For the past couple weeks I stopped diving. When going about this I thought there was no way I could go even a few days without driving, at first I wasn’t to successful driving to the store. The next couple weeks I was successful without driving I got adjusted enough that most days not driving didn’t cause any problems. Until, last week I got sick and went to the doctors, this is when I realized that driving is sometimes needed. The main thing I realized is how bad I used to abuse driving. After this project I will start to drive again but the thing I will change in my life is a lot more carpooling. With four roommates we are very wasteful on energy consumption. Within these past weeks three of the four of us started to change around our schedules a little bit so we would only have to take on trip instead of three. The thing that I believe will keep us to continue to drive together is the raise in gas. whenever I go home it cost around $20. Being a college student trying to cut back on spending this would be a simple way. This project started off as something I thought would be hard to accomplish. I thought most days I would have something negative to say about how it was an inconvenience. After all of this I realized specially living by campus the amount I used to drive was ridiculous.

The green movement delay

        last week in class we talked about how colleges are going green. Colleges then get grades on how well they are doing Western Michigan University got a B+ one of the higher grades in the state. With my second degree in supply chain management i was wondering if they had a grading system for companies. 

        When I did a little research and the most recent article i could find was from 2009.  It was shocking to find out how bad most companies did.  They were judged in six different categories, which included chain of custody, endangered forests, plantations, responsible forestry, recycling and reduction, and other leadership. The section of companies that did the best where office retail sectors. with the average overall grade of a B. The worst company was officemax whose grade in endangered forests was a D+. I found this crazy that some companies as big as this cared so little.

       The worst section was the most common general retail. This group included Target, Walmart/Sam’s Club, Amazon.com, and Costco. With the best out of this group being Target who still got a D+ grade. The worst was Costco who got F’s across the board except in recycling and reduction. When reading more I found out that Costco had no plans to change anything in there supply chain management ways. Walmart has started to work with conservation groups to learn a little bit on how to become better overall they have a lot of room to improve since they are at a D+ right now. 

         A big reason I decided to double major was because I figured most companies would start to change, their has been a few. I never would have thought that a lot of these major companies would be so poor in taking care of our planet. The companies that allow lower prices normally did worst on their grades I started to wonder when will these companies have to change there ways. 

Hydropower

         This week I looked more in depth into hydropower. A typical hydropower plant is a system with three parts. An electric plant where the electricity is produced; a dam that can be opened or closed to control water flow; and a reservoir where water can be stored.

         Hydropower is the type of renewable energy we have taken the most advantage of. Over the forty years hydropower has accounted for about 40 percent of all renewable energy produced. We could start to make this number higher as a energy source. The United States has around 80,000 dams. I don’t think we need to create anymore dams to help increase the amount of energy we from hydropower. We should take advantage of the ones we got, of those 80,000 dams only three percent of them have hydroelectric systems running in them. This seemed like a waste to me if we already have dams set up we should at least use them to their full potential. One of the main advantage to creating hydropower sites in these existing dams is that hydropower is  already proven to work. The biggest hydro plant in the United States is located at the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in northern Washington. 

          Although I still prefer this type of energy over fossil fuels I think that solar and wind power have less negative effect involved when using this type of power. To start off with dams back up water causing it to flood the natural surroundings. Dams make it nearly impossible for natural fish like salmon to survive. With blocking off the river has its negative effects also downstream not having consistent water flow. Overall I believe Hydropower is a good step in the right direction but we could also go a better way to.  

         This past weekend I realized how sometimes there is just no way around driving. I got sick last week wednesday I tried to put off the doctor for a while just cause I would rather not go. When The sickness started to wake me up at night I decided to get it checked out. Since I was home the doctors was about five miles away and on no rest decided to drive. But other then the dive to the doctors it was really easy this week not driving since I wasn’t feeling well enough to go anywhere anyways. 

Sun helping the earth

One of the greatest resources we have is rarely used. With solar energy not running out anytime soon like the recent fossil fuels we are using now its a great energy source to switch too. Unlike wind power, solar power can be found anywhere. There are many different ways to use the sun to benefit us and I will talk about a couple that can be established now and in the future. 

The main way the sun can help use out is threw photovoltaic power or from solar panels. With the use of these panels you can cut back on enough energy to actually put energy back into the system. The part I think thats best about this type of renewable energy is it produces a lot of energy and be used just about anywhere. To make it easy for the energy to be transfered rooftops are a great place for solar panels. I believe not using solar panels to its full potential is one of the US biggest mistake. Since the US was the first to make these and now one of the lowest users of this resource was huge opportunity missed out. We have made an increase in how we use this with a 17% growth in the past year. With only using a small amount of the energy the sun gives us we could supply enough free energy for the world. 

          The next way to use the energy is by passive solar energy. This form can be acquired by architectural design. When we learn how to build better buildings and housing lighting, heating, and cooling cost will go down. With these being many of the main waste of energy just changing the places we live will cut back on energy. Realizing that the we have been going about building our homes and buildings the wrong way didn’t come as a complete shock. What I was surprised about was that it took so long to catch on. Old building had a primitive form of this with how the were designed such as indented windows. With new advances in architecture we I feel like we are moving in the right direction.

          To try and see how dependent I was from a car I have cut back a majority of my driving time. Its has know been a week and a half. The first day was kind of a failure with driving to go get food and also the grocery store. After driving twice in one day I realized I would have to go out once more to grab a bike pump. Since then its either been walking or riding my bike. It hasn’t been to bad except for the rain on the way to class. This weekend I will have to slip up a little on my lack of driving since I am going home, but my roommate and I decided to carpool together home since we live by each other. The sad thing is we have only done this once or twice before since normally our schedules are a little bit different. As gas prices continue to rise how many people will start to change around the schedules to carpool? The I started to think at what price will people start to demand a change in the type on energy we are using. 

Bill McKibben eaarth

When reading eaarth I found it amazing how much change has happened over the years. I heard of most these effect that were stated in the book but never really thought of how permeant they can actually be. Normally setting records are something to be proud of but these are a couple we wish we could take back.  Starting with in the summer of 2007 when  Arctic ice caps were 1.1 million square miles smaller then ever recorded in history. From 2003 and 2008, more then a trillion tons of Greenland’s ice melted. Its not just the ice thats melting from a report from the New York Times “ the last thirty years have yielded four times as many weather-related disasters as the first three quarters of the 20th century combined.” Another major factor that is being affected is the oceans, they are already 30 percent more acidic then before.

The part that angered me the most was the lack of early caring for the earth. When researchers found out that for about the past ten thousand years earth was at a sustainable amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which was around 275 parts per million and before being worried about how to stop raising the levels they just made a level that would be suitable to live with. I believe with the lack of information they know just setting a suitable number based on doubling the historic concentrations was the wrong way to go in the first place. With putting the amount at 550 parts per million made it look like we had plenty of time to figure an alternative out. Later reading that the actual suitable amount was 350 parts per million made the time to change right now, since we are already over that level at 390 parts per million. Even after all of this we still haven't changed much with how we are going to get fuel. Maybe the raise in gas will help out people to not consume so much of it but I feel like there is still way to much that needs to be done since its been put off for so long.  

In my second blog I read about the struggles that the US has had with presidents saying they were going to help out the situation but normally did the bare minimum if anything to switch to sustainable energy. I then book all of the government officials talked about how they didn’t want their grandchildren to wonder why they left the earth in the condition its in. I fell like they could do much more improvement politically to make the US not consume so much fossil fuels. One of the fears for the future is with higher temperatures rising. The ability to grow food will go down, estimates of around 20 to 40 percent less wheat being able to grow. So why hasn’t there been a change? Even with presidents coming in and out of office promising to switch more to sustainable fuels there has been little change. Fossil fuels are an easy way out, they help increase what humans have been able to do. For example with one barrel of oil can supply enough energy as twenty-five thousand hours of human manual labor. The first president to switch us off of this will have troubles explaining to most the population why production is changing. 

In chapter two I like how he pointed out the cost we already use to fix things and what can be done to prevent such expenses in the long run. I already stated that I believe for most americans wouldn’t understand or think its not necessary for such changes. I believe we have to start somewhere before there is no turning back. I agree with the earth we live on today isn’t the same as it use to be, but I also with the technology we have and as long as its implemented we still can change the damage to some point. I believe it has to be a process that we have to go through and not just one giant change. We have to take action fast but not skip any corners and just take guesses like the past.