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