Final Thoughts on Green Chemistry
I once again took my carbon footprint score. Previously, I got a score of 25 tons. Apparently, that has gone up by two tons and my new score is 27 tons. Ouch. I thought I had worked hard to unplug appliances a bit more, but I do not think this test could really capture that. After all, “I sometimes make an effort to unplug appliances” (paraphrase, not the actual wording) is still true. I think it might have hurt me that I have a more realistic estimate of the amount of miles I drive per year now. The increase also could simply have to do with some of my educated guesses being inconsistent. I do not keep close track of all of my activities.
For those keeping score at home, I would apparently be able to offset that amount of carbon with $540. That’s one less trip to the casino, I guess!
Whether I offset or not, I find it interesting that my carbon footprint is relevant to evaluating how much I learned over the course of the semester. In a philosophy course, I have read a number of arguments for why the natural sciences are value-laden. This subjectivity does not imply that sciences fail to shed understanding on the objective world. It simply means that it is futile to pretend that scientific observation is performed in a vacuum sealed away from the humans conducting the observation.
Green Chemistry is a strong example of values in science. Why do Green Chemistry? That is not a question that can be answered by empirical observation. There is nothing in nature that says human beings ought to be concerned with the environment. Someone will quickly respond: what about all of the harmony in nature that shows that there is some kind of natural tendency of every other species on the planet to live at peace with nature? I would respond by saying that if nature was so smart, why are human beings capable of such great destruction? Nature should have thought that one through before allowing human beings to naturally develop such capacities.
My point is that there is no such law of nature that dictates human action on a moral level. The decision to pursue Green Chemistry is a decision that is made based on a certain set of principles that are implicitly assumed valuable. For one, Green Chemistry assumes that human beings ought to chemistry. Why not just quit chemistry if it causes so many environmental problems? I am all for that, personally. Chemistry is such a dreadfully dull subject!
We are all very fortunate that my views of chemistry are not common. Chemistry does provide human beings with a lot advantages. But the only way we determine that chemistry is advantageous is because we hold values. These values drive us to pursue chemistry. I doubt that chemistry would have developed if it relied on people simply taking pleasure in drawing lines connecting letters.
Similarly, human value creates the concern for the environment at the foundation of Green Chemistry. I will not exit this class knowing a great deal more about chemistry. The class has instead exposed me to many of the issues that Green Chemistry finds important. The values developed during this course are not some unimportant, secondary topic behind the chemistry concepts. This is why the carbon footprint ultimately does provide an evaluation of my coursework. While it seems that I have “failed” then, I feel like the higher score on the carbon footprint simply reflects the fact that my conscience has developed over the semester. I am more aware of ways in which I do have an impact on the environment and am better able to answer the questions.
I now have an understanding of the environmental challenges faced by Green Chemistry and a number of ways people seek to solve these problems. I am more aware now when I keep my cell phone charger plugged in or if I fail to turn the water off while brushing my teeth. It will be interesting to see how my carbon footprint changes if I take it again next year. I suspect that it will decrease a bit. In a way, even though that concerns human action and not chemistry, I think that is important to Green Chemistry.
And if I ever do a chemistry experiment, I will know to avoid polluting the environment.
Thoughts on Geoengineering
In previous posts, I have made a big deal about how difficult it is to go green, despite knowledge that going green is the right thing to do. If doing the right thing was easy, then many of the difficulties of the world would be erased. I see geoengineering as a way around that.
Ideally, humanity would continue to reduce carbon emissions, eventually replacing polluting sources of energy with clean and renewable technologies. Now, I know the “realism” card is played too often in debates. It can be a bit annoying to constantly be told that one’s view is too idealistic and would “never work” given reality. Many times, it is precisely the attitude that the problem is intractable that makes it so. In this case, though, it is clear that there are real hurdles to reducing global warming. I am not going to say that these hurdles will not ever be overcome. In fact, I really do think that it is possible that lazy people like me who do not do enough for the environment will become more rare as more and more generations are born. That said, this change will take time. In the mean time, global warming persists.
A big concern of mine has not just been that people are realistically not going to change their ways and reduce their impact on the climate. I have also been concerned that it is simply too late. Two of the documentaries we watched this semester, Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour, show horrific scenes of glaciers collapsing, polar bears dying, and floods and hurricanes destroying human cities. Hasn’t the end already begun? It seems from these documentaries that we are in the beginning of the movie 2012. Even if we do manage to survive, what is the point? Our planet will be completely destroyed, never to be the same again!
Some people criticize geoengineering as only being a stopgap, but that is precisely why it gives me hope. This gives humanity more time to change. It need not be seen as a replacement for reducing carbon emissions. Unlike some people, I do not see geoengineering as something that will cause us to think that we no longer need to switch away from fossil fuels. It is my expectation that scarcity alone will make renewable resources more competitive in the coming years, and geoengineering allows the Earth to stay alive long enough to realize that day. It is something that will help with the transition that has caused me the greatest concern.
The possibility of geoengineering gives me hope that we could reverse some of the damages of global warming, especially as the geoengineering techniques become more popular.
In no way is geoengineering ideal. Some of its methods carry risks that should be taken into consideration. I do not really want aerosol to prevent star gazing from the ground, for example. That said, although it is not ideal, we are not in ideal conditions. We have a real threat of global warming, and we may not be able to transition away from our polluting habits soon enough.
I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas
“I’m Mister Green Christmas, I’m Mister Sun.
I’m Mister Heat Blister, I’m Mister One-Hundred-And-One!
They call me Heat Miser… Whatever I touch—
Starts to melt in my clutch!”
The easiest way to care about the environment on Christmas is to not celebrate the commercial version of it. You could keep it religious (or secular humanist or something). What is the fun in that, though?
For those of us that do celebrate Christmas in the commercial/decorative sense, we have to reflect on the fact that such celebrations do have a cost to the environment. I associate Christmas with a pretty significant amount of waste. An obvious example: a lot of gifts are given that end up in a landfill. This post is dedicated to the environmental issues raised by Christmas along with possible ways to address these issues.
- Turn off the Christmas lights. Decorating a house with Christmas lights is a lot of fun, especially when your roommate Greg does all the work. Leaving the lights on all night, though, drains a lot of energy. This is probably not even worth the energy usage because most people are sleeping in the early hours of the next day (1 to 5 AM). Further, if no one gets out to turn the lights off soon enough, the lights will be on during some of the daylight, which is definitely a waste. With the Sun out, it is difficult to even tell if lights are turned on or off. The best solution is to turn the lights of before going to bed at night. Another solution would be to purchase a power control device that automatically turns the lights off at a certain time. The second solution would probably still drain some electricity though, since the control unit would have to be plugged in all night.
- Use a fake tree. There are a number of benefits to using fake trees. First, fake trees will not bother people with certain allergies. Even if you are not allergic to anything in trees, one of your guests may be. It would be a courtesy to avoid this problem all together by using a fake tree. (If you are allergic to the materials used in fake trees, I am afraid you are simply out of luck!). Second, you could always purchase one of those funky looking silver fake trees that were popular in the the 1960′s/1970′s. Those trees usually come with this color changing spotlight that makes the tree look really cool. Third, and finally getting to environmental reasons, a fake tree means that one less real tree will need to be cut down. A living tree can help breathe in the excessive carbon dioxide in the air. Finally, a fake tree can continue to be reused for a long time. Since it only comes out once a year, it will be pretty safe from wear and tear. Even though there may be some issues with the material being recyclable or not, you should not see very many fake trees in the landfill.
- Do not buy people ugly sweaters. If you do not have a good gift idea, maybe a gift card would be better than just giving the person some random sweater or novelty gift. At least with a gift card, that person will be more likely to purchase something that will be useful rather than wasteful. I would suggest something like a hug or kind words but in this consumer society that would probably only earn me a “cheapskate” label.
- Wrapping paper best practices. First, purchase wrapping paper from recycled material. In this green paper obsessed society, that should be widely available. Second, after presents have been opened, send that wrapping paper to recycling rather than the landfill. I cannot imagine how much paper waste is created on Christmas day. Finally, use less paper by consolidating certain presents into one package. I know this will make it seem like you have given less gifts to a person, and it will also cut back on the amount of time spent opening presents. That may cut down some of the fun of Christmas morning, but I have an idea that could help replace some of that lost fun. Maybe people could hide their presents like easter eggs throughout the house! As an added bonus, if this bad economy has caused fewer presents to be purchased, then someone could always use the excuse: “I am sure I bought you more presents, but I do not remember where I hid them.”
Merry Christmas!
Thoughts on Trashed
Brief, bulleted paragraphs are a popular format for blogs. In honor of that, I am going to post some thoughts I had on the movie Trashed in that style.
- Why is it so “cheap” for Canada to send its trash to Michigan? Canada is now almost completely at the mercy of Michigan. If Michigan banned Canadian trash, it seems that Canada would probably be willing to pay a bit more. After all, according to the movie, the health of Canada’s cash-cow (or cash-moose), their tourism industry, relies on being able to rid themselves of trash.
- I really like the honesty of that young Canadian woman that blatantly came out and said that she would rather the trash be polluting the United States than Canada. Sometimes I think about movements and how there is often this slogan of “Think Global, Act Local.” It is the idea that though we have global-wide goals, we set out to achieve those goals in a place where we have causal reach. In this case, I think of the Canadian woman as saying that she thinks local and acts local. It is not some kind of pretentious “We, unlike the USA, actually minimize our use of landfills.” Instead, it is the more obvious: “Yeah, we pollute. But once we pollute over there, it is there problem, not ours. Eh?”
- The Freegans kind of creep me out. That should not surprise anyone, though. However, I do think these people have a very interesting service that they could provide. It seems like restaurants and grocery stores should take advantage of these people (that sounds horrible, but I promise it is to the Freegan’s advantage as well). Why not have a special trash bin for Freegans? Restaurants and grocery stores could dump leftover yet clean food products into those bins. I know that restaurants will scoff at the idea because they believe that if there is a demand for that food, then someone should pay for it. Yet, if they just gave away the food they are planning to throw away, the result would be the same to them, except with the added plus that they will now feel good about helping the environment.
- I am going with 60% chance that the male Freegan with the roller blades is a software developer. Of course, this could be tested scientifically by leaving out a half-can of Mountain Dew in a trash can.
- The only problem with my Freegan service idea is that the government would come in and regulate it if companies started purposely leaving food. Would a health inspector by the Freegan’s argument that “this lettuce is still good for a long time after the sell-by date?” I am doubtful. Then again, maybe the reason that I could never be a Freegan is because I believe the government has a point… It is just a little bit sketchy to be eating thrown away food. The Freegans are able to set aside the perhaps irrational fears I hold about the sanitary conditions of trash.
- I am getting my Green Chemistry moments mixed up, but I know somewhere it was mentioned that Space is a backup for when the Earth is destroyed. I have a better idea: Why not send trash into space? That may be a bit expensive now, but it is probably more viable than setting up a colony on Mars.
- Why not send trash to Venus? As much as people complain about the Earth’s environment in these documentaries, they really, really bash on Venus. I do not believe one environmentalist has had a nice thing to say about Earth’s sister planet. All we ever hear is: “If Earth keeps up like this, it may end up like Venus. We have to stop it.”
- Theory: I think that there was life on Venus at some point. The people of Venus had a thriving civilization, then an industrial movement, then the Greenhouse Gas effect, then global warming, then they became Venus: the planet that is like Edward Norton’s character in American History X.
- I really think that someone should make a movie where a group of space travelers head to Venus… only something weird happens on the way that causes them to black out. They arrive at Venus eventually, and they look around the surface. The movie ends when the main character finds the Statue of Liberty and realizes that he’s been on Earth all along.
- I tried my best to make this blog post like the movie. Somewhat insightful, although a bit limited in data. Poorly edited, bouncing around related topics but without solid transitions. I hope that, like the movie, it at least was not too depressing. Okay, hopefully it was not too depressing except for the mention of yet another crappy Planet of the Apes movie.
Industrial Ecology, Recycling Demand, and Beer
My Top Five Fictional Polluters List – Number Four
The Secret of the Ooze? It’s Pollution!
As anyone who has seen the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can attest, those turtles are not normal. They are much taller than the usual turtle. They talk much differently than the usual turtle. They eat more pizza than the usual turtle… You get the point. The point is, something is unnatural when you watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fight a bunch of foot soldiers in a toy shop in New York City. Something has disturbed nature, and in this case, that something is simply known as the “Ooze.”
Coming in at number four:
Techno Global Research Industries – The Company Behind “The Ooze”
A world where turtles grow into human sized teenagers with a love of pizza and kung fu engage in heroics while using such words as “Cowabunga?” Clearly, that world would be awesome! Yet, there is a downside to pollution.
The “Ooze” formula is used in this movie by the evil Shredder to create villainous creatures. Although these creatures have the intelligence of young children (for comedic effect), their viciousness is also unquestioned. Among other things, the bad creatures battle with the good turtles with Vanilla Ice rapping the background. These creatures are examples of the wrong side of chemical experiments, much like Godzilla. It does not help the matter that the “Ooze” was invented on accident. In addition to this fact leading to one of the good turtles having an existential crisis (no one likes to be told that their birth was by accident), it also does not make us feel much better about Techno Global Research Industries (TGRI).
There are a couple of ways we could look at TGRI and its chemistry, in regards to Green Chemistry. On the one hand, I could make the case that there is a kind of balance similar to the Quantum Leap project, where the heroic creatures created by the experiment may be used to kind of justify its less positive pollution. However, even our enthusiasm for the great creatures created is tempered by the fact that these mutants are outcasts in society, forced to hide away in a sewer.
This leads to a more relevant point about what we can learn in real life from TGRI’s Ooze. Even though they created a set of heroes, there seems to be a problem that happens from upsetting the normal ecological balance of nature. I do not know where turtles usually lie in the food chain, but they are definitely not the ones near the top eating pizza. A more real-world problem with pollution is that when we start dumping pollutants in the oceans, or if we let fertilizer run-off, we start to kill off creatures that are perhaps necessary for other creatures. This also is the case with over-fishing and destruction of coral reefs in the ocean by processes including bottom trawling. In the process of upsetting nature, in creating waste that pollutes and effects animal and fish life, we risk upsetting biodiversity.
Now, clearly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are not the best example of this phenomenon. But I find it striking that their creation has a couple of features similar to pollution in the real world. For one thing, the “Ooze” is accidental. A lot of waste that we create is definitely not created on purpose. Yet, it’s still a responsibility that we must be accounted for. Even honest mistakes are still mistakes when messing around with potentially dangerous chemicals.
Further, the turtles were created when they were living in a sewer. This is not the place where “Ooze” belongs, but by definition, pollution is never “where it belongs.” It is always somewhere where it would rather not be. The way the “Ooze” seeped into the sewage system to cause the mutant turtles reminds me of the way fertilizer from agriculture seeps into water streams that run into the ocean, carrying the pollutant from the farm to the ocean environment. It is amazing where chemicals will end up if we are not careful. This is also relevant in looking at the effect garbage collection—and the seepage of garbage into water—has on the health of our trash-heavy society.
Though the turtles are certainly “awesome,” I have to put the TGRI on this list because in the real world, I am not sure that we’d be so lucky as to have benevolent creatures formed by such run-off. More realistically, we would probably just upset biodiversity, leading to a chain of species extinctions.
My Top Five Fictional Polluters List – Number Five
In class we discussed the Green Rankings provided by Newsweek. Newsweek’s list ranks only the largest corporations in terms of being green.
The list reminded me of a list I saw on Forbes. It is the list of the wealthiest fictional characters. It is not of great importance here, but my favorite Disney character Scrooge McDuck was named the wealthiest. That made me wonder what a list of fictional polluters would look like. I would have done a list to parallel the Newsweek Green Rankings, but it is difficult to determine how green fictional characters are.
Every list has its limits. In this case, I will only be using examples from TV shows, movies, or books that I have experienced personally. I will post the results one at a time in order to prevent me from running out of blog ideas allow me to expand in detail on how the example relates to the class.
Coming in at number five:
Dr. Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap.
Reason for being on this list:
Project Quantum Leap uses a massive amount of energy, costing a great deal of money and presumably hurting the environment because it is not renewable. If Sam Beckett simply gave up trying to return home, and stopped meddling in the past, he would be able to shut off the project and save great amounts of energy.
Possible justifications for pollution:
- Sam Beckett was pretty clearly on a mission from God (unlike the Blues Brothers). He made right what once went wrong.
- It seems a bit harsh to downgrade them for not using renewable energy when the show takes place in the early nineties.
Analysis
It is pretty clear to me that the Quantum Leap project was using a ton of energy. For one thing, it had to provide power to project a hologram of Al, the assistant only seen by Sam Beckett. More obviously, there were multiple episodes where the government threatened to shut down the project because it was so expensive. If the project used renewable energy, it might have been able to justify staying alive longer because most of the costs would be up-front in purchasing, for example, solar panels. The continued, consistent cost of fossil fuels is a problem that we all face. It may be more expensive in the short term to switch to renewable resources in the nascent stages of those technologies, but in the long run, it would be less expensive. The Quantum Leap project would not have required a steady, and even increasing, costs associated with fossil fuels. Instead, the costs would have curved downward over time.
I have to consider the two reasons to justify the usage. I admit that these considerations are part of why I went with Project Quantum Leap at number five instead of even higher.
It is important to remember that if we really wanted to stop hurting the environment in Green Chemistry (and otherwise), we could just completely go back to being non-technological. No technology would be much better than technology for the environment (in many, though not all) cases, excluding examples of technology that better protects the environment than nature itself. Yet, we still do chemistry even when it is not 100% green. The reason is that sometimes there are ends that can justify the costs, both monetary and environmental. Green Chemistry is not a failure if it cannot eliminate all damage to environment. It must minimize the damage while providing the same advantages as before.
I think about this concept of Green Chemistry a lot when I see McDonalds do well on the green list of large companies. Obviously a world without McDonalds would be more green. The production of meat on that scale is not good for the environment, to name the most obvious reason. Yet, McDonalds has earned a reputation for being relatively green by doing its best to minimize its damages. So, yes, it would be better for the environment to have no McDonalds at all. But if we are going to crave McDonalds, we should minimize the impact on the environment.
In the case of Project Quantum Leap, it is clear that there is a pretty big moral justification for the project. Helping to make lives better in the past is a noble goal, and that is part of why Project Quantum Leap comes in at number five instead of higher. However, even the most noble of goals, and even the best Chemistry experiments, should look to minimize negative impact on the environment while maintaining benefits to society. That is why Project Quantum Leap is still on this list, even though Sam Beckett is clearly a hero.
Quick Thoughts While Watching Presentations – Part 1
I plan to reuse the title as appropriately. Here are some quick-bullet style thoughts regarding material presented over. These thoughts are not comments about the presentation but are comments about the subject matter. Sometimes these things occur to me after class is over, or sometimes I think of things that I would like to post here but would rather not say to the class.
9/30 Carbon Sequestration
This is an awesome idea, but of course we need to be careful how we do it. I have a fun anecdote from high school debate that has something to do with carbon sequestration.
My debate partner was the (natural) science geek, while I was more interested in subjects like English and computer programming. Our novice year of debate we were going to a tournament at the end of the year where we were certain to be overmatched. Turns out, this would end up being a trend for many years to come. Anyway, the debate topic was about increasing protection of ocean resources. My partner used his powers of science to craft a tricky affirmative case arguing for a plan to improve the ocean by dumping iron nutrients. I had to look this up now to even understand how this plan solved global warming (National Geographic 2004), but the idea is that by feeding phytoplankton much needed resources, we would increase the amount of photosynthesis happening in the ocean which would use up some carbon dioxide from the sky. As a bonus, it turns out that phytoplankton are the key to ocean life, and by saving them from nutrient deficiency we could also solve problems of biodiversity.
Sounds really cool. Now I wish I remember more about the next part, but apparently this was not such a good idea. We ran this case one time, and that one time we were absolutely demolished. There were so many disadvantages to the plan that we were able to concede a few that contradicted each other… but still lost. The point is that there are ways to use sequestration beyond that in the presentation, but that we should be careful before arguing that point in a competitive debate round.
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My favorite brewery is Boulevard, located in Kansas City. In addition to building packaging out of materials that may be recycled, they also practice carbon sequestration. On top of their recently built addition to the brewery, they have planted grass to help bring carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere. Beer can be a really good thing.
10/2 Food Service Industry and Waste
I worked one summer for a company that delivered boxed lunches (before going out of business shortly after I went back to school… coincidence!?). I can definitely understand why the food service industry uses a lot of water. Not only do they have to use water for cooking, but the washing of dishes is a pretty heavy process. We probably used so much water by washing dishes by hand rather than using an energy star certified machine. I knew I had a good reason to complain about that job!
I cannot help but add another anecdote here. While working that job, I once wasted quite a bit of gasolene and polluted the environment more than necessary when I delivered lunches to the Olathe, KS city hall located on Sante Fe Street. I should have paid more attention because the lunches were actually for the Overland Park city hall which is located on Sante Fe Drive (and in a different city all together).
*I have one more note about the presentation that is insignificant. Why is it that McDonalds keeps being brought up in our class? I will have to say more about McDonalds in another post, but I want to note right now that I have gone to McDonalds twice in the last week or so after Green Chemistry class, both times due to a craving that developed during that class.
10/2 Space Solar Panels
Obviously the presentation was about solar panels and not space solar panels. A great question brought the subject up, though. Why not send solar panels into space and then transport the energy back using microwaves? I have an answer to this question from international relations rather than science.
Let us say that these microwaves cannot be turned into weapons. I would guess that the microwaves probably could be turned into weapons rather easily, but let us assume that there is a clever fail safe that prevents this from happening, or maybe microwaves are simply misunderstood by people like me. With all that assumed, I will still make my case against using space solar panels.
First, even though we have assumed the microwave transports cannot be used as weapons, that does not mean that Russia or China will make the same assumption. The very perception that the United States (or some other country) is putting microwaves into space might put some countries on edge. It might cause them to militarize space just to make sure. Having new-fangled space military might seem cool from a science fiction standpoint, but it would probably pose risks from miscalculation standpoints. Mistakes happen, especially when countries are trying to protect themselves using technology they are not used to using for military purposes.
Second, even if other countries do not militarize space in this way, the country that launches space satellites almost certainly will. Would you put really expensive, brand new, energy providing equipment in space without wanting to protect your assets? I doubt it. With property comes property protection, another reason to militarize space. Not too many companies would want to invest in the project without that guarantee of protection, meaning that the world may even know about the space militarization in advance. Which would lead us back to my first scenario since it is possible that the other countries would want to militarize space first before we even finish the solar microwave transportation systems. Great. Just what this world needs.
Scale, Green Computing, and Individual Action
This illustration, drawn to scale, shows a happy man about to be attacked by a dinosaur. Unfortunately, he has no idea what one little dinosaur can do.
(Image courtesy of WikiCommons)
In computer science, scale is important. Taking a class in Algorithm Analysis, I have already learned that a lot of my “intuitive” solutions to problems are not very scalable. For example, to generate all the anagrams of a word I thought the best solution would be to get all of the combinations of a word and to then check the dictionary for those words. After all, the word “leap” only has 24 combinations, and surely it is faster to check the dictionary 24 times than to automatically go through each and every dictionary word, performing an anagram test operation on each word.
I was way off track.
It turns out that while there are only 24 combinations of “leap” there are 3,628,800 combinations of a word with ten letters such as “basketball.” A difference in six characters yields a difference of 3628776 dictionary search operations.
Green computing, though, is not really going to be too concerned with my inefficient algorithm. That’s the amazing thing about scale. Well, actually, it isn’t really all that incredible. The slow algorithm actually only wastes a bunch of my laptop’s power. In the grand scheme of things, that’s probably not too bad. I waste a lot more processing power watching videos on Youtube in a given hour (not to mention the power used by devices that help with that, including wifi).
However, imagine an operation that is taking place on a supercomputer. Or actually take it a step further: multiple super computers linked together. At this scale, such programming design decisions could have more tangible effects on the environment.
That said, I’ve only been reading about Green Computing recently. I’m sure I will have the opportunity to look more at it more in depth later in this semester. For now, I wish to discuss what I think may be relevant to environmental action, although one might say that the relevance is merely through analogy.
Most of what I do as an individual has very little effect on the environment. Multiply my impact by millions, and all of that changes. This is where the analogy of scale comes into play. Green computing has very little impact on most of the programs that I write for use on my own computer since my computer is small and does not require much power to run. However, let’s say that my software is an operating system that is a large process relative to each computer (though each computer is small), and this software is distributed on millions upon millions of computers.
As an individual actor in society, I actually am really having a small impact relative to the size of the planet. I am just a small machine in a world of billions of machines. However, distribute my pollution across the other people in the world and we have a serious problem.
One person being green is a nice idea. It’s no different in the computer science world. I’m supposed to write efficient algorithms that could scale even if they never do scale. That is simply considered good practice. However, if I wanted to really impact the computer world I would not simply have to create a computer that minimizes power usage. I would have to some how get my efficient technology to be distributed. The problem that has been multiplied so vastly has to be solved at an aggregate level, not merely at the individual level. That is, unless we can expect every individual to independently reach the same conclusion and implement the pollution needs.
We do use energy all the time, but even though cutting back on our power usage is important, we have to remember that each of us is just one part of a larger chain of electricity usage. It is important to not be satisfied with merely changing individual efficiency but to push the top of the chain (electric companies, car companies, et cetera) to provide better efficiency. A poorly efficient, heavily polluting energy provider will only do greater and greater damage as the scale increases just like a poorly designed algorithm.
Paperless Society
I have actually considered ridiculing the whole paperless thing on my blog. To me, it seems kind of trendy. Ever hear of a “Green Book” instead of a “Blue Book” for students taking tests? I actually have no problem with the Green Books, I just find it funny that everything has to be so brightly advertised.
I think my main problem with the whole paperless thing is a particularly prevalent slogan. It goes something like this: By wasting paper, you are killing trees. To me, the slogan is not worth repeating. No one cares about killing trees. There are people who actually would say that killing any plant is wrong, though I forget the name that classifies these people because I have never met anyone living on a diet entirely of fruit (and other non-living things). However, most people who complain about killing trees are not the people who actually care about killing trees. They care about something else.
Yet, for the life of me, I had not been able to figure that out. It seems that paper is pretty green. Even looking at some of the principles of Green Chemistry, I would have to say paper does pretty well. It is not explosive, although it can catch on fire. To the best of my knowledge, it is biodegradable (but I have never sat down to watch a piece of paper degrade). It is even made of renewable material. We may kill one tree to create some paper, but soon enough a new tree will grow so we can kill it and turn it into paper.
With that in mind, I found it strange that people target paper. I always felt that maybe people have simply found it an easy target. Maybe it is not a significant issue, but an easily solvable one so that people can easily do something for the environment to pat themselves on the back. Do not get me wrong, I still think that is why most people do it, but I have found out through quick research that there is more to the story than just a trend.
I do not like linking to other blogs, but this link here has a nice summary of this longer report here. I will summarize the summary by saying that the process of killing trees itself has a strong adverse impact on the environment through the emission of green house gases. So it is not really just the end, but the means to that end that is causing a problem (I would speculate that the reason greenhouse gases are emitted is that we cannot cut down large quantities of trees without using some heavy equipment). Interestingly, the end of killing trees might also be an instrument for global warming since the blog reports that forests may act as a sink for carbon dioxide. Some stats are provided, but I do not really have the expertise to know how well these stats represent the problem, or if these stats are merely cherry-picked results. That said, I have been convinced that there is enough reason to go along with the paperless movement.
Over 500 words into my post, I have arrived to my point. It may not be intrinsically wrong to kill trees, but there are bad effects that stem from killing trees. I have a thought on how Creighton might help to reduce the use of trees. Part of this, as you will see, is actually just part of another agenda of mine. I learned in my brief time as a political science major that sometimes the agenda has to be slipped into the back door of a policy.
Do not print the syllabus. Students already are supposed to have access to Blueline, so there’s no real reason to print the syllabus. If you want to talk about the syllabus on the first day of class, you could send students an email telling them to read it before class.
Paper syllabuses are kind of annoying (it should really be syllabi, but spell check disagrees with me so I will defer). Sometimes they get lost. Other times they get ignored completely and a professor used paper for no purpose. Sometimes they are nice to have, but then the professor updates the syllabus and either an addendum needs to be passed out or else an entirely new syllabus has to be produced.
One advantage to the paper syllabus is that the professor may want to talk about it on the first day. However, a professor could also email the class and tell them to read it before the first class begins, maybe even coming to class prepared with questions. The professor could then use a projector to give the class a reference point (hopefully projecting straight from a computer screen, but one set of syllabus paper could be offered as sacrifice to the needs of education).
Worst case scenario, some students will print off the syllabus on their own accord. I would recommend that students do not do that (since this post is not meaning to just address the behavior of professors but more generally the university body). However, even if some students do, it will probably only be a few. Most people will probably take a look at the syllabus online, some more briefly than others. Even when a few students do print the syllabus, the professor has still saved the paper that would have been wasted on printing syllabuses for the other students. That is still an improvement.
Yet, I do have an idea for how professors might get fewer students to print the syllabus.
The real reason I brought this up is because I have an even more radical idea that I want to promote. Professors should post the syllabus to a web-site that is accessible to the public and in HTML format. The green benefit here is a bit tenuous. I would argue that having a syllabus on Blueline is kind of a hassle. The student has to log-in, click around for a while till he or she finds it. Then, inevitably, the syllabus will be in a format such as .doc or .docx. Let’s say the student can open the file format without problem. It is still an inconvenience to have to open a separate program. Due to that, even students who will save themselves the log-in trouble by downloading the document to their computer, it probably would be more convenient to print out the word document rather than opening it each time.
An HTML syllabus on the open web would be much more conveniently viewed. A student could just bookmark the page in his or her browser. No longer would they have to log-in to Blueline, click on the course, click on resources, click to download the syllabus, wait for the syllabus to begin downloading, wait for Microsoft Word (or Adobe PDF reader, for that matter) to load, then view the file.
If the professor did not want the syllabus on the open web, then he or she could provide the HTML format in Blueline and at the very least, some memory and processor resources will be spared from having to load a separate program to read the file. However, having the syllabus on the open web is part of my real agenda, which is to allow students to see the syllabus of a class before they sign up for it (without having to contact a professor to ask for one, which many professors might not mind but a reasonable student may still be wary to do).
I realize that asking for HTML syllabuses may be asking for too much since converting the syllabus document into that format may be a hassle (while preserving the rich text features of Word or other similar programs). So I want to conclude by pointing out that the original purpose is to promote the use of paperless syllabuses, whether in HTML format or not.
The further discussion ties back neatly into the beginning of my post, though. I started with the idea that not printing a syllabus and using a word document in Blueline would be a way to save paper. I still think that it is a way to save paper, and probably a good one. But we cannot become satisfied with surface-level, quick fixes all the time. Sometimes we are actually able to take it to another level. In this case, I have hopefully come up with a way to help reduce the motivation that some students may feel to print the syllabus out by eliminating what I consider to be a hassle.
Applying this concept to paper, I can return to my original thought that paper is a resource that is very much in line with Green Chemistry. That is certainly true on one level, since paper is more biodegradable than, say, plastic (a good way to resolve the great grocery store debate). However, we can do even better than paper by using computer resources that do not cause green house gas emissions. Who knows, maybe one day we will even do better than the “Green Book.”
