Hot, Flat, and Crowded Post 6

In the last section of my book Friedman continues to support his three main ideas of hot, flat, and crowded. Specifically he shows how Texas Instruments was able to cut cost by millions,
Together, TI engineers and the RMI team designed big water pipes and air conditioning duct with fewer elbows, which reduced friction loss and let them use smaller, energy-saving pumps. To bring down cooling costs in sun-baked Texas, engineers designed a plastic membrane that reflects 85 percent of the sun’s radiation from the roof (Friedman 282).
Furthermore they were able to use seven chillers instead of eight, which saves them $1 million and a lot of space. The man overseeing it all, Paul Westbrook, argues that it isn’t always about windmills and solar panels, but rather finding creative ways to reduce waste and energy (282). Something that I enjoy about this book is that it has real world examples. I totally agree with Mr. Westbrook because every company has different needs. Would it make sense for the Starbucks down the street to get a huge windmill out front? No, but there are many things they can do to creatively cut energy costs, but not customers. Later Friedman comments on the failures of the last administration,
It is a cruel joke the way Congress and the Bush administration count pennies… as if the money for wind, solar, and biomass were coming out of their own children’s piggy banks, and yet they throw money out the window…when it comes to old, established, well-capitalized oil, coal, and gas industries… (379).
It seems like a recurring trend in this book, that the mistakes we made in the past have come back to haunt us in the future. I’m sure it isn’t all the Republicans fault either, just mostly their fault. Regardless of your position on global warming or the environment in general, we need to find alternative energies. Oil gives dictators power and it isn’t going to last forever. We can’t procrastinate and wait for someone to come along solve the energy crisis because that may never happen. His central theme of hot, flat, and crowded just further supports the need for alternative energy. If the world’s developing countries all suddenly develop, our resources will be used that much faster. In the end, I would definitely recommend this book because it is full of great examples and anecdotes. He really gets a lot of proof together to support his ideas.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded 5

This week I read something that gave me hope for the future. The passages were about how one person can make a big difference. Also it showed me that a little change can make a huge difference like the fight over air conditioner efficiency,
The Clinton administration, late in its second term, ordered that the air conditioner energy-efficiency standard be raised from SEER 10 to SEER 13, which, once implemented, constituted about a 30 percent improvement: more cooling for less electricity…Shortly after the Bush administration took office, it decided to roll the standard back to SEER 12, only about a 20 percent…The Natural Resources Defense Council and ten states sued to reverse… the action and won. (Friedman 273)
Basically when the Democrats were in power they tried to increase energy efficiency, but when the Republicans were in power they tried to decrease it just enough so many would not know how big a change it actually was. Thankfully, someone was watching and turned the tables on the Bush administration. How big exactly was the difference between SEER 12 and SEER 13 you might ask? According to Friedman, “Only about twelve 400-megawatt power plants” (273). It seems ridiculous that one level is that big a difference, but to me the bigger shock is the fact that Bush tried to cut it down one level. It is even more shocking when one learns the amount we saved from the bill; almost 250 kilowatt hours and $21 billion in electric bills through 2030 and the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the air by it is the equivalent of taking 34 cars off the road every year (274). That is the thing, though, about helping the environment, it doesn’t have to be a massive bill to make a big difference. Later on Friedman tells a story about a man who made a large difference name Noah Horowitz. Noah started to see vending machines popping up every where in places like schools, hospitals, and supermarkets. He wondered if he could lighten the burden for some of these places because after all the school would have to pay for the electricity that runs the machine. He went to the companies, but they said no because they aren’t the ones footing the bill so he tried a different approach and asked if they could work together on a solution. Along with Coke and Pepsi he worked on simple things like better lighting and not leaving outdoor machines on all winter. After all is said and done they expect to save 5 billion kilowatts an hour and, along with his work on tightening standards for computers, his compromise is set to save $14 billion in electricity costs by 2010 according to EPA (280). To me, that just shows how anyone can make a difference in the world. Noah just took one simple device, a vending machine, and therefore saved billions of dollars with simple fixes. Along with that is billions of pounds of carbon dioxide that will not make it into the atmosphere. Imagine if everyone took one electronic device and brainstormed ways to make it more efficient. Although that is more of a wild fantasy we can all do little things to use less electricity like make sure all of our house lights are off when we go to sleep or when we go on a family vacation. If one man can make that big a difference; what would happen if everyone called these companies? We need to work together, otherwise nothing is going to happen and I don’t think any of us can afford that.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded Post 4

This week in my reading Thomas Friedman introduces some possible solutions to our environmental crisis. He points to the Toyota Prius because of its ability to store the energy from braking and from rolling down hills, “…Toyota was able to move from an incremental change in miles per gallon to a quantum leap-a car that could generate some of its own energy” (Friedman 185). I think that this is brilliant. If we ever were to have electric cars then the main problem would be how to charge it, but how many times a day do people stop when they are on the road? I can count almost 20 stops just between my house and the high school alone along with several hills. We can also take this a step further; how many times a day do we open doors? If we were to apply the same technology to our doors, we could generate electricity just from opening and closing them. Obviously it wouldn’t be enough to power your entire house for a day, but every bit counts. It all comes down to lifestyle changes. We can all easily recycle and take many other steps to help green our lives, but not everyone does. Friedman talks along these same lines,
Telling every individual on the planet who wants or can afford a car that they cannot have one would be changing our lifestyle. But banning cars over a certain weight or engine size, or bringing maximum speed limits back down to 55 miles per hour, or banning taxis that are not hybrids-such efforts do not strike me as fundamentally cramping anyone’s lifestyle…Telling people that they cannot have an iPod or laptop would certainly involve changing our lifestyle. But requiring all iPods and laptops to be made with recyclable materials doesn’t strike me as fundamentally cramping anyone’s style (193).
Some of the things we can do are so simple and yet we do not do them. He makes great points about the difference between an inconvenience and something that is very easy to undertake. After all no one needs a hummer or an iPod, but they are nice things to have as long as they be recycled. If every person in the world bought an iPod and threw it away in three years, where does it end up? Since very few if any of the parts are recyclable it will just lie in a heap for many years. Later Friedman argues that green revolution has been far too commercialized,
We have too many Live Earth concerts and Barneys “Have a Green Holiday” Christmas catalogs and too few focused lobbying efforts to enact transformational green legislation. If the money and mobilization effort spent on Live Earth had gone into lobbying the U.S. Congress for more generous and long-term production and investment tax credits for renewable energy, and for other green legislation, the impact would have been vastly more meaningful” (206).
I think he brings up an excellent point. If you just watch 5 minutes of commercials, you see tons of products advertised as “green.” Companies are using it as a way to bring in customers. I don’t think it is bad that companies are trying to do their part to help the environment and I’m sure some are doing more than enough, but is a Barney Holiday card really going to help fix our problems? It would be a better use of money and would certainly attract my attention if a corporation used the money and the effort to help the Congress get green legislation passed.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded Post 3

Once again I would highly suggest reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded because it is so jam-packed with facts and I cannot do it justice. Last week someone commented on my blog post wondering how global warming is so prevalent when places like Minnesota are seeing progressively colder winters. Luckily for him that is just what I finished reading in my book. It is important that these naïve people are shown that global warming isn’t just warming, but as Thomas Friedman calls it “Global Weirding.” He cites one of his friends John Holdren who states,
It is affecting a wide array of critically important climactic phenomena besides temperature, including precipitation, humidity, soil moisture, atmospheric circulation patterns, storms, snow and ice cover, and ocean currents and upwellings… A more accurate, albeit more cumbersome, title than ‘global warming’ is ‘global climactic disruption’ (Friedman 134).
Basically global warming isn’t just warming, but many other factors that can cause great harm. We all remember the destruction hurricane Katrina left in its path; can the U.S. take more frequent and stronger versions of that? That is just one example, however, Friedman takes a story from CNN.com about the weird weather in 2007,
Four monsoon depressions, double the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh… England and Wales have experienced their wettest May-to-July period since record-keeping started in 1766… An unusual clod southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as 7 degrees blow zero Fahrenheit… in Argentina… South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, as almost 10 inches… fell (Friedman 134).
So obviously it isn’t just warming that is affecting our planet, but rather many different factors. Furthermore you can tell something has gone wrong when places like South Africa gets almost a foot of snow. Some places will get warmer and places will get colder.
Later, Friedman argues that we need to do more to help maintain our biodiversity, …mindlessly degrading the natural world the way we have been is no different than a bird degrading its own nest, a fox degrading its own den… The scale of biodiversity loss happening today is having global impacts… we can’t keep doing that and assume that we will repair it (153).
I completely agree with what he says; I know it is easy to forget all the other living things in the world because we have all of our own problems, but we cannot ignore them. Species are rapidly becoming extinct because of our actions. If we want a clean Earth that is full of unique creatures than we need to start making some changes.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded Post 2

The second part of Hot, Flat, and Crowded is about how we got to this point in our world. He starts by talking about how oil is halting the freedom of the people in eastern countries saying, “That is, the higher the average global crude oil price rises, the more that free speech, free press, free and fair elections… are eroded” (Friedman 96). My interpretation is that the higher the price of oil, the lower the freedom. This may be, but can he back this claim up with facts? As always Friedman comes through with compelling evidence from an source who did not want to be named stating, “When oil was $20 a barrel, Putin had 20 percent of the Russian vote; when it was $100 a barrel he had 100 percent of the Russian vote!” (Friedman 95). This is why we need to get the world off oil. If a single politician can control a country strictly by the price of oil; what is going to happen when we begin to run out of it? What if Putin keeps getting reelected because he continues to raise the price until there is none left? Russia will be left dazed and confused. That is why it is so important for America to be a leader in this search for renewable fuels, which leads to his next talking point the environment.
Friedman makes the argument that we are not doing enough to halt global warming stating,
“There are other reasons we may be underestimating global warming. To begin with, scientists-the good ones- are congenitally afraid of overstating anything. They are punished for overstating and not punished for understating, and this produces caution generally” (Friedman 121).
Congenital, by the way, means having a characteristic as if by nature. The scientists have developed a fear of talking the truth about global warming. It is a shame, but after all people like to hear good things not bad things. To think that a scientist could be fired from his job because he wants to help is a sad thought. Such truths are usually shrugged off and converted to skepticism, which has several stages: first the skeptics tell you that you are wrong and can prove it, second said skeptics admit you are right, but it is not going to have any affect, and third they say that admit that it does matter and it will affect us, but it is too late (Friedman 125). Eventually everyone will realize that global warming is a huge problem that needs dealing with immediately, but I don’t know if we can get the skeptics to believe in time. One thing is for sure, we have a big problem on our hands and everyone is going to need to pitch in to solve it.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded Post 1

I am reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman. This week I read Part 1, which is his introduction to the problem of hot, flat, and crowded as he puts it. The book has so many compelling arguments to back these up, it would be best if you just read it, but I will do my best. In summary, the world is being drastically affected by global warming, in that, the earth is warming and humans are the main cause for this increase (Friedman 31-36). He points back at the Reagan administration that, instead of continuing the trend of increasing the mpg gallon for cars and helping to further ease our dependency on foreign oil, decreased it by a whole 1.5 mpg (Friedman 14). He cut the funding for many of President Carter’s alternative energy programs and even took the solar panels off of the white house (Friedman 14-15). Some may argue that a small increase in temperature will not affect us, but Friedman thinks differently,
From our ice core samples, Holdren explained, we know that the difference between an ice age and an interglacial period like we are in now - that is, the difference between the earth being and ice ball and being very comfortable. So a small difference in that global temperature can lead to very big changes, which is why this .8 degree Celsius is telling us, as Al Gore likes to say, the planet has “a fever” (Friedman 37).
Many people argue that the environment should not be a big priority, but does it matter how well the economy is doing if the world is a degree from being a popsicle? I think that it is interesting how he points to the Reagan administration: mistakes we made in the past may come back to haunt us now. What if he had continued to increase the mpg necessary in cars or continued to fund the alternative energy programs? Unfortunately, that is history now and our generation is going to be defined by how we pull together and try and fix the growing problem of global warming.
Secondly and thirdly, the earth is flat and crowded. He points to three causes of the flattening of the earth,
The first was the invention of the personal computer, which enabled individuals-individuals- to become authors of their own content in digital form… Another big flattener was the emergence of the Internet… a set of tools that enabled individuals to send their digital content anywhere in the world…The third flattener was a quiet revolution in software… thus enabling work to flow farther and faster through internal company networks, the Internet, and the World Wide Web (Friedman 29-30).
Basically, my interpretation of flat, is that it is becoming increasingly easier to reach anyone around the world. Take this assignment for example; once I post it, anyone around the world can see it at a few clicks of a button. You can decide whether that is good or not. Crowded is simple, the world is filling with people. According to the United Nations Population Division, the population will be over 9 billion by 2050 (Friedman 28). Some of these places are not ready to support the millions of humans that are going to live there. There will be nineteen million people just in Mumbai, a country that also has a lot of pollution, deforestation, over fishing and water shortages (Friedman 28). Can the Earth support another 2 million people? I like how the author brings up the point about Mumbai; some countries don’t have enough, or are losing its natural resources. I’m sorry this is so long, but these are the main points of his book and I think that it is important to understanding the rest of the book. I realize that hot is two times larger than the other two, but the section about hot in the book also has two times the info and I just feel stronger about the global warming.

Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Charles Schulz Part 6

Now that I have finished the book, I decided my last blog post shouldn’t be about death, but rather his triumph. The part that followed Charles’ success was basically just a huge spending spree. Charles and his wife, Joyce, went all out on their new house,
At a cost of $20,804.75, she [Joyce] rolled out a tennis court, lighting it for nighttime play (a novelty at that time, when even night baseball games were new), and put in a heated swimming pool, bathhouse, children’s wading pool, and stone waterfall, all enclosed by an Anchor fence… The kitchen was her command post, and she designed it as “a housewife’s dream” with… two ovens, two refrigerators, and a separate deep-freeze for stocking meats…She rolled out tarmac pathways for bikes and installed a pathway with standard school yard equipment including a slide, swings, and climbing bars; she bulldozed woods to claim a Little League-sized baseball diamond… (Michealis 327-329)
One of the first things that I thought when I read this was; why hadn’t I heard of this place before? It is definitely a strong argument against the idea that money cannot buy happiness. I think the house was a way of showing off his success not necessarily his fortune. Sparky had always had a compulsive need to be liked, which carried over to Charlie Brown. It may seem strange the same man who built such a massive and expensive fortress, weeks before, didn’t even want to go collect the awards he had won (Michealis 29). However, he had worked so hard to achieve his fame that his house was a way to show everyone what he had accomplished.
It wasn’t long after he became a household name that he was approached about making a short Christmas show. Lee Mendelson would produce the show, Sparky would write the script, and Sparky wanted Bill Melendez to animate the feature because of not “Disneyfying” the Peanuts in an unrelated commercial (Michealis 346-347). One of the biggest issues, however, was a key element in the storyline. According to Michealis, “But Mendelson had not realized just how much of the Gospel Schulz intended to include in the movie. When Sparky began work on the script, he “proudly announced,” as Lee recalled it, that there would be “ one whole minute” of Linus reciting the Gospel…(349).
As I have said in previous blog posts, Sparky’s faith was very important to him and I am not surprised that he put it in his show even if television, at that time, was hesitant to put up religious shows. Even though his characters are famous, he is very insistent on not letting them become like Disney characters, which I’m sure is why he wrote the script. He just wanted his ideas and characters to be original and enjoyed by all.

Schulz Part 5

The road to becoming a famous cartoonist was very difficult, but Charles Schulz made it to the top. He had fallen in love and married the love of his life, Joyce. He had persevered and Peanuts was gaining the stardom he deserved rapidly. He put a little of himself in each of his comic characters,
He gave his wishy-washiness and determination to Charlie Brown, the “worst side of himself” to Violet, to Lucy his sarcasm, to Linus his dignity and “weird little thoughts,” his perfectionism and devotion to his art to Schroeder, his sense of being talented and unappreciated to Snoopy. (Michaelis 258)
Being almost done with the book, I can definitely see where all of these characters stand out in his life. His high school years when he was very shy around girls is his Charlie Brown side. His strive to be at the top, and never give up was where Schroeder came from. His years at the bottom of the pack helped him to form Snoopy. He put all the characters together and a winning comic was formed. He was making more than $90,000 a year in 1957 (287).
Not only did he start collecting more cash, but he also began to accumulate many awards. Charles, however did not want to go to collect these awards, “Sometimes [Joyce] left the airport, having just put [Charles] on a plane, only to have Sparky beat her home in a cab” (299). I find this kind of funny because you would expect such a famous person, especially one who has worked to hard to attain his stardom, to accept his awards. He just wanted to be home above all else (299). According to Michaelis, “He grew up in the apartment over his dad’s barber shop, and all he ever did was sit there and listen to classical music, draw his cartoons, and play golf” (299). I don’t know how many famous stars these days would rather sit at home than attend a party, but that was what Charles had always known. With his mom gone and his dad always working, Sparky found things to do by himself and I think that stuck with him through his adult life.

Michaelis, David. Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.