Eric+Siegel

Eric's Environmental Wikispace:

Personally, the five most important topics, respectively, are 1. Climate Action 2. Clean Water and Sanitation 3. Responsible Consumption and Production 4. Quality Education 5. Good Health and Well-Being Responsible Consumption and Production is an extremely important issue because, while learning about the world around us and our effect on it is vital and will inspire some change, no true progress will be made unless we learn to reverse some of our environmentally damaging habits. This is true in the small-scale (consumption) with everyday decisions by every person on the planet, and large-scale (production) with companies willing to invest in the future of Earth over the immediate gain from producing in cheap but harmful ways.

Quality Education is also key to having a positive impact on the world around us, because no change will occur until most people understand our impact on the planet, and the way of spreading that message is through quality education. While many scholars and highly educated people are aware of the problems we cause to the planet, we need to spread the message through quality education all across the planet to get the whole population on board, regardless of background or their country’s economic status.

https://youtu.be/Erm4vP1vTn8



This TED Talk is about making the use of solar, renewable energy widespread by reinventing the solar panel, which the speaker says is not widespread because of its unattractive design. She notes that, as a population, we had already used up all of the energy predicted to be generated by plants for the entire year by early August last year, and if we keep up trends like that, we could quickly run the planet out of non-renewable energy sources. The speaker's team is working on a different model called Organic Photovoltaics, and uses carbon instead of a metal to receive the energy from the Sun. This allows the panels to be extremely lightweight and flexible, so they can hopefully be used commonly to increase renewable energy, particularly in large buildings, which take up 40% of our total energy demand. Due to their heavy energy demand, potentially making buildings carbon-neutral through technologies like the one described in the video would go a long way in preventing us running out of non-renewable energy sources, or at least delay it for a number of decades, and also lessening our carbon footprint on the planet.

While the topic of this video may seem far from the topic of water availability, its potential effects could be far reaching enough to help us avoid some of the problems causing the lack of water availability on the planet. In developing nations (where water availability is sometimes a daily urgent issue), 70% of all industrial wastes are dumped into potentially usable freshwater, a practice which is devastating in many nations that lack many freshwater reserves. This new solar energy device presented in the video is attempting to allow renewable solar energy to spread in a cheaper and easier way across the world than with current, often expensive and cumbersome, models, with the hope of lessening humans' collective carbon footprint on the planet. Hopefully, this device can help facilitate the spread of renewable energy across the world, even to developing nations, and lessen the amount of waste produced by the nonrenewable energy sources often used. In the countries with water availability issues, this lessening of industrial waste could allow for less contamination of drinkable freshwater and prevent some future crises over water, perhaps the most necessary substance on the planet.

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One of the top news stories in the realm of science this week is a debate over the future of British scientists and how they will cooperate in the wake of the United Kingdom exiting the European Union through Brexit, and its potential ramifications on future international scientific collaboration. Recently, the European Union has announced that they plan on beginning a scientific research-funding program called Horizon Europe worth around 100 billion euros (approximately 116 billion US dollars), and British prime minister Theresa May has since announced that the country would like to maintain their ties in research collaboration with the EU, despite their vote to leave it in 2016. However, the EU is reluctant to let the United Kingdom simply rejoin their major scientific effort while they are scheduled to leave the group in less than a year and therefore not be restrained by many of the rules and regulations the European Union has agreed on, as these laws are the basis of scientific collaboration between the member nations. The European Commission has stated that they plan on creating new rules to regulate scientific collaboration with non-EU nations, such as the United Kingdom, on European Union-funded research programs like the upcoming Horizon Europe. This is an interesting, mostly unexpected, consequence of the Brexit decision, because it shows the effect the political world can have on the world and progression of science, and may swing certain countries who currently have movements to leave the EU themselves, such as the Netherlands and France, into staying to keep the scientific benefits the organization offers.

Horizon Europe itself could lead to important research in the industry of food, although the specific topics of research are yet to be determined, but it could have further consequences on international scientific collaboration as a whole. Many European Union nations individually contain some of the world's best research universities and facilities, and together the organization is one of the superpowers of scientific research, if not the absolute best. The United Kingdom's attempt to join into this research program despite their exit from the European Union could open the door for other nations with top scientific research facilities, such as the United States and China, joining in future efforts or perhaps even the upcoming Horizon Europe. This could have a major effect on the food industry and research around it because of the differences in policies between the United States and the European Union, as well as essentially the rest of the world, over the use of genetically-modified organisms in food products. Scientific collaboration between those two entities could lead to a major shift in policy surrounding GMOs, which would have a large effect on the national food industry and the products that they serve us, if some harm is found in their use in food.

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/energy/senate-bill-would-ramp-up-clean-energy-development/



In Massachusetts, state legislature has begun drafting a bill that would increase the development of clean energy within the state over the new few years. Right now, the state requires that electricity companies must buy renewable energy for thirteen percent of their customers, and that percentage increases by one every calendar year, but the proposed bill would change that yearly increase to three percent. Yet, despite an increase of only two percent per year over current law in a relatively small state, there has been a backlash from energy businesses in the state about the implementation of this law. An official of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts stated that because the state's renewable energy definition does not include hydroelectric power, this legislation would be putting too much reliance on the wind power. However, this new bill does also support the hydroelectric power supply by allowing the state to purchase more of it, as well as more than tripling the amount of state-bought wind power.

While the effects of this bill alone likely are not going to be significant on a global or even national scale, it shows the potential struggles of forming and passing future renewable energy laws in the US Senate or in other national governments around the world. Obviously, there is the factor of the current energy industry, which seems to be more focused on short-term profits and competition than long-term sustainability and their carbon footprint, which will seemingly eternally lobby against any regulations that support renewable energy over fossil fuel use. This kind of near-sighted thinking is likely to continue the decimation of our natural resources and biodiversity around the world, because as long as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy, companies will continue to destroy habitats in order to search or obtain them. While industrial lobbying is clearly in the way, the struggles of passing this bill also show a potential problem for renewable energy legislation: deciding which renewable energy source or sources to endorse.