Casey

 E. O. Wilson. According to Mrs. Lil, he is the environmental science equivalent of Einstein. This environmental genius is calling for an "Encyclopedia of Life." media type="youtube" key="9dE5OWBw4fE" width="560" height="315"  The Encyclopedia of Life is an online database attempting to catalogue all of Earth's known animals and discover all of those still yet unknown. Scientists have identified 2 million (give or take a few) species of animals so far. Kind of hard to believe that there hasn't yet been one single pool of data to collect all this information until now. The Encyclopedia of Life puts all this valuable information in one place and is open to anyone who wants to access it. So that regular people, not just scientists, have the resources to be aware of Earth's diverse populations. I think that the Encyclopedia of Life is a great idea, especially in the light of the fact that there isn't an existing database for all of the existing identified species of life. In addition, the public will be able to access the Encyclopedia which is awesome because it not only provides a credible information source on the internet but also exposes the public to information and general awareness about the life on Earth. Through social media and the opportunity to participate, the Encyclopedia of Life allows everyday people to be an active part in the creation of the database and to become scientists themselves. The EOL would remind people that we are not the only ones inhabiting the earth and also that learning about animals and their environment aren't things that are reserved specifically for specialists.  For more info, visit the official page: []   

Earlier this week (or maybe it was last week? I don't really know at this point), we were talking about lighting in photography class and got talking about light bulbs and how we didn't really know the difference between the different kinds of light bulbs that are out there these days. We'd looked it up online and had managed to pull up an article that compared the different kinds. That same day a few periods later, a couple of us mentioned light bulb efficiency at the end of my bio class. I struggled to recall the facts from the article but to no avail. So in case you're looking to impress your biology teacher and fellow classmates with some mean facts about light bulbs or just trying to make the right choice for your lighting needs, let me give you a run down on light bulbs: (In order of efficiency, least to greatest) **Incandescent ** **Halogen Incandescent** **Compact Fluorescent** <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">**LED** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;">Although there are many options available, it is apparent that the traditional incandescent light bulb, while cheap, is not the best for the environment. In fact, 90% of the energy used is turned into heat and we all know that energy given off as heat is practically useless. So you would think that people would choose more eco-friendly version of the light bulb, right? However, one study by National Geographic found the political alliances affected people's choices in buying traditional incandescent or CFLs. Conservatives, who are less supportive of funding energy-efficient technology, were less likely to buy CFL light bulbs with "help the environment" stickers than their liberal counterparts. What I find funny (and by that, I mean not really funny at all), is that even when if comes to saving the earth, people have to think about their political parties before they make any decisions. Sustainability shouldn't be about political parties, it is a serious, conscious decision. People have to realize that saving the Earth has more to do with cooperation and unified conviction than political factions. (articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5; text-align: left;">
 * [[image:http://uv-blog.uio.no/wpmu/maryam/files/2010/10/light-bulbs.jpg width="322" height="207" align="right"]]<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">90% of the energy used to power traditional incandescent light bulb is used as heat instead of light
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Emit 3,000 pounds of CO2 per year
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Cost about $0.84 each
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Does not contain mercury
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Halogen incandescent light bulbs last 3x as long as the standard light bulb
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">creates 4x the heat of a traditional incandescent bulb
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">creates brighter "white light" than an incandescent bulb
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Does not contain mercury
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">new type of energy-efficient halogen bulbs have infrared coating that reduces waste heat and are 30% more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Lasts 10x as long as the standard light bulb
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Require 75% less heat to operate than the standard incandescent light bulb
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Emit 701 pounds of CO2 per year
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Cost about $2.49 each
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Contains mercury
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Most expensive ($24.99 each)
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">lasts the longest (Energy Star-certified = 25 times life-span of standard bulb)
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">LED bulbs emit 301 pounds of CO2 per year
 * <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Does not contain mercury



<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The two biggest issues that seem to most concern people are energy and economy. How do we improve the economy? How do we create jobs? How do we improve the environment? How can we start harnessing and using clean energy? Jennifer Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, answers all these questions in her enjoyable TED talk.

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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">In the video, she explains the steps that we can take to creating jobs in America and using clean energy. She talks about what has worked in rallying Congress and state governors, Democrat or Republican, and what we can do to set this plan in motion even without Congress. Granholm proposes a "race to the top"-style competition in which states will compete for government funding for 4.5 billion dollars (which as Granholm says is not at all a lot, describing the sum as, "less than one-tenth of one percent of federal spend" and as a "rounding error" and was the bi-partisan amount approved for Obama's successful education race-to-the-top). The competition would be opt-in, so that any changes that occur would be voluntary changes and the price of entry into the competition would be that the states would have to obtain 80% of their energy from clean sources by 2030. She goes on to say that each region of the country has its own contribution to what could be the clean-energy revolution of the US. Jennifer Granholm explains that this kind of challange is beneficial for everyone, essentially a win-win. Investing in clean energy means the creation of factories for harvesting clean energy as well as creating the technology needed throughout the process. The creation of factories means jobs and an economy in clean energy that would be able to compete with the likes of China. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">But what if going through government and Congress proves to be too difficult? Granholm gives an alternative solution to that problem as well. If private sectors and companies were willing to donate money to create a pot (much like the 4.5 billion dollar prize) and offer it to governors of the 50 states in an identical race-to-the-top competition, states would compete for the funding all the same, bringing about clean energy and jobs in the process. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;"> What I thought was the most interesting part of this video was that the plan Granholm proposes is totally plausible. Even more surprising to me was the fact that the plan was so simple and yet, no one had already thought of/tried it. It seemed to me that the answer was practically knocking at our door and either for ignorance, stubbornness, or some other equally idiotic reason, we've been ignoring it. Granholm mentions the race to education reform as an example of what worked and I couldn't help but "mmmhm" in agreement as the new Key Stone tests popped into my mind, assuming that the test is a part of this education reform competition. If education reform in the form of competition between states could bring real-time changes like the switch from PSSAs to Key Stone tests, imagine what it could to for clean energy. <span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;">Granholm mentions that Pennsylvania could be a leading state in biofuels and biofuel technology which can be used to power cars. Biofuels are an excellent <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">alternative to oil and other fossil fuels. They're renewable and, theoretically, the plants used to create biofuel photosynthesize the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the cars that use them. Slight snag though, they use A LOT of energy to produce. Almost TOO MUCH energy for it to be any better than using fossil fuels. But wouldn't switching to clean energy make a difference? Make it more efficient and worth it despite the activation energy it needs? Some believe that if we could find a way to use cellulose as biofuel as it would be more efficient. I'm not putting Granholm's theory down though. In fact, I'm all for it. What do you think?

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">On Friday, Mrs. Lil showed the three people in class this TED video of Hans Rosling. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">media type="custom" key="23084010"

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> In the video, he talks about the concept of "We" and "Them" (Western world and Third world) and how the preconceptions people generally seem to have is that there is a wide gap between "we" and "them." Rosling explains that, as true as this concept was 50 years ago, it's not as easy to generalize now. In the modern world, most countries have attained all the different, if interrelated, reasons of why "west is best:" small families, low child mortality rates, and the economic conditions that allow these two to happen.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> So how do we get every country in the world to have families that have fewer children who live longer and why is this beneficial? Hans Rosling again explains it very well in this video. Basically, he shows his audience that the population of the world is growing at a tremendous rate and the only way to stop it is if all the families of the poorest regions with the lowest child survival rate stop having so many kids. Essentially, if these families have, in his words, "six children born, there will be at least four who will survive to the next generation and the population will double in one generation." A perfect example of these conditions could be seen in Thailand back in the 70s. With seven kids per household and a national population growth rate of 3.3%, the country, as Mechai Viravaidya puts it, had "no future." In contrast, the number of children per family in Thailand at the start of the twenty-first century, only thirty years later, was 1.5 and the population growth was reduced to 0.5%. How did Thailand, even without a strongest government or economy, achieve this feat? The answer: family planning and contraception.

<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype,Book Antiqua,Palatino,serif;"> The concept was simple, start the process of improving the economic situations of the poorest right at the beginning, help women and children through family planning so that child mortality lessens and reduce the number of poor people through the use of contraceptives. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">As Virayaidya's TED talk explains, the people of Thailand took an active effort to make contraceptives available to everyone. Contraception meant couples had kids when they were ready which meant children were better cared for, more attentively raised, and in many cases, better educated. The availability of family planning meant that the chances these poorer children could grow to adulthood increased. And although some of the methods might seem controversial, the fundamental ideas of population control are present: smarter, happier, longer-living kids. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">So how does this tie back to sustainability? The problem is that, at our current J-shaped <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">population growth and rate of consumption, the earth's resources are not enough to sustain us. The three most obvious ways to fix this would be to either to control our population growth, reduce our rate of consumption, or both. And although the reduction of humanity's consumption rate of earth's resources is our end goal, the easiest and most immediately effective solution would be to control the growth rate of the population. And as I've previously explained, the key to realizing this goal would be the widespread availability of contraceptives and family planning. Not only are contraceptives and family planning awesome because of the reasons in this video but also because we stop total consumption of resources from increasing and produce better-educated individuals who will be able to get to the root of our consumption problem.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; line-height: 1.5;">I do concede that, if anything, slowing the population growth rate would only buy humanity time before it hits carrying capacity. However, any time we have is precious time that we can use to figure something out before we crash and burn. Therefore, methods of contraception and family planning should be readily available to everyone, especially people in low standards of living.