Wednesday, July 14, 2021

KISS Principle Applied to the Environment

  A recent article on Grist on "subtraction" - getting rid of elements instead of adding new ones. That led me to thinking about the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) and how that applies to the environment.

When students are asked what is the best method to solve the solid waste problem, the answer is almost always: Recycling. Using the KISS principle; however, Source Reduction is the best answer. If you do not produce the waste, you don't need to manage it (by recycling or any other method). There are also problems with recycling that students (and much of the general public) do not understand. First is they think that making a small object (such as a decoration) is what recycling is all about. But objects make made like this are eventually thrown out (if used at all). Secondly, people are still under the illusion that all plastics can be recycled. Not only wrong, but those non-recyclable plastics include many commonly used (such as plastic straws).

Another area for KISS is in pollution control. One thing that I have been interested in for the last forty years as an engineer is "front-of-the pipe solutions to pollution control. Traditional approach is end-of-the-pipe, meaning air pollution control devices and wastewater treatment. It is still the primarily taught method and is often used by companies as an excuse.

Returning to the subtraction method, a good example is removing roads, etc. Consider flooding for example. Rather than adding expensive pumps and other equipment, removing pavements would allow water to soak into the soil, thereby reducing runoff and the resulting flooding. And its much cheaper.

Probably the most important KISS principle in today's consumeristic society is simply buying less. If people do not buy it, then there is nothing to throw away. Of course, this means a shift away from consumerism. This may not be easy, since many large corporations use it to make large profits and then greenwash the public (hello, Apple!)

To the question, how do we solve global warming?, the most common answers are "reforestation" and "planting trees". While this is a good idea, only planting trees is not enough to remove all global emissions. Since burning of fossil fuels is the cause of most of global warming, the simplest thing to do is stop burning fossil fuels. Pure and simple!

An extension of this (and a solution to traffic congestion) is to simply remove cars (especially gasoline-driven cars) from the road. This is a solution I have been promoting for over twenty-five years (since my days doing impact assessments on transportation). The COVID-19 situation has shown how this can work.

A lot of discussion has been on biodiversity lately. The best way of saving biodiversity is also the simplest - the setup, maintenance, and preservation of bioreserves.

There are some words of warning, however. First, not all things can best be done by simple solutions. One good example of this is food; simply growing of more food does not solve the food shortage problem. Other examples of this are education and water quantity.

Friday, February 8, 2019

Innovation vs. innovation talk

Recently, I have been tired of hearing the talk about innovation. I am all for innovation, rather it is the talk that bothers me. Politicians, administrators, and business people always talk about innovation, but then they make policies which do exactly the opposite.

One of the keys to being innovation is science. Not only science in terms of technology developed, but also in applying the analytical skills necessary to innovate. However, at the same time that the talk about innovation has increased, science education has decreased. In some places, high school students do not have to take any science courses.

Not only science education, but is using the science in business/industry. When I used to teach engineering, half of my graduates were going into sales, because the companies would be using technology from other companies, often from other countries.

Some times those in authority sometimes push "innovation", but they push it in the wrong direction. For example, energy companies are not putting money in renewable energies but are putting money into being able to extract more oil, coal, etc. (Note the importance here is relative amount of money)

Being in higher education, I even see this trend in schools, especially in conservative (that is, traditional) ones. They mouth the words innovation, and even demand teachers do "innovative teaching", but their policies and practices actually discourage innovation.

What is also lacking are incentives, both inside organizations (companies, universities, etc.) and outside (mostly governmental). I have always found it amazing that organizations try to get employees to innovate and then try to claim that innovation as theirs. The company (and executives) make lots of money and the employees get nothing. What incentive is there for an employee to innovate?

As for outside organizations, innovation cannot continue to grow without patent and copyright reforms. The real problem here is that we are going backwards on this area, not forwards. Increasing use of digital rights management (DRM), secret trade deals, use of forced arbitration (bypassing the court system), extending publisher copyrights (but not the author), etc. has been the norm for the last twenty years or so.

One of the biggest problems when it comes to innovation is often the management. There seems to be an emphasis on everybody doing things the same way (for the reasons of ... blah, blah, blah, ...). But if everybody does things the same way how can there be any innovation?

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Populism is not about being popular

In the last year or so, everybody is talking about the new political "movement" -- Populism. Donald Trump's election, Brexit, the raise of right-wing nationalist parties in Europe (for example, in France, Hungary, Netherlands, Germany), return of neoliberals to parts of Latin America, anti-immigrant policies in Australia and Europe, etc.

I think all this talk about Populism is actually off the mark. Instead, I actually see a more worrying trend -- Corporatocracy.

The first worrying thing is that these "populist" politicians (and yes Trump is a politician -- you have to be to become a business tycoon) is the fact they are using the populist "movement" to hide their real motives. What they want is for businesses to be able to do what whatever the business like to do, and that these businesses will also be able to dictate all other government policy.

Look at almost all of the major populist movements today and there are some interesting similarities. First, they are almost all led by rich businessman or rich conservatives that claim to represent business.

Secondly, the corporatocracy movement is not actually interested in democracy. Understand that a corporation is not a democratic institution. CEO's control the organization with very little input from the workers (or anybody else). They are top down organizations with absolutely no responsibility to anybody. They, therefore, think that they should also dictate the policy for the country. (Interesting to note is how democratic countries often embrace capitalism - one of the most undemocratic systems there is.)

Thirdly, they use the tools of business to push their political agenda. These include slick marketing campaigns, using money and political connections to influence people, being sparse with the truth and hiding unwanted facts, etc. They also use the economic argument that increased "growth" will increase jobs, etc. (See this article for a rebuttal to this argument)

The corporations want to reduce regulations so they can make more money, even if those regulations are to protect workers, consumers, others' human rights (especially privacy), or competition.

This populism should be of serious concern. It wishes to erode basic human rights, privacy, labor laws, consumer protection, and most importantly environmental protections.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Rethink on renewable energy

In the couple of years, two things have made me think that it is time to rethink how we teach energy, especially renewable energy. These are the annual environmental technology exhibition in Bangkok and the answers on my students' final exams.

The exhibition in the last two years has made me think that my students, along with the general public, do not realize the scale of the renewable energy industry today. At the exhibitions, it now appears that at least half the exhibits were on renewable energy. In fact, the organizers are now promoting it as "Asian Sustainable Energy Week", not as "Entech-Pollutec" as prior to 2016. (Entech-Pollutec is still used, but as a secondary name)

Importantly, we are now at the point where more than half of all new power generation is from renewable energy.

The other thing that made me think was the answers to the questions on the final exams. Most of the students seemed to be thinking in the past.

People still think that renewable energy is expensive. It is not! Yes, that was true as recently as ten years ago, but prices have decreased dramatically. A number of reports now show that renewable energy is cheaper than nonrenewable sources. I also keeping getting the answer that a problem with renewables is they are not efficient! What?!

People are also still thinking that solar and wind power are limited by the time of day and how much the wind blows. But in fact today that is not a major problem. If this was such a problem, then why are we now building large-scale solar power plants and wind farms?

The answer is to this is STORAGE. In my opinion, the biggest advances in energy from the last fifteen years or so has been in the field of storage. Not only batteries (in which there has been huge advances), but in other forms (for example, using molten salt).

Another "myth" often given is the hazards from wind energy due to bird strikes. Two recent studies, one from the USA and the other from the United Kingdom, have shown that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is very low (0.0001%). In fact, since using wind turbines reduces the use of fossil fuel, thereby reducing the amount of pollution -- which causes many more bird deaths, the net effect may be a decrease in the number of bird deaths. It is interesting that the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds (RSPB) actually supports the development of wind power (provided proper siting studies are done).

On the other hand, there seems to be very little criticism of large-scale hydropower. They have been extremely damaging to ecosystems (among other environmental and social problems) and recently have been shown to be one of the major emitters of greenhouse gases in the form of methane. Another area in which almost all environmental activists have concerns is with biofuel crops - no major environmental organizations support them anymore - do to concerns about deforestation and problems with food crops. Note they still support biofuels produced from waste products.

The thing that people seem to be reluctant to talk about is fossil fuel subsidies. This despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [refs] have both said that fossil fuels subsidies are huge and must be eliminated. The biggest problems is that subsidies distort the markets and contribute to increased fossil fuel use and therefore increases global warming.

The following parts of energy education need to be changed:

1. Care needs to be taken to be sure the information is up to date, things are changing fast in the field of energy, especially renewable energy. Even textbooks are often out of date soon after being published.

2. We need to shift from just teaching simple energy conservation measures (turn of lights when not using, etc.) to including more large-scale solutions (larger-scale conservation in industry, better building design, electric cars, etc.)

3. More emphasis on the need to eliminate all fossil fuels. Not just reduce their usage. Subsidies must also be discussed.

4. Inclusion of the concept of distributed energy (micropower). This includes the need to change the current business model of electrical utility companies.

5. Improvement in how we teach renewable energy. Much of this is discussed above. It includes discussing current costs, energy storage, and major environmental concerns with big dams and first generation biofuels

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Paris Agreement - Suprise!

Well, a few months ago we recently finished the Paris talks on a climate change treaty (technically called COP-21). Now that all the hype has died down, let us take a look at it. Very surprisingly we got a good result, known as the Paris Agreement.

First, let me say my overall reactions to it. While not a perfect treaty (more on that in the points below), it was probably the best that we can hope for.

An important point is that the concept behind Paris is radically different from Kyoto (except for the goal of reducing greenhouse gases). The process behind the Paris agreement actually started in Durban.

The foundations on which the Paris agreement is based are the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) which each country must submit to the UNFCCC secretariat. These are declarations of how the country intends to reduce its carbon emissions. Note that while the content of the INDC is not legally binding, the fact they must submit one is.

These INDCs are both the good and bad parts of the agreement. The reason for changing to the INDCs was that the Kyoto Protocol did not work. So another solution was necessary. It also allows countries to choose their own approach to the problem. However, the INDCs are not binding; therefore, there is no enforcement mechanism. More importantly, there is no real mechanism to ensure that the sum of the INDC's will be enough so that global warming stays below the 1.5 degree target. Indeed, with the current INDC's the warming will be 2.6 degrees. Yes, the secretariat must report on the gaps between the total commitments and the overall target, but that will have no real effect.

I also find that the target of 1.5 degrees as specified in the Agreement to be shades of hypocrisy. Even though it sounds good, I think most of the countries have no intention of meeting it.

A highlight of the Agreement is that it places an equal footing adaption (reducing effect of global warming) and mitigation (reducing the greenhouse effect). This is an important step that countries such as small island nations (probably the countries with the biggest impacts) have been asking for a long time.

There is both good news and bad news about the topic known as "loss and damage". The good news is that at last the developed countries have accepted the concept. The bad news is that the Agreement specifically states that no country will be held legally liable or be made to pay composition. Another example of developed countries thinking they can do want they want and not give a shit about anybody else.

Then there is the finance, especially financing of adaptation. Many commentators are stating how great this part is, but I need to remind people (again!), that these are only pledges -- and countries are very bad at keeping their pledges.

Probably the second highlight was the important place for transparency in reporting of countries emissions. This ensures that countries do not try to fudge the numbers and make look like they are doing better than they really are.

In conclusion, this is an important step in reducing global warming, but it is only a step. Much more has to happen, especially at the national level. A lot of work is going to be necessary. Simply turning off the lights when not in the room is not enough.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Climate Change - COP-20, Bonn, ... Not Ready for Paris

We just had an eleven days of talks about the future of climate change in Bonn, Germany. The results do not look good (surprise -- not!).

To begin with, remember the important thing to note is that at the end of 2015, in Paris at Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (COP-21), we are supposed to finalize a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Let us go back six months to the failed (again!) Conference of the Parties. In December 2014 it was the turn of Lima, Peru to host COP-20.

COP-20 was to be a major step toward the goal of having an agreement ready for Paris. In fact, COP-20 was nothing like that at all. What we got was a weak four page statement. Those four pages were indeed agreed on only after the conference went into overtime -- and addressed none of the major issues.

One thing that was "agreed" on at COP-20 was that countries would give to the UNFCCC secretariat stating their country's action plan. However, the plan is voluntary, not mandatory. The deadline was 31 March. But only 34 countries have given their action plan! That just shows how unimportant governments think about making any real impact.

However, just the individual contributions are not enough. The sum of all emissions cuts must be such that they keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.

Now what about Bonn? The biggest thing is that many important countries are refusing to discuss national contributions and how they would add together. Without this there is really no way that the goals of climate change could be met. The European Union (EU) and African countries want countries to face up to the fact that emission totals won't keep global warming below the 2 degree threshold. However, other countries - especially, China, India, and Brazil - do not want to discuss national contributions until Paris. This has effectively slowed the negotiations.

Instead, the negotiators spent almost all of the meeting discussing procedural issues for the Paris meeting. But even more importantly is the fact that the major issues (in addition to emission cuts) such as equity and finance for developing countries have yet to be addressed.

There was one piece of good news. That is, a draft agreement on technical aspects of the UN's REDD+ (Reductions of Emissions due to Deforestion and Degradation Plus reforestation) was agreed to.

So what will happen in Paris? I think that the countries will agree to will be a meaningless piece of paper. Then they will claim it to be the deal of the century. And global warming will continue to go on.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Brazil and good news on deforestation

One of the hard things to make students understand is how to protect biodiversity. The usual answer we get is do not hunt endangered species, etc. What they fail to grasp is that the major way is to prevent habitat loss, especially by establishment of bioreserves and preventation of deforestation.

That is why I find this article to be interesting. It shows the effect of policies in Brazil in combating deforestation.

What has been happenning? In the last ten years, the amount of deforestation per year has been declining steadily. It is now only 70% of what it was in 2004.

The authors identify the following factors leading to this reduction: monitoring, frontier goverance, government policies, new protected areas, pressure from environmental groups, and macroeconomic trends. It points out that it was the combination of these things not any one specifically.

One interesting thing is that Brazil does not only establish national parks, but also has other "strict protection areas": sustainable use areas, indigenous territories (where large scale logging and plantations are not allowed), and agarian reform settlements.

One conclusion of the article is that in order to keep continuing this trend of reduced deforestation, farmers, ranchers, and other land users must be given further incentives.

This a good example of what is really neccessary for progress in reducing deforestation and therefore protecting biodiversity. Now if others would take this seriously.