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Could it be? Could we be getting a U.S. Chief Technology Officer? It certainly seems possible, with our most technologically savvy President in office. If we were to have such a role, it would most definitely enable Obama to intelligently craft many of the solutions to the issues he has been talking about, such as healthcare, climate change, energy independence, government 2.0, etc.
Technology Review has a good interview with one of the names being bandied about for holding such a post, Cisco’s Padmasree Warrior.
A collision of feeds — “Imagine” on iTunes and @guykawasaki’s Tweet about the infographic below — led me down the path of imagining where we would be if we hadn’t spent the estimated $3 trillion on the war…I bet we’d be really close to energy independence already, no?
Nicholas Kristof’s recent New York Times article, entitled “Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’?,” affirmed much of my own thinking about the future of our food source. As part of my responsibility as chairwoman of my local municipality’s Open Space-Farmland Preservation Committee, I am to ensure we enable sustainable agriculture and help improve the economy of farming in town. We have experienced first hand how challenging this can be. Some neighbors don’t like the smell or noise farms make. Others think a farm stand at the side of the road is tacky and want it moved “elsewhere.” Many are supportive, but simply do not understand “keeping NJ green” means they actually need to buy at the local farm stands before going to the big box stores. Regardless, changing behaviors will always be difficult and we soldier on in the hopes that a new, more reform-minded Secretary of Food is appointed to straigten this mess out.
What really showed me just how important fixing our food system is, was an inteview of Michael Pollan by John Battelle at the November Web 2.0 Summit. The interview centers on Pollan’s recent New York Times article, entitled “Farmer in Chief,” where he lays out how dealing with our food problem will also be the way for President-elect Obama to address climate change, oil independence and healthcare costs as promised.
Think about it…we currently drive production for the cheapest but worst kind of food–high fructose corn syrup (think sugar) and hydrogenated soy oils (think fast food and trans-fats). By doing so, poor farming habits occur like mass feed lots, high pesticide (petroleum) and fertilizer (natural gas) use and increases in processing and transportation. Keeping this kind of system prevents making any dent in oil independence or significant climate change and significantly reduces the quality of the end product in terms of its nutrition. Those end products have proven to be the leading causes of cancers, diabetes, stroke and heart attack. Other than being cheap in the short term, there is little good or inexpensive about our current food system.
In town, we are striving to create a series of community gardens for those without large backyards, farm stands for local farmers to sell and outreach programs to show residents how to create a backyard garden which will feed them well, compost their green wastes and even keep farm animals, like chickens, on a small scale. I personally believe, as Pollan suggests, we need to look to the old-world farmer to help us adjust to more appropriate farming practices. Few family farmers wanted the Monsanto’s and agriculture lobbyists of the world and they were right! Pollan is far more eloquent in his interview than I am here. Eat sunshine!
I recently had the privilege of attending the Virtual Energy Forum and was thrilled with the experience. Not only was the forum itself excellent, but so too was its content. The experience begins not by slogging to the airport, getting on a plane and checking into a massive convention hall, but rather after logging in from my computer wherever I already happened to be. Attendees were able to browse an Exhibit Hall and interact with exhibitors via live chat. Sessions were held interview style, for the most part, and virtual audience questions were seamlessly integrated throughout.
Though many “virtual” conferences have begun popping up, they often feel as though they have been planned in RL and VR is an afterthought. How many times have we seen a list of files for download or supposed live microblogging of an event slow or stop all together because the event’s wifi is down or insufficient to handle the load. The VEF seemed to be setup and managed from a completely virtual perspective. As the trend of low RL conference turnout increases given the tight economy and operational “greening,” more and more conferences should become truly virtual.
The content of the VEF will be available for 90 days. The Hess and Merck sessions were particularly interesting and described much about what both companies are thinking and doing in the “green.”
As per Esteban’s comments on my last post, I thought it would be helpful to list some of the more real examples of how enterprises are Greening IT. Most initiatives are focused primarily on energy efficiency. I believe this is a common trend, because “green” is still equated with “more expensive” and reducing energy costs is the easiest way to quantify why IT should go green. It is also the biggest, low hanging fruit!
I felt it more important to research those initiatives completed or in process by non-technology enterprises, rather than on technology manufacturers. Most hardware manufacturers are focusing on producing products with greater energy efficiency, lowering heat emissions from products and offering free recycling programs for products. And, most software manufacturers are focusing on reducing the need to travel/meet in person or on reducing the use of paper in the office as well as between a business and its customers (e.g. banking, insurance).
Google is included, however, because it spans both the enterprise and manufacturer role to some degree, and is so far ahead of most, I would be remiss in leaving it out.
Completed/In Process
- Google’s Commitment to Sustainable Computing
- Fujitsu Green Datacenter Cuts Water Use by 80%
- Top 12 Green-IT Users: No. 2 Discovery Communications LLC
- Top 12 Green-IT Users: No. 10 Marriott International Inc.
- Monsanto’s New $21 Million Datacenter Earns LEED Certification
- Enterprise Rent-A-Car Touts Green Benefits of IT Upgrade
- U.S. Navy Intranet Realizes Big Savings Through Virtualization
Planned
Why is it that the so-called “civilized” world always takes the easy way out and in the end winds up shooting itself in the foot?
There’s been so much in the media recently about the rising price of corn, the domino effect that higher cost has been having on our staple foodstuffs like meat, milk, bread, etc. and all because of farmers selling their crops to biofuel manufacturers. (Though I agree that is having an effect, I would suggest some of that increase in cost is also due to $145 barrels of oil.) There’s also been a lot of print around countries tearing down the rainforest so farmers can plant sugar cane and sell it to biofuel manufacturers. Both crops by the way take about as much or more energy to make the biofuel than you will ever get from the biofuel itself. All in the name of saving the environment, we are actually just killing it faster.
If the energy ratio for biomass were to work out in our benefit, why could we not have looked at plant scourges first, like kudzu, duckweed or algae, and tried to use those as biofuel sources? These are all things that have little to no effect on the world’s food supply, will grow almost anywhere in their horticultural zones and are actually trying to be eradicated from some ecologies they have overtaken with their amazingly fast growth rates. Based on the Cornell calculation the energy associated with production of these “crops” could be nil since they are such invasive species, not sure how much of an effect that might have, but it could be worth a test or two…
