EPA regulations

First of all, the article mentions that about 40% of the nation's coal plants do not have controls for toxic air pollution. That is an unacceptable number in my opinion. I think it should be 0%. Call me an authoritarian, big government type of guy but I think that there should be at least some sort of regulations on them if they are going to be emitting toxic fumes into the air which they most likely are because coal plants and air pollution just go hand in hand. Anyway, the other side of the story is that energy producing companies like American Electric Power will have a cost in the billions of dollars in order to abide by the new regulations that the EPA has set. Those costs would be transferred to consumers. There is the other side of the coin. Consumers will have to pay more for energy and companies will lose profit. However, I think that preserving air quality is more important than that because it is a long term kind of issue.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/04/2530866/can-coal-plants-afford-epas-new.html

Buildings that eat smog

The company Alcoa makes aluminum panels that are coated with a substance that breaks down the smog-causing compound nitrogen oxide. The titanium dioxide coating interacts with sunlight to break down nitrogen oxide into a harmless substance that just washes off the building where the panel is installed. The company claims that 10,000 square feet of the aluminum panels has the same detoxifying effect as 80 trees. Although the panels would have to be installed on a large scale in order to make affect smog levels, the idea of buildings cleaning the air is the kind of ideas that we need to preserve air quality. I like how science is being employed to solve the issue. Of course the government also has a responsibility to preserve air quality for its citizens through legislation and regulation.

Human progress getting in the way of human progress

The article is about Beijing's main airport canceling 233 domestic flights and 17 international flights due to the decreased visibility caused by smog. The airport is the second busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic. The smog is caused by Beijing's increasing energy consumption and the burning of coal in the city. Beijing is widely considered one of the most polluted cities in the world. The U.S. and China have different methods of gauging air quality. The Chinese rate air quality by measuring particles 10 micrometers or less while the U.S. embassy measures those particles that are 2.5 micrometers or less.
China's future progress seems like it might be hampered by all the pollution. The smogs interference in air travel represents that in my mind. It would do China well to learn from the mistakes of other nations that have gone past that beginning stage of industrialization. China would then be able to avoid the pollution that accompanies that beginning stage.

Synaesthesia in chimpanzees

German researches found that chimpanzees associate high-pitched tones with light colors and low-pitched tones with dark colors. The research was taken to mean that chimpanzees also experience some form of syneaesthesia, a condition where the senses overlap. A person with synaesthesia would experience a shape as a taste or a color as a sound. Vera Ludwig, the neuroscientist that led the study, thinks that connections between words and colors emerge from the structure of the brain and its wiring. The purpose of the study was to determine if the associations between different senses are learned from other humans or innate in the brain. Captive chimpanzees were studied and the researches found that the chimps associate light objects with high tones and dark objects with deeper ones. Ludwig thinks that because synaesthesia occurs in chimps as well as humans, synaesthesia was already a part of the human species before language arose. Ludwig proposes that synaesthesia may have influenced human language.

I like it when we humans learn about our animalistic biases because being aware of those biases helps us make more informed decisions about everything we do. If biases such as associating a color with a sound exist,  that leaves open the possibility that other biases exist that more directly influence how we act. For example people subconsciously attribute good qualities to attractive people and bad ones to unattractive people. Its good to know about these biases because although they are subconscious, they affect how we act.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-chimpanzee-who-sees-sounds-1.9541

Butterfly Lessons

"Ultimately, all of the crops we grow are biological species; all the diseases we have are biological species; all the disease vectors are biological species." Chris Thomas' remark points out that most of the things we depend on and know are biological in essence and as such they are sensitive to environmental change as other biological systems are. Humans ourselves are biological species. Butterflies and toads aren't the only animals sensitive to environmental change. Changes to their behavior is just more easily seen because they're more sensitive to smaller changes in temperature and other environmental changes.

180 Degrees South

I enjoyed the film and its combination of adventure and conservationism. Sports shown in the movie like surfing and rock climbing are activities that take enjoyment out of being with nature. The sports shown mesh well with the environmental message of the movie. The movie focuses on seeing nature as something in itself, as something with a value beyond its material value to humans instead of something that is used for people to exploit for natural resources. The film also implicitly warns of overusing the land to the point of societal collapse when the land can no longer support the stress that a over-consuming society places on it. Easter Island is used as an example of such a place where that has occurred.

From a different perspective

There is simply not enough food to supply the needs of an expanding population. The need for food is increasing and as a result, efficiency is the key to providing the food at the least cost. "Factory farming," as it is called, often derogatorily, provides food for people at a low cost. The low cost translates to a low price which surely helps lower income families. Meat is no longer a commodity to be enjoyed once a year as it was for the peasant of feudal Europe. 

What does it mean to be in denial?

In my opinion, to be in denial means acknowledging the truth of something in the presence of evidence for that something. I will use the example of smoking. There is ample evidence pointing to the fact that smoking causes lung cancer. Someone in denial would continue to smoke and think that lung cancer would never happen to them. Someone who simply disbelieved something would do so because the evidence is either invalid or questionable. I think someone who is in denial doesn't believe something for a different reason. Perhaps that reason is desire, a desire for that thing to be untrue.

In-class writing

I think a major theme is what appears to them as the white man's unappreciation of nature as opposed to the Native American's perspective where nature is something sacred. Standing Bear talks about literally loving the Earth because of it's mothering nature. It is true that without the Earth and it's environment, humans would not be able to survive. I like how Standing Bear refers to the Earth as a caregiver because I like imagining the Earth as supporting all life including human life. The Earth, Gaia, our mother earth, does not pick favorites and that is why humans should appreciate nature because without it, we would be nothing.


Chief Seattle's speech refers to the land as something that has become part of his culture, his identity. It is the land that his ancestors were buried and for that reason the land is sacred to him. Seattle has a bond with the land because it is the land he's known all his life and the land his ancestors before him knew as well. His bond includes all of nature, not just the land because the trees, the rocks, the sky have been there living life along with Seattle as he lived his.

http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:WM4iF_6rRQoJ:scholar.google.com/+chief+seattle+speech+authenticity&hl=en&as_sdt=0,34
 
The link leads to an article by Noel Gough with an interesting title of "chiefly Protestant propanda?" referring to how the speech can be traced to a 1970s television movie produced by the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commision. Gough states that "the accuracy of this translation is a matter of speculation, but nineteenth century folklorists are notorious for censoring  and sanitising native American stories," further throwing into question the authenticity of the speech. It might not even be characteristic of Native American sentiments toward the subject and merely a white man's, an outsider's perspective on what they may think.

Chief Seattle

http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:WM4iF_6rRQoJ:scholar.google.com/+chief+seattle+speech+authenticity&hl=en&as_sdt=0,34

Making up a speech and passing it off as a quotation for someone isn't being honest. Although the speech makes Chief Seattle appear intelligent, it ignores his actual wisdom and words. The speech itself is well-written and it makes good points. It definitely shows poetry in its words.

Artifact

I don't know if this can be called an artifact but I wanted to share this picture of Rio de Janiero, a city in Brazil known for its wide gap in wealth distribution. This picture could easily be related to the environment in the form of urban sprawl and Rio surely, like many other cities of the world, specially in countries that are in the process of industrializing, produces a lot of pollution. I however would like to address the easily visible gap in wealth. Even the city's layout makes this evident. It is as if there are two cities, the one in the lower half of the picture and the other in the upper half. The lower half is of the slums where the poor of Rio de Janiero reside in what appear to be crowded conditions. The upper half shows a metropolis of important-looking high rise buildings that surely required capital and lots of it. I find it interesting that such a wide disparity is visible in such close proximity.

It turns out that business and sustainability can be reconciled!

http://www.livemint.com/2011/09/18233447/Sustainability-the-next-busin.html?h=B

Historically its been the case that business and environmentalism have not usually gone hand in hand. Its mostly because in order for a company to be environmentally friendly, that usually means that the company would have to pay more money. It is cheaper  for a company to use gasoline as a fuel source (or at least it was) than to use solar power and have to go through the trouble of building solar panels which are not easy to make. This article says that business executives are now realizing that sustainability actually fits in well into a business model. It is more advantageous for a company to turn to renewable resources for energy than to continue using oil which has a rising price due to its increasing scarcity. Also, governments are giving tax incentives to companies that maintain an environmentally friendly agenda.

1st all time post

More to come!