Chapter. 15 & 17 Working in an Organization / Working as Agents

In this final blog post after such an amazing time throughout the colloquium course. I will be examining all of the concepts that we have learned over the whole semester and taking them all into consideration and coming up with more sustainable solutions for us all in this coming holiday weekend. During this blog posting, we will also take into consideration Chapter 15: Working for an Organization / Ch. 17: Agents for Change.

One of the largest changes that we can make to the world as we know it and that is especially relevant during the holidays is the amount of wasteful wrapping paper that we end up using and subsequently discarding throughout the whole season. I've personally noticed that in my own family, for example, we tend to use more paper than needed and often times double wrap things which in my opinion seem wasteful. What I believe we need is to go completely green in regards to how to we choose to hide presents from loved ones, a greener method and more simple one at that would just be to either hide gifts in plain sight, out of sight and simply don't wrap them. This cuts down on the cost of wrapping paper and also at the same time helps keep the environment just a little bit cleaner. This holiday season I will make sure to try and get my parents to try and reduce the amount of paper they end up using!

Another great method to be an agent for change in the world that I have learned about this semester is to cut back on red meat consumption. Comparatively, red meat is one of the highest users of water in the world. It takes almost 3x as much water & energy to create 1lb of beef than it does to make chicken. This fact shocked me when I first saw it because a large portion of my diet does inevitably end up being red meat. Throughout the Thanksgiving break, I spoke with my parents about it and they were also shocked to find out that eating red meat is not very sustainable, after all, they are used to eating whatever they want when they want it. In order for us to be a greener and more sustainable society though, cutbacks need to be made. Small steps such as simply reducing the amount of meat you eat a week are enough to help the cause, and I suggested this option to them to no avail. While I understand their viewpoint, they don't really get the drastic consequences of climate change and our water/energy usage, it is still good to get the idea of lessening consumption into their heads. Personally, I will try to reduce the amount of meat I consume from now on by having a "red meatless day" throughout the week. I believe that adopting this helps everyone in the long run and I am proud to be a part of the solution, instead of the problem.

The final example I would like to highlight is the usage of carpooling with others, especially on your way to mutual events that you're both a part of. The energy crisis is currently underway as we discussed in this course, and we all know that eventually, our petroleum reserves in the ground will eventually run dry. Carpooling with other people is an easy method to cut down on both emissions from gasoline usage, as well as a way for people to stay in touch easier. Nothing is more lonely than driving a large 4-door sedan all by yourself, so I figure why not have a good time with people while being more energy-efficient? In my own experience, I've always had a good time and been incredibly grateful when someone offers to pick me up & carpool, but now with the added fact that it is *much* more of a green alternative to driving alone only incentives me more to do it.


Photo Sources: https://www.buyautoinsurance.com/wp-content/featured-content/emissions/images/choose_chart.png

http://www.texasvox.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/vegetarian-benefits-5.jpg

Ch.5 - Climate

On this week's blog post I will be covering Chapter 5 of Margaret Robertson's book, Sustainability Principles, and Practice. This chapter covers the topic of climate and inevitably climate change, in which the scientific community is at a consensus is caused by man. At the current rate that the earth is warming scientists are projecting a large influx in worsening storms, rising temperatures, and higher sea levels all around the globe. The issue is not isolated to one specific area, rather it is a global issue that must bring us all together to create meaningful solutions instead of pushing it back due to policy and infrastructure that we already have in place.

The first line that I will be highlighting from this chapter comes from page 68 in the book and talks about the fact that only a slight change in temperature of a few degrees can have lasting impacts on climate all around the globe.

"A change of only a few degrees in the global average temperature has a significant impact on the climate as a whole."

Robertson, Margaret. Sustainability Principles and Practice. Routledge, 2017.

It is quite a frightening thought that only a change of a couple degrees Fahrenheit can cause such widespread changes in our climate. We are all used to weather changes in our daily life, temperatures here in Florida can be 90 degrees one day and 60 the next during Winter. While that would constitute a change in the weather, a distinct difference from climate, which is the weather over a longer period of time. Established climate patterns are all trending upwards in regards to temperature, and in the last hundred years has already risen a few degrees, which has caused an uptick in the intensity of storms around the globe.

"Earth’s climate is warming and it is doing so at a rate that is unprecedented. The primary driver is something called the greenhouse effect."

Robertson, Margaret. Sustainability Principles and Practice. Routledge, 2017.

The warming of the planet is being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which come from plants that have been turned into fuel that died millions of years ago and are used to power most of the things in our lives. Burning fossil fuels releases gasses that help trap heat inside the planet, like methane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Currently, burning fossil fuels and natural gasses is the predominant way we move around. Most of the cars around the world burn fuel in order to move us, so there needs to be a widespread change in how we gather energy and it has to be both cleaner and renewable. Without a doubt, we will eventually run out of fossil fuels. Once we do, we need other green energy solutions in order to be ready for when that does happen.

"Since the start of the industrial era the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen almost 40 percent."

Robertson, Margaret. Sustainability Principles and Practice. Routledge, 2017.

The warming of the planet is being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which come from plants that have been turned into fuel that died millions of years ago and are used to power most of the things in our lives. Burning fossil fuels releases gasses that help trap heat inside the planet, like methane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Currently, burning fossil fuels and natural gasses is the predominant way we move around. Most of the cars around the world burn fuel in order to move us, so there needs to be a widespread change in how we gather energy and it has to be both cleaner and renewable. Without a doubt, we will eventually run out of fossil fuels. Once we do, we need other green energy solutions in order to be ready for when that does happen.

Picture credits: https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

Ch. 14 "Waste"

This chapter in Sustainability Principles and Practice touches on the topic of waste and recycling as it relates to the concept of sustainability.  The first portion from this chapter which I found to be quite interesting comes from the first paragraph and sets the stage for the rest of the chapter that follows.

Waste is big business. Every day the average person living in the US throws away 4.6 pounds of solid waste (Center for Sustainable Systems Factsheets 2008, 1), and for every pound of household waste we discard, 40 to 70 additional pounds of industrial debris were generated during its production (Rogers 2005, 4)

This quote from the textbook is quite the figure. For every person, we produce 4.6 pounds of solid waste per day, which I think is an astronomical figure. This fact was backed up when we went on our field experience at the Lee County Waste plant and we got to see the sheer amount of trash that gets created, and eventually how it is dealt with. I think that in order to minimize the sheer amount of trash we produce drastic measures need to be taken in our lives to ease us off of that lifestyle. If it doesn't go to a landfill where it potentially can lay there for decades, it usually ends up being processed but some waste is inevitably created and left about. The most sustainable method would be something akin to what Lee County is doing with their trash. Creating energy from the incineration of the trash, while keeping the emissions clean, is a great step towards further sustainability and provides energy to many thousands of homes while putting the trash to good use.

The following line I found interesting was about the issue of Leachate, which is a liquid that forms from rainwater seeping through trash and picking up all the pollutants along the way to the bottom.

According to pollution specialists it is impossible to prevent all leaks; all landfills do eventually leak. 

(Robertson, M (2017) p.277

 Inherently, because it is impossible to prevent the spread of leachate landfills will always remain a method of trash collection that is not good for the environment. Even the best alternative, which is Waste-to-Energy incineration, produces material that is destined for a landfill in some way shape or form. Only ash is leftover but that ash needs to also be moved to its own landfill, and even the filters which clean up the exhaust air of waste-to-energy plants need to be emptied out in the same area. I think the final solution is to either launch it all into space or reduce our total trash creation (which is the more feasible method).

A reduction in total trash creation is quite a daunting task, and there are methods that we can all practice in order to reduce the total waste created. The principles of "zero waste" should be more enforced and taught in order to have a lower total trash production level. The 3R's, reduce, reuse, recycle, and possibly the fourth - "re-think" are a good way to promote sustainable waste. A larger campaign of education and reform should be implemented to further promote zero-waste.

Zero Waste begins with design. It means that products and packaging must be designed for durability, reuse, and recyclability, and the ways we live, including the ways we do busi-ness and the ways we lay out our cities, must be redesigned to minimize or eliminate the need for so many products.

(Robertson, M (2017) p.289

I agree with this statement by Robertson. A large scale change in how we package all of our consumables ranging from food, electronics, clothes, almost everything we use today comes with so much excess packaging. We should definitely put measures in place that aim to reduce the amount of packaging everything comes with ideally to nothing, but we all know that in a country such as this one we tend to buy products with our eyes before we dish over money for them. It would undoubtedly be a struggle, but I believe moving towards zero-waste should be further looked into. 

Ch.9 Energy

If I were to come into the position of Secretary of Energy I would choose to rather focus on finding methods to cut down the total miles people need to drive, rather than increasing miles per gallon. The issue is quite simple really, lessening the dependence that people have on their own personal vehicles will be a benefit to us all. We can accomplish this through a variety of ways, some being drastic changes to our lives as we know them and some are relatively simple.

My thoughts go like this: other countries have focused on public transportation and improved it to the point where it is more practical to take it than drive yourself. While improving the number of miles able to be traveled off the same gallon of gas would without a doubt be an improvement, in order to become fully sustainable we need to ease off of them sooner rather than later. A step forward in decreasing our reliance on personal vehicles is much more cost-effective for the average consumer and much better for the sustainability of the planet. Reinvesting money into improving the public transport system to solve the issues people usually associate with it, cleanliness, speed, and efficiency to name a few would be a great improvement to the already underutilized transport system.

The three forms of renewable energy that I will be focusing on are solar, wind, and geothermal energy. These three forms of energy were the ones that I believed would be most likely to gather the greatest amount of energy while still remaining cost-effective. Solar is a common method already used today that after further refining in the efficiency of the panels, will yield much greater numbers. I believe the best panels today are between 20%-30% efficiency which only leads me to assume that if those numbers ever reach 90% or 100% efficiency we will see a vastly different world than the one we see today. Wind energy is also another great option that works in tandem with solar. Both methods are not available 100% of the time due to there being differences in both sunlight and sometimes the wind is just not picked up. Combining these methods will prove to be very effective if implemented correctly. Finally, geothermal energy is a recent discovery with promises to deliver vast amounts of reliable energy that is drawn from the Earth's heat.

A social cost could likely come from any of these. People simply are used to the idea of having ever-present energy at a moment's notice. There is the possibility that with these methods of energy creation there could be downtime in some areas, which people will not be used to. An economic cost would be the high levels of capital required to build and implement these systems into our grid. Finally, an environmental cost could come from the amount of land that needs to be cleared in order to set up effective wind or solar farms, but I believe the benefit outweighs the cost of all of these issues.



Photo sources: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/estimating-cost-and-energy-efficiency-solar-water-heater
https://archive.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/solutions/technologies/geothermal.html

Chapter 11 - Livable Cities

Today, I will be covering three quotes from Chapter 11 of Margaret Robertson's book, Sustainability Principles, and Practice. The impact that sustainable and liveable cities around us is incredibly important for us. A majority of people are now choosing to live in cities rather than in the rural countryside. This is for a variety of reasons, but if cities and more urban living are going to be the primary habitat for people, then we need to ensure they are built sustainably and responsibly so that they don't pollute and enhance the lives of both the planet and the people.

"New developments are almost always based on the assumption that people travel in automobiles every time they move from one place to another." 

- Robertson, M (2017) p.209

The section in which Robertson touches on Sprawl, which is what we tend to think of as urban sprawl, is most commonly what we would think of when a city is mentioned. Large concrete cities that are heavily dependant on cars for daily routines are not part of being sustainable. As the quote by Robertson details above, any new sprawl-like developments are always going to assume and account for vehicles in the area, to a large extent. Until there is a new method of convenient, inexpensive, and reliable transportation. The cities today are part of a vicious cycle where people move there with cars, architects build around the plan of ever-increasing vehicle/people populations, and the cycle repeats. Liveable cities that have more sustainable measures like encouraging biking, pedestrian walkways, and active-lifestyles are the only logical step moving forward. Existing cities need to be renovated with sustainability and avoidance of sprawl in mind.

"Planning healthy, sustainable communities requires the integration of top-down pro-fessional skills from multiple disciplines with bottom-up, community-driven thinking and decision-making."

 - Robertson, M (2017) p.211

I like this quote from the text because it really tells us the amount of care and thought that has to go into creating a city with sustainability in mind.  The process starts from the top to the bottom, plans need to be made first-hand by the community about whether or not measures such as the ones listed in the book are worth the cost and time to develop them. Fully integrated systems that all benefit one another such as rainwater collection feeding into use for irrigation throughout cities would make them a lot more worthwhile.

The benefits range from helping keep the environment cleaner, but also in helping people's moods by increasing the amount of greenery they see, to also helping drive down water costs and electrical ones. So many tangible benefits could be gained by creating a green-focused city, but it will indeed take a lot of planning and money to get completed to that level.

"Coastal cities will face increasing intensity of storm surges and rising sea levels which will inundate whole neighborhoods. Some inland cities will face increased flooding, perhaps together with water shortages."

 - Robertson, M (2017) p.221

This paints a grim picture of the possibility people will likely be facing in the near future if no dire action is taken by leaders in an effort to reduce the level of climate change and adapting sustainability-focused cities. Coastal cities such as Naples, Miami will be some of the first directly impacted by the rising seawater as a result of climate change, A large percentage of people in Florida are impoverished and unlikely to have any other options to move if a climate-related disaster occurs. Due to this reason, our government needs to take responsibility and move forward with plans to reduce waste and pollution as well as implement sustainable city planning.

Photo References:https://www.statista.com/chart/5852/the-worlds-most-sustainable-cities/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/29/climate/southern-states-worse-climate-effects.html

Ch. 12 - Food

In this week's blog posting I will be examining chapter 12 in Margaret Robertson's book, Sustainability Principles, and Practice. The vast majority of the chapter opens up by describing what we would generally call food, and how every organism, both big and small, depends on some type of food to derive their energy from.

"Agriculture occupies about 35 percent of the Earth’s land surface" 

- Robertson, M (2017) p.224

This astronomical figure is a bit hard to wrap my mind around. The fact that our planet is covered by nearly 70% of salt water and the rest is land that has to be dedicated to both living, agriculture, and all the other things we as a people need is a bit startling. That figure needs to be dramatically lowered in the future if we are going to cut down on our water usage when it comes to agriculture, which just so happens to be the number one way in which we as Americans wastewater. In addition, this figure is only expected to grow alongside the ever-increasing population of the world. The infrastructure and methods we use to farm crops for consumption is a wasteful one and we should attempt to refocus our efforts on different methods of production, instead of creating more farmland.

The section in which the author mentions GMOs or Genetically Modified Organisms, seems a bit off to me. While talking about the risks of GMOs, Robertson says:

"Others (scientists) believe that the uncertainty about risks remains too great to justify their use." 

Robertson, M (2017) p. 227

I don't necessarily believe that the risks of consuming and farming GMOs outweigh the benefits that they have brought to not only the agricultural community but to humanity as a whole. As stated in the textbook, humans have been selectively breeding for millennia, and only recently have we figured out how to beneficially manipulate the genome of plant species to isolate traits that we desire in our crop foods. GMO crops not only tend to have higher yields, but also some use less water which is essential to a sustainable future. More crops for a lesser amount of energy use required to grow a crop is exactly what we need to focus on in order to have a larger impact on sustainability, while still being able to eat many of the same crops.

Finally, in the section in which the author talks about Obesity and Hunger, I found something incredibly interesting about how humans as a species are likely pivoting towards unless some drastic measure is taken.

"One cause is lack of activity, brought on by several cultural factors and exacerbated by the automobile culture and suburban sprawl. Another cause is food content, with two factors of particular concern: diets high in meat and diets high in sweeteners such as sugar and corn syrup."

- Robertson, M (2017) p. 229 

This quote is concerning to me on many different levels.  Socially, we are moving at an ever-increasing pace with technology quickly outstepping our knowledge and making many aspects of our lives easier. I don't see that advancement slowing down any time soon, and with more and more nations becoming as affluent as the traditional ones you hear about, health as a result of overconsumption is definitely going to be a growing issue. Better education for more impoverished countries that have not had many years of food security needs to be implemented, or else I can definitely see many countries becoming as unhealthy and as ravenous as the United States for example. Also, high fructose corn syrup has generally been confirmed to be the absolute worst thing you can consistently put in your body, that just so happens to be everywhere in your life. There is not a single thing that isn't sweetened with it nowadays and has become an easy, cost-effective way to make things taste better and seem more appealing. Getting off high sugar diets needs to be implemented by a large percentage of the population if they ever intend to improve their health.


Picture sources: https://www.meatthetruthforyourkids.com/english/social-justice-and-global-hunger/
https://www.kimbertonwholefoods.com/avoiding-gmos/
https://www.top10homeremedies.com/news-facts/reasons-why-high-fructose-corn-syrup-is-dangerous-for-health.html

Ecosystems & Habitat - Chapter 7

Ecosystems and Habitats around the globe are what sustains life on the planet, and thus are essential functions of the world for both human life and all other life to prosper. The very first paragraph of Chapter 7 in Robertsons' Sustainability Principles and Practice has an interesting quote to set off the tone of the rest of the chapter. The quote frames how bad our situation is and truly how dire the science says it is, and yet not nearly enough action is being taken to prevent or slow down the rising change in habitats and ecosystems around the globe. In the words of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 which was quoted in Robertson's textbook:

"The state of the world’s ecosystems has changed more rapidly in the last 50 years than at any time in human history." 

 Robertson, M. (2017) p.110

 Unfortunately, this statement holds true and the fact of the matter is the situation will only deteriorate unless action is taken quickly. Currently, we are in the beginning stages of a mass extinction event. Some previous ones throughout history were caused by a variety of reasons ranging from volcanic activity to asteroid impacts. The current trend of extinction though is being perpetuated by industry and the releasing of greenhouse gasses that change the makeup of our atmosphere. Extinction rates are currently :

"Reaching 1000 times the background extinction rate, with species going extinct at a rate not seen in 65 million years" Robertson, M. (2017) p. 111.

This figure is truly a scary thing to witness happening and the general populace not taking it seriously is even more worrisome. Instead of perpetuating the mass extinction event underway, we should be promoting biodiversity in areas that have a vast amount of species in it. Areas such as the Amazon Rainforest which harbors thousands of species and is very reminiscent of the lungs of the Earth was recently caught on fire. The world watched it burn while the Brazilian administration did absolutely nothing to control it and some even say it was a direct result of the policies the Brazilian president wants to introduce. I believe that a bigger stance on the ecosystems around the world needs to be in place. A sole focus on humans has directly driven us towards the 6th mass extinction event in the history of the world, and that should begin changing sooner rather than later.

"Overexploitation is a sign that humans are spending Earth’s natural capital rather than living off its interest."

Robertson, M. (2017) p. 117 

This final quote was interesting to me because it tied in a concept that is heavily taught in my business courses while being used to describe overexploitation of our planet's resources. I really like how the author worded this quote, it was easier to understand what she was talking about while reading it and put into perspective how consumption of resources would ideally work in a sustainable culture. I understand though that throughout human history we've been taught to overexploit everything to either make a profit or survive, the nature of exploiting resources must change from now on so that it is prevented in the future and we can live sustainably.


Photo Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/09/21/mit-professor-predicts-earths-next-mass-extinction-to-begin-by-2100/#322b95456e57
http://landdegredationassignment.weebly.com/impact.html