This vid was posted on facebook by a buddy of mine. I like the guy's sweater and his points are valid and all... but even though this is a hopeful, ecologically positive vid I couldn't shake the nagging spectre of "here we go again!"
I thought at first it might have been the fact that the grad students' appeals to citizens' desires to save money, save the planet and just be nice went over like hot Pepsi on a summer day. But it wasn't just that.
Taking advantage of the "everything in life is a competition" part of the well entrenched consumer programming to bring about some good seemed to me rather capitulatory if I didn't just make that word up. lf we can't beat 'em join 'em. Don't even continue to try to deprogram the folks and get them working together for common good, the grad students gave that a token attempt and crashed and burned. Trying to impress our peers, people we mostly don't know or even like is in large part what has led to the hellish state of global ecology so it can't be the source of any solution. This bugged me but it wasn't the main flaw in the plan.
In the first few minutes, shortly after fully admiring the solid wardrobe selection I learned from Alex something that shocked me. Coal is 90% inefficient and is the number one source of power to light the lightbulbs of the world. Really??!! Holy underwear, do you suppose we could expound on this? Nope. Let's skip right past that and onto how a very few minor contributors to the problem can make some sacrifices that will amount to an almost insignificant dent in a major problem. This was what urked me.
It's that Hansel and Gretel effect once again. To save you scrolling down to my last entry, the H&G effect is to just skip past the glaringly obvious solution to the problem and move on to one that might even make things worse. Because the family was poor and starving, the parents of Hansel and Gretel decided to leave their kids for dead deep in the FOREST when the Dad was a wood cutter. So there was that solution staring them in the face. Then during the second attempt at child abandonment Hansel took along a few loaves of BREAD and left a trail of bread crumbs. Killing the kids won't make things better for the parents of H&G. It will just add guilt and criminal records to their hunger. How could things get worse by encouraging energy saving competition between neighbours you ask? It might even lead to entire countries competing to use less coal, less energy, maybe even find some more efficient and cleaner energy sources you add. Why, this could snowball into an ecological competition that could save the earth you exclaim. Well coal me a pessimist but I don't share your overzealous positivity, imaginary friend. Here's why:
In areas most crucial to the rescuing of this sinking ship where all us deeply flawed humans live, the earth, there seem to be three ways of doing things: the right way, the corporate way, and the Chinese way. To be fair, since they pretty much invented it, the corporate way might as well be called the American way. But it has gone viral this kind of capitalist, profit-at-all-cost thinking. Ironically if there is a student that has taken this philosophy beyond that of the teacher, it is communist China. Let's investigate just one single blight on our planet this philosophy has led to shall we? It's the one featured in this particular ted talk: coal.
There are 3 countries that burn 3/4 of the coal on this planet. More shockingly, there is ONE country that burns about half of it. Can you guess the number one and number two countries? I knew you could. According to figures from the US Energy Information Administration, measured in thousands of short tons, China burned 3,826,869 in 2011 while the whole world burned 8,144,308. Allowing that China increased from '07 to '11 more than a million I'd hazard a guess that they just may be beyond half the world coal consumption by now. Have you seen pictures of China lately? Just scroll on down. Oops! How did pictures of those terrible eyesores, wind turbines, get in there? Probably something to do with my posting this whole story via cellphone. What a challenge that has been! But rest assured those ones aren't pics of China.
The US has actually shown signs of cutting down on coal usage in recent years. They may be below the million mark in 2013 for all I know. They dropped from 1,127,998 in 2007 to 1,003,066 in 2011. But two of the fastest growing economies in the world, those of China and India, are powering their industrial growth with coal. India's coal usage went from 587,255 to 721,419 between '07 and '11. By now they could be catching up to the US. Every other country, surprisingly even Russia, uses negligable amounts in comparison. So it would seem a fairly easy fix. Certainly it is great for private American citizens to watch their waste but it is very doubtful that that is making an observable difference. In fact even if there was a groundswell of energy conservation among the citizens of China it likely wouldn't make much difference.
That's the other big aspect of this vid that made it a bit depressing to me. What it boils down to is industry using cheaper, dirtier, more convenient fuel while ignoring all the alternatives that won't scourge the earth into surrender. How long has it taken to get a miniscule measure of social resposibility into the industries of most of the world? Yes, even in the States there's a Prius for everyone. But only recently. I don't know about India, but can anybody out there foresee Chinese business owners EVER choosing the more expensive, green alternative? Don't take it from me, ask a Chinese perrson. They will laauugghh... then they will cough... then they will laugh some more.
This is gonna sound really negative but look at all the success the world has had just trying to stop China from, "committing human rights violations" euphamistically speaking. Speaking like a normal person the Chinese Communist Party still kills people. Do you think they give a fortune cookie about smog? No country has more smokers than China. Know why? It's fresh air compared to what they breathe in many areas. I have no proof of that but a little hyperbole for effect. But without exaggeration how do you suppose we can convince a country that shows so little respect for non-violence to do their part for the protection of ALL people when they don't much care about their own? It is a scary question. Leastaways that's what I reckon.
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