Post 5

During the round table discussion, there are four kinds of technologies that were discussed. The first one is biofuel technology. The group first gives a brief introduction of biofuel technology. Biofuel technology is currently a very hot area where many research has been done. Unavoidably, many controversies will be brought up by it, such as the use of land in Singapore. Actually we can make use of the roofs of the HDB flats as the “land” to grow biofuel crops. There is rich sunshine and rain there, so the flats may works very well.

The second group focuses on green chemistry. It is a new concept coming from the principle of sustainable development. It emphasizes on the environmental friendliness during manufacturing process. The greatest difficulty it is facing is resources, such as fund, people and technology. The green chemistry techniques are likely to require higher cost; therefore an intense competition exists between the traditional techniques and green chemistry techniques. As a result, its popularization would be a problem.

The third group discussed a new technology which will plant some chips into human body and convenience would be created through this method. We will not need to worry about losing our identity card and bank cards. Payment would also be much easier then. However, there is a serious disadvantage of this technology which might prevent it from being adopted. Planting chips into human body means that our every single action will be supervised by the government, which would be a great challenge for our privacy. I believe most citizens would not agree with adopting this technology at the cost of their privacy.

The last discussion is on carbon storage, which is another hot area in mitigating climate change. The group briefly showed us the mechanism of carbon storage. Inevitably, problems also exist. One problem is find container for carbon. Currently scientists plan to use the ocean as the container. But what if the ocean is saturated? We will be facing a difficult problem with finding another good container as the ocean. All these issues remain to be seen.