How Much Does Globalization Ruin the Environment?

Today's ABC news webcast interviewed an LA Times reporter who talked about the damage that is being caused to the world's oceans. Something that caught my attention was that shipping was responsible for more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

It made me think about all the stuff that the US imports from China (and elsewhere). How much additional environmental damage we cause simply by shipping the goods here. The most environmentally friendly production is probably the stuff that is produced close to where it is consumed.

When we were buying granite for our countertops, we got this nice black granite with flecks of silver (probably mica) that looks really nice. The woman who sold it to us told us that the mountain in China that it came from is nearly mined out. I had visions of hollowed out mountainsides. Because those mountainsides are so far away, they seem almost unreal. If the devastation was close by, we'd probably care more.

When I was going to school at the University of Oregon, I made many trips to the countryside. It is amazingly beautiful. I liked to wander around, and occasionally took a wrong turn. On a couple of these unintended journeys, I suddenly was confronted by clear cutting: where the lumber companies had cut everything down. It was horrifying, and reminded me most of all of someone with a head wound. When someone has a head wound, doctors shave the hair around the wound. In a day or two, hair grows back through the wound causing a matted, grisly, bloody mess. All around the wound is normal hair. Clearcut is kinda like that...

A couple of years back, my family and I went to the Malakoff Diggins State Park. Its the site of California's largest "hydraulic mine." Fancy name for a mining technique where the miners ('49ers, -- gold miners) used enormous water cannons to blast entire hillsides away. The cannons shot out 5-7000 gallons per minute! The devastation was amazing. Interestingly, the practice was outlawed not because of the damage caused to the mine itself, but because of the damage caused to downstream communities. Just goes to show that if bad things don't happen in our own back yards, we care less about them.

The park service has a link to a panoramic view off their website. Its a bit clearer in this picture I took thats on the left. I couldn't figure out whether the erosion you see is flooding caused by the mining or the water cannons. It was mind boggling that entire hillsides could be consumed.

In the song "Clementine", which is about a "miner, 49er" there is a line about the girl falling "into the foaming brine." I wondered if the foaming brine was the water they blasted the hillside with.

In addition to the erosion caused by the water, chemicals were used to get the gold out of the soil. And if I remember correctly, a lot of mercury was used...

So, back to what got this started: if we rely on goods produced far away, we care less about how they are produced. And shipping them to us exacts a toll on the environment...

Lets start a new tradition: Wii instead of football after Thanksgiving Dinner

This Thanksgiving was different for us. Instead of lying around in supine lumps watching football, all the adults and all the kids played on Wii games.

After that huge meal, it felt very good to get up and do something active. We all took turns playing in different combinations, parents mixed up with kids, men and women on the same teams, on different teams.

I don't recall a more raucous Thanksgiving. I think this was the most fun anyone us has had at Thanksgiving in a long time. And oh yes, the food was great too!

Give Chinese Workers the Same Rights as US Workers

I was reading an article in the San Jose Mercury News about how Chinese workers are getting poisoned by the goods that they are making for customers in the US. In the last couple of days the California State Attorney General decided to sue companies like Mattel and Toys 'R Us for selling tainted toys in the US. I agree with the AG about the suit, but don't see it solving the problem.

I even heard that Japan sends inspectors to China to check goods before they leave China, and substandard goods don't make it into Japan. But that is still not enough.

I don't want to be responsible for workers in China falling sick so that my kids can have toys and I can have sneakers. I think the way to deal with this is to have all goods that are manfuactured in China (or any other country) manufactured with the same (or better) standards as well as worker safety regulations that are applied to workers in the US.

This will lead to a number of things. First, employers will have to pay better wages and benefits to workers in China, which will level the playing field for workers in the US. It seems sort of backwards that the US should loose manufacturing jobs in part because we care about the health of workers in the US.

Second, hopefully we'll feel less guilt about what US consumer goods are doing to the workers in countries like China.

Finally, maybe increasing the level of worker safety will reduce the amount of bad products that get into the US.

Mazda has a better UI than Toyota

We've got two cars. A Toyota and a Mazda. We bought the Mazda because at the time the Toyota we wanted was going for a premium. So we paid less than asking for the Mazda. The Toyota is mechanically the better car. They've got about the same number of miles on them and the Toyota is still 'taught' while the Mazda has loosened up somewhat.

But the Mazda has a better user interface (UI) than the Toyota. Two examples:

The Toyota has no indicator on its radio about what the volume is. The Mazda has an LCD bar that extends from min to max, indicating a midpoint. Its helped me know that while driving on the freeway (lots of wind and road noise), I've got the stereo cranked way up. On the Toyota, I don't have any idea how loud I'm listening to the stereo.

The two companies also designed their keyless entry systems differently. On the Toyota, if you press the lock button on the remote, the car beeps once. If you press the unlock key, it beeps twice. This happens regardless of whether the car was already locked or unlocked.

So if your car was unlocked and you press the lock button, it beeps once. If your car was locked and you press the lock button it beeps once. i.e. you have no way of knowing what the state of the car was before the lock key was pressed. (If a door is ajar and you press lock, the car makes a sound like its being strangled, but that's another story).

The Mazda changes its behavior depending on the prior state of the doors. If the car was unlocked, it locks the doors then flashes the lights once. If the car was locked, it does nothing. But if you press the lock key a second time, it honks the horn, as if to say (I HEARD you.) Its very reassuring. Press the key twice, and you get no lights flashing, but a HONK, and you know that the car was already locked, you're just being obsessive.

So, which car would I buy again? Probably the Toyota because of its mechanical soundness. And wish it would have a UI as friendly as the Mazda's...

Goodie Bags & Cheap Toys: Ruining Children's minds

I hate goodie bags. There I've said it. I also hate kids meals and the general glut of toys that my kids have. For every toy I had growing up, they must have 10. I think this overabundance of toys is ruining my kids' imaginations, and the imaginations of children all over the world.

My kids have too many toys. They have too many stuffed animals (I had one which I cherished. One of my kids has not one, but three different stuffed leopards. To say nothing about dogs, rabbits, parrots and even the odd bear. They each have about 5 construction kits of different kinds. Lego, lego and more lego. Magnets, Lincoln Logs... Thanks to the tons of cheap goods we get from China, everyone can afford to give their kids toys. Everyone can also afford to give all their friends' and relatives' kids toys. And not cheap toys either, but large, sophisticated toys. My kids have between them not one, but 5 electronic toys that teach them how to spell.

And those are the 'better' toys. Kids meals. If I haven't already said that I hate the toys in kids meals, then I'm saying it now. My kids eat the kids meals only for the toy. Great marketing, of course. Recently my wife and I decided that the kids can order the kids meals, but not the toy. So one of my kids refused to eat. Which pretty much proves that its not about the food, its about the toy.

Which brings me to my favourite bug bear: Goodie bags. I think I'm actually afraid of goodie bags and how they make my kids behave. A short while back, we were at a friend's house attending the first birth of their son. He was utterly adorable, but eventually we had to leave. It didn't look like goodie bags were on the agenda which was a releif. The couple was not from the US, and I was hoping that they hadn't heard about the goodie bag custom. As we were heading out the door, I was utterly mortified when my daughter said she had to talk to the hostess. I was delighted that she might want to thank the hostess for a very nice party. Boy was I wrong. She said "I didn't get a goodie bag." I was embarassed beyond belief. Fortunately for all, there was in fact a goodie bag, and I was delighted that it contained only one toy, a plastic saxaphone.

We've even had conversations where we tell them that we are going to a party, and they ask if they'll get a goodie bag. We explain that the purpose of the party is not the goodie bag, but to enjoy time with friends, and of course that makes no sense to them...

Most of the goodie bags we get are full of cheap toys. I should know, I've helped my wife with so many of them... Oh, and candy, which somehow rubs salt into the wound. My kids seem to have no trouble remembering each toy they got, and never remembering to put them away. So we always have toys underfoot.

And the goodie bags seem to have gone beyond just birthday parties to any event where kids gather. My son goes to afterschool care at the Y, and they had an end of year party. Where all the kids attending (including the ones who don't go to the Y) came back with a goodie bag.

So we have so many toys, there is no place to put them. We have endless battles about putting toys away. I'm sure other parents do the same thing. We even said that if toys weren't put away, they'd get banished to the garage. It didn't have much effect: they just switched to other toys. Finally, in frustration, I filled 4 large boxes with toys and stacked them in the garage. My kids complained for a while. Its now months later, and they are doing fine without the toys. Which proves something...

My final gripe is that I think that having too many toys is bad for my kids' brains. When I was growing up, when we finished playing with toys the way they were designed to play, we switched to what I call inventive play. We made things up, and we made the toys do things they weren't designed to do. For instance, my son using his magnet set to try and create a train out of his toy cars. But today more often than not, when a kid gets bored with one toy, she simply switches to another. No invention. No practice...

So we've stopped buying our kids toys. We are thinking more in terms of one really 'good' toy rather than lots of cheap toys.

What do you do with your kids?

Reflections... ?

Reflections...

Outsourcing -- why the powers that be won't stop the dollar's decline

coming soon

Educated people are the natural resources of today

Educated people are the hottest natural resource of today, and the US is not as focussed on producing them and luring them to the US as it used to be. Long term this will prove to be disastrous to the US economy, which has thrived on innovation.

It is ironic that 'over populated' countries like India and China are now the envy of established economies. 50 years ago, they were studies as recipes for disaster, too many people, too few resources. Now those 'teeming millions', combined with a highly subsidized education are creating a resource hotly sought after by the high tech and high tech based companies of the west.

Skilled white collar jobs are flowing off shore from the US to other countries. Its not surprising, given that educating people in the West is expensive, and countries like India highly subsidize education, right up to the college level. I had the privilege of attending the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in the late '70s and early 80s. Based on the exchange rate of the time, my fees for a semester was $8. That was for a world class education that has produced engineers that are much sought after both by western universities as well as high-tech companies. I was not on any sort of scholarship, beyond what the Indian government subsidized all students. Room and board was an additional $15 a month. Education was cheap.

Getting hitech skills is also cheap. Hitech has created a paradox. It took billions of dollars to create computers, software and the internet. We created a robust industry and brought down the cost of entry into a high tech career. It now costs very little for anyone anywhere in the world to get a PC, and a few books and start to learn the basics of programming. I have a friend who sends old computers to schools in Uganda. Perhaps Africa will be the Indias and Chinas of this century, where scores of children will learn computer skills on slightly older, but utterly capable computers. After all, computers that are a few years old are more powerful than the ones that people like me learned on in the 70s and 80s. Add open source software like Linux, GCC, Apache and MySQL, and it doesn't take much to create the infrastructure needed to train people in the most complex technologies of today.

By providing cheap education to their children, countries like India and China are creating a resource that is highly sought after by the West.

It is unclear to me how the US will compete in this space. In the US I see a constant erosion of funds for education, while at the same time increasing the number of things that schools have to do. They are struggling to keep up. As we continue to under fund education, we are allowing the Indias and Chinas of the world to get and stay ahead.

For years the US created a wonderful place for people to come, get educated and stay, contributing knowledge and income to the US economy. Over the years that has eroded, partly through underfunding education, partly through things like the Patriot Act, which has made it far more difficult for students to get visas to come to the US. For a while, countries like India were subsidizing the US by fully or partly education engineers who then went to the US for further studies and eventually settled down there. I guess I'm an example. Now they have other options.

There was a time, before the 'Hi Tech bubble' that companies in the US, and particularly in Silicon Valley were desperate for skilled workers. They pleaded with the US government to increase the H1 visa cap. The US government did somewhat, but powerful lobbies in the US kept the cap at a minimum. That left the Hitech companies with no option but to take their operations overseas. It lead to the development of a need in countries like India, Ireland, the Czech Republic etc. They had lots of workers who were willing to work for a fraction of a US salary. The effort by the anti-H1 lobbies in the US has backfired spectacularly. Instead of lots of foreign-educated engineers getting jobs in the US and settling down here and boosting the US economy, they are in their own countries, boosting the economies there.

Labor is a resource, and companies will go to wherever the resource is the most cost effective. That is currently not in the US for hi tech jobs.