Session 3

“Sustainability requires a shift from linear to circular thinking. Old industrial Model: Economic Development Vs Environmental Well-being. Sustainable Industrial Model: Economic Development and Environmental well-being.” In the past, to many people, environmental issues seems to be very irrelevant, all people care about is the profit or the convenience they will gain from the product. This is because they have not yet experience the consequence of the complete depletion of the world’s resources or the disaster that will come if global warming exit the limits. Hence, the typical old industrial model does not include environmental issues. It is a linear thinking as they only focuses on producing the products from the raw material without considering the process. However, as we can see from the increasingly prominent disasters and the forever rising temperature, the world is reaching its maximum carrying capacity, and people are starting to realize that. Therefore, people started to change their mindsets, instead of treating pollution as externalities, it is considered as part of the economic assessment, as internalities. It is called the circular thinking. For the earth to be more sustainable, circular thinking has to be adopted.

Most people will agree that it is important to implement the sustainable industrial model. However, is it fair for third world countries to take into account the cost of environmental degradation such as adopting green technology? Previously, the first world countries used the old industrial model (which is much more efficient in generating profit than the sustainable industrial model as no funding was required to be allocated to buy green technologies or the process without considering environmental issues are less time consuming) to achieve rapid growth in their economy, without taking into account the environmental issues. But now, we are forcing the third countries to adopt the costly industrial model when it is their turn to undergo rapid economic development? I do not think it is fair. Much of the pollutions were the products of the first world countries. Hence, it is not fair for the third world countries to bear the consequences. I am not saying that these countries shouldn’t use the green technologies, but these technologies should be subsidised by the first countries, who were the main culprits that caused the world to be in the state it is now. Moreover, these acts can be seen a sign of peaceful ties between countries. Friendly treaties such as exchange of resources and technology can be made. In the world of globalisation, it is better to have more friends than foes

In this session, Professor Shahi brought up a very interesting idea: the advantages of backwardness. Countries such as Germany and Russia were slower at picking up the development of green technology at the beginning as compared to Europe countries. Hence they do not need to go through the pain of researching from the scratch. By the time they were ready to use the green technologies, they were already several final products from the more developed countries, and all they need to do is to utilize it. Hence, the cost and manpower required for research was greatly reduced. However, for countries that are “too backward”, even though they enjoy this benefit, they will face the problem of not being able to undergo rapid economic development, as mentioned in the above paragraph.

Overall, I will rate this session 7/10. I was really surprised by the idea of having two meanings in the Chinese character of crisis. Crisis = danger + opportunity. I believed that this opportunity (green technology revolution) which arises is of great potential. Also, I was truly amazed by Air car, which is so environmentally friendly. I am sure that even though it is not in production now, one day (when the world runs out of petrol), this invention will be greatest invention in the century. During the lesson, the term “Kyoto Protocol” was mentioned. From what I understand from this term, it is a protocol created to fight global warming. It gives the incentives to reduce pollution, as by doing so, they will be able to sell the extra units to the other countries. However, the negative aspect of this protocol was not discussed in detail. From the rate at which America is producing the greenhouse gases (20 tons per person annually, over six times that of the global average (ignoring the US)), it seems that the protocol is not very effective in the reducing the level of emission greatly as a whole. Personally I feel that it is because since America is a rich country, they can afford to buy the units from the other countries (a loophole in the Kyoto Protocol). Hence, for America, it does not really serve as a deterrent to reduce GHS emission. It is quite a pity that this issue was not discussed in class. However, I understand that due to the time constrain, Professor Shahi would not able to discuss everything in detail.