With summer's arrival, I am going to try and start blogging again about my various inquiries into the world around us. Last weekend I tried to cross the boarder into Canada for my summer job at SNO Lab but was denied entry because I did not have the proper papers. Thus I am waiting for a few weeks for a labor market assessment to make sure that I am not stealing a job from a Canadian.
Personally, I am not a fan of closed borders. I find it hard to understand what difference being born inside or outside a country makes on that person's right to work or live inside of a country. A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend of mine about citizenship and rights and we developed some interesting insights into these issues. As we all know a republican government is centered around the social contract, the give and take between the citizens and their government. Rights are those things which the people believe their government must respect to ensure progress and stability. Also as part of our government system, people should be free to agree to whatever social contract they wish to. If a person thinks gambling and prostitution should be legal they are allowed to move to Las Vegas. This freedom to choose one's social contract is pretty reasonable within one's country, but much more restrained between nations. It should be very easy to move from one nation to another and immigration regulations should be greatly reduced.
Yet the traditional understanding of citizenship is not centered around the social contract. Usually, a person becomes a citizen by being born within a nation's borders not by intellectually agreeing with that country's outlook on rights and freedoms. Furthermore, why should a country's view on human rights and privileges apply only to people whom it considers citizens? Should not all human beings have the same rights as the people who were fortunate enough to be born within its borders? Being a citizen I believe means that they are the voters, those who design and mold their country's social contract. If you have come into a country, citizen or not, as a human being you are owed the rights which their belief in the social contract ascribes to you. If a person comes into the realm of influence of the United States they should have access to education, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and due process. This has recently come into question with military detainees. I believe that if the government deems it ok to torture detainees they must also believe that it is ok to torture any other person including their citizens. There are many questions which would arise concerning the line between rights and other government programs. Social security does not seem to be a right and a person who comes into the United States should not automatically be entitled to receiving it because they have not paid taxes into the system. Yet what about health care or education? These are expensive but also very important to any person living in the United States and essential to ensuring progress. Ultimately these types of questions would have to be answered by those who are designing the social contract.
So how does a person become a citizen, an active sculptor of the social contract? In Rome and Greece, public service was an integral part of the life of its citizens whether in the army or in the forum and courts. I believe that in order to become a citizen people must demonstrate their desire to serve the country thought a term of selfless public service. This makes sure that those who influence the government's action are truly devoted to it and also brings back meaning to the role of the citizen.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Conclusions?
So with all of these plans, what are my conclusions. I think it is pretty simple basically we need to combine all the plans into a comprehensive solution. Just a random question, what the heck is comprehensive, it seems to show up in every political speech given by anyone about anything, thus I naturally had to throw it in. Anyway, I digress.
So this comprehensive solution must contain both a stimulus for research and also a stimulus for applications of existent technologies. So essentially it would be a combination of the Manhattan Project and the TVA. First we need to pass Forbes’ bill to begin the process of stimulating research. Secondly we need to make R&D spending tax deductible to get businesses on board. Third we need to set up a more extensive grant program for something like 100 billion dollars over 5 years.
On the “TVA” side we need to start create governmental policy that reflects a logical look at environmental issues. We need to repeal the tariff on sugar cane ethanol and start developing the infrastructure to support biofuel. I think all cars that are sold within the United States in 5 to 10 years should be flex fuel. Again we can use the government’s taxing power to make this transition less economically damaging. Furthermore we need to streamline the process for approving nuclear power plants like they have in France so that we can have new nuclear plants coming online within the next 10 years. We must also implement other forms of alternative energy that can be built relatively quickly such as solar and wind so that we can start mitigating this crisis now.
I believe that any loss of income that the government has now will easily be offset by the economic growth that this combination of research and construction would stimulation.
I must say that I am sorry that this post does not contain my usual thoroughness but I am in the process of preparing my house for a move so I have been really busy.
So this comprehensive solution must contain both a stimulus for research and also a stimulus for applications of existent technologies. So essentially it would be a combination of the Manhattan Project and the TVA. First we need to pass Forbes’ bill to begin the process of stimulating research. Secondly we need to make R&D spending tax deductible to get businesses on board. Third we need to set up a more extensive grant program for something like 100 billion dollars over 5 years.
On the “TVA” side we need to start create governmental policy that reflects a logical look at environmental issues. We need to repeal the tariff on sugar cane ethanol and start developing the infrastructure to support biofuel. I think all cars that are sold within the United States in 5 to 10 years should be flex fuel. Again we can use the government’s taxing power to make this transition less economically damaging. Furthermore we need to streamline the process for approving nuclear power plants like they have in France so that we can have new nuclear plants coming online within the next 10 years. We must also implement other forms of alternative energy that can be built relatively quickly such as solar and wind so that we can start mitigating this crisis now.
I believe that any loss of income that the government has now will easily be offset by the economic growth that this combination of research and construction would stimulation.
I must say that I am sorry that this post does not contain my usual thoroughness but I am in the process of preparing my house for a move so I have been really busy.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
How about a New Manhattan Project?
Recently Rep. Randy Forbes, a republican from Virginia, released an energy policy that I believe has great potential and even espouses many of my ideas, which I have outlined previously. His bill, H.R. 6260 entitled, New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence, I believe will begin the process of shifting toward a more environmentally friendly and economically beneficial energy solution.
There are several main steps, which the representative outlines to achieve the ambitious goal of becoming energy independent within 20 years. While I would prefer a more environmentally minded goal, effectively I think that this bill will drastically reduce emissions while also gaining conservative support with its aim of energy independence.
First he would create a prize program, similar to the X-Prize foundation, which would grant prizes for the successful fulfillment of 1 of 7 categories. These prizes would range from 250 million to 10 billion dollars, which are much greater than any prize program that I know of. These prizes will stirrup innovation and lots of investment into these new technologies. The Ansari X PRIZE was a 10 million dollar prize for launching a private spacecraft, which was won by SpaceShipOne in 2004, however over 100 million dollars was invested by 26 teams in the competition. Therefore, the 14 billion dollars in prize money could easily produce 140 billion dollars in investment into these technologies. These are the goals for the program:
1) A Vehicle that costs no more than 10% more than a normal car that has equal performance, can travel 750 miles between refueling and get at least 70 MPG if it is gasoline powered.
2) A Green Building that uses 50% of the energy of a similar building and can be reproduced anywhere and costs no more that 15% more than a traditional building.
3) A solar power plant that generates 300 megawatts of power at a cost of 10 cents/kilowatt-hour.
4) A biofuel that when mass produced costs only 105% as the energy equivalent of gasoline.
5) A carbon sequestration system that only ads 15% to the cost of the power and will store the CO2 for 5000 years
6) A nuclear waste solution, which will remediate the waste so that it will not be harmful for at least 5000 years.
7) A sustainable fusion power plant that can produce 300 megawatts.
The other steps, which are outlined, are more traditional and include a 10 billion dollars grant program, and the development of a summit to discuss the various technical problems and solution dealing with energy independence. He also wants a commission to be established to develop recommendations to fulfill the goal of energy independence.
I have some minor criticisms of the bill like I think that 750 miles between refueling is unreasonable. I also am not a fan of carbon sequestration because I do not think capturing all the CO2 coming off a coal plant and then storing it in the ground is a good idea in the long run. Also I wish there was an emphasis on nuclear waste reprocessing. I further think there should have been a prize for developing an economically effective way of developing hydrogen. But overall I really like this plan as a start toward a greener energy solution.
There are several main steps, which the representative outlines to achieve the ambitious goal of becoming energy independent within 20 years. While I would prefer a more environmentally minded goal, effectively I think that this bill will drastically reduce emissions while also gaining conservative support with its aim of energy independence.
First he would create a prize program, similar to the X-Prize foundation, which would grant prizes for the successful fulfillment of 1 of 7 categories. These prizes would range from 250 million to 10 billion dollars, which are much greater than any prize program that I know of. These prizes will stirrup innovation and lots of investment into these new technologies. The Ansari X PRIZE was a 10 million dollar prize for launching a private spacecraft, which was won by SpaceShipOne in 2004, however over 100 million dollars was invested by 26 teams in the competition. Therefore, the 14 billion dollars in prize money could easily produce 140 billion dollars in investment into these technologies. These are the goals for the program:
1) A Vehicle that costs no more than 10% more than a normal car that has equal performance, can travel 750 miles between refueling and get at least 70 MPG if it is gasoline powered.
2) A Green Building that uses 50% of the energy of a similar building and can be reproduced anywhere and costs no more that 15% more than a traditional building.
3) A solar power plant that generates 300 megawatts of power at a cost of 10 cents/kilowatt-hour.
4) A biofuel that when mass produced costs only 105% as the energy equivalent of gasoline.
5) A carbon sequestration system that only ads 15% to the cost of the power and will store the CO2 for 5000 years
6) A nuclear waste solution, which will remediate the waste so that it will not be harmful for at least 5000 years.
7) A sustainable fusion power plant that can produce 300 megawatts.
The other steps, which are outlined, are more traditional and include a 10 billion dollars grant program, and the development of a summit to discuss the various technical problems and solution dealing with energy independence. He also wants a commission to be established to develop recommendations to fulfill the goal of energy independence.
I have some minor criticisms of the bill like I think that 750 miles between refueling is unreasonable. I also am not a fan of carbon sequestration because I do not think capturing all the CO2 coming off a coal plant and then storing it in the ground is a good idea in the long run. Also I wish there was an emphasis on nuclear waste reprocessing. I further think there should have been a prize for developing an economically effective way of developing hydrogen. But overall I really like this plan as a start toward a greener energy solution.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
If the G8 won't help how about an Oil Tycoon
This week T. Boone Pickens announced that he has a plan for increasing our energy independence and thereby beginning to help the environment. I applaud him for using his money to promote this cause and actually give a plan, unlike the G8. I was surprised to see that he actually purchased TV spots for his plan, which is a great step in the right direction. So in terms of what he has done to promote this issue, he is beginning to do great things and hopefully more will follow his lead.
However I must be more critical of the plan itself, which does not have helping the environment as a primary goal but seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. While this is a great goal I think that we can advance both aims with the same economic inputs that he seeks. His plan can be summed up as lets replace the 20% of our energy that we get from natural gas with wind power and then use that natural gas to run cars off of so that we can reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 1/3. He estimates that it will cost about 1.2 trillion to get 20% of our power from wind turbines. He already has substantial investments in West Texas in wind, including a 4000 mW plant that cost about 12 billion dollars. First of all, you all know I am a great proponent of Nuclear Power and I believe that 1.2 trillion would be better spent on the nuclear industry. This amount of investment, using the metrics outlined by the World Nuclear Association, could create around 200 new plants, which might get us to where 60% of our power came from nuclear. Also, according to those metrics, nuclear power has a lower operating cost than other forms of power, including wind. Also another issue I see with his plan is that it does nothing to combat the great evils of coal fire power plants. This is because the US has a lot of coal so there is no incentive from the people who want energy independence to get rid of coal, yet it releases most of our CO2 and other pollutants. Third, natural gas would be a good temporary fuel for our cars as according to Pickens’ Plan it release 30% less CO2 than gasoline. However, I believe that by the time the infrastructure is developed to support natural gas as our fuel of choice, we will be ready to switch to hydrogen. Thus I think that because biofuels require much less change in the current infrastructure they are a much better temporary solution.
So overall I applaud him for taking a step in the right direction. But I wish that his plan would do more for the environment and see the potential of other more effective technologies.
However I must be more critical of the plan itself, which does not have helping the environment as a primary goal but seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. While this is a great goal I think that we can advance both aims with the same economic inputs that he seeks. His plan can be summed up as lets replace the 20% of our energy that we get from natural gas with wind power and then use that natural gas to run cars off of so that we can reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 1/3. He estimates that it will cost about 1.2 trillion to get 20% of our power from wind turbines. He already has substantial investments in West Texas in wind, including a 4000 mW plant that cost about 12 billion dollars. First of all, you all know I am a great proponent of Nuclear Power and I believe that 1.2 trillion would be better spent on the nuclear industry. This amount of investment, using the metrics outlined by the World Nuclear Association, could create around 200 new plants, which might get us to where 60% of our power came from nuclear. Also, according to those metrics, nuclear power has a lower operating cost than other forms of power, including wind. Also another issue I see with his plan is that it does nothing to combat the great evils of coal fire power plants. This is because the US has a lot of coal so there is no incentive from the people who want energy independence to get rid of coal, yet it releases most of our CO2 and other pollutants. Third, natural gas would be a good temporary fuel for our cars as according to Pickens’ Plan it release 30% less CO2 than gasoline. However, I believe that by the time the infrastructure is developed to support natural gas as our fuel of choice, we will be ready to switch to hydrogen. Thus I think that because biofuels require much less change in the current infrastructure they are a much better temporary solution.
So overall I applaud him for taking a step in the right direction. But I wish that his plan would do more for the environment and see the potential of other more effective technologies.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The G8 can they help us
The G8 is meeting this week and some of the major things that they are talking about are environmental and agricultural issues. They just set a target of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. Well this sounds great I think it is a an empty statement by the G8 as it does not hold any of the current governments accountable for decreasing emissions and also the Kyoto protocol set ambitious goals also and very few countries have lived up to their promises so far. Like I have continually stated, the answer lies with encouraging the growth of green technologies not with making empty promises to score political points. They must actively pursue this technology and implementing the great technologies that we already have, like nuclear power plants. I would have loved to see them outline an ambitious research and development plan like they would a foreign aid plan. If I would have heard them say that they will devote at least 100 billion dollars over the next 5 years to develop abundant and clean energy sources that would have been a step in the right direction.
We will see how they tackle the food issue; they already affirmed a 50 billion dollar foreign aid package including 25 billion for Africa. I hope that they realize that they must identify the base problem and solve that and not just paper over the cracks by giving out handouts, which will never adequate help the people. A couple years ago Popular Science had a small insert about some of the major environmental problems facing the world which was really interesting which can be found on this site. These are the problems that need to be addressed in order to truly help people. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse he outlines how one of the major contributors to societal collapse are environmental problems, and I think he is quite correct.
We will see how they tackle the food issue; they already affirmed a 50 billion dollar foreign aid package including 25 billion for Africa. I hope that they realize that they must identify the base problem and solve that and not just paper over the cracks by giving out handouts, which will never adequate help the people. A couple years ago Popular Science had a small insert about some of the major environmental problems facing the world which was really interesting which can be found on this site. These are the problems that need to be addressed in order to truly help people. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse he outlines how one of the major contributors to societal collapse are environmental problems, and I think he is quite correct.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
More People, More Ideas
Many have seen population growth as the bane of environmental stability as people continue to over consume resources and expand into new environments. However as I have eluded to previously I believe that technological advancement is the solution to this problem not a decrease in population growth.
Population growth is directly correlated with technological and intellectual advancement. The link is very simple as populations grow they have more people that think and communicate with each other so they can collectively advance ideas more quickly. But two factors must exist for this to occur: people must be educated and people must be able to communicate. That is why I see the distribution of growth throughout the world as problematic. Not only are the areas with large population growth those that can not support many more people e.g. Africa, but also those areas are the places where those two conditions do not exist. In contrast the areas with the least population growth, western countries, not only have the economic conditions necessary to sustain growth but also have the intellectual conditions to have that growth translate into the advancement of humanity.
Thus we need to not look at the solution to our environmental problem as ending population growth but first of all making it distributed over areas which can support that growth, places with decent economies and also a low ratio of persons to acre of arable farmland. And second of all creating practices to increase the carrying capacity of all regions, that is to increase the amount of people the world can support, essentially through increasing the output of agriculture and decreasing its global foot print, like with my favorite hydroponics. We must also expand the eduction and communication systems throughout the world, but this task first requires the economic development of the third world. I do not suggest that we force certain people to have children or not have children as in China, but that we must make modern society more conducive to families and also that people must become aware of why population growth is important, I believe that our future is rooted in a continued exponential increase in population and advancement.
Population growth is directly correlated with technological and intellectual advancement. The link is very simple as populations grow they have more people that think and communicate with each other so they can collectively advance ideas more quickly. But two factors must exist for this to occur: people must be educated and people must be able to communicate. That is why I see the distribution of growth throughout the world as problematic. Not only are the areas with large population growth those that can not support many more people e.g. Africa, but also those areas are the places where those two conditions do not exist. In contrast the areas with the least population growth, western countries, not only have the economic conditions necessary to sustain growth but also have the intellectual conditions to have that growth translate into the advancement of humanity.
Thus we need to not look at the solution to our environmental problem as ending population growth but first of all making it distributed over areas which can support that growth, places with decent economies and also a low ratio of persons to acre of arable farmland. And second of all creating practices to increase the carrying capacity of all regions, that is to increase the amount of people the world can support, essentially through increasing the output of agriculture and decreasing its global foot print, like with my favorite hydroponics. We must also expand the eduction and communication systems throughout the world, but this task first requires the economic development of the third world. I do not suggest that we force certain people to have children or not have children as in China, but that we must make modern society more conducive to families and also that people must become aware of why population growth is important, I believe that our future is rooted in a continued exponential increase in population and advancement.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Cultural Diversity
In less than a week I have been through 20 states ranging from California to Maine and it amazes me how little people change in such a large geographic area. This is a wonder of modern society as we are united by modern communications. Unlike many places, like Africa, were a geographic area the size of the US would have thousands of languages the US speaks one dominant language without much change in dialects, with the exception of in Alabama but I do not think that even qualifies as a language. This type of unification, which has been experienced throughout the modern world, makes one wonder about how long it will take the world to be united by a dominant culture with little variation due to location.
When we develop the technology to allow us to travel to any part of the globe in an hour what will happen to culture? And also this generates the question of how important cultural diversity is. I understand how biodiversity is necessary in a group of different species but within a species is it important to have different subgroups that only differ in language and customs. Customs used to have importance like telling people when to plant crops but now they just serve to united people and make them feel like they are part of a community. This is important but we do not need the thousands of different cultures to make people feel like they belong. So do we let cultures die and naturally evolve into one world culture or do we actively try to save them by limiting technology’s impact or making people participate in them. How important is cultural diversity, what do you think? Emotionally I think it is important but intellectually I do not know why.
When we develop the technology to allow us to travel to any part of the globe in an hour what will happen to culture? And also this generates the question of how important cultural diversity is. I understand how biodiversity is necessary in a group of different species but within a species is it important to have different subgroups that only differ in language and customs. Customs used to have importance like telling people when to plant crops but now they just serve to united people and make them feel like they are part of a community. This is important but we do not need the thousands of different cultures to make people feel like they belong. So do we let cultures die and naturally evolve into one world culture or do we actively try to save them by limiting technology’s impact or making people participate in them. How important is cultural diversity, what do you think? Emotionally I think it is important but intellectually I do not know why.
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