Building a Smarter Planet
(Original)

Divya Gopinath
(Age 11, USA)
Seven Bridges Middle School

As a typical American, I depend on energy. I’m a New Yorker, and we need heat in winter and the occasional A.C. to cool us off. Maybe we’re not ready to conserve that much energy, but there are certainly feasible ways to cut down on energy consumption. Americans, no doubt the greatest consumers of energy, do have a slight issue when it comes to curtailing their needs and wants. In 2004, the U.S.A. used approximately 2,325.9 million tons of oil alone. Unfortunately, our energy consumption has consequences for the whole world. Global warming and the dependence of the world on oil is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge facing the world today.  There are small things we can do such as buying seasonal foods so there is less of a transportation factor in getting the food to you, or turning of lights and taps when not in use, but this will not be enough to solve this crisis. Our only way forward is to use advances in science and technology to save our planet.

Just recently, I participated in a program where children from all around the world would invent or innovate to create something that would help people. My innovation, a machine called EcoFuels, harnessed solar power and used that energy to change carbon dioxide in to carbon monoxide, and from there, morphing it into a synthetic fuel using a catalyzed chemical reaction. EcoFuels is not fundable for large regions, such as the whole of New York, but small cities around the world could depend on it. Although EcoFuels is not yet scalable for practical use, the technology that it depends on, such as capturing carbon from the atmosphere and converting carbon dioxide into a synthetic fuel using the Fischer-Tropsch process, already exist.  As part of this process, I also researched other technological innovations into cleaner fuels. I learnt that we have the knowledge to use algae to create bio-fuels, and that this fuel can even be used for jet engines!

We can also use our knowledge of science to develop better ways to deliver energy and to also better control how much energy we use. Imagine something as simple as a sensor installed in all our taps so that it would beep when the desired water temperature was reached. This way, we wouldn’t have to waste water while we waited for water to turn hot or cold.  Imagine a smarter energy grid that was capable of monitoring energy use and diverting energy to places that needed it. 

Even as kids, we can use science to help educate our communities.  Earlier this year, I participated in an international robotics program where I researched and reported about climate change and global warming. On both topics, I gave suggestions to the town board about how our town could prevent these two ‘cataclysmic’ events from happening.  For global warming, I suggested, after evaluating two local libraries on how ‘green’ they were, that the libraries could accommodate small changes in their system, like motion-sensor lights which turn off automatically. Also, regarding climate change, there were certain floods on a parkway in my area, and I suggested to the parkway coalition to plant willow trees along the edges so that a) the willow trees would soak up the rain water and b) so that the trees could consume carbon dioxide.  Additionally, I, along with my team, raised $3,000 donated to a public library to buy an interactive white board, or a Smart Board, that displayed our team website and tips to how to stay green, including a quiz so young children could learn. Also, aside from this website, we have climate change blogs that are designed so children can do their own part. After all, the kids of today are the future of tomorrow.