Marcus Tay's List: Environmental motivational info

• "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.
• African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We need to go far, quickl
• CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution.

  • tax that shift burden of taxation from employment to pollution? GST to consumption
• , "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

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• If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).
• But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.
• No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.
• Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts

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• The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
• People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists.

• nergy efficiency typically requires large upfront investments to achieve savings that accrue later. In addition, it has low mindshare, and opportunities are fragmented across billions of devices in more than 100 million locations. Finally, the organizations that would be primarily responsible for implementing energy efficiency find it hard to measure, which makes them less motivated to act.

  • Reasons as to why when energy efficiency have a good returns and yet not invested.
• move before recouping the upgrade’s cost—a barrier that undermines 40 to 55 percent of these opportunities

  • Even though home owners can profit from a more energy efficient home, they often move before recouping the upgrade cost
• Long Island Green Homes program, an innovative approach to financing, provides capital for upgrades. Monthly repayments smaller than the savings they generate are paid through utility bills or property taxes, so the beneficiaries—future owners or current tenants—bear the costs.

  • Solution to getting around the problem of home upgrading financing
• power that devices consume on standby can account for up to 90 percent of the total energy used

  • Standby energy may account up to 90 percent of total energy used for home appliance
• experience with CFLs shows, to capture many of these opportunities manufacturers must ensure that the customer experience remains unchanged or improves.

  • To ensure that consumers are willing to switch to more efficient alternatives, the customer experience must remain unchange or improve
• xpectation of most companies that efficiency investments should pay back in one to four years—a problem for deeper retrofits. Second, energy-efficiency programs often arouse resistance because they may increase debt and divert money from revenue-enhancing projects.

  • Major issues why companies don't engage in energy efficiency upgrades for buildings.
• Total-cost-of-ownership purchasing criteria could help capture much of this opportunity.
• many purchasers in the commercial sector focus on acquisition rather than life cycle costs.

  • Issue for office devices - purchases focus on one time acquisition cost rather than life cycle cost

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• These include, for example, a requirement since the early 90s for reclaimed land to be built at a height of 125cm above the highest measured tidal level, as a buffer against rising sea levels.

  • Good Environmental Notes for people who still disbelieve

• essaging needs to reach people’s emotions and trigger fear about the dramatic consequences to come. Specifically, this means making future hardships vivid, personalized and credible
• greater effort to address the large-scale lifestyle changes that will make a significant difference. “I don’t want to have to make a zillion little decisions

• Tropical trees have grown bigger over the past 40 years and now absorb 20 percent of fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere
• tropical forests across the world remove 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
• noted that oceans absorb about 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

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• (56.2%, here in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration). As I understand it, by wasted we don't mean that it's used, but not used effectively. We mean that it is not used at all. It is the current dumped into the ground by power plants whose generation exceeds demand and other generated energy that accomplishes no task.
• s I understand it, no system can be perfectly effective at eliminating wasted energy, but if we managed to slash energy waste in half -- all other things being equal -- it'd be like eliminating roughly 25% of our energy-related emission

• "A community has to invest in the project themselves to manage it," insists White, 48. "It's bottom-up, not top-down."
• In separate conversations, both men declare themselves lucky to have found the other. "He's not what I expected at all," they say of each other, sounding similarly surprised.
• here needs to be a water committee. At least 80% of the community needs to sign up and raise money for the project, participate in its construction and up-keep," he says. That's how a project turns from top-down charity to bottom-up sustainability.

  • The only way a project work is not top down charity but bottom up involvement
• oor people do have some money, White observed. And millions of them spend an inordinate amount of that buying water from the equivalent of loan sharks and hucksters -- opportunists with a faucet.
• What if communities self-organized to get a loan to create their own wells or buy their way into water access? "We began to work with microfinance institutions [MFIs]
• specially important for the women, because research shows that projects that ultimately succeed are designed with them in mind, as well as maintained mostly by them
• masochistic, somewhat selfish sport
• 28 million people learned about the mission last December when they played Zynga's FrontierVille and were offered a chance to buy or give a Water.org-branded blue water bison
• Instead of showing pictures of Damon with desperate kids or wells with YOUR NAME HERE! plaques, visitors learn about the difficult struggle that comes with creating sustainable water projects, virtually shadowing a community's efforts as it goes through months of town-hall meetings, trainings, negotiations, and public debates. Upon signing up, people become digital ambassadors of sorts, with progress reports, even the disappointing ones, posted through their Twitter or Facebook feeds. Around 13% of those who sign up donate, and "65% get another person to come to the site," says McCamon. For a profession that deems a 2% clickthrough rate as success, that's an avalanche of engagement.

  • Using social media really effectively - Bringing people through the entire progress.

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• major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility.

• he test of our sincerity (or our hypocrisy) will be if everything we sell is useful, multifunctional where possible, long lasting, beautiful but not in thrall to fashion.

• He is adamant that in as much as the orang utan and rhinoceros, for example, depend on our help directly, they are also dependent on us “not knocking down the environment in which they live” and believes strongly that the answer simply lies in looking after the environment.
  
• need to raise the standard of living for women, allowing women to determine their choices and their primary roles in curbing human population growth.
• if Man being a more superior species would naturally be the fittest to survive at the expense of other species. He replied, “Only if you assume that human beings have no foresight.
• “If they use foresight, they can see that their survival, which is what we’re talking about, depends upon healthy environments,” he explained. Does this assume that Man would be driven by conscience? Probably by self-interest, he replied.

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• majority of the plastic found in the ocean are tiny pieces less than 1 cm. in size, with the mass of 1/10 of a paper clip.
• According to Project Kaisei, a non-profit also studying marine debris, 70 percent of the man-made waste that enters the ocean sinks to the bottom. That means that the plastic soup is only the 30 percent of the debris that floats. N
• • This report is good because it higlights the ratio of plastic to plankton in water
    
• One of Moore’s expeditions collected hundreds of samples of fish, and conducted necropsies on them: over 1/3 had ingested polluted plastic fragments, including one 2.5 inch fish that had 84 pieces of plastic in its tiny gut. In 1999, Moore’s research in the Central Pacific found six times more plastic than zooplankton in the water. In 2002, off the coast of Southern California, he discovered the ratio of plastic to plankton was 2.5
• Over 50 percent of the plastic samples studied contained PCBs, and over 75 percent contained PAHs
• plastic debris can attract and concentrate POPs up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater, and when consumed by marine animals, the POPs endanger both the creatures that ingest them and humans higher up on the food chain, especially infants. Moore has said, “No fish monger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.”

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