Holding the Green Revolution Together
According to some experts, we’re on the verge of a ‘green revolution’ — a time when environmentally friendly products and practices will not only make good environmental sense, they will also make good business sense.
According to an ongoing series in the New York Times, new software, sensors, materials and information delivery systems are providing the opportunity to build more environmentally friendly (and safer) roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure projects.
In one example, the integration of these new technologies could allow governments and power companies to reduce peak loads on power grids by 15 percent, which would reduce the need for 30 large coal-fired power plants over a 20-year period. Similar advances are projected in food distribution systems, shipping, water management and more.
In another interesting example, a small metal foundry in Chester, N.Y. has found that it makes good business sense to ‘go green.’ The company casts architectural hardware using an ‘Eco Brass,’ which uses no lead, and they have developed other practices that allow their entire facility to produce less than half the emissions of a Toyota Camry. And yet, the company’s Eco Brass costs just 20 cents more per pound than standard leaded brass and 40 cents less per pound than brass made using bismuth, a lead alternative.
To be sure, this ‘revolution’ is still in its infancy, however, and there will be many dead-ends as we search for the path to a cleaner planet and a prosperous economy. What is certain, though, is that many of these new efforts will require skilled welders.
What are your thoughts? Do you think there will be a ‘green revolution’ in which our nation’s infrastructure will be overhauled to be more efficient and environmentally friendly? Will there be many new opportunities created for skilled welders? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.
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May 13th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
If we go green, what kind of jobs will there be. Most jobs are for the pollution and the air. My ma is with the DNR, would she be out of the job because there will be no air pollution?
May 14th, 2009 at 11:58 am
all this “Green” activity is based on controversial science.
Studies have not been in existence long enough to know if this is an environmental “Radar Blip” or if this is a long term scenario.
Anybody who has ever taken Geology 101 knows that “Geological Time” and “Chronological Time” are very different. 10,000 years is not very long when it comes to the mechanical functions of the Earth. The last international global warming convention had over 650 dissenting scientists who are at odds with the current global warming theory.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
What we really need to understand here is that our economy is changing. It has changed many times before and will do it again in the future. We are leaving the manufacturing age and moving into the technology age as a country. We went from hunter gatherers to agriculture and left the hunters behind due to efficiency in farming over hunting (you could feed more people with a days work). We left agriculture and moved to manufacturing again you could feed more people with a days work- yes there are still farmers but they went from 80% of the population to 2%. We are seeing the manufacturing industries doing the same thing but we now call it down sizing. Our manufacturing will entail fewer and fewer people to do the same work as technology marches on. Robots aren’t displacing workers they are taking over industries, they are cheaper to employee. As we move into this technology age where are you positioning yourself to be?
It really is a societal evolution, we developed hunting and still have hunters (ranchers in todays language). We developed farming and still have farming, we are puting the final touches to mass manufacturing and moving toward the built to order-customizable platforms where all of the options are based on one core product and there for easy to manage. Dell and the other computer manufacturers seem to be in the lead and have some very strong business models. Yes they too will downsize even more as their efficiencies continue to develop.
The green movement is just a way to apply technology. The economy has been based on what the general population needs because that is the largest base of customers. Technology moves forward and it seems that the way they are rolling it out to the public is to identify something that we think we need. A clean planet, what could be more worthy?
Yes we could concern ourselves with the starving and the diseased but when has that ever been the priority of the economy? I never has. It might be the next societal shift that we make. The green movement could have been predicted when the manufacturing economy was developing by looking at the waste and disregard of the environment. What can you see as waste and disregard in the green movement and that will give an indicator, but it will take some time for us to build the green initiatives until we need to move to something else. Fact is we just run out of things to grow the economy and have to find something new.
Look at the trend; we solved the food issue, we solved the stuff issue, now we will solve the environment issue. People have to be in that line somewhere and I don’t know about you but I sometimes feel a little abused and taken advantage of.
We will still use animals for food, we will still use agriculture for food, we will still build things just not like we use to. There will come a time when we will move on from the green movement and it will seem to us like manufacturing does- it is old hat stuff.
Look for ways to do things more efficiently, especially moving data. These items will be the big money in the green movement.
in my opinion.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Consider most money for ‘green’ initiatives have/are coming from the federal govt. (your tax dollars). While its easy to hype a certain technology in the media its quite another to prove it scientifically. In other words before we run head long into ‘green’ technologies lets make sure they’re sound and the consequences are understood…like we do w/ multi-year environmental studies for other projects (roads, buildings etc). Then there’s the business aspect…will it be profitable w/o govt funding?
June 26th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
“If we go green, what kind of jobs will there be”
None!
If the cap and trade bill / green bill / energy tax bill, makes it through in it’s current form, I don’t think anybody will have the money to even turn a welder on (to big a carbon footprint).
It’s nothing more than a massive energy tax disguised as a green initiative which is supported by flawed science which is supported by statistical masturbation. If it’s strapped to our backs right now, when we’re already on the verge of a major depression, I don’t think the economy will make it. But then I think that’s the plan. Collapse the economy, replace the constitution which made this nation the most prosperous, powerful, benevolent and free nation in the history of mankind, with some utopian socialist hodge podge that’s been tried a million times and failed a million times.
By the time everyone has finally realized how badly we’ve screwed things up, all the jobs here will long since have gone to China or India or one of the other industrialized nations that don’t give a rat’s ass about green.