In an interesting contrast of perspectives on governments’ takes on environmental issues, these two videos highlight air pollution in Hong Kong and electronic waste in Toronto.

The first is a comedic public service announcement (PSA) put out by the Clean Air Network (CAN), which is a nonprofit advocating for more action to control air pollution in Hong Kong. I first saw this as part of an entry at the Green blog at New York Times that I saw yesterday.

Basically, air quality is a big mess because of industrial activity and roadside pollution. Instead of the usual “shockvertising” and serious ad campaigns, CAN decided to change their approach with this light, but poignant piece. Check it out:

For the Cantonese version, click here. The wording in this version is a little bit different, but the ideas are the same. (Interestingly, instead of the horse scent, there is man’s scent. Probably geared towards the fans of the main actor, Daniel Wu, because that is him in the image, I believe. I wonder why they chose to make it a horse scent and not anything else.)

The second is also an entertaining PSA but this time put out by a government agency. The City of Toronto wants your electronics, and they make it quite clear here:

I also saw this yesterday, at the blog Green as a Thistle. This video is quite funny, almost to the point where you don’t believe the City are the ones who actually released it. It is more in the style of a cheesy mattress commercial.

It seemed like a strange twist of fate that I came across these two videos on the same day, each with its own purpose in a common mission to incite environmental action, but coming from different perspectives. As I see it, there is one government attempting to stimulate action, and one government needing to be stimulated into action. It really gives you something to think about!

Today I started reading news in Google Reader, and came across 2 topics that I wish could just find a way to meet up. They have to do with getting widespread behavior and mentality change to happen and funding for political campaigns/issues. That may not sound like they can be connected, but just read on!

The first article is titled “Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings” from the Dot Earth blog on the New York Times. It that talks about a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The researchers surveyed regular people and found that they generally do not have the right idea about what the most effective ways to save energy are, when compared to what is recommended by experts. The best ways to increase energy savings, according to this study, are efficiency improvements, rather than usage curtailment. (Though both may be necessary, in my opinion.)

I think what they are trying to stress here is that people have the idea in their heads that if they just turn the lights off when not in use or drive a little less, that that will be enough to make a major difference, that they can “do their part” in these small ways. While these behavioral changes are good and great, there really isn’t much of a change in mentality or understanding of the deeper issues. There is still a self-centered approach to those activities, whereas more significant action would take more significant effort (i.e. buying more efficient light bulbs, appliances, water heaters, cars, etc.; insulating your home).

The NY Times journalist suggests that this study is a sign that the US needs to invest more in energy literacy in order to make a dent in the wasted energy and avoidable carbon emissions related to energy use.

The next article I would like to bring into this discussion is about Proposition 23 in California. You can find the second article here at Grist. Prop 23 opposes the climate change legislation in California, and is supported by big oil companies from other states such as Texas. The campaign against Prop 23 also has big backers, such as environmental groups, tech companies in Silicon Valley, and other companies. All in all, there are several millions of dollars going into the campaigns on both sides.

I won’t get started on how unrestricted lobbying could possibly be one of the big reasons why our local and federal governments continue to fail on important fronts, because that would be too much of a tangent. But I couldn’t help thinking, what if they took those millions of dollars going into campaigning and actually put it into informative programs on the ground to address issues like energy efficiency? Maybe it wouldn’t even take that much seed money to get something going, because apparently home energy efficiency is a booming business.

Now, I’m not actually suggesting to take the money out of the No on Prop 23 campaign, but what if every group that invested in the campaign matched with an investment into an energy literacy program? Rather than only putting money into TV and radio ad campaigns that may not increase the general public’s understanding of climate change legislation but confuse people more?

I do not wish to resign to the idea that people are mindless and believe whichever campaign had the most funding and was therefore more prominent. Maybe I don’t understand enough about what is going on. I admit that I sometimes do not understand why people are such adamant deniers of climate change.

In any case, the point is that there really isn’t enough effort or funding going into informing the masses and this could potentially be an innovative way to raise funds and awareness. I would really like to see a lot of things become part of general knowledge, like climate change and evolution, which really deserved to be a part of general knowledge decades ago.

I was lucky enough to catch The xx at Summerstage in Central Park last Sunday after being away for a tournament. And by “catch,” I mean I sat/stood outside of the gates in a clearing in the trees and barely was able to see a sliver of stage.

There is something about being outside in semi-nature, enjoying live music, that makes me very very happy. Maybe it is the combination of being in a green, grassy park with the sun shining and breeze blowing, and good aural stimulation that just relaxes the mind and body. It could also be that outdoor concerts are associated with summer, which is a generally happy time of the year. Yay for Vitamin D!

This reminds me of a few things I’ve read in the past few months. First, there were some studies that looked at how consumers spent their money. They split this into 2 categories: material purchases and “experiential” purchases. The researchers found that the happiness that consumers felt from material purchases did not last as long as the happiness that they got from experiential purchases. For example, buying a massage or doing something with friends gives a longer lasting happiness than shopping for clothes or splurging on things.

Considering I didn’t even have to purchase a ticket to The xx’s concert, I’m really glad that I went! It has been good for my mental health this week.

Another good article is this one in the NY Times. It talks about similar ideas and a specific story about a couple who took it upon themselves to get rid of most of their belongings. The woman was able to get it down to 100 personal items, and they were able to move into a smaller apartment and pay off their $30K debt. The couple was also happier with their jobs and life in general because they were able to do more of the things they liked, like being outdoors, volunteering, and spending time with family.

I’m not ready yet to winnow down my belongings that much, but I would like to try to get rid of the possessions that I don’t necessarily need anymore. It is a difficult thing to do, though, but I have managed to clean out some clothes at least once a year. I do, however, find it particularly satisfying to find a use for something that I had been saving for a long time. This might be a different type of happiness. Maybe a happiness from solving some kind of puzzle? A puzzle of how to use randomly sized boxes and containers?

What experiences make you happy?

[Update]
An interesting article on CNN about maximizing spending for happiness

Here are some articles a friend sent to me recently (thanks Katie!).

I posted earlier about piezoelectricity being used in dance clubs and subway turnstiles, but here is an article about a smaller version that could be used in cell phones.

The second article is about gecko tape. Geckos have a really fascinating ability to climb on the pads of their feet using Van der Waals interactions between the tiny setae (each with a diameter of 5 micrometers) on the pads of the toes and the surface of the thing it is sticking to. The article says that tape and adhesive technology being developed now that imitates the gecko’s abilities may be available on the market in 3-5 years!

I am currently reading the book The Best American Science Writing 2007, and in it was an article about lie detecting by Robin Marantz Henig entitled Looking for the lie that was published in the New York Times Magazine. (Just so you know, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that polygraphs can detect lies at very high accuracy.)

Towards the end of her piece, Henig discusses some of the evolutionary implications pertaining to deception and the development of the brain. Advanced social interactions are complex and often deception needs to be part of the equation and might be somewhat related to skills that make individuals socially adapted and intelligent.

This idea is interesting because it would explain a lot of the selfish behavior that we see in humans today. Social groups that are small enough may not suffer as much from serious deceptive offences, though they definitely have their share of gossiping, etc.

But as social groups get bigger, relationships are not as much defined by kinship but by association and profession. Being able to lie or deceive may have become adaptive in these settings where it would be the difference between gaining an advantage over a competitor or getting the short end of the stick.

Henig explores the possibility that having a proven lie detector technology may not be desirable to continue living comfortably as society functions now. She discusses the spectrum of lies from harmless to malicious and how lying is not all bad. This reminded me of an episode of the manga and anime series “Kino’s Journey,” where Kino comes to a country where all the people live alone in their own houses because years ago they acquired the ability to read other peoples thoughts. It is an interesting and spot-on portrayal of how humans could ruin things if all thoughts were revealed.

The research going into lie detection is quite fascinating, as are the ethical and moral implications behind it. One researcher has nailed down a system of recognizing facial and vocal cues to tell when people are lying that is 95% accurate. He does, however, have a rule that he doesn’t use his ability to out his family and friends when they are lying to him. I wonder if I would be able to restrain myself if I had the same capabilities!


Image credit:
Flickr user Elia Diodati

This NYT article talks about the trend that is becoming more popular now of keeping chickens in backyards across the nation, such as Chicago, Brooklyn, and the rural West.

From the article, the general sense is that most of the people who recently started raising chickens in their backyards are doing it because of the economic recession. A common sentiment that is repeated in the article is that people want to feel secure, just in case they lose their job or the recession gets worse.

Possibly the most difficult thing about raising animals is feeding them. The problem with raising the chickens in backyards is that you spend nearly as much as you could make just by buying feed for the chickens. There are also the initial costs of providing shelter and purchasing the chicks.

Compared to farms that purchase feed in bulk or have enough land to rotate the chickens on plots of grass, raising your own chickens is inefficient. You are hardly saving any money while increasing the hassle for your household.

In Nature, inputs and outputs balance each other out. For human food production endeavors, inputs and outputs aren’t as well balanced because all the components in a cycle are not always readily available in the same system. People raising animals in cities need to buy inputs from far away and feed that are products of the sun and grown by farmers. Sunlight is free, but farmers are like middlemen in this process because they increase the cost as they pass things along.

Growing your own chicken feed would make the system more ecologically connected, but that means more resources would need to go into another type of production. Hatching your own chicks (which doesn’t seem common by the amount of discussion of chick packaging companies in the article) would also lower the initial costs. You would essentially need a mini-farm in your backyard that contained a relatively closed cycle to make things very efficient.

Overall, I think the reasoning behind these people raising chickens is understandable but somewhat silly. Arguments that homegrown chickens and eggs taste better might be valid, and the sense of security may be worth the effort. But in the end, I don’t think having chickens will be the difference between one family being more successful during a deep recession than another family in the long run because I don’t think it will get to the point where families will have nothing to eat so the chickens would save the family from starvation.

Image credit:
Flickr user james+3

The author of the NYT editorial I wrote about on August 4th brought up this idea:
“Domestically, a power company can earn credits by, say, helping farmers capture methane emitted by animal waste ponds or cultivate land in ways that help absorb carbon.”

I’ve read a few articles about these “black lagoons” (term borrowed from NYT article linked below) of animal waste created by farms, specifically pig farms. Recently, I started wondering whether people really understand what these farms are like. If you haven’t ready anything like The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you could live on not knowing what kind of atrocities there are out there that are connected to producing your food.

The animals raised on large lot farms are kept in close quarters, and can’t be near each other’s waste because it would make them sick. (Which is quite understandable. It would make me sick too.) So the waste needs to be trucked out of the animals’ barns and deposited somewhere, often on one big piece of land on the same farm. This turns the land into a black lagoon of animal waste that contaminates the soil, possibly the groundwater, toxic gas emission, and tons of other issues that affect the environment and the health of humans.

For further reading, check out:

• NYT article
• More on the environmental impacts
• Methane to produce electricity

Image credit:
Flickr user friendsoffamilyfarmers

The Senate is in a position to pass a climate change bill aimed at the energy industry. There are some things that were changed through much of the politicking going on, and it is unsure whether the bill would be successful at doing much in the way of reducing emissions.

Here are a few opinions:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/opinion/22wed11.html?_r=1
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/opinion/lweb02climate.html

Whichever method is chosen, something should be done soon. If cap-and-trade policy is less effective than taxing carbon, then we will find out and should be flexible to adapt our policy.

We WILL NOT get things right the first time around! We cannot expect to! Policy should not be written and left stagnant anyway! But we can’t afford to argue back and forth about which policy will work better. That would take way too long to make anything happen.

We are missing the point by debating over what type of policy would work better. We should be open and flexible while ensuring that whatever policy is implemented is as strong as it can be, predicts any abuses, and doesn’t have any loopholes.

The author of this article says that the International Panel on Climate Change may be loosing its edge in terms of focus and methods. He says that the panel may not be able to keep up with the amount of climate research that is out there now.

This makes me think about the discussion of scientific collaboration talked about in Wikinomics. Scientists could do so much if they had a way to coordinate their efforts in an open source kind of way. Currently, I do not know of any such place. Scientists do coordinate and collaborate, but at a much smaller scale than what is possible.

What is the right type of policy to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? I don’t think that is the right question to be asking. I think we should ask, “How do we get all the stakeholders to work on this together?” The policymakers, the industries, the farmers, the scientists, should all be working together to come up with the solutions. No one group should be able to get their own interests in there without the other groups keeping them in check. (Too many lobbyists in DC!) But, I think it could work!

We all have a friend who is one. An electricity-hog. A 45-minute-showerer. The drive-to-the-gym-so-I-can-run-in-place kind of person. The most common of these types of habits among young adults today seems to be the excessive bad computing habits, like leaving a computer on when it isn’t being used (especially overnight) and printing things that don’t need to be printed.

Computing and printing habits are some of the toughest to break in our culture of excessive everything (perhaps not as tough as that of food, but still tough).


GreenPrint is a computer software company trying to battle these habits by giving the user more control over what gets sent to the printer. (NYT article and gadgetwise blog) There is also a corporate edition that could really make a difference in the workplace.

However, as useful as GreenPrint may be, it is not really getting at the heart of the issue. There might be less paper being used for each specific print job, but the number of print jobs might even increase because people feel they can print more often since they have been saving up “printing credits.”

Instead of printing something to look at for a few days, hours, minutes, whatever, there has to be a change in judging what is necessary to print or just a better way of having a copy in your hands (perhaps e-ink? E-ink is the technology that is used in Amazon’s Kindles and Sony’s Reader as well as other reading devices).

What really needs to happen is the change in mentality of users. Much like the ideas that Michael Pollan promotes regarding food portion sizes, the solution might not be to force the shaving of fractions of what is being used, but to fundamentally change what we think is an acceptable level of use.


Image credit
GreenPrint http://www.printgreener.com/images/logo.gif

Will Allen is an urban farmer featured in this NYT article. He does interesting work in greenhouses to feed 10,000 local people. It is so exciting to see something great happening where it is needed most.

Urban centers, especially inner city areas, often lack access to fresh produce. This has enormous implications for health because, while it is easier to get a hamburger and fries for dinner, no one will be able to stop the obesity trends.

The article talks about composting and urban farming and the recent rise in appreciation and interest for such work.

The author seems to make a big deal about farming systems that close the cycle, using the “waste” to continue the growth and nutrient cycle.

But this is not something new!! We have been aware of these ecological principals for such a long time. By we, I mean scientists…and all the old school farmers who understood the relationships between all the living things on their farms.

There is no waste in Nature! That is the missing underlying idea that the author skips over. The history of how we are returning to this type of farming is not mentioned at all.

But the author makes a good point of bringing up the fact that farms like these are not and can not be self sufficient with the current condition. Will Allen’s farm receives grants and other types of support to keep up and running. For more similar farms to be successful, it has to become profitable. It makes me sad to say that, but it is basically true.

In any case, it is an enjoyable and informative article and I hope you read it!