Jonathankiely's Blog

The Frontline

jonathankiely — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:13:43 +0000

This discussion is about the introduction ofcarbon tax and options of renewable energy in the future

Building Sustainable Communities week 12

jonathankiely — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:06:50 +0000

This was the last week in sustainable development and it was a very encouraging positive week where we found out that there are many people participating these days in building sustainable communities. It just shows us that when people get together with the same goals things such as sustainability can be achieved.

Here is a short video of an example of a sustainable community.

Cloughjordon eco village

The topics we have covered throughout the module have definitely aided us in understanding what factors people take in to account when building sustainable communities.They have to figure out how they can be as friendly as possible to the environment while also having a comfortable lifestyle. Its clear the people involved in these projects are very dedicated in what they do.They are willing to put the environment first where as in other towns and cities it’s not the environment that comes first at all. People involved in these projects have different values to other peolple.They value the natural landscape around them and respect it.

These people are just like the first inhabitants who arrived in Ireland a long time ago.Those peolpe worshiped the environment and had great respect for it. But there has been terrible changes in values since then.Values in today’s world revolves around money! People building these sustainable communities are making a very important change in today’s world. I’m sure if others were encouraged to get evolved in these projects they would gain much satisfaction from it because they know they are involved in making a change in order to save our planet.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this module as it gave us a deep insight into sustainable development. It also gave us an opportunity to explore and research particular aspects that we found interesting especially in the projects. It allows us to see all the links that can be made with all the different topics we have covered throughout the module and most beneficial shows us that there is a solution to achieving sustainable development in our world

My Project and poster

jonathankiely — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:06:32 +0000

Poster

How could Ireland make itself resilient to interruptions in its energy imports 23

Week 11 Law and Policy local, national and european

jonathankiely — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:21:24 +0000

From this weeks lectures its clear that the european union does want to improves its environmental policies but its going to be a very though job for them to do this.The reason Diversity! When I used to think of the european union I always just thought about Ireland and the E.U forgetting completely about the other 26 countries. Thats why I always thought to myself how cant the E.U just implement an a clear environmental policy for us to have zero carbon emissions by 2030 of course at this time I was just thinking of Ireland and forgeting that if the E.U wanted to implement this policy they would have to take a look at all 27 countries first and weigh out their options and the put in place a fair environmental policy that each of the member states would be able to cope with and accept.

I can obviously now understand why it is so hard for the E.U to improve environmental progress quicly.the E.U has great diversity.For example there is 23 different working languages, different population densities, different climates and different cultures and much to be taken into account when putting legislation in place. This is why laws that we would love to have in place right now cannot be put in place.Legislation is a lengthy process through out the E.U and this is going to have to change if we are going to tackle the likes of climate change and sustainable development throughout the E.U.

Sustainabilty Metrics week 10

jonathankiely — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:51:29 +0000

Another interesting week indicating to us once again how complex sustainable development is. This week we learned how hard it is to actually measure sustainability worldwide.So many different aspects come into consideration when we are trying to measure sustainability and these aspects can be different in different countries making it practically impossible to measure the sustainability of a country. We also see that ecological footprints can be helpful. Personally for me it’s not the exact figures that are helpful but the information that they show can be quite a shock which in my opinion is a good thing because it can show the world how we are currently using more resources that the world can provide. I would not rely on these figures completely though as ecological footprints do not take everything into account especially when I found out that they don’t consider important aspects such as water scarcity.

There is no standard sustainability metric which can be used worldwide unfortunately but this sends out is a very important message to us.It reminds us that the reason we can’t measure global sustainability is because of the complexity of the globe.Which in turn reminds us of how carefull we have to be when implementing policies. For example Ireland now plans to be a european leader in electric vehicles in the future which sound like a great thing but are we jumping in to this decision too soon?For examle where are we going to get all the lithium to produce these car batteries? Is there enough lithium for these car batteries? According to an article in the Irish Times “Mitsubishi admits that lithium supplies are so tight that by 2015 electric cars may be uncompetitive to build,”I think this a decision that we have made too soon and I think the government just wanted to show that they are trying to do something positive for the environment.

But while we prosper from the clean electric cars countries who produce the lithium for these cars will suffer. Not in economic terms but in environmental terms they will.The article mentions that ”mining lithium is a dirty process. Vast amounts of chlorine are used . . . and this destroys the local water table. Industrial lithium production has already laid waste thousands of square kilometres, leaving water supplies too polluted even for agriculture, and ending farming in parts of Chile and Argentina. It threatens to do the same in Bolivia.” This example of what we are doing links back to the Rebound Effect which we discussed a few weeks ago.Basically it shows us that it is extremely hard to know what outcomes will occur from policies that are implemented. This also links to the sustainability metrics showing us how hard it is for the human species to make predictions bout our environment. In the end there is one thing we will always be certain of and that is that we will always be dependant on our natural resources.

Critical Thinking

jonathankiely — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:03:50 +0000

“Critical thinking is the identification and evaluation of evidence to guide decision-making. A critical thinker uses broad in-depth analysis of evidence to make decisions and communicate his/her beliefs clearly and accurately.” www.cricalthinking.com

This is one of the many definitions I came upon when looking for a definition for critical thinking but I agreed with this one the most so I decided to go by this one.When I first heard of critical thinking at the start of this module I found it very hard to get my head around the whole idea of critical thinking.But now having come this far through the module I have definitely a much better understanding of the critical thinking process.I think one of the objectives of this module was to get us to become critical thinkers and to be able to understand that not everything we hear about and read about is true.Also i have learned that to become a critical thinker you need to be able to make your own decisions based on your own beliefs.I think one of the first insights I got into critical thinking was week 2 or 3 when we were asked to pick which groups we would join in order to address the problem of climate change.We all had to become critical thinkers in that situation.We were given the evidence and the facts of each group and we all then had to analyse this information and based on our own beliefs pick one of the groups to be in.I remember I picked the green energy group because my belief was that the sustainability development group were not going to be able to address the problem of climate change at a fast enough pace where as I tought the green energy group would based on the information I had analysed

Critical thinking has become easier to understand as we have progressed through the module.All the activities and discussions that took place gave me a good understanding of critical thinking.To me critical thinking is about analysing society and what societies views are bout many different aspects such as climate change and energy.Also I think it involves analysing your own position in society and finding out where you stand out.To do this it is important to ask ourselves does society need to change and if yes how? Clearly I would definitely say yes to this question and my answer to the how part would be to get everyone in society to become critical thinkers and to educate them on how to become one.I think if this was brought into a subject in schools it would be very interesting to see how young students would react to it.I think for certain it would help young students to understand that not everything they hear and read about is clear.Who knows it might even help young students to become more aware of the greed that nearly all of society takes part in today especially in the developed world and hopefully this may change the way society is acting and living today.

Corporate Social Responsibility

jonathankiely — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:53:42 +0000

CSR is about how companies manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society. This was the most simple and best definition of corporate social responsibility i found at www.mallenbaker.net

This is a good video i came across explaining Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Take the following illustration:I think this is a great diagram to show the common business in society today

When companies decide to adopt corporate social responsibility it can have a positive or negative effect on the company depending how truthful the company is about their policies.For example an article in the irish daily mail was released recently talking about chinese sweatshop where workers are slumped on their desks with exhaustion.These workers are working 15 hour shifts in miserable conditions in up to 30 degrees heat!The only time they get to sleep is on their mere 10 minute breaks.They do all of this for as little as 39cent an hour making computer mice and webcams for Microsoft.This investigation has been on going for 3 years by the National Labour committee a human rights organisation that campaigns for workers worldwide.However Microsoft weren’t the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE but it does account for about 30% of the factory’s work.Other companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Logitech also use these KYE systems.What i cannot understand is how a 3 year investigation has being going on by the NLC and Microsoft says they will only start to investigate the situation now!I find this odd when clearly it states in Microsoft’s CSR report that one of their objectives is “To provide a healthy and safe work environment for employees”

Picture of the Exhausted Chinese factory employees at KYE systems sleeping during their 10 minute breaks.

The above example shows how sometimes if businesses are not careful about what they publish in their (CSR) reports it can end up on having a negative effect on the company and its profits especially when the media gets involved.Companies like Microsoft have to make sure that their policies are not only implemented in their own country but in the foreign countries where they are located aswell.

Shift Happens

jonathankiely — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:42:51 +0000

I said I would put this video up as it shows how times have changed and leaves us wondering what society and new inventions are going to occur in the next 50 to 100 years

Week 7 Responsible Production and Consumption

jonathankiely — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:05:19 +0000

Week 7 was an enjoyable week but also a very eye-opening week aswell as we realised how wasteful producers and consumers can be when it comes to responsible production and consumption. To me it became very clear that people in the developed world are much more greedy and expect much more than people do in the developing world.We throw products away to easily in the developing world.Its clear we have become a throw away society!We clearly don’t value all the products we buy because we simply have too many of them to give enough attention time to.The reason for all this is because of planned obsolescence which is adopted by almost every manufacturing company today!Manufacturing Companies today try make products that will eventually fail or become less desirable over time so that consumers will keep buying more and more products.A typical product that would adopt this approach would be any mobile phone.These days we can buy a new phone and by the next year that phone has been upgraded and so much more advanced that we think the phone that we bought is no longer any use to us because it has become so out of date so therefore we buy the new one and throw away the old one! Here are two contrasting pictures of how the Nokia mobile phones have become so advanced in the last few years.

Old Nokia phones

New advanced Nokia mobile phones

This planned obsolescence can also be seen in the selling of cars.For example in some cars these days it has become so dear to replace a broken part of the car that the consumer would be better off to update the car and buy a new more efficient one.However in stark contrast with this is the developing world where they do simply not have enough money to buy a new car so they try to repair it instead which is why we see a lot of old cars in the likes off Cuba and some other poor developing countries.

Cubans put a lot of effort and ingenuity into maintaining old careds like this 1952 Ford Custom. With an average salary of $19 a month, most Cubans could not afford a new car even if they were available. Photo by Tina Gallagher.

But it isn’t all bad for example a clothing company named Patagonia are making clothes and other out door gear and they try to make their products cause least harm to the environment. They are an inspiration to many people who are keen on trying to reduce environmental damage to the world that we live in and i hope that they can continue to encourage other companies to try to be less harmful to the environment when producing their products. Here is an excellent video about Patagonia and what contribution they make to reducing the worlds environmental problems

Week 6 Ireland’s Economy and Environment:Future Perspectives

jonathankiely — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:32:52 +0000

An interesting week to be honest.It was interesting to see how the economic side of things has such a big role when it comes to trying to improve our environment.It was also a very informative week where we learned about Ireland’s past present and future economic and environmental issues.To me its clear that in the past Ireland has neglected environmental issues and concentrated on economic issues a lot more.To be honest I wouldn’t really blame us when you think of it before the Celtic Tiger Ireland was a very depressing place to say the least especially for a young person growing up.There was very little job prospects which led to thousands migrating in order to search for work each year.Investment in education wasn’t the greatest and disposable income was low.This lead to believe that economic matters were more important than environmental matters and so we concentrated on improving our economy regardless of the environ mental effect.To do this we gave cheap corporal tax and tax incentives to foreign companies.We created an economic openness to global markets which encouraged many multi national companies to come and set up in Ireland for example Dell.This lead to job creation which was very beneficial to the economy because it gave rise to public expenditure growth.Also by joining the E.U we eventually entered the Celtic Tiger years where we experienced rapid economic growth between 1995 and 2007.But this all came to an end!

Which leads us to where we are at present,in a recession with not only economic problems but environmental problems aswell!In my opinion we are clearly now a lot more environmentally aware.Evidence of this is in our recent schemes and taxes that have been introduced.I think that taxes are being proposed these days not only to improve the economy but to improve our environmental matters aswell which have become more of a concern in recent times especially with the extreme flooding and freezing conditions we experienced this winter.For example our car scrappage scheme is a positive scheme that tries to reduce carbon emissions whilst helping to increase car sales and keep workers in employment in these areas.Aso the carbon tax is another positive small step into reducing carbon emissions.This is a double dividend tax because it is encouraging people to reduce carbon emissions by eventually switching to electric cars in a few years time and it is also expected to generate 330 million euros in tax annually.Finaly Sustainable Energy Ireland have also introduced a number of grants available to households so that house will avail of these new technologies which will help Ireland to become a leader in sustainable supply and the use of energy.

For our future perspectives i saw two very interesting videos one which was one by Marc Faber who talks about sovereign debt and mentions Ireland as a particular vulnerable country to this crisis.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9CSbUXTYqI

The other video is an interview with Stephen Kinsella where he talks about his new book and also mentions some of the future possibilities that ha predicts will happen to Ireland by 2050https://www.tv3.ie/videos.php?video=14559&locID=1.65.74&page=1