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.