Session 8 (Week 9): Energy, Transportation and World Change

Week 9's session was the first class for all of us after a week's break from classes. For most (myself included), it was only a break in the sense of there being no classes, but not in terms of workload etc.

This week's session was on Energy, Transportation and World Change. Preliminary points that were brought up and sounded interesting included the idea of creating lifeforms that did nothing but produce hydrocarbons to ensure that we have a renewable source of electricity. It is interesting, but brings back the bio-ethical concerns of doing such research.

Another interesting, and less controversial issue, would be a world-wide energy grid, allowing energy to be transmitted from the part of the world producing energy to the energy consuming regions seamlessly. This would be an interesting and useful concept, but one which needs to be executed carefully. Terrorists and other militant organizations if in control of it, or if able to hack into the system, would instantaneously gain control over the world's energy supply. This would leave all of us as sitting ducks, with the exception of those who didn't rely on electricity in the first place, or who have their own back up generators.

Apart from these 2 points, another thing that jumped out at me from the presentation was the idea of nuclear power as an alternative to current energy production processes. Other commentators seem to share that view as well (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/nuclear-option-deserves-our-most-objective-gaze/story-e6frg6zo-1225926989266) However, one thing that most nuclear power proponents fail to address is that the current "cheap"-ness of nuclear power is partially attributed to the stores of decommissioned nuclear weapons of the US and Russia that have been sold as uranium sources since the Cold War ended. Such stores are rapidly depleting and uranium deposits would have to be mined from the earth to supply the reactors - something that is definitely more expensive than selling weapons that you are not going to use. Hence, I personally do not feel that nuclear power is the solution, but other forms of renewable energy, like osmotic power, sound rather exciting.

Overall, I would rate the session a 7. Although I found it interesting, the discussion was boring as new points were not being brought up.

On a side note, this is an interesting website and experiment on the influence of surveillance technology and how hard it is to escape from the "clutches" of government and private companies (http://erasingdavid.com/)