Bio plastic could be just another fad.
In theory bio plastics can trap carbon if they are used for a permanent purpose, like building materials, rather than single-use cups and bags. But the reality is different:
It would take an astounding amount of land and water to grow enough plants to replace traditional plastics — plus energy is needed to produce and ship it all. Bioplastics can be loaded with the same toxic additives that make a plastic plastic, and still splinter into micro-sized bits that corrupt the land, sea, and air.
Switching to bioplastics could give the industry an excuse to keep producing exponentially more polymers under the guise of “eco-friendliness,” when scientists and environmentalists agree that the only way to stop the crisis is to just stop producing so much damn plastic, whatever its source of carbon.
Humanity is not sustainable
The Doomsday Clock has moved to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to Armageddon.
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich declared:
“[W]e’ve had it, …the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.” In other words, “Humanity is not sustainable.”
He’s certain the world is about to end and he’s been wrong for 55 years but he’s never in doubt. Its worth a shot to hear what he has to say. Plus there is more on this topic in this piece.
The myth of different learning styles
Off late there has been a lot of focus on customizing learning as per children and their abilities. New schools have opened up making this their moat and selling this idea about optimized learning to anxious parents.
This piece has an interesting take on it.
So we arrive at a paradox but one that I find hopeful: we teachers should treat each of our students as individuals, but at the same time we should base our teaching practices on the fundamental aspects of learning that are common to all students.
In this way, we will help all our students to ultimately flourish as individuals in the long term – to create a bridge between their future and past selves, and the ways they can make sense of the world.
India needs to rethink its air quality monitoring
To comply with a 2018 NGT directive, India should operate 2312 monitoring stations covering approximately 502 cities across 26 states and 5 UTs. As of September 15, 2022, India possesses 1,266 ambient air quality monitoring stations, which is approximately 54% of the actual target.
The issue is not just that we need to build these facilities. We will also need a re look at how we monitor air quality in the first place. We need a better financial and policy architecture and we need to leverage modern (not necessarily expensive) technology as well.
Revisiting the 4 hour work week
If Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek kickstarted the “first wave” of the post-industrial reimagination of work in 2007, 2022 was the year that a newer, and weirder, second wave began.
As the worst blows of the pandemic have receded, people who seemed committed to traditional employment and working for big companies have started to soften their attachment to traditional work scripts.
As someone who quit my job and walked away from a promising and well-paid strategy consulting path more than five years ago, and has been making a living while self-employed, it is jolting to experience people shifting from mocking my lifestyle to asking how they might, too, claim a little more freedom.
what has changed?
In the 1990s, the sociologist Andre Gorz argued that most people live in what he called “wage-based societies.” What determined membership in such a society was participation in formal work. Put more simply, to be a good person, thou shall be employed. This was undoubtedly a hidden force that held the ideas in Ferriss’s book from reaching mass adoption. But for the first time, the conventional thinking that it is taboo to question these 20th-century scripts is starting to evaporate.