By Kelly Wendland
In the past decade, as in every past decade, a new fad has invaded our society. In my lifetime, these phenomena of pop culture have been unquestioningly embraced by ‘edgy’ bands and Hollywood elite in general.
Sometimes you get the best of both worlds
The latest and most significant of these fads will be instantly familiar to anyone not living in a cave, is championed by Al Gore, and is described by the hip catch phrase ‘going green,’ because that’s the color of plants.
The latest of most significant of these fads is described by the hip catch phrase ‘going green,’ because that’s the color of money plants. It has come to the mainstream in recent years thanks in large part to Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ along with tear-jerking pictures of polar bears swimming around, unable to find solid land to stand on because their ice caps have melted.
The idea is that we are just now realizing how our energy consumption adversely affects the environment. Forget about baby seals playing in oil spills, the new wave of environmentalism focuses on what the average person can do to reduce his or her personal energy consumption, and if everyone works together, we can make a collective difference.
As with any fad, businesses are generally quick to adapt to market trends, aka jump on the bandwagon and make money. This time around, words like ‘organic,’ ‘natural,’ and ‘chemical-free,’ are the buzz words used by marketing departments to make their products sound more environmentally friendly. In one particular instance, Huggies announced a new line of diapers, dubbed ‘Huggies – pure and natural,’ which are made from a full 20% percent recyclable materials. Well, that’s not too shabby – oh, actually the 20% recyclable material only applied to the paper-thin plastic packaging the diapers came in.)1
Even I know you’re full of shit.
Well, not all businesses are just throwing meaningless eco-phrases onto their products to make some money. The most integral part of this new wave of environmentalism is obviously the energy industry. Because of pressure from the public, debated scientific evidence about global warming, and the fear that oil and natural gas demand will outrun supply in the coming years, many governments and private energy providers are turning towards various forms of energy which can be replenished, and minimize impact on the environment – these are all grouped into the cleverly named category of renewable energy.
Here in the US we know all about this debate – it was a significant part of our last presidential race. Despite the fact that ‘going green’ is indeed a fad that will probably be abandoned by pop culture five years down the road, energy conservation is an important and noble goal for society. With populations across the globe growing exponentially, it will be important for all nations to work toward maintaining renewable energy sources in the future - if not for environmental concerns, than to reduce the likelihood of global conflict over non-renewable energy supplies.
Being part of a Russian class assignment, I decided to do some research into the Russian market and see if they’ve changed their tune towards the environment since the days of dumping spent nuclear reactor rods off the coast of Norway and hoping no one would notice.
“Do something, Norway… yeah, that’s what I thought”
Having never lived in Russia, I really don’t have access to the general mood of the public, or get to see if their companies rely on the ignorance of consumers to sell their products, so I had to settle for official reports on what the government and large-scale corporations are up to concerning reducing environmental impact.
As recently as 2000, it seems (as in the USA as well) that renewable energy was something of a running joke in Russia – after all, they consistently compete with Saudi Arabia for the top ranked oil producer in the world (accounting for 12.1% of the world’s production in 2006). With enough oil and natural gas to satisfy domestic needs and still be able to sell energy to much of Europe, why bother extensively developing a different system? The natural gas fields of Russia were justifiably a source of pride for the country. And apparently it wasn’t enough just to produce a huge amount of energy – the environment had to be Russia’s bitch. That’s right, it seems Putin had some kind of personal grudge, evidenced by the fact that he shut down State Committee for the Protection of the Environment in 2000 after he took office.
“I’m hunting nature itself”
However, Medvedev seems to have made an earnest attempt to turn things around since coming to office in 2008. Obviously I can’t speculate on whether or not he cares about environmental impact, but he certainly recognizes the economic concern. With a hefty amount of US, European, and Asian (well, mostly Japan) capital going into solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear energy sources, from the business side of things, alternative energy isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
The Russian Federation is currently the fourth largest consumer of energy in the world, behind the US, China, and Japan, and the modernization of the methods by which energy is consumed would make an enormous impact on the amount of money wasted by relying on the less efficient coal and natural gas industry. Medvedev himself, in an article written in Sept. 2009, stated “the energy efficiency of the majority of our companies is shamefully low.” Because of this, he would like to implement plans to cut overall national consumption by 40 percent by 2020 – which would require a monstrumental overhauling of the industry. Perhaps most importantly, they are looking into re-vitalizing the nuclear power industry of the Soviet era.
I would imagine that Chernobyl still poisons public opinion in Russia about nuclear power, but the government doesn’t seem to have a problem with giving the public the middle finger and expanding the number of reactors in the country from 31 to 59 by 2020. This move makes sense from an economic and environmental standpoint – the worldwide nuclear industry is rapidly expanding, and the only reason Chernobyl happened is because of the shortcuts the USSR was notorious for taking (ie they didn’t build a containment shell because they thought their technology was too badass to malfunction). On an interesting note, Russia’s nuclear energy is still completely state run.
Currently, geothermal power is the most developed renewable resource in Russia. This involves harnessing heat from beneath the Earth’s surface and turning it into working electricity, and has been developed extensively in the Northern Caucasus and the far East already. These are the only two regions where geothermal power is practical, but when harnessed correctly, this is a very efficient and clean way to provide essentially free and limitless energy (Iceland has been taking advantage of it for years due to their uniqe geographical position).
Another huge untapped and potential source of energy is the vast land encompassing Siberia. Not the land itself, but the huge amount of land that solar panels and wind turbines could possibly be used on. Of course, transporting the energy from Siberia to areas where people actually use electricity may prove problematic.
Pictured: Siberian parliament building
Even though solar and wind aren’t terribly cost-effective at this point in time, this is one of the most currently researched scientific areas, and universities worldwide hope to improve the storage capabilities of solar energy storage in the near future.
So basically, Medvedev has shown genuine enthusiasm for the development of alternative energy sources in Russia. The potential is most certainly there, for the government or private companies to take advantage of – the country needs to reach into the pocketbook a little bit now, to potentially see huge dividends in the next 50 years. There are really few long term investments that I can think of (and I base this off my having never taken a financial class ever) that are guaranteed to pay off such huge dividends in the next 50 years as alternative energy.
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1. http://www.treehuggingfamily.com/huggies-goes-green-well-at-least-goes-greenwashing/
This article is awesome. Great editorial and well written!
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