“Please consider the environment before printing this message.” Those words, appearing at the bottom of many e-mails, are a visible manifestation of a trend that will gather momentum in 2009: the move towards more environmentally friendly information technology, or “green it”. Advertisements for pcs already tout their meagre energy consumption just as prominently as their number-crunching prowess.
Overall, computing and telecommunications today produce 2% of global emissions, according to the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (Gesi), an industry group. Of these, 49% come from pcs and printers, 37% from telecoms networks and devices, and 14% from data centres – the large warehouses full of computers operated by companies.
The overall volume of emissions is comparable with that from aviation. But the it industry, unlike aviation, has not provoked the wrath of environmental campaigners. Perhaps that is because computers are less visibly polluting, or their use is not deemed, like air travel, to be frivolous and unnecessary.
The aviation industry has found itself on the defensive, emphasising its efforts to switch to less fuel-hungry aircraft in the coming years. Makers of computerмand telecoms gear, by contrast, have chosen to highlight the volume of emissions their machines produce, because they already have newer, greener products to sell today. New processing chips, clever software that lets one machine do the work of many, and smarter cooling systems can all reduce energy consumption and thus carbon-dioxide emissions.
For vendors, in other words, the large environmental footprint of computing presents a sales opportunity. That is one reason why the hubbub about green it will increase in 2009.
A second reason is that companies like to tell everyone about their efforts to reduce their own carbon emissions, and technology is a relatively easy place to start. Hardly a week goes by without a large company announcing that it has just installed fancy new videoconferencing suites to reduce its carbon footprint. вSkyв, a British satellite-television and telecoms operator, was one of the first companies to go carbon-neutral by reducing its emissions as much as possible (by programming its set-top boxes to switch themselves to standby when not in use, for example), and offsetting the rest. Vodafone, a mobile-telecoms giant, has been turning down the air-conditioning in its base-stations, which accounts for a quarter of its carbon footprint. Allowing the base-stations to operate at 25 °C instead of
21 °C can cut energy use by 10 % in some cases, and newer base-stations can happily run at 35 °C. This will, the company says, help it to meet its target of cutting its emissions by 50 % between 2006 and 2020. Expect more such announcements, in particular from telecoms and financial-services firms, since a large part of their carbon footprints is associated with computers and networks.
Green it is also being pushed for a third reason: the computer industry's desire to stay in the limelight. It has become apparent that clean technology will be the “next big thing” as the internet becomes pervasive and, correspondingly, less exciting. Venture capitalists and executives have been jumping from computing to clean-tech companies. Promoting computing itself as a clean technology may help those left behind to convince themselves that their field is still at the cutting edge.
Text 9
Want to Drive Green?
Onе way to save fuel and be kinder to the environment is to drive a smaller car. Or you can buy a hybrid, which is also cleaner and meaner with petrol by using a combination of an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor. Then there are all-electric cars that don’t use any petrol at all, and hydrogen-powered ones, some of them using fuel cells. And increasingly there will be variations in between. Picking a new green drive in 2009 will not be an easy decision.
For a start, the choice will be much bigger. Plug-in versions of Toyota's Prius hybrid will allow that groundbreaking vehicle to be charged from a mains socket. But it will face tough competition from a new Honda Insight hybrid capable of 80mpg or more. Watch out too for a new six-seater Renault hybrid and a four-wheel drive Citroen with a diesel engine powering the front wheels and an electric motor operating the rear ones.
Other fuel-saving cars will appear at motor shows. General Motors will also start road testing the Chevy Volt before it goes into mass production. The Volt is a compact plug-in hybrid able to travel on a full charge for about 40 miles (64km) – a typical daily commute – but with a small petrol engine kicking in as a range-extending generator thereafter. It will cost around $30,000.
Better batteries will give electric cars a boost. Some already leave petrol ones in the dust – at a price. The Tesla Roadster, based on a British Lotus, uses a power-pack of more than 6,000 beefed-up versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in laptop computers. It can accelerate from 0-60mph in under four seconds and reach around 125mph. It is already on sale in California; Europeans will be able to get their hands on one in 2009 – at around?100,000 ($140,000). If you do not mind 0-60mph in eight seconds and one less wheel, then zap, a Californian maker of electric vehicles, will offer a sleek three-wheeler called Alias for around $32,000. Classed as a motorcycle, it resembles a souped-up Reliant Robin.
More hydrogen-powered vehicles will arrive, but remain constrained by a lack of refuelling stations. Not so for petrol and diesel cars, which will be getting better, too. Fiat’s new Multiair engine will start appearing in its cars. These engines use hydraulics and electronics to optimise valve settings. When combined with a tur-bocharger, this will allow tiny two-cylinder engines to perform like four-cylinder ones, but use 20 % less fuel.
With such tricks, some small petrol and diesel cars will be able to achieve around 80mpg – and, with a light foot on the accelerator, break 100mpg. But big cars will become more frugal too. A new Daimler engine will operate as a petrol engine when power is needed and like a diesel when economy is required. Daimler has called it the DiesOtto after two German engineers, Rudolf Diesel and Nicolaus Otto. The internal-combustion engines they helped to pioneer may be more than 100 years old, but they have yet to reach the end of the road.
Text 10
Copenhagen Conference
The most important year for climate change since 2001, when the Kyoto protocol (which set targets for cutting carbon-dioxide emissions) was agreed, will be 2009. The first period of the protocol runs out in 2012. The deal to replace it is supposed to be done at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which starts on November 30th 2009 and is due to end on December 11th. No deal means that mankind gives up on trying to save the planet.
The accord needs to be a substantial one, not just a face-saving agreement to declare that the issue must be tackled. The rich world (especially America) needs to commit itself to legally enforceable carbon-emissions reductions for the second period of Kyoto, from 2012 to 2016 and beyond. The big emitters from the developing world, such as China, need to commit themselves to something substantive – not economy-wide emissions-reductions, but, for instance, carbon-intensity targets (cuts in carbon emissions per unit of gdp) or measures directed at the power sector in particular.
The rich world, which has been responsible for most emissions so far and recognises that it needs to pay up because of that, also needs to find a way of transferring money to the developing world to help it pay for cutting carbon. The Clean Development Mechanism, which was set up under Kyoto to allow rich countries to buy carbon credits from poor countries that have cut their emissions, does that already, but is probably not robust enough to do the job on the scale needed. There needs to be some new vehicle, such as the Superfund proposed by Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia. He thinks the world should copy America's approach to other forms of pollution: make polluters contribute to a fund which pays for the costs of cleaning up.
Text 11
The Strength of Europe
The European Union has led the fight against climate change. As part of its implementation of the Kyoto protocol, it set up its ground-breaking Emissions-Trading Scheme which allows companies in EU member-states' dirty industries to trade carbon-emissions permits and has thus put a price on carbon. And in 2007 the European Commission produced the “20/20/20 by 2020” plan: emissions cuts of
20 % below 1990 levels (plus a 20 % gain in energy efficiency and 20 % of energy from renewables) by 2020. But the plan must be approved by the Council of Mi-
nisters and the European Parliament in 2009, and it is meeting hefty opposition –from heavy industry, and coal-dependent countries such as Poland. Getting the package through will be hard; but any backtracking in Europe will undermine America’s efforts.
A change of attitude in Beijing is also crucial to a deal in Copenhagen. It was China’s refusal to agree to any form of constraint that led America to walk away from Kyoto in 2001. These days China, now the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, accepts the need to take action against climate change; it argues that, through energy-efficiency and renewable-energy targets, it is doing as much as can reasonably be expected. But the American Congress will want China to take on extra commitments – perhaps in the form of targets for particular industries – if it is to legislate cuts. And the Chinese government resists the idea that it should have to give ground in order to get America to move.
Getting progress on climate change in these three places would be tough at the best of times, and the year ahead looks like being one of the worst of times. A substantive deal in Copenhagen therefore looks unlikely; but the world's leaders are not likely to give up trying to save the planet there and then. Perhaps the likeliest outcome in Copenhagen in 2009 is a repetition of what happened in Kyoto in 2000 – abig bust-up, another meeting called and a deal done the following уеаr.
Text 12
Judicial Systems
Judicial systems are formal institutions that not only enforce restraints designated by the government for the good of society, but also clarify the meanings of formal rules. North explains, “Institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction”. Formal or informal institutions of judgment are undeniably important in any society; my thesis focuses on how the role of these institutions affects society in an ever changing, contemporary manner. Present issues in society, and their various, either temporary or permanent solutions, are notably prevalent in social discourse. I examine how formal institutions, such as Judicial Systems, influence issues in present society and the discourse concerning those issues. There are always several factors that can be analyzed with relation to social causation, for rarely, if ever, is there simply one factor that can be distinguished from the rest as a main influence on the outcomes. The choice to focus on judicial systems and their effects on society arose from my interest not only in the judicial systems themselves, but from the fact that they are often viewed as less powerful than other parts of the government. For example, the American system of government is divided into three branches, the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial. Even in the constitution of the United States of America the powers given to the Supreme Court in Article 3 are limited, and therefore the powers of the court are also derived from common law and precedent.
France and the United States of America are often compared with one another for various reasons depending on the comparison being made. The United States of America, while typically thought of as only an English colony, has had a long history of involvement with France. Not only did France have colonies in the United States, but also there were often consorted efforts in wars, treaties, and world affairs. It should not be confused however that while there are similarities in the histories of France and the United States of America, as well as intertwining in the histories, there are undeniably certain differences in the pasts of each country that had an effect on the countries and their governmental systems as well as certain parts of society. Many look to the French and American revolutions as a point of reference for where to start a comparison. However, it should be recognized that the revolutions did not occur because of similar plights of the people, nor did the revolutions occur with the same series of events. As with any cause and effect relationship, the introduction of different variables will naturally lead to a different effect.
Due to the past history of France, there is a greater sense of social stratification, more specifically with how members of society identify themselves. The reason for greater sense of social stratification is due to the fact that “classes, once they have come into being, harden in their mold and perpetuate themselves, even when the social conditions that created them have disappeared”. In France there is a long history of class identification and social stratification being a prevalent part of society. While formal social stratification no longer exists as such, there is still informal class identification present in France today. Class identification is an important aspect to acknowledge, especially because of my focus on labor union. This factor leads to different effects on group solidarity, which later plays a role in collective efforts in labor unions. Differences in the histories of France and America can are reflected in the societies of each country.
The collective conscience of the countries is different not only because of the differences in the histories, but also due to cultural differences. These cultural differences in turn manifest themselves in different ways such as national pride, group solidarity, and so on. The many distinct attributes of each country compile upon each other and are noticeable in the government, specifically the government organization. Therefore differences in the judicial systems can be seen as well.
Text 13