THE HUMAN settlements of the future need a balance of everything. It is not enough to have basic needs, because human life has become complicated far beyond human civilizations have ever imagined. Basic needs are needed in order to survive, but then, new technologies have now made it possible to provide for more advanced needs at more affordable costs.
As it is now, we already have the technologies to improve the quality of life in human settlements, and with costs no longer a hindrance, the only remaining challenge is to produce the policy frameworks that would enable us to avail of these technologies and to put them in good use. The irony here is that in order to make use of these technologies towards the goal of having intelligent settlements, we need national and local leaders who are intelligent enough to understand what we need, and how we could provide for these needs.
It could still be said that food, clothing and shelter are still the most basic of human needs, although clothing has become less of a problem in many places. As life has become more complicated, energy and connectivity have joined the list of basic needs. Even if it could be said that human life has survived for eons without connectivity, it is hard to imagine how human life now and in the future could survive without connectivity, the thread that connects both mobile and online communications.
It is hard to say whether one is more important than the other, but suffice it to say that without energy, there could be no connectivity. In comparison, water is seldom mentioned as a basic need, but also suffice it to say that without water, we could not cook food either.
Some power companies are already claiming that cooking with electric induction stoves is already more economical than cooking with gas. That might be good news at the household level, but it does not sound too exciting at the macroeconomic level, because most of the electricity we are using now is produced using fossil fuels, just like the cooking gases like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
As I see it, we should only get excited about electric induction stoves if most of our electricity is already produced from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Assuming that that will not happen yet at the national level, we should still get excited if an affordable array of solar panels could already power one or more electric induction stoves.
It seems that we have already given up on biogas even before we have tried it. Tapping biogas does not need rocket science and besides, the technology is already available and affordable.
In the case of landfills, there is yet another incentive to tap methane as biogas, because not unless it is tapped, it causes damage not only to the ozone layer, but also to human health as it escapes into the air.
Do not get me wrong, but I am actually opposed to the idea of having landfills, because I believe that almost everything could be recycled in which case landfills would really become unnecessary. Of course, I am also opposed to dumpsites even if these are already banned, on the same reasoning that proper recycling would make dumpsites obsolete. (To be continued/PN)
