Many times in human history we’ve seen how technology has brought advances that enable human beings to overcome limitations in nature; allowing us to continue to grow in population, and to extract resources from our planet in a bigger scale.
Understanding of agriculture, geology, chemistry, enabled us to much more efficiently produce fruits, vegetables, etc. We are producing much more crops per squared meter of land than we could have ever imagined. Mechanization of many of the labor intensive tasks, enable one man to do the job of dozen of men. The development of methods such as refrigerating meat and crops- processes to extend the life of groceries, and dairy products. The coming of modern infrastructure, and transportation system such as the trains, availability of modern, faster, and bigger boats, allowed us to store and ship to remote places in massive quantities products that would have been surplus, to areas of the world that really need it.
I can go on, and on. Talking about telecommunication systems, energy plants, development of plastic as a cheap alternative to natural wood, and metal.
In fact, every couple of decades we do hit another breakthrough in technology, in the areas of production, engineering, transportation, or entertainment that impacts directly. Today, we are actually waiting for answers from the governments of the world, or from science to step up and bail us all out. However, there are already a number of viable technological advances that are already waiting to be widely used by the population. I will give you a few examples of such technologies: Use of wind to generate Electricity. Hydroelectric generation of electricity, the use of the heat underneath the earth crust or geothermic energy, increased usage of ethanol alcohol to power cars, the use of bio plastics to replace current wood and plastic, etc.
The good news is that those technologies and many more, are going to be adopted more and more by people. The bad news is that it will take time for this to happen.
There are other schools that teach that people should learn to become more efficient. We should learn to choose a car that will give us a lot more mileage rather than a car that has a lot more horse power. The industry and government should ban or adopt the use of devices and processes that are energy efficient and clean. Reducing the resources and energy we use by means of being efficient is more effective than producing more energy because producing more energy would use resources, assuming that the energy is not 100% cleanly produced.
The solution to the problems with the environment and the growth of demand for energy, global warming, dependency of oil, dependency on coal, will be a combination of technology and social behavior. The social behavior part is what I am going to cover briefly in this article, because these are things we can do today, and don’t need any new technology and big investment in cash to achieve immediate results. These are measures that if adopted by one person may not matter, but if you lead by example, thousand of people will eventually do it and then we’ll see a significant effect.
Use of Plastics.
Today we live in a society of consumption and everything is disposable. The amount of garbage that we generate today is so huge- we are talking about roughly 2 billion tons of garbage per million people every year. This is equivalent to 3 million cubic meters of trash every year per million people. This is enough to cover a 4 lane road that stretches around the equator 35 times. Yes, there are methods to compact the garbage, and 10% of it is being recycled. Plastics produces a lot of by products that are toxic and a lot of it goes directly into the atmosphere. The majority of the plastics we know require massive amounts of oil to produce.
Start buying goods made out of bio degradable or recyclable materials. Buy things that you really need, that would satisfy a necessity that otherwise would take a long time or would be impossible without the plastic product. Avoid buying disposable items. Keep in mind, that about 30% of all the plastics goods, are items that end up in the garbage within the first year of use. If 20,000 household apply this to the use of plastic bags, use paper bags, or reusable ones when they can (assuming there is a reduction of just 3 plastic bags per day per family), we are talking about a net reduction of plastic-equivalent consumption of almost 2.5 tons of raw plastic.
Use of electricity.
Again, try to be efficient. Do not open the refrigerator more than necessary. Disconnect or turn off devices you are not using. Do not go for sheer size or power when you buy electric devices. Go by their functionality. Why buy a 42 inch plasma screen TV for your bedroom, or a 60 inch projector TV, when you can use the far more energy efficient LCD technology in a 29 or 32 inch size. They are perfectly suitable for a bedroom.
Computer equipment- Turn off the printer or the screen if you are not using it. Turn off the computer if it is not doing anything. There are tricks such as auto turn off and hibernation that you can use to your advantage, and efficiently resume your work the next day. Today in the US I estimate that over 20,000,000 computers are turned on at any given time with no operator, and not running any active task. We are talking about 9 megawatts of electricity being wasted constantly. This figure is not taking into account all the routers, modems, and cable boxes that are not is use, that are constantly on in both corporations and homes.
Cable boxes and satellite receivers are devices that are always on. If you touch their back, you will notice they are hot. It is not clear how much power these devices draw, but judging by the temperature of over 100 degrees in the back of those devices, it is a number high enough to significantly raise your electric bill.
Use of Water- Being efficient in the way we use water is important. It helps reduce energy consumption, by reducing the demand for water. This is going to be a big challenge for many big cities to get people to start choosing products that are efficient and do not take for granted the delivery of water. They may not face high water bills or water rationing in the near future.
Becoming a more efficient society- We need to start building products that are energy efficient and recycling friendly. We need to use exactly what we need to suite our needs, and help others adopt a life style where resources are not wasted. The impact of such practices will definitely show up in nature, your pocket, and of course, will make us cleaner and less dependent on oil.
If we only use 20% of the electric energy generated today by utilizing these efficient methods, we can produce enough energy from clean energy sources and nuclear energy to meet all our energy needs. Ironically, almost 20% of the energy in use today in the US, is generated using those energy sources above.
