The whole Green thing in the US is a big joke – and a perfect example of local suboptimization. I don’t think they will get it until they get hit hard by some natural forces.

Maybe someone from US can shed light on this.

For the time, I have spent in US, I think the idea behind all of this is more consumption -> more GDP.

And that is the reason, US (although it has lesser population) has GDP more than India, China.

I was thinking about this a few days back, but on different lines.

There are times when larger food chains recall meat (beef) and I think it has gone upto 500,000 lbs. Imagine the number of cattle slaughtered, human energy spent on it till packing it, freezing it & shipped to different stores across US, freezing the beef in the stores & then recalling it back.

I think, we all should be worried about this, because the trend of large food companies is coming to India.

There are people who take responsibility by taking small steps. Companies won’t change their way unless they find some profit in it.

I searched for the largest beef recall & it was 143 million pounds of beef last year.

Imagine all the energy spent & lives lost.

And the recalled beef is dumped into the landfill. Ahh!!

it’s easy to be green forced by poverty … in third world countries humans have too many problems to actually think about being green … so yeah u’d use 1 bottle of water if u r lucky to have one … and then u’ll reuse it … don’t fool yourself

On that same thread, are there any Green Agile presentations at this year’s conference?

I posted about baking GPI into Agile, but Ryan Martens @Rally stated that we have a steeper uphill climb that I imagined: http://7thpixel.net/blog/2009/07/09/planting-green-agile-seeds/

@Mike, why does richness usually come with arrogance and stupidity?

Hi Naresh,
I am both appalled and guilty of what you’ve have observed. Americans, like most cultures, tend to be insular, provincial, and self-serving. Progress is almost imperceptible when you live here, but can be observed over a longer time frame (1, 10, 50 years). After over a half-century as an American citizen, I realize that forward-thinking citizens advocate ideas that will be common-place 25 years hence. Forward-thinkers just keep chipping away at the backlog. Thanks for reminding us of the task at hand.

Naresh,

Great post and a lot to think about; always nice to have an outside observer. Just to clarify a bit though, I think Mike was just stating a factual observation. If you are in a poorer region, you probably can afford one bottle if at all. Countries emerging as powerhouses get a fresher chance to look at this, they can avoid some of the mistakes by predecessors.

To build on what Bob said – What I think we have at hand is a full cultural 180 from being green that we are trying to at least partially turn back.. Before the industrial revolution, we (the US) were pretty green. Clean water and the containers for them were not that easy to come by… Now that they can be cheaply made, no one contemplates much about it. People are finally beginning to realize the wasted resources. So we need to go back to greener roots.

Let’s take the water you drink as an example. Most people (me being guilty frequently also) buy bottled water; it became vogue in the 70s/80s and now we haven’t shed ourselves of it. Why do we do this? We have a great freshwater pipe infrastructure here in the US that delivers clean water in about every location (there are small issues here and there, but no large scale issues); why not use that? It’s built, it’s maintained, and we pay for it.

Thinks like ice or the fact that you have hot water on demand to me is something that allows freedom. I can have ice cold water to drink, not just water. I can take a hot shower after my noontime run, I don’t need to go for a jog and shower at a preset time (although newer flash heaters make it so you can do this). These can be answered by sourcing the energy in a greener way (wind for example).

Having escalators (or elevators) is a convenience (sometimes a necessity if you are physically disabled); great if you have a hard time getting around, carrying stuff, or need to go 5+ floors, but really overall promote an unhealthy lifestyle of zero activity. Not sure where I fall on this except to say turn them off when they won’t be in use.

So bottomline: I agree that we should start holistically looking at things, particularly the necessity of an item. Again for the water example: if we drank more water that we pay for anyway from our supply system, then we would cut down demand for bottled water, which in turn would cut down production of plastic bottles – recycled or otherwise, they are wasteful.

Naresh,

Great post and a lot to think about; always nice to have an outside observer. Just to clarify a bit though, I think Mike was just stating a factual observation. If you are in a poorer region, you probably can afford one bottle if at all. Countries emerging as powerhouses get a fresher chance to look at this, they can avoid some of the mistakes by predecessors.

To build on what Bob said – What I think we have at hand is a full cultural 180 from being green that we are trying to at least partially turn back.. Before the industrial revolution, we (the US) were pretty green. Clean water and the containers for them were not that easy to come by… Now that they can be cheaply made, no one contemplates much about it. People are finally beginning to realize the wasted resources. So we need to go back to greener roots.

Let’s take the water you drink as an example. Most people (me being guilty frequently also) buy bottled water; it became vogue in the 70s/80s and now we haven’t shed ourselves of it. Why do we do this? We have a great freshwater pipe infrastructure here in the US that delivers clean water in about every location (there are small issues here and there, but no large scale issues); why not use that? It’s built, it’s maintained, and we pay for it.

Thinks like ice or the fact that you have hot water on demand to me is something that allows freedom. I can have ice cold water to drink, not just water. I can take a hot shower after my noontime run, I don’t need to go for a jog and shower at a preset time (although newer flash heaters make it so you can do this). These can be answered by sourcing the energy in a greener way (wind for example).

Having escalators (or elevators) is a convenience (sometimes a necessity if you are physically disabled); great if you have a hard time getting around, carrying stuff, or need to go 5+ floors, but really overall promote an unhealthy lifestyle of zero activity. Not sure where I fall on this except to say turn them off when they won’t be in use.

So bottomline: I agree that we should start holistically looking at things, particularly the necessity of an item. Again for the water example: if we drank more water that we pay for anyway from our supply system, then we would cut down demand for bottled water, which in turn would cut down production of plastic bottles – recycled or otherwise, they are wasteful.

“@Mike, why does richness usually come with arrogance and stupidity?,” interesting words from someone who comes to another country and rudely demonstrates judgmental arrogance. I don’t think you understand what it means to be a proper guest.

The filth, squalor, and pollution in Mumbai and New Delhi is appalling (http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/26/pollution-baku-oil-biz-logistics-cx_tl_0226dirtycities.html), but I didn’t feel compelled to make all Indians feel bad about it when I visited.

Indeed there is a lot of waste in the US, and much of it unfortunate. I try to conserve, not just for the environment, but because it is economically sensible. Treadmills, though? Give me a break. Running on cement is bad for your health. Hot water taps? Disease is borne by people who don’t wash their hands properly, and it can be more wasteful to pump lots of water unnecessarily while waiting for it to heat.

I find it sad that someone can fly halfway around the world to a conference, burning jet fuel, instead of taking advantage of technology or local conferences, and then hypocritically criticize the host for wasting energy. Try not to insist others live by your inconsistent morals.

Having said what I have, I have read comments from people in US.

I think, it goes with human nature. We conserve when we don’t have and when we have things, we spend it like it is going out of fashion.

It is funny (I don’t know the right word), that bigger emitting countries are pushing India, China to sign Kyoto protocol.

@Joe Mama: Yes, there is filth and dirt and all that crap. No country is perfect. And it is no way to compare, countries. It is people who have to take responsibility of whatever bad exists, whether in India or US.

I am not sure what makes you feel bad about the blog post. The fact remains.

Does the forbes article make all Indians feel bad?
No!! Again, the fact remains.

And regarding “inconsistent morals”, I don’t know what to say when countries push India, China to sign the protocols?

I don’t want to fight on this topic. But when “morals” are set differently, it is called hypocrisy. Is that fair?

Guys, I mean no offense.

I am stating what I have observed. And, people should not take it in negative sense. Much of what we are, is that we are not aware of our actions, however small it could be.

@Naresh the same way poverty is accompanied by envy and ignorance … we r humans … far from being perfect

@Joe, I don’t mean this to be us v/s them (US v/s some other country). My goal was not make all US Citizens feel bad or pass a judgment. I’m not saying India does not have problems (we have way too many, some inside our control and some outside).

I think its helpful to bring to people’s attention things that they might take for granted. Things they can avoid. Small steps go a long way. My blog was trying to highlight an observation I made and I was posing a question asking:

I’m not sure if people don’t care or they are ignorant or they simply not aware of the implications?

And may be there is more to it….

One of the things I miss the most when traveling out of the US is an ice cold drink. Please don’t take my cold drink away. As for the hot water, that is changing. A lot of new construction in the US now use those small, instant hot water heaters instead of keeping a giant tank of water heated – talk about waste!

As for all the rest, I think your observations are very accurate. Most people in the US (myself included) don’t see all the waste that surrounds us.

One man’s waste is another man’s economic good. The majority of things done using a computer could be(and have been) done by hand. Think of all the energy we could be saving if we just stopped using computers.

As far as recycling goes there is not any concrete incentive in the US to recycle other than the fact that you can then say “We recycle!!!”. Putting out multicolored bins is sufficient to provide that benefit for a person, company, or convention venue.

Its an excellent point Naresh. The amount of waste of both power and resources in the west is mind boggling and appalling. Then again we aren’t saints here in India and the so called “greener by virtue of being poor” parts of the world. Take our cities for instance. Isn’t the use of power so very skewed as compared to rural India ? If you live in Mumbai for instance, you can probably use all the power you want (and most do it very wastefully), while the rest of the country reels under load shedding. In fact if you head into interior Maharashtra (even a 100 odd km out of Mumbai), the power situation there is equally shocking. I always wonder if people living there might have similar thoughts about Mumbaites. I guess in the end we will always use whatever we have in plenty wastefully without thinking about tomorrow,its human nature after all.

I complete agree with Naresh and agree even more with Elroy. The observations are spot on. We (note ‘we’) waste too much energy. This question is not about US or some other country. This is about rich and poor, the haves and have nots. A richer guy (no matter ‘third’, ‘second’, ‘fourth’ or whichever world he may belong to) always tend to waste more energy as he can afford to without ever giving it a thought. I think it is built in to human DNA. As I am writing this and if I care to reflect back upon myself I can see even myself wasting too much energy every day. The only real sense that has a mass appeal is ‘economic’ sense. No other sense like ‘moral’ has such a wide effect. Policies should have an economic incentive (and a major one at that given the ‘convenience’ we lose out on, something we are just too accustomed to) for conservation and economic penalty for waste but all this without affecting the poor (don’t know how this can be achieved). But again it is human nature that is an hinderance. Rich don’t want to lose their affluent lifestyles and are happy constraining poors. This is what is showing in all this fight about ‘India’ and ‘China’ ought to ensure large scale emission cuts..

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