Top Ten Emerging Environmental Technologies

Sci-Fi Displays, Smart Plants and Turkey Guts

#10 Paperless Paper: A German electronics firm, Siemens, projects a lowered production cost for paper thin displays that can replace newspapers and magazines. Imagine using one sheet of electronic paper to read your daily news, favorite celebrity rag or current novel? The possibilities are endless. The “paper” would contain tiny microcapsules filled with particles that carry electric charges all bonded to a steel foil. The display would have the capabilities of a TV screen or computer monitor. The technology was a feature throughout the film Minority Report, a postmodern flick with a big brother type advertising subplot. It was also touted in Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Along with Siemens, several other companies are working to make this sci-fi environmentally sound technology a reality.

#9 Carbon Dioxide Sequesters: The most prominent and criticized greenhouse gas attributed to global warming, carbon dioxide is the focus of urgent environmental legislation and action. Predictions against the human capacity to decrease production of carbon dioxide leads to some suggesting we bury the problem, literally. The idea isn’t new. Thousands of years ago, Brazilian peoples living in the Amazon buried burned waste underground creating carbon holds of rich, fertile soil. As with many sustainable practices, sequestering CO2 underground might only apply to small scale operations. Although injecting CO2 into the ground before it becomes loose in the atmosphere may be a quick fix to slow global warming, scientists can’t predict the long term results. But the Amazonian precedent peaks the interest of many. At present, the cost of separating CO2 from other gases is too high to make this clean air method feasible.