It’s a fundamental tenet of capitalism that individuals are rational and self-interested, and will act accordingly in the marketplace. Such is the social internalization of this principle that we tend to extend its logic to the majority of personal choices, assuming that the invisible hand has created an equilibrium of cost and utility. A common example of this is when choosing where to live; buying a home in the suburbs often necessitates commuting a longer distance for work and shopping, but this is balanced by having more space at a lower cost.

Or is it? A fascinating paper from the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics in Zurich seems to indicate that people systematically underestimate the impact of long commutes, corresponding with a highly statistically significant decline in subjective well-being. For whatever reason, people who have longer commutes are simply not being compensated enough financially, socially, or aesthetically for their choice. When it comes to commuting, perhaps we are not as rational as we should be.

Basically, people who don’t need cars to get around are happier. Do everything you can to find a job that’s close to home (or vice versa), ride a bike to work, and be glad.

I feel a bit odd posting about this given my general abhorrence for war, but technology for creating a ‘virtual minefield’ may be one of the only examples of a new killing machine that is less evil than its predecessor. Metal Storm’s multi-barreled, computer-controlled, non-mechanical machine gun is the basis of the weapon, which lays a minefield that consists not of explosives, but of proximity sensors. When the sensors are tripped, the gun fires a projectile to its exact location. The weapon can be turned off and on at any time, and apparently it can even fire ‘less-lethal’ projectiles, whatever that means. Military types will be happy because they gain inexhaustible coverage of the minefield as long as the sensors remain intact, and humanity on the whole will be happy because we’re no longer sowing the earth with perpetual, indiscriminate death. Once the gun is gone, so is the minefield.

Not like it’s going to be adopted, though, so long as landmines cost pennies and are so very effective at the maim-not-kill objective that helps to make them such a terrifying weapon of war.

Last night I watched a relatively recent documentary called Food, Inc. which takes a critical look at the American food industry and its transformation over the last 50 years or so.  It was pretty mind blowing and worth recommending (I’ve set a small personal goal to tell everyone to watch this film) as it’s full of terrifying, revealing and interesting interviews and studies.  I would say that I was a moderately aware consumer prior to watching the film, attempting to buy local, organic produce when possible, only buying meat from my local butcher and cooking as much as I reasonably can.  To say that Food, Inc. has reaffirmed my desire to live this way would be a massive understatement.  One thing it does as an informational film is to explain why ethical, healthy eating in 2010 is barely feasible for a vast majority of our population.  You won’t believe the grip that corporations have on this industry in the United States (and by extension, Canada).  I’ll let you pass your own judgments on the movie but do me a favour; watch it, and let me know what you think.   That neat little link down there will get you to the trailer.

Almost forgot to mention, not that I would ever condone piracy of any sort, but I have heard that it’s available somewhere on youtube…

Signs throughout Southeast Asia warn of explosives left over from the fucking retarded history of the place

As I commented on during my time in Laos, it’s interesting how a few countries are really taking the lead in dealing with removing mines and unexploded ordinance from conflicts of old.  Well, a bunch of scientists (grad students working on a side project by the sounds of things) from the University of Edinburgh have come up with a remarkable new tool that should really help all those overworked and underpaid people toughing it out one bomb at a time.  It’s a great story of how pure research can lead to all sorts of unforeseen applications.

I guess this is also a story about the marvels of genetic engineering, and the awesome things it can let us do.  These scientists in Edinburgh have been developing a procedure they’re calling “BioBricking,” essentially figuring out how to build bacteria able to respond to whatever cue the designer desires.  In this instance (one of the first instances, but here’s to hoping that there will be many more), bacteria have been programmed to glow in response to explosive residues.  For the cost of pennies, crop-dusting style aircraft can spread these bacteria in solution over fields thought to contain mines or other UXO - these fields will then glow green where the bombs are.  All the crazy work of digging the bombs out by hand and maneouvering the hundreds of pounds of explosive safely to a detonation area would remain, but the hardest part would be so much easier.

This lab is also working on a bacteria that will glow in response to arsenic.  I’m sure the other possibilities are virtually endless.  Good on ya, Prof. Elfick, and all your grad students.

There are probably bombs in this Laos field. Good luck finding them.

How many of you have heard the big science news?  According to a new special issue of Science, it appears that humans did not evolve from apes - instead, APES MAY HAVE EVOLVED FROM HOMINIDS!  (colloquially anyway - I should say that the common ancestor of apes and hominids looked more like  a hominid than an ape, but it doesn`t have the same zing.)  Scientists from the world over have concluded this based on an intense 17 year examination of an old-school primate named Ardi (from Ardipithicus ramidus), who predates the split of the hominid and ape lineages (i.e. is representative of their common ancestor).  Check out the picture of Ardi - to me, this team of scientists, and likely you too, she looks more hominid than ape.  What these means is that the common ancestor to hominids and apes probably stood vertically with an elongated spine - these are the primitive characters.  The bent backs, long arms, and arboreal lifestyle of the apes came later - these may in fact be the derived traits.   How`s that for a mindfuck?  Never mind that, how fun is it going to be to watch creationists battle with the correct terminology that humans display primitive morphological traits (though a big brain is still definately derived).

Anyway, I like the emotion in this picture.  It feels suitable for today.

As an unrepentent industrial design geek, new materials fascinate me, especially when they combine useful mechanical properties with useful sustainable properties - like biodegradability. Until now, there have been very few options to truly satisfy the brief for sustainable structures; bamboo is excellent where it can be applied, and metals and some plastics can be recycled, but the energy use and waste production is still undesirable.

Which is where DuraPulp comes in. Developed by the Södra Pulp Labs, the material is a composite of wood pulp and polylactic acid (PLA), a corn-borned bioplastic that is biodegradeable. By blending in approximately 25% PLA with the pulp, an extremely strong mouldable goo is produced that remains completely biodegradeable. My guess is that the mechanical properties would be a lot like glass-fiber reinforced thermoplastics.

The service life of the material with heavy use is estimated to be 3-4 years before it should be composted, so the designers cleverly chose a children’s chair as the first product to showcase the material.

It’s kind of a cliche among designers that whenever a new material is developed, a chair is the first thing to be made from it. I think bikes are probably second, and my mind is already reeling at the possibilities…

The lab is also developing other paper-based products such as a lightweight pulp foam, and a nano sheet material with tremendous strength and resiliency. Very exciting stuff.

A local architect, Les Klein, has come up with a plan to revitalize the Gardiner Expressway without demolishing it (and requiring us to build another Leslie Street Spit with the rubble, presumably). Klein’s idea is to adapt the highway, as with New York’s High Line, using a green roof on the elevated portion of the highway to create a mixed-use pedestrian/bike path, accessed by stairs and ramps, with elevators and commercial space at busier intersections. As with all green building projects, any electrical infrastructure is, of course, entirely self-powered by solar and wind-turbines.

While the environmental argument against the ‘tear-it-down-and-rebuild’ model of city development is a strong one, in my mind Klein doesn’t go nearly far enough. What we need isn’t a green-roof park atop an active highway; we need to scrap the highway entirely and turn it into a park. Let the Gardiner become a green conduit that cuts across the downtown core - a highway for bikes and pedestrians, like a Ride For Heart that happens year round. We can improve our urban green spaces, amend the eyesore, and cut off an artery that carries congesting vehicle traffic into the downtown core. Cities are for people, not cars.

A study by the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center posted over at the Green Car Congress has found that using electric vehicles as an integral aspect of a more robust, efficient, and intelligent grid system may be more feasible than previously thought.

As the blackout of 2003 demonstrated, our present grid system is in a fragile balance, and is distinctly geared towards central generation and distribution. Part of the problem stems from the disparity in electrical loading - high loads that occur during the day require fossil-fueled ‘peaker’ plants, while the clean base load generated by nuclear and hydro often goes underutilized at night. Creating a smart grid that can handle distributed microgeneration will go a long way towards making our electricity infrastructure more stable and efficient, and a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system that uses plug-in EVs is an oft-discussed proposal for balancing loads. By charging the batteries at night, EVs can take advantage of low-cost, low-impact electricity, and then feed it back into the grid during the day when they’re parked.

The common argument against V2G systems has been with respect to the additional cycle requirements that would be imposed on vehicle batteries, shortening the lifespan of what are currently a very expensive asset. This CEIC working paper, however, indicates that with modern lithium iron phosphate batteries (in this case, cells from A123 Systems), the capacity degradation after thousands of daily driving and V2G cycles is significantly less than 10%. Basically, it is eminently practical from a technical standpoint.

The paper also describes some of the economic aspects of a V2G system, and the utility incentives that may be necessary to encourage EV-users to plug their cars into the system. Since the benefit to the utilities (both economically and operationally) will likely exceed the relatively small peak-usage savings to the EV-driver, some feed-in tariff probably makes sense, especially when the greater social welfare benefits associated with the displacement of peaker plants is considered.

There is tons of information floating around about sustainability - and most of it is largely useless. Media articles and press releases trumpet new breakthroughs in vague terms that make it impossible (perhaps intentionally) to really quantify the virtue of a new process or product, something we have to do if we’re actually serious about building a sustainable future rather than merely paying lip service to it.

David MacKay has produced an excellent field guide called ‘Sustainable Energy - without the hot air’ for the more technical- and policy-minded among us, and best of all, he’s put it all online for free PDF download. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but I skimmed through the transportation section in the technical chapters at the back, and he puts some seriously useful hard facts at your disposal.

You can also buy a physical copy of the book, if you are so inclined. (I wonder if he’s included a discussion on the impacts of a hard copy vs. downloading and reading it on a computer…)

Laos is the most isolated country in Southeast Asia, a slash of thick forests, jagged mountains, and snaking rivers that cuts through the heart of the region. Until relatively recently, road access to other countries was virtually impossible, and the flow of people, goods, and information was along the Mekong or the Nam Ou rivers. Even today, nearly half of the settlements in the country have no road access.

While Laos is developing at an explosive rate, much of it remains relatively pristine, and it was fascinating for me to see first-hand the course that development has taken in these untouched areas. I’m going to use Laos as a microcosm for how I see the way that culture relates to the prospects for sustainable development in the Global South.

One of the most startling initial impressions while riding through the winding mountain roads was seeing huge swathes of forest on the mountainside slashed and burned. In much of northern Laos, this is how agriculture works; the burnt forests provide rich soil for planting crops, though they last only a single season. After the rice is harvested, the torrential rainy season washes away the arable soil on the unterraced hillside, and the local farmers repeat the process somewhere else. In a sparsely populated country where three-quarters of the people live rurally, its easy to see how farmers might imagine that their natural bounty is inexhaustible. Especially when that style of agriculture is what they have always practiced. Trying to convince a poor, scattered population that they need to break from tradition and work harder to foster more sustainable methods of agriculture ‘for the good of the planet’ is hardly a challenge unique to Laos.

However, while food and farming may be firmly rooted in cultural history, there is some reason for optimism when it comes to the elements of development that have no traditional precedent; namely power and communications. In these circumstances, the best technology wins, and when it comes to remote regions with inaccessible, inhospitable geography and climates, more often than not, the winner is renewables.

When I visited the village of Ban Kiew Kan in northern Laos, a day’s trek by foot from the village of Muang Ngoi, itself accessible only by boat, I would never have expected to see electricity. Yet every home had a compact-fluorescent bulb, and the chief’s house was even decked out with a satellite dish. Fossil-fueled generators would have been impossible option here in the mountains, with no practical or affordable way to resupply them with fuel, and so the solution came in the form of micro-hydro.

Scattered among the infinite streams that flow down from the mountains, the locals had set up wooden scaffolds that held machines resembling tiny outboard motors, their long driveshafts dipping into the current. These generators were enough to provide a modest, but simple, cheap, and consistent electrical supply to remote villages. The villagers aren’t ‘going green’ to pump up their eco-cred; they’re doing it because fossil fuels just don’t make sense for them.

Local micro-generation shows great promise to spur development in areas that lack access to transportation, let alone grid electricity. This sort of leap-frogging is certainly not restricted to power generation; the mobile phone has been the basis for a tremendously important communications revolution in the Global South, especially Africa. Without even the option of expensive, infrastructure-intensive land-lines, mobile phones in Africa have quickly become one of the fastest growing and most profitable industries in the entire world.

The take-home point is, while there are obvious challenges associated with shedding bad habits, places where those bad habits have not yet had a chance to take root can become great breeding grounds for sustainable development. When cleaner technologies win on the basis of practicality, availability, and affordability, is it any surprise to see their adoption?