Party Time

This week was a little easier, as the new things started to become more habitual. Taking shorter, fewer showers wasn't a big deal since I wasn't running or playing lacrosse. I managed to drive less, which, although it wasn't one of my main objectives, felt good. I did drive to the Georgetown farmer's market, which was pretty cool, and got some bread and eggs. This week I'm planning on getting some tomatoes and peppers, anybody wanna split a basket and save some money? I was surprised that the eggs were cheaper than the Central Market "cage free" eggs, so I'm certainly not going back to HEB for eggs anymore. I was also able to avoid creating a lot of trash, with most of it coming from the paper towels I use to clean my frying pan, (as opposed to washing it with soap and water.)

Friday night was a different story, as my fake frat threw our big party of the year. We obviously used a couple hundred red cups, between the guests and beer pong, but most of the guests managed to hold onto one cup all night. As I cleaned up afterwards, I grabbed a large trash bag, and filled it up with all the beer cans I could find, which I will, at some point, sell to pay for the gas of a trip to Austin or something.

Jobs

Of course, without jobs, who needs to go anywhere? Jobs are where most people go during the day, and without jobs, there's no reason to go buy anything, because then there is no money. 

A career in an environmentally friendly future would, like most things, be quite different than today. Almost all jobs will be local, with people either working in the communities they live in, or telecommuting. Most work will be in service of some kind, like teaching or providing healthcare and transportation (through public transportation.) The rest of the work will be in producing food and other necessities. Day to day life will probably become much more sedentary, with people working within walking or cycling distance of home, or actually from home, by telecommuting. 

Most people will wind up working in service industry, including education, food production, and maintenance. Education will probably not change much, except teachers will generally live in the towns that they teach in. Food production will change drastically, becoming less mechanized, and not using monoculture farms that now dominate food production. Animal power could conceivably replace mechanized power, and the care of these animals will provide other jobs for local workers. Maintenance will not change in terms of methods, generally, but what is maintained will change, as automobiles and high tech devices are replaced by less complicated appliances and modes of transportation. 

Overall, careers will be based more around the local economy, and even those that telecommute will probably be involved in production of their own food, or something else, even if just at the level of having a small backyard garden.

In short, careers in the future will be more involved in the local economy, and international trade will decrease dramatically. This has happened in small ways already. As gas has gotten more expensive, people have started working closer to home, even taking new career directions, and this benefits the small towns that gain jobs while the larger cities, especially hub cities, become less attractive as work places. Communities could possibly become more closely knit, and more flexible to adjust to change, or become isolated, and shut themselves off to outsiders, to an extent. Beyond that, I don't want to hazard any guesses, but that is where I see jobs going in the future. 

Transportation

Since the first issue most people associate with hurting the environment is cars and transportation, I will jump on the bandwagon and go there first. 

The gasoline powered automobile has changed the face of the United States, given the freedom to travel to the masses, and become an icon of Yankee Ingenuity. And while Yankee Ingenuity has recently followed Japanese Ingenuity in making smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, the fact that oil is a finite source means that no matter how efficient our vehicles are, oil will eventually be either no longer available or prohibitively expensive for use by most people. This means that, barring introduction of new powerplants, such as an economically viable electric engine, the era of the automobile is coming to a close. While diesel may be easily produced from plants, competition with food production will keep the price of diesel high, possibly restricting it to larger transportation companies. An interesting historical point, Rudolf Diesel, the German who invented the diesel engine, originally wanted to make fuel from coal dust, then switched to vegetable oil, preferably peanut oil, as the source of fuel for his engines.

What will take its place is, obviously, a system of public transportation similar to Europe’s, trains, busses, etc. Most of these vehicles will be powered by electric engines, which returns to an earlier era in this country. When both electric and internal combustion engines were new technology, there was heavy competition in many cities about whether to power city vehicles with electric or gasoline motors. Eventually, the cheapness of oil fuel won out, but many cities, including New York and Chicago, used electric vehicles for everything from delivering milk and mail to picking up trash. The electricity for these vehicles will come from various sources, which I will discuss in a later post. 

For shorter distance travel, such as commuting to work (and hoping that 50 mile commutes also die out,) methods such as bicycles will take greater prominance. Already increasing in numbers, bicycles are able to carry moderate loads, and variations, such as tricycles that can be used as taxis. Animal-based transportation may also come back into common usage, especially for larger loads.

Perhaps powerplants for car-sized vehicles will advance enough in the near future to keep such transportation viable, but the changes in infrastructure required to acommodate the new technologies will take a long time and massive amounts of capital. This, along with price, is one of the main problems facing Hydrogen vehicles. If these obstacles are overcome, perhaps a car will remain in every garage, but hopefully, the cost of ownership will be sufficient to promote other environmentally friendly forms of transportation.

An Environmental Crystal Ball

Hi, so this is my first blog venture, and I'm not sure how to really get this whole thing started, so I'll guess I'll tell everyone about myself. My name is Sam Marsh, I'm a student of Environmental Studies at Southwestern University, and this will sort of be an exposition of my growing, changing, and (hopefully) improving views on the environment and where this field of study will take the world in the next few years. 

So now and introduction to my first broad topic. I started this with a short paper in mind to enable myself to organize and understand what I see as a future American lifestyle, one with a mind towards living in community with the natural world. That quickly blossomed beyond any semblance of a short paper, and some friends suggested formatting it as a series of blog posts. So I eventually decided to go ahead and make a blog. So, here is one vision of the future, from a young, optimistic point of view. 

What will soon follow are my interpretations of trends I see in American society, both the positive and the negative aspects. I will tackle one subject at a time, and hopefully, will eventually tie all of it together, to form a cohesive philosophy towards the environment and the humans living in it. I am no fortune teller, I know no secrets about the environment, I am just trying to express what I see and feel, and hope that it can help you clarify your feelings and beliefs.