My eight panel discussion that I attended was titled "Everything Connects: Building Blocks of Daily Life." There were three panelists.
The following short biographies were taken from the LA Times Festival of Books website:
Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is internationally known for his popular books on archaeology, history and climate change and has won numerous awards for his writing. His most recent book is “Beyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Oceans.”
Edward Humes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of 13 books, including acclaimed enviro-chronicle “Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash.” He is a recipient of the PEN Award and his writing has been featured in Los Angeles Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the New York Times. He resides With his family in Southern California, and his latest book is “Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation.”
Jonathan Waldman grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., studied writing at Dartmouth and then Boston University, and has since written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Wired, Slate and Outside magazine. His latest book, “Rust: The Longest War,” is a finalist for the 2015 L.A. Times Book Prize in Science and Technology.
The following are my notes from the panel discussion. There are potential misinterpretations to what I heard so take that into consideration.
Waldman. The military is losing too many ships to rust. We can't build ships fast enough. Rust is attacking material all the time. There was a bay for rusting ships in San Francisco for the Navy. It was causing pollution issues.
Impact of rust on the military: a study was done on how much is costs to repair military equipment for rust. The number came to $20 billion a year.
There is a science to making cans. Cans are made to rust (oxidize) from inside out. The can is a corrosion miracle. The science behind the can is more complex to anything we send to space. Energy drinks are tested at can test center. Many energy drinks are too corrosive, which indicates what you're drinking.
Can school shows how cans are made.
Humes. When Los Angeles shut down the 405 for expansion, it was called carmageddon. The 405 was shut down for 54 hours. During that time, traffic improved, pollution dropped. Now with the extra lane, traffic has gotten worse on the 405.
We need to change people's behavior. We need to make life better without spending money.
Amazon's one day delivery is horrible for traffic. People are mad at trucks on the road but want the convenience.
Just 160 transportation tankers emit more pollution than all the cars in the world. Tankers in Long Beach harbor emit more pollution than all the cars in the US.
3D printing might result in a return of local manufacturing and could reduce pollution.
Invention of shipping containers allowed for outsourcing. Shipping containers are low tech. The good or bad nature of outsourcing can be debated, but that is an unseen consequence of what was initially seen as an invention that would improve efficiency.
Fagan. The donkey adapted to semi-arid conditions and so can survive well in the desert. It is also easy to train. An ancient Egyptian trail indicates that donkeys were used. There are also trails between Iraq and Turkey. These details can be found in ancient letters.
Donkeys were worked to death. They were the ancient world's pickup truck. Domestication happened around 4000-ish BC. Wheels came in later for ox carts. Camel came later. Gold came from West Africa to Europe via the camel.
We are in this situation where we eat animals and treat them horrible, but we also have them as pets.
Horses were used around 3500 BC. Horses allowed for mobility; however, donkeys were the earliest pack animals. The ox needs too much water.
Pit ponies worked underground.
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