Straight up on week 2 of my Future Learn course "Sustainability, Society and You", We've been asked two very important questions.
The first is the scope of sustainability. Do we just want to sustain opportunities for human wellbeing, or do we extend that to include other living creatures we share the Earth with.
The second is about the sources of our obligation to act sustainably. Dr Neil Sinclair is asking why we should try to preserve opportunities for other people in future generations who we will never interact with.
Having come from a background of an enormous interest in biology, I see little difference in sustaining opportunities for humans and sustaining opportunities for other living beings. In fact, I think it's impossible for us to have the former without also bringing the latter into the mix.
Ecologies are amazingly complex, and we don't always understand the relationships between the varied organisms in each ecosystem. Knowing that we don't fully understand something is an incredibly important realisation, and one that all too many people are willing to dismiss all too easily.
Take, for instance, krill. These small crustaceans feed on phytoplankton and zooplankton. They then swim around in enormous swarms, getting eaten by (seemingly) anything bigger than them that comes their way, including humans. They (as a collective of all species of krill) are an important link in the food chain.
So what happens when the temperature of the sea rises? A lot of species are arctic, and rising temperature levels may put undue stress on krill, reducing their numbers substantially.
Pollution may decrease the amount of plankton available, which could also reduce the numbers of krill.
And once the krill population drops, so too do the populations of fish that survive in whole or in part on krill.
Fish populations that are already under pressure from human fishing may be devastated by the removal of this one link in the food chain.
Okay, so that's just one species of fish, right? Wrong. The scenario I describe affects multiple species of fish, all at the same time, and from there it affects all the predators as their food source dwindles. A lack of these creatures might go on to cause a boom in the numbers of plankton, causing toxic algae-blooms which block the sun, which then has further ramifications.
Removing a tiny crustacean from the food chain causes a massive knock-on effect which has the potential to put food pressure on human populations.
These important connections in food chains around the globe are everywhere, and sometimes we take them for granted. Colony collapse disorder in bees has been causing increasing amounts of worry, as European honey bees are responsible for pollinating many agricultural crops worldwide. This has the potential to put stress on the food crops of many countries.
It's not just food that we should be worrying about though. Medicinal properties of plants and animals are continually being discovered, and there are well-founded concerns that our destruction of the Amazon could be leading us to destroy potential cures for cancer or other diseases through massive extinctions of plant life.
There are good reasons for keeping our ecosystems intact; reasons which benefit us as well as benefiting other life-forms within ecosystems, and I think I've only just started to scratch the surface of this question, but I want to get onto the second question.
Beyond all the fluffy, herd-mentality co-operative stuff, I'm looking very specifically at one of the basic things that defines me as a life-form: reproduction. Having four children, I want to preserve the opportunities for my genetic line. It seems quite astounding to me, but every creature that lives on the face of this planet is descended from the same ancestor. It's quite clear when you look at the taxonomy of species. And it blew my mind the day I heard Richard Dawkins say it, even though it was the most obvious statement that I had ever heard (and I'm paraphrasing here): every single one of your ancestors lived long enough to pass on their genes. By preserving opportunities for future generations who I will never interact with on a personal level, I am preserving opportunities for my genetic lineage to thrive, to spread, and most importantly, to continue.
What can I say? I am more than who I am. I am the culmination of more than 3.5 billion years of life that has survived hostile conditions, crawling from the littoral zone, mass extinctions, predators, starvation, drought, pestilence, plague... I'm ego-maniacal enough to want, at some stage in the distant future, to be the mother of new species, even if I'm never actually remembered for anything beyond the next couple of generations. And sustainability now gives my genetic heritage the best footing for long-term survival.
Showing posts with label #FLsustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #FLsustainability. Show all posts
Monday, 13 January 2014
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
How I View Sustainability
The beaver does a lot of damage. It builds dams, causes localised flooding, stops water from reaching areas it would normally flow to seasonally.
Humans are like beavers. We build these massive colonies of structures, we destroy ecologies to create new plantations of monocultures, we waste land by building housing on top of fertile soils, we pollute our waterways, we push noxious fumes into the air and make it unsafe... the list is a long one.
I've heard the viewpoint that we're different somehow from every other animal, that we have some inherent right to the land that doesn't belong to any other species. That's anthropomorphic bullshit. More and more, we're learning that we're no different from any other mammal.
If I make a mess, it's my responsibility to clean it up. Well, we as a species made a mess. and we have one thing that other animals don't appear to have: we have awareness of the fact that we screwed up. We have awareness of how badly we screwed up. And we have the ability to try to fix it.
Personally, I think it's too late to try fixing. However, it's not too late to make sure we cut down the amount we break in the future.
To that end, this is what sustainability is to me:
Sustainability is putting solar panels on my house, because then I won't have to pay as much for electricity. It also means that a minute amount less coal needs to be dug out of the ground to run the Powerplant at required levels, but that's a side-effect.
The same goes for installing LED lights in my house. For filling my house with power-saving devices. For hanging my clothes on the clothesline instead of using a dryer.
Sustainability is growing my own food, because then I won't have to pay as much for food. It also means that a chunk of land is no longer wasted on lawn. It means that the people I feed are not dependent upon commercial monocultures. It provides a place for bees and other insects to safely gather nectar without being poisoned by pesticides, and for birds to pick at insects.
Sustainability is building our structures around the house with recycled materials, because stuff that was once in a demolished house is so much cheaper than buying wood that's just been chopped down last week. And that avoids putting it in landfill, which is never a nice choice.
Sustainability is composting my food waste. Because compost is great on my garden. It's expensive to buy stuff like that. And like I said, landfill is never a good choice.
Sustainability is reducing waste in the office by double-siding internal documents and using toner-save settings. It saves money and means that only half as much paper and ink get used, plus the company has more money at the end of the year with which to give us all raises.
Sustainability (and this one will raise eyebrows) is GMOs produced to ensure that nations with high populations of food-insecure families have not only more food, but more nourishing food to go around. This means that there is less effort spent in these countries on just surviving, which frees up people's ability to increase their economic stability. More economic stability leads to more education and less need for population expansion.
Sustainability is planting native plants to desalinate ground. Because ground that doesn't grow anything is worth about as much as you can grow on it.
Sustainability is striving for carbon negative, because global climate change is bad for business. You can't get your product to your consumer if you're blocked from them by unseasonal flooding and people recovering from their house being destroyed by a super-cyclone don't have money to spend on your gee-gaw of the month.
There are a hundreds more examples I can give, and they all come back to one point. Sustainability makes financial sense. And if we can sell it to the corporations who have the muscle to move the mountains in the way, we've got part of the battle out of the way. Money may seem like like a very base reason to do something, but money is king, and we can't dig our way out of our mess without it.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/sustainability-society-and-you
Humans are like beavers. We build these massive colonies of structures, we destroy ecologies to create new plantations of monocultures, we waste land by building housing on top of fertile soils, we pollute our waterways, we push noxious fumes into the air and make it unsafe... the list is a long one.
I've heard the viewpoint that we're different somehow from every other animal, that we have some inherent right to the land that doesn't belong to any other species. That's anthropomorphic bullshit. More and more, we're learning that we're no different from any other mammal.
If I make a mess, it's my responsibility to clean it up. Well, we as a species made a mess. and we have one thing that other animals don't appear to have: we have awareness of the fact that we screwed up. We have awareness of how badly we screwed up. And we have the ability to try to fix it.
Personally, I think it's too late to try fixing. However, it's not too late to make sure we cut down the amount we break in the future.
To that end, this is what sustainability is to me:
Sustainability is putting solar panels on my house, because then I won't have to pay as much for electricity. It also means that a minute amount less coal needs to be dug out of the ground to run the Powerplant at required levels, but that's a side-effect.
The same goes for installing LED lights in my house. For filling my house with power-saving devices. For hanging my clothes on the clothesline instead of using a dryer.
Sustainability is growing my own food, because then I won't have to pay as much for food. It also means that a chunk of land is no longer wasted on lawn. It means that the people I feed are not dependent upon commercial monocultures. It provides a place for bees and other insects to safely gather nectar without being poisoned by pesticides, and for birds to pick at insects.
Sustainability is building our structures around the house with recycled materials, because stuff that was once in a demolished house is so much cheaper than buying wood that's just been chopped down last week. And that avoids putting it in landfill, which is never a nice choice.
Sustainability is composting my food waste. Because compost is great on my garden. It's expensive to buy stuff like that. And like I said, landfill is never a good choice.
Sustainability is reducing waste in the office by double-siding internal documents and using toner-save settings. It saves money and means that only half as much paper and ink get used, plus the company has more money at the end of the year with which to give us all raises.
Sustainability (and this one will raise eyebrows) is GMOs produced to ensure that nations with high populations of food-insecure families have not only more food, but more nourishing food to go around. This means that there is less effort spent in these countries on just surviving, which frees up people's ability to increase their economic stability. More economic stability leads to more education and less need for population expansion.
Sustainability is planting native plants to desalinate ground. Because ground that doesn't grow anything is worth about as much as you can grow on it.
Sustainability is striving for carbon negative, because global climate change is bad for business. You can't get your product to your consumer if you're blocked from them by unseasonal flooding and people recovering from their house being destroyed by a super-cyclone don't have money to spend on your gee-gaw of the month.
There are a hundreds more examples I can give, and they all come back to one point. Sustainability makes financial sense. And if we can sell it to the corporations who have the muscle to move the mountains in the way, we've got part of the battle out of the way. Money may seem like like a very base reason to do something, but money is king, and we can't dig our way out of our mess without it.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/sustainability-society-and-you
Monday, 6 January 2014
Dipping My Toes into Sustainability
So my first week of Sustainability, Society and You from Future Learn has given me the following three poll questions:
1. Which is better for the environment - incineration of waste, or disposal via landfill?
2. Which do you think is more sustainable? Drying your hands with hot air dryers or using paper towels?
3. If you have the option of using a dishwasher, do you think it is more sustainable than washing up by hand?
These are tough questions, and we're asked to justify our reasoning.
My answers are:
1. Incineration. It seems a little counter-intuitive, but I honestly believe it's the better choice.
Landfill is an enormous problem. While incineration can cause air pollution (mostly in the form of CO2), it can be done relatively close to the source of the waste production, and impurities can be scrubbed out of the air before the waste gases are released, whereas waste has to be transported to the landfill site (non-filtered fumes from the transportation) where it is then buried, poisons the water table due to toxins which leach out of the waste, and creates methane, which is one of the worse greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is a pussy compared to methane. Seriously.
2. Hot Air Dryers.
Less energy goes into heating the air in a hot air dryer than goes into the production, transportation, sale and disposal of a paper towel. It is also cheaper to run over the course of a year than to supply paper towels for the same amount of time, so it makes awesome business sense. Remember the cradle-to-grave cycle. There's no guarantee that paper towel is going to end up in a place where it can biodegrade, and there's an awful lot of water that goes into the production of paper. Being an Aussie, I have a healthy respect for water consumption.
3. Washing up by hand. Yeah, I know there are water-saving models of dishwashers and stuff, but really?
Washing by hand allows you to control the amount of water that is used in each wash. You are also more able to control the heat of the water rather than just having all that heat pumping in willy-nilly. You are not as limited by the space of a dishwasher... you are able to wash as many dishes as you want in the one batch of water (although grunge is grunge, and it does build up, you hear what I'm saying?) So, less water, less electricity, potentially more dishes... you do the math.
So, are you tempted to pick different answers? If so, why?
1. Which is better for the environment - incineration of waste, or disposal via landfill?
2. Which do you think is more sustainable? Drying your hands with hot air dryers or using paper towels?
3. If you have the option of using a dishwasher, do you think it is more sustainable than washing up by hand?
These are tough questions, and we're asked to justify our reasoning.
My answers are:
1. Incineration. It seems a little counter-intuitive, but I honestly believe it's the better choice.
Landfill is an enormous problem. While incineration can cause air pollution (mostly in the form of CO2), it can be done relatively close to the source of the waste production, and impurities can be scrubbed out of the air before the waste gases are released, whereas waste has to be transported to the landfill site (non-filtered fumes from the transportation) where it is then buried, poisons the water table due to toxins which leach out of the waste, and creates methane, which is one of the worse greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is a pussy compared to methane. Seriously.
2. Hot Air Dryers.
Less energy goes into heating the air in a hot air dryer than goes into the production, transportation, sale and disposal of a paper towel. It is also cheaper to run over the course of a year than to supply paper towels for the same amount of time, so it makes awesome business sense. Remember the cradle-to-grave cycle. There's no guarantee that paper towel is going to end up in a place where it can biodegrade, and there's an awful lot of water that goes into the production of paper. Being an Aussie, I have a healthy respect for water consumption.
3. Washing up by hand. Yeah, I know there are water-saving models of dishwashers and stuff, but really?
Washing by hand allows you to control the amount of water that is used in each wash. You are also more able to control the heat of the water rather than just having all that heat pumping in willy-nilly. You are not as limited by the space of a dishwasher... you are able to wash as many dishes as you want in the one batch of water (although grunge is grunge, and it does build up, you hear what I'm saying?) So, less water, less electricity, potentially more dishes... you do the math.
So, are you tempted to pick different answers? If so, why?
Just MOOCin' around...
Welcome to my brand new blog. This blog has been prompted by a MOOC I'm currently doing.
Don't know what a MOOC is? For those of you who haven't Googled it already, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. The current MOOC organisation I'm working my way through is Future Learn (http://futurelearn.com), although it's certainly not the only one available. I'm sure that over the upcoming months I'll find myself looking at others as I find interesting courses.
I'm currently enmeshed in the throes of two courses... England in the Time of King Richard III via the University of Leicester and Sustainability, Society and You via the University of Nottingham. I must admit, there's a huge amount of fondness within me for the University of Nottingham, as I've been following the exploits of their science department with a large amount of glee on YouTube (check out the channels Sixty Symbols, Numberphile, Periodic Videos, and Nottinghamscience if you want to know more).
Over the coming couple of months, I'll also be looking at courses about writing, climate change, and business, and I'll blog about these courses as I come to them.
Don't know what a MOOC is? For those of you who haven't Googled it already, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. The current MOOC organisation I'm working my way through is Future Learn (http://futurelearn.com), although it's certainly not the only one available. I'm sure that over the upcoming months I'll find myself looking at others as I find interesting courses.
I'm currently enmeshed in the throes of two courses... England in the Time of King Richard III via the University of Leicester and Sustainability, Society and You via the University of Nottingham. I must admit, there's a huge amount of fondness within me for the University of Nottingham, as I've been following the exploits of their science department with a large amount of glee on YouTube (check out the channels Sixty Symbols, Numberphile, Periodic Videos, and Nottinghamscience if you want to know more).
Over the coming couple of months, I'll also be looking at courses about writing, climate change, and business, and I'll blog about these courses as I come to them.
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