reasons do not justify American inaction, but they explain why the agencies who are fighting for the environment are using these techniques to get the public comfortable with the idea of small personal sacrifices so that one day, real sacrifices can be made.  The debate over this liberal approach (as opposed to a more forceful radical approach) is valid and important to have in moving forward, but we are where we are and we need to figure out a way to move forward.  I agree that the current strategies are not enough, but the problem of American inaction is larger than the advertising techniques of the eco-friendly movement.

A Zero Sum Game

I live in a bubble. If you're reading this right now, you also live in a bubble - inside the contained habitat of our technocratic anthropocene.  In March of 2011 Elizabeth Kolbert wrote an article for the National Geographic entitled Enter the Anthropocene - Age of Man   in which she discusses the possible ways in which humanity may leave an indelible mark on the earth itself so that "to future geologists...our impact may look as sudden and profound as that of an asteroid" (Kolbert).  I mention all of this because in the context of Michael Maniates's Going Green? I believe it is relevant.

Humans are changing the earth. That is the bottom line. And inside the safe spaces of our highly connected, technologically inundated societies, we don't notice.  I grew up in an affluent Maryland suburb.  In my neighborhood, almost everyone recycled.  In my house, we always made sure the lights were turned off before we left the house.  I was encouraged to take shorter showers, (to admittedly varying success) and we often bought (and still buy) produce from a local stand a short drive from our house.  As citizen of the United States who was relatively uninformed about the environmental situation beyond Nightly News specials on the destruction of the rainforest, I felt good about our lifestyle.  I mean, we recycled! My family was helping the environment.  We were friendly to it.

This mindset - my own mindset, at times - is exactly the problem Maniates points out in his Washington Post article from 2007.  The contained habitat I mentioned earlier - the places where electricity, running water and connection to the outside world via technologies is largely taken for granted - looks pretty nice to those living inside of it.  There are still green things; trees and gardens inside cities, bits of Nationally preserved parks, patches of wilderness between suburban neighborhood, where even the occasional wild animal may appear, the sky is blue, the air seems clear, and you can see the starts in the night sky.  Never mind the exhaust from the UPS truck filling the air with black smog, never mind the coal and fossil fuels polluting the earth to keep us warm at night.  The lights turn on when we flick the switch, we can connect our 3 and 4G phones to the internet when we go on a weekend camping trip.  But we recycle papers and plastics; so the environment is going to be OK.  In this contained habitat of the technocratic anthropocene, we have been content with our "simple steps" and the "glorification of easy" as Maniates puts it.

 We shouldn't be.  The simple, easy steps blind us to the truth of the hard facts: that humans are changing the planet, and those changes are mostly likely accelerating, and most likely will not benefit future generations of humanity as we know them.  In a March 2005 Reuters report in the New York Times on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the 45-member board proclaimed a stark warning, that "human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted" (Reuters, emphasis added).

The time for easy, if it ever existed, is at an end.  As a species, we are are becoming the designers of our own demise.  If we want to ensure the future, we have to start taking actions now.  Action comes in many forms, and it does start with simple steps - simple steps, but not easy steps.  As the purveyors of affluent lifestyles, we must be the first to make the hard changes - politically, and personally.  We must inspire ourselves, our neighbors, and our governments to take action against the threat of the anthropocene.  On this issue, the international community must also come together and implement policy, with concrete measures that member states must hold themselves to adhere to.  There are solutions to this problem.  I don't have the expertise to list them; but once we realize that the starkness of our situation, and the finite resources we are exhausting, we can face this international challenge together.  It doesn't matter whose fault it is; the political blame game has to end.  There is no easy way out - but if we focus creative thought and innovation on the emergency that lays in front of us a sustainable future may be possible.  The game we are playing with our planet is a zero-sum game, one in which the human race either wins or loses. 

We need more than easy tips.

Personally I totally like the idea of we need something bigger to happen in terms of going green from Professor Maniates' perspective. It's difficult or even impossible for us to simply 'reuse scrap paper before recycling' or 'take showers' to be green or environmental friendly. These actions are environmental friendly ones but they will not bring out of the current situation of global climate change. Its time for something larger to happen: the ones will have fundamental effects globally. EPA as well as other organizations provided us different kinds of lists that can guide us to choose green actions. The best result that could happen is that we are "slowing the growth of environmental damage". If we want to avoid the worst outcomes of global climate change to happen, in next 30 years, 80% of carbon emission in the States needs to cut off completely. Keep recycling paper, installing energy efficient light bulbs and taking shorter shower will not help us cut 80% of the carbon emission. These individual and consumer-centered actions are the just a tag used by politicians to tell the public that 'we care about our environment so that you need to this, this and this'. But the fact is that what is going to work to help the society being green, is much more expensive but will have huge impacts. Politicians and government organizations barely talk about these because they know that they do not have that money and human resource to do that.

In order to achieve the goal of cutting carbon emission by 80%, far more difficult technologies are needed instead of tweaking on the margins of what we already have. We need fundamental changes of our energy use, the way of transportation and agriculture system we have now. All of these aspects requires tremendous amount of money. I like the idea that we are grown ups and we know the importance and necessity of making difficult choices and working hard to make changes. Taking the energy change fro example, all the infrastructures we have now have to switch for new ones. This will cost billions of money worldwide. How can politicians raise such huge amounts of money to make the society going green in each president’s term of service? Going green has become a tool for the candidates for advertising themselves for making more job opportunities. It’s a time consuming and costly thing to go green for politicians; they want things that will have immediate outcomes. The essence of going green has been narrow down to personal levels. Environmental elites and our leaders treated us like children. This article really wakes me up regarding of acting green and going green. While I was trying so hard to go for green, what our nation is doing?

Still consuming tons of energy to maintain an American lifestyle for the entire society. While the global north blaming the global south for deforestations, we are living in a luxury lifestyle that needs five or more earth to support all population if we live in American lifestyle. Personal actions can help us starts from grassroots to make changes and brainwashing more people of the idea “going green”, the individual actions will help the progress of going green but without bigger actions from the entire society. It’s impossible to make changes for achieving the goal.

Energy: just a drop in the bucket

As a voter who is concerned about environmental issues, I want to know how each candidate plans to address problems such as increasing drought, alternative energy sources, America's impact on global warming, etc.  I'm exploring Obama and Romney's sites and I keep asking myself, "Where are the environmental platforms?"  The tab for "Energy" under each candidate's list of issues is the closest option.  The fact that each candidate does not directly address the pressing environmental issues we currently face tells me two things: a.) to them, environmental issues fall under the same umbrella as their energy platforms, and b.) making a platform to amend/prevent further damage we have done to the planet would cost them the election.  Energy is only a piece of a larger environmental puzzle we currently face today.  The lack of a comprehensive platform on both sides is very disconcerting for America's future, especially considering that our lifestyle has the largest environmental impact on the rest of the world.  

Aside from Romney and Obama's failure to mention environmental issues not related to energy, both platforms share some similarities.  Both energy plans emphasize America's abundance in carbon-based resources and make it clear that we should be getting as much from them as we can.  The measures they want to take to use these resources will hopefully end up in what they both refer to as "energy independence".  They also claim that both plans will result in more jobs for Americans.  Job creation seems to be the bottom line of each energy platform since the economy has taken the stage as the number one issue voters are concerned about in this election.    

While both candidates discuss oil and natural gas in their platforms, they both touch on other energy sources in different ways.  For example, Obama's plan seeks to increase wind and solar production while Romney claims that these sources have, "failed to become economically viable."  Romney on the other hand seems to be pushing future investment and deregulation of nuclear energy sources, when Obama doesn't mention this type of energy at all in his platform.  I had expected both candidates to mention the coal industry, but to my surprise, Romney only pointed out how the Obama administration is anti-coal and doesn't discuss it any further.  Obama makes sure to show how he has increased investment in "clean coal" as opposed to just regular coal mining.  I'm a bit of a clean coal skeptic, so as far as I'm concerned, neither candidate shows a strong view on what direction the coal industry should take.

Environmental issues tend to be the empty promises candidates make that will occur within a certain time frame and never happen.  This is evident in the language shown in Obama's platform such as, "development of our near 100-year supply of natural gas, which could support more than 600,000 new jobs by the end of the decade" just doesn't seem firm, and I really have a hard time believing that many new positions in the natural gas industry could be created in a decade.  The same goes for Romney in his goal for "North American energy independence by 2020."  This all depends on how our relationships with the major oil producers continues to evolve as well as America's appetite for oil within the next ten years.  Oil independence in eight years seems to be a huge stretch, and is most likely not happening any time soon.

In both platforms, these grand goals need to be downsized.  I know the candidates are doing it just to win votes, but realistically, energy independence by 2020 and a surge of "green" jobs within the next few years seem to be exaggerated claims.  I would also appreciate a broader environmental platform, which can include other topics such as pollution and global warming, which are closely related to points brought up in these energy proposals.

Destructive Assumptions

            What is striking about both Romney and Obama’s energy plans is not necessary what is included in the plans but what is excluded: a thorough discussion of environmental sustainability. While both campaigns discuss the environment in their energy platforms, neither give us a clear picture of what they believe the environment is or what they relationship between the state and the environment should be.

This is most evident in Romney’s plan, which is merely titled “Energy.” The environment is mentioned several times in the platform when Romney, mostly in the context of the “environmental” laws or regulations that Romney fears tend to stifle industry. At one point Romney states that he will “make every effort to safeguard the environment” but quickly throws in the caveat that “he be mindful at every step of also protecting the jobs of American workers.” It is unclear both what he means by being “safeguarded” and how he intends to strike the balance between protecting jobs and the environment.

In general it appears that Romney conceives the environment as a function of the economy. It is a resource for the American people to use. The country was blessed enough to have a “cornucopia” of carbon-based energy reserves and Barrack Obama is being both unpatriotic and a job-destroyer by not allowing them to be fully exploited. Most importantly, he makes no reference to the degradation of the natural environment, global warming, or the finite nature of carbon-based resources. These inconveniences are entirely written out of the narrative to allow for the construction of his cornucopia of resources narrative.  

Obama’s plan includes more reference to the environment and environmental protection then Romney’s but is still dominated by an economic perspective. Obama discusses how he has increased regulation of environmental hazards such as mercury and how he expanded conservation efforts but declines to discuss any other environmental concerns such as global warming, extinction, or environmentally sustainable agriculture. Further, Obama justifies his alternative energy initiatives not by toting their environmental benefit but by arguing that they will create more jobs and free us from foreign oil. Although Obama declines to give us a clear picture of what he views the relationship between government, the economy, and government, he appears to believe that environmental problems are really regulatory problems. Our current system can be tweaked with regulations to prevent environmental destruction; no systemic changes are necessary.

Both candidates hold on dearly to the idea that in order for our country to progress, its economy must constantly expand. This idea is the focal point of both campaigns energy platforms. For Romney the goal is to do what’s best for the economy irrespective of the environment, while for Obama the goal is to what’s best for the economy while correcting for environmental damage using regulations. These two assumptions, that progress necessarily means GDP growth and that environmental problems are fundamentally economic problems, are detrimental to the extent that they exclude any robust discussion about sustainability and the  between relationship humans and the natural environment.

 If we can move beyond these assumptions we might eventually be able to hold serious political discussions about sustainability, growth, species die off, carbon emission and other important environmental issues, but at this point it seems unlikely. However, it is important to note that political discourse and assumptions are mutable; they can be challenged and altered. Perhaps this is role of environmental activism, to challenge and subvert these dominant assumptions to create a space for productive discussion.

Yeah for Renewable Energy!!!!!!

Both Obama and Romney address the importance of energy in the economy through their platforms; since the whole country’s economic activity depends on that. How the candidates proposed their policies that regarding of energy issue became the key whether they will win the presidential contention or not. There are three main points that they argue about. To sum up these differences, we can put them into three questions: what the energy economy should be; what price we want to pay for that and where can we get those energy resources.

They proposed these policies from the perspective of achieving to a better situation and trying hard to boost the economy. Policies related with energy supply and generation will have fundamental effects on the results. Because of the different political background of these two candidates, their proposal for energy policy varies a lot. I will explain what I would lobe to subtract from their platforms regarding of these three questions and trying to combine them towards a new direction.

“I want us to stop giving tax subsidies to oil companies that are already incredibly profitable. I want to double down on our investment in clean energy that’s never been more promising—in solar and wind and biodiesel—and put people back to work so that we can free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and build up America.”

Obama’s idea and Romney’s idea about what the energy market should be are totally different. Obama committed to a planned energy market by putting in place an “all of the above strategy”. This strategy will help the nation develop all kinds of energy and all available sources of energy. The purpose of doing this is to solve the problem of we have to making a choice between develop the economy or protect our environment. We can tell from Obama’s website that he put wind power and solar energy as the next electricity generation source. For fuel economy part where our automobiles heavily depend upon that, the President make agreement and also standards with manufacturers to make fuel efficiency cars as well as lighter cars to save fuels. The Obama Administration also claim that there will be 12,500 new jobs created by 16 solar energy projects with other 13 renewable projects. 1.3 million American homes can run on this renewable energy. Jobs became another big interest for the public when they are suffering from depression. He also showed his ambitions of helping America becoming less dependent on foreign oil, which it is a stumbling block that limit the growth of America as well as other political problems.

            On the contrary, Romney’s agenda seems more practical for still depending upon traditional energy resources but leave more space for the market to decide. A new regulatory frame will be applied to these industries to ensure they are not polluting the environment as what they did before. This strategy will work better regarding of the current energy situation. Renewable energy sources are definitely better for the environment comparing with the traditional way of energy generating. The problem is that it’s very costly to switch from those ones that we have used for a long time especially where most of the infrastructures are still in use of the traditional energy. It will be very costly and time intensive process to install new infrastructures. Obama’s ambition is good for the environment but not for our purses. He claim that the government will pay for whatever the price it will take to do that. Where is the money come from? Most of the funding comes from tax. In another way to say, from the money we earn.  It will work much better if we can combine these two strategies together. Giving more time for the society as well as the economy to get used to renewable energy. Saving the environment allows no time delay yet we do not have that ability to change it in one night. 

Winning Gaia's Vote

It is September of 2012, and we are less than two months from the November 6th Presidential Elections.  The battle for Captain America rages on between the Romney and Obama camps as the nation watches - but is either candidate looking out for the largest non-voting enabler and provider of their campaigns; the earth herself?

President Barack Obama

On his campaign page, one of the eight issues the Obama/Biden camp lists is titled Energy and the Environment.

The web design of this page is certainly inviting, with myriad charts, diagrams and videos all pointing to the great work President Obama has done over the past four years to make our world cleaner.  Inevitably, all of the charts for  Oil, Natural Gas, Bio-fuels, Wind Energy, and Solar energy show improvement under President Obama.

These charts, and the words that accompany them are aimed at showing how these new energies are providing jobs and bring America closer to energy independence, though, and are void of any reference to the broader environmental effects.   The tagline for Obama's "all of the above" strategy is "to develop every available source of American energy while making sure we never have to choose between protecting our environment and strengthening our economy" (Source: www.barackobama.com).

Under the Fuel Economy section of the Obama campaign's Energy and Environment, there is mention that:

"The Obama administration’s groundbreaking standards for cars and light trucks will save families roughly $8,200 at the pump per vehicle by 2025. The standards will also cut in half vehicles’ greenhouse gas pollution, reducing a major cause of climate change."

So at least our President incumbent mentions the environmental buzzwords "greenhouse gas" and "climate change".  There is also mention in investments in clean coal and "carbon capture and sequestration research", but no further data beyond initiatives implemented and long term goals set.  

In sum, the President's energy and environment platform looks pretty and is directed towards the grievances of the simple american voters: high gas prices, high energy prices, unemployment, and direct health effects (such as heart attacks and asthma) rather than global environmental dangers and proposed solutions.  This platform is not designed to educate, inform or even vaguely alert voters to the global environmental challenges we face in the future, but is instead intended to be a message of progress, pointing to the brighter, cleaner path President Obama has set the American public on for the future.  And of course this make complete sense.  Voters don't want to be told that we are approaching - or have passed - the carrying capacity of our planet.   They don't want to be told about the thousands of species that have become extinct, they don't want to see pictures of forests mowed down or rivers turned toxic by pollutants.  President Barack Obama won the 2008 election on a message of hope - he surely hopes to do the same in 2012. 


Mitt Romney


Romney's equivalent to President Obama's Environment and Energy platform is titled, simply, Energy.

The tagline for Romney's page is "Energy: Pro-Jobs, Pro-Market, Pro-American"  and his platform focuses on the economic and industrial side of the energy issue.  The headers of Romney's energy platform are simply, "Obama's Failure" and "Mitt's Plan".

According to the Romney camp, "the first three years of the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector.  In thrall to the environmentalist lobby and its dogmas, the President and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in ways that sap economic performance  curtail growth, and kill jobs" (Source: mittromney.com).

The Romney spin on the investments made into alternative energy is that "the Obama administration wages war against oil and coal, [and] it has been spending billions of dollars on alternative energy forms and touring its creation of "green" jobs...the "green" technologies are typically far too expensive to compete in the marketplace".

Once finished the obligatory bashing of the other side, "Mitt's Plan" boils down to bulleted points under bolded goals of "Significant Regulatory Reform", "Increasing Production", and "Research and Development".

After reading his plan, Romney seems to be in the Cornucopian camp of environmentalists, and seems to have no thought that our planet is a finite resource.  If Obama's platform wanted to keep voters feeling warm and fuzzy about the American environmental future, Romney would rather his voters not even consider that we might have environmental issues.  He makes no mention of greenhouse gases, or climate change - barely even uses the word environment outside of his attack on Obama and in regard to ensuring environmental laws account for cost.

The Verdict

In truth, it would be hard for environmentalists in most camps to support either energy platform.  Neither candidate puts emphasis on the environmental challenges we face as a nation or global community, and neither candidate recognizes the stark immediacy of the degradation threat.

If Obama's platform is disappointing in its references to our actual environmental state, Romney's cornucopian, market liberalist platform is terrifying.  Under his "Significant Regulatory Reform" heading, he is planning to "Amend the Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview".

 Carbon emissions are, as I am coming to understand it, one of the most significant and alarming factors contributing to climate change.  The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million that currently sits at 387ppm is warming that planet, and it is rising (Source: A Safe Operating Space for Humanity, 2009, Johan Rockstrom).  So far it seems that the "safe" proposed boundary to draw back down to is around 350ppm, though the pre-industrial number is 280ppm; that is, before humans were around, 280ppm was the planet's natural balance.

The planet is already above the proposed "safe" boundary, and Romney's planned removal of carbon dioxide from the Clean Air Act is certainly not going to slow down carbon dioxide emissions.

On November 6th, the American public will decide who leads them for the next four years.  If the planet earth were given a vote, I don't think she would pick either candidate.