Gallery Conversations: Energy, Environment and... Immigration?

Yesterday, sitting in the gallery with a visiting friend (Diane) and my Great Uncle Ram, we were rehashing what my Great Uncle had been talking about in the gallery a day ago about energy. And immigration. Prior to my Great Uncle returning yesterday, Diane and I had spoken at length about socioeconomic and even philosophical issues related to the developing nations, and the cultural identities associated with it.

The mix was wonderful when they got together. Uncle Ram's point was that the energy infrastructure of the developed nations was not growing as fast as the related populations; that even renewable energy wasn't going to be of much help when there were so many immigrants coming from the developing world. An interesting perspective from someone who migrated to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago in 1958; but one that makes sense at an intuitive level and which makes a lot of sense when thought through. If the developed nations - specifically those in North America - cannot supply enough energy for their population, immigrants continue to come in, people continue procreating and nobody leaves - the energy infrastructure will continue to fail. Oddly, with the United States, this affects pollution at a tangible level. The United States has an interesting, if not strange, relationship with the Kyoto Accord - which means that it is likely to increase pollution as it increases energy production.

Diane said that no matter where people are, they use energy, and that the energy used globally would be the same - and yet, when we were working through that, it was hard to say that this would be true. American advertising tells people throughout the world that things are wonderful in the United States - and with American media as a vehicle, it's hard to dispel the need for everyone to have a SUV, as an example. So then media came into play, and we discussed that at length.

Yet, in developing nations, while energy is produced and while the Kyoto Accord may have been signed by the country (and ratified), it doesn't mean that they will honor it - and in this regard, at least the United States has been honest. Much manufacture is done in the developing nations, with blind eyes turned toward safety and pollution despite laws, simply because it's a means of continuing foreign exchange.

So it's all not that simple. So someone other than me (I forget who) brought up renewable energy, and that it could be used in developing nations - but I threw out the fact that the manufacture of renewable energy equipment wasn't clean either - solar panels aren't produced cleanly, and the batteries aren't either. Whether there is a balance between the energy used to create them and the pollution that occurs during the manufacture is a topic of research worth considering; I've heard no claim of substance of either way but it is something to be considered. While I am a strong advocate of renewable energy - and use it - when looking at the larger issues, it's not intelligent to blindly dismiss such issues.¹

In another perspective, we have people moving to colder areas of the world (oddly, the developed nations tend to be in temperate or cooler climates) where more energy is needed throughout the year. Why is it that the developed nations tend to be in cooler climates? This I wondered about, and asked Olivier and Diane (who are behind me on a commercial break from the Lord of the Rings), and there are countries which are developed where the climates are not temperate - such as Australia and Bermuda - and maybe immigration isn't as much of a problem there? Something else to look into.

Like all good conversations, I come away with more questions than answers... looking at things differently.

And this was only one aspect of our conversations... more to come. It's good to have such visitors, with more coordinated brain cells than you can shake a Faux News stick at.

On a more humorous note, I quipped as my Great Uncle left that I didn't know that he was intelligent - and the 78 years of experience responded that he didn't know that I had friends. :-)

¹ And this is something I have to remember to look into more deeply - deeper than the studies published, perhaps.