And...I kind of want to know how true everything he says is. I mean, he sounds convincing, but I don't want to just blindly believe everything he says because it just sounds TOO easy.
Even though it's not.
(Floods will be more common and more severe if we don't start working to alleviate climate change.)
Does anybody get what I mean? That you can pretty much say that saving the climate, preserving our planet's biodiversity, helping our national security, promoting growth in third world countries, taking down petrodictators, and other good things is economically viable in the long run? (Or maybe not THAT long...I didn't get this as much because I don't know much about economics.) That, and it's all interconnected and related to improving our energy system/pushing clean energy? AND it would give us a chance to NOT surrender "the next big industry" to China/India/another emerging giant?
Because (according to Thomas Friedman, who - by the way - I don't think I agree with on all of his points), if we do things like promote a tax on imported oil (or all oil...)/carbon emissions in general, create harsher emission standards (like for transportation), as well as make it easier for people to invest in solar/wind/nuclear/wave/etc R+D/production, it will:
- Promote a cleaner environment
- Spark competition between companies to become more "green", which will end up saving them money in fuel and become a selling point for when they want to hire people ("come work for us! Look at how green we are!")
- Spark capitalistic competition: for example, between automakers. Contrary to their whining, harsher emission standards does NOT cause automakers to go out of business.
- Encourage American alternative energy companies to stay American and not focus on foreign markets
- Keep American taxes going into projects that help the USA (coughcough not the Middle East)
- Help our national security (ie we don't have to bow down to oil-producers)
- Help our TROOPS
- Show a good example to the rest of the world, ESPECIALLY developing countries who want to "live an American lifestyle"
- Give us a foothold against cheap Chinese/Indian companies by preventing them from selling products that would not meet our higher carbon emission standards. Which would, in turn, force China/India to create their OWN higher standards to compete with American companies, (and so on) which would be better for the world...
- Help develop technology that could provide power to developing countries and villages, making it easier for people to stay in villages and not cram into unhealthy, overcrowded city slums. This would make it easier for people to get into the middle class AND would allow these people to focus on education rather than pure survival, which would increase the numbers of innovators
And other things...
It kind of seems too easy, this "saving the world" thing. Like if we have a good energy policy, too many things will just fit into place, and like how if we tell people that preserving the forests in Sumatra is more economically viable than cutting it down, we can both help developing economies and alleviate the strain on our planet. But it also seems so impossible, because this sort of thing CAN'T happen in the US government right now, and it HAS to.
I mean, I hate to be patriotic, but we NEED to be one of the countries moving forward into a clean energy system. Japan and Europe are already getting there and leaving us behind, which isn't THAT much of a problem right now - but what if China and India get there first? Then we would get left behind as China (or India) would become the new world power, and while that might be great for the Chinese - I'm American. I'm a plain, boring, whitebread American girl. While yeah, I wouldn't mind China becoming a clean energy giant, I want my own country to do well, too.
Because if we can jump ahead in our energy policy and create an economy that China can't compete in, China will find a way to compete. If we become green, China will want to become greener - India, too. And Japan. And Europe. And Indonesia, and everybody else. "Anything you can green, I can green better."
It's a competition that we can't lose - but, even though it's a competition, everyone has the potential to win.
...
But it's not happening, which sucks.
...Wow, that was long. Did that make any sense to anyone, or is it just late-night ramblings from a girl that doesn't really understand economics as much as the Palo Alto School District would have wanted her to? :)
Because (according to Thomas Friedman, who - by the way - I don't think I agree with on all of his points), if we do things like promote a tax on imported oil (or all oil...)/carbon emissions in general, create harsher emission standards (like for transportation), as well as make it easier for people to invest in solar/wind/nuclear/wave/et
- Promote a cleaner environment
- Spark competition between companies to become more "green", which will end up saving them money in fuel and become a selling point for when they want to hire people ("come work for us! Look at how green we are!")
- Spark capitalistic competition: for example, between automakers. Contrary to their whining, harsher emission standards does NOT cause automakers to go out of business.
- Encourage American alternative energy companies to stay American and not focus on foreign markets
- Keep American taxes going into projects that help the USA (coughcough not the Middle East)
- Help our national security (ie we don't have to bow down to oil-producers)
- Help our TROOPS
- Show a good example to the rest of the world, ESPECIALLY developing countries who want to "live an American lifestyle"
- Give us a foothold against cheap Chinese/Indian companies by preventing them from selling products that would not meet our higher carbon emission standards. Which would, in turn, force China/India to create their OWN higher standards to compete with American companies, (and so on) which would be better for the world...
- Help develop technology that could provide power to developing countries and villages, making it easier for people to stay in villages and not cram into unhealthy, overcrowded city slums. This would make it easier for people to get into the middle class AND would allow these people to focus on education rather than pure survival, which would increase the numbers of innovators
And other things...
(We can prevent urban decay and environmental decay at the same time.)
I mean, there are a ton of things standing in the way, such as the fact that a lot of the governmental bodies controlling various aspects of our energy policies aren't under the same roof - in order to get a central energy policy, you need to go to the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the US Army Corp of Engineers, etc. In that sense, China has a much easier way of implementing a clean energy system than we do...except that China isn't really doing that, either.
There's a lot to say about this, but I don't want to rant. I just want to say a couple things I found interesting (assuming everything Thomas Friedman says in his book is 100% true):
One thing...our troops. (Esp the ones in Iraq/Afghanistan.) Let's look at Iraq. Now, I don't support the Iraq war...but I do support our troops (as people). I admire that they are putting their lives on the line to protect us back home. I would like it if as few of them died in Iraq as possible, and I'm glad President Obama is withdrawing a lot of the troops.
What's really sad, I always think, is when a soldier dies in Iraq because of something like a car bomb. They weren't doing anything at the moment, and they just get killed. Or when they're doing something mundane...like transporting diesel. Why diesel? Because it's really hot in Iraq (like 121 degrees Fahrenheit), and the encampments can't use the Iraqi grid for energy to run their many air conditioners. For a long time, soldiers had to truck in so many gallons of diesel to run the ACs, and these soldiers in their diesel-transporting trucks would be easy, flammable targets for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The US Army had to spend time, energy, and lives to make sweep roads of IEDs and send soldiers to truck in the diesel to run the ACs.
So the Army wanted to cut down on the amount of energy they used. Makes sense, right? They were able to save 40-75 percent on their energy usage just by insulating the tents with foam. They built on that design (using the foam insulation) to build large, domed temporary structures with that insulation, the capacity to sleep 40 soldiers (4x the average army tent), more ballistic protection thanks to the concrete in the design, and 2 mobile wind turbines and 2 sun-tracking solar panels in addition to a backup generator. Thanks to the wind turbines and solar panels (and the insulation), the tents can produce enough energy to provide power, air conditioning, and have a bit left over to give to a nearby village.
As of when the book was written, I don't think those structures have been implemented in Iraq or Afghanistan (since it needed to be perfected), but it's a good start. As Friedman said, you "buy one, get four free". You spend the money on the efficient structures, and you:
- Save lives by getting the diesel convoys off the road
- Save money by lowering fuel costs
- Might be able to give some extra energy to a nearby village, which might make the people in the village less angry at the occupying soldiers
- Might make the soldiers demand the same kind of energy-saving practices in factories/buildings in America once they come home. The same thing happened when the army was desegregated - why can't it happen now with energy policies?
(The above was summarized from the beginning of the chapter entitled "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")
So yeah...
There are a lot of interesting things to think about, like how if you don't focus so much on the "we need to save the polar bears"-type attitude and focus more on the "we need to save money and promote a healthy national economy"-type attitude, you end up saving the polar bears because more people will be on board.
Another chapter I thought was interesting was about how to get poor communities on board with "the green revolution". If somebody can't afford their house, they won't care about saving the polar bears. But if you put money into education and create entry-level "green-collar jobs" (such as working in a manufacturing plant for solar panels - which could lead to being a manager, which could lead to being an innovator, and which would be the stepping-stone factory job of the present), then you would stabilize more people. If people don't have to worry about feeding their families and getting evicted, then they can worry about the polar bears. And if you can kill the poverty bird and the disappearing-biodiversity bird with one stone? Um, why not?
(The passages about "green-collar jobs" are in the same chapter as above: "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")
So yeah.
There's a lot to say about this, but I don't want to rant. I just want to say a couple things I found interesting (assuming everything Thomas Friedman says in his book is 100% true):
One thing...our troops. (Esp the ones in Iraq/Afghanistan.) Let's look at Iraq. Now, I don't support the Iraq war...but I do support our troops (as people). I admire that they are putting their lives on the line to protect us back home. I would like it if as few of them died in Iraq as possible, and I'm glad President Obama is withdrawing a lot of the troops.
What's really sad, I always think, is when a soldier dies in Iraq because of something like a car bomb. They weren't doing anything at the moment, and they just get killed. Or when they're doing something mundane...like transporting diesel. Why diesel? Because it's really hot in Iraq (like 121 degrees Fahrenheit), and the encampments can't use the Iraqi grid for energy to run their many air conditioners. For a long time, soldiers had to truck in so many gallons of diesel to run the ACs, and these soldiers in their diesel-transporting trucks would be easy, flammable targets for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The US Army had to spend time, energy, and lives to make sweep roads of IEDs and send soldiers to truck in the diesel to run the ACs.
So the Army wanted to cut down on the amount of energy they used. Makes sense, right? They were able to save 40-75 percent on their energy usage just by insulating the tents with foam. They built on that design (using the foam insulation) to build large, domed temporary structures with that insulation, the capacity to sleep 40 soldiers (4x the average army tent), more ballistic protection thanks to the concrete in the design, and 2 mobile wind turbines and 2 sun-tracking solar panels in addition to a backup generator. Thanks to the wind turbines and solar panels (and the insulation), the tents can produce enough energy to provide power, air conditioning, and have a bit left over to give to a nearby village.
As of when the book was written, I don't think those structures have been implemented in Iraq or Afghanistan (since it needed to be perfected), but it's a good start. As Friedman said, you "buy one, get four free". You spend the money on the efficient structures, and you:
- Save lives by getting the diesel convoys off the road
- Save money by lowering fuel costs
- Might be able to give some extra energy to a nearby village, which might make the people in the village less angry at the occupying soldiers
- Might make the soldiers demand the same kind of energy-saving practices in factories/buildings in America once they come home. The same thing happened when the army was desegregated - why can't it happen now with energy policies?
(The above was summarized from the beginning of the chapter entitled "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")
So yeah...
There are a lot of interesting things to think about, like how if you don't focus so much on the "we need to save the polar bears"-type attitude and focus more on the "we need to save money and promote a healthy national economy"-type attitude, you end up saving the polar bears because more people will be on board.
Another chapter I thought was interesting was about how to get poor communities on board with "the green revolution". If somebody can't afford their house, they won't care about saving the polar bears. But if you put money into education and create entry-level "green-collar jobs" (such as working in a manufacturing plant for solar panels - which could lead to being a manager, which could lead to being an innovator, and which would be the stepping-stone factory job of the present), then you would stabilize more people. If people don't have to worry about feeding their families and getting evicted, then they can worry about the polar bears. And if you can kill the poverty bird and the disappearing-biodiversity bird with one stone? Um, why not?
(The passages about "green-collar jobs" are in the same chapter as above: "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")
So yeah.
(I don't know about everyone else, but I think this is worth protecting.)
It kind of seems too easy, this "saving the world" thing. Like if we have a good energy policy, too many things will just fit into place, and like how if we tell people that preserving the forests in Sumatra is more economically viable than cutting it down, we can both help developing economies and alleviate the strain on our planet. But it also seems so impossible, because this sort of thing CAN'T happen in the US government right now, and it HAS to.
I mean, I hate to be patriotic, but we NEED to be one of the countries moving forward into a clean energy system. Japan and Europe are already getting there and leaving us behind, which isn't THAT much of a problem right now - but what if China and India get there first? Then we would get left behind as China (or India) would become the new world power, and while that might be great for the Chinese - I'm American. I'm a plain, boring, whitebread American girl. While yeah, I wouldn't mind China becoming a clean energy giant, I want my own country to do well, too.
Because if we can jump ahead in our energy policy and create an economy that China can't compete in, China will find a way to compete. If we become green, China will want to become greener - India, too. And Japan. And Europe. And Indonesia, and everybody else. "Anything you can green, I can green better."
It's a competition that we can't lose - but, even though it's a competition, everyone has the potential to win.
...
But it's not happening, which sucks.
...Wow, that was long. Did that make any sense to anyone, or is it just late-night ramblings from a girl that doesn't really understand economics as much as the Palo Alto School District would have wanted her to? :)
(Sunsets are beautiful. Let's have the sun continue to set on a planet that's just as beautiful.)
