Summary of roundtable discussion

During the roundtable discussion, on the 9th of March, 4 different topic were covered. They were bio-fuel, followed by green chemistry, RFID chips and carbon capture and storage. Since my group discussed bio-fuel, I would be giving a summary on the other 3 topics.

First of all green chemistry is a technology that helps prevent and reduce pollution. The supporting side says green chemistry is a must as it will tackle global warming and green house gas emission problems. This can be done by taking used and unwanted plastic bottles and reducing it into carbon microsphere, which is said to be stronger then diamond. Green chemistry is a technology that ensures that during process and the final production of the product does not not harm the environment in anyway. While on the other hand the opponents argued that green chemistry techonlogy is difficult and very expensive to sustain during this global economic crisis time. They also said that it is not worth for Sigapore to invest due to its limitation like land, cost and the recent economic crisis. Instead of developed countries using green chemistry, they suggested developing countries to use it instead. When i heard that, i was like how can a developing country use green chemistry when it is expensive for developed countries to support it.

The topic was about implantation of micro-chips into every human. This chips would be used as a mean of identification, storage of one's medical history, could be used as a tracking device to locate people lost in natural disaster, to track wanted criminals. However, the opposing side argued that, this micro-chips may seem useful but at the same time dangerous. As hackers could hack their way and steal every individual information. Next is privacy as government or some organisation tracks movement of its own people, and human rights group are against it. There is also the cost of implementing this technology and running it as not every country would be able to afford it.

The last topic was about low-pressure carbon filter process technology. Basically it is carbon capture, as from the name suggest to collect and trap carbon emission will help to reduce carbon emission in the atmosphere and reduce global warming. The supporting side main arguement was to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by using this low-pressure carbon filter and using the collected carbon emission for enhace oil and methane recovery. The opposing side argued that this technology will provide benefit if it is implemented on a large scale and to have it on a lager scale, cost of implementation will be huge. The long pipes used may leak and so well maintence is need. I personally felt that the against was weak and did not have a proper arguement on why he opposes.

This roundtable discussion help me to understand the other topic for WA2 and also the various technolgies.