BLOG POST 6: New York City Ecology

Left, Sanderson’s rendering of Mannahatta in 1606; right, modern day Manhattan

For over a decade, landscape ecologist Dr. Eric W. Sandstorms has tried to understand and recreate what Manhattan Island was like before Europeans arrived in 1609.  Sanderson funneled knowledge from old maps and modern ecological studies though Miraweb technology to recreate images of Manhattan’s 1609 landscape.

Current streets over the old Mannahatta ecosystems

His work tries to reveal the forested land New York City used to have before concrete and skyscrapers.  Sanderson cites that this project aims to increase understanding of the baseline ecology for specific NYC sites, pinpoint how humans interfere and influence the landscape, and influence people to make smart choices to help mankind and wildlife alike.

This link can help people understand FLC ecology.  (includes a geo-referenced map allows visual of vegetation with modern streets overlay).  Work this is part of a movement to reconnect people with their environments.

PlaNYC’s Twitter logo

A few years ago, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a sustainability plan for the New York City with a vision and set of goals to be completed by 2030.  The city has already taken efforts to ensure a high quality of life for future residents and tourists of New York, halting traffic in Times Square to improve air quality as well as creating 500 more acres of park and planting 500,000 more trees to improve natural cycling process and to increase the amount of vegetated areas.  New York is constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency, expediency, and sustainability for the transportation of its goods and services.

Grand Central old cross section

Over a hundred years ago, the city took extensive action to implement large-scale civil engineering projects like the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central, and the subway system.  City planners believed that the success of the city relied heavily on the health of public transportation systems.  When public transportation systems received poor funding in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, the underfunded and graffiti-smothered transit system was not a safe and reliable means of transportation to many people and it greatly hurt New York’s economy.  Moving forward a few decades the system was improved and so did the quality of life.  Some of PlaNYC’s largest aims is to maximize clean air and clean water.  NYC’s worst air pollution actually comes from burning dirty fuels in buildings and outweighs the amount of pollution created from cars and trucks.  As for water, New York water supply consists of three major watersheds that together provide some of the cleanest water among America’s largest cities.  However, the city is wary of the dangers linked to fracking (induced hydraulic fracking), which has the potential to infiltrate and pollute the city’s water systems.  Both clean air and water aim to increase the long-term quality of life for the city and the surrounding environment, which also includes parks.  Ideally, the city wants to have all NYC residents to live within 10 minutes of an accessible park because parks offer a lot to increase the quality of life.  City officials cite parks to be spaces that encourage families to raise their kids in the city and citizens to embrace active lifestyles, and of course, provide wildlife habitat and facilitate the earth’s natural cycling systems to clean carbon dioxide from the air and pollutants from the water.

Section of the High Line

Apparently, people are paying more attention to the health benefits associated with spending time in natural settings.  According to conservation biologist Dr. Wilson, he believes that humans are naturally inclined to love nature on deep level, a level that transcends socio-economic and cultural boundaries.   He calls this attraction, biophilia, or a person’s “instinctive love of nature” (E.O. Wilson).  Studies have noticed a corollary between human health and contact with nature, noting that the more people spend outside in natural environments, the stronger their immune system, the better their test scores, and the higher their overall happiness and satisfaction.  Proponents of biophilia also stress the importance of nature exposure when it comes to children, arguing that children function and grow better when nature is a part of their daily experience.

The Bronx River has been severely affected by industrialization on the water’s banks

The Bronx River was once a cool and clear body of water that supported a lush compilation of ecosystems (especially different kinds of forests and salt marshes), teemed with wildlife, and sustained the Lenape and other native tribes.  Eventually as industrialism spread northward from Manhattan and incorporated the Bronx as a New York City borough piece by piece, the Bronx River began to feel the stress of industrialism, losing it’s protective wildlife barriers and species as well as becoming more and more polluted.

The Bronx River will need to undergo over a century of restoration and people like Dr. Sanderson can use old maps and geological referencing to understand what a specific environment along the banks of the river was before it was developed and what specific efforts and end results should planned to properly restore that site.  Many separate projects to restore the river will eventually link together to restore the health of the ecosystem.  Examples of these projects include fish replenishment, oyster habitat creation, invasive species removal, native species planting, and erosion control.  Many of these projects are already underway and will continue to happen into the distant future.

Restoration efforts in the Bronx River

To clean pollution in the Bronx River, Governor Cuomo office pledged 1.8 million dollars to many NYC entities (including the Bronx River Alliance, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York City Parks Department, and more) for the creation of green infrastructure, specifically wetlands.  In comparison to any kind of pollution control equipment that humans could manufacture, natural wetlands are a much cheaper means of cleaning water pollution.  It would cost 8 billion dollars plus 300-400 dollars annually to build and operate a man-made filtration system whereas it would only cost 200 dollars annually of preserving ecosystems and managing them sustainably to do the same thing.  Policy makers are beginning to realize that nature is more than beautiful, but economical as well.

Many poets have historically been inspired by the Bronx River area and have commented on the effects of the river’s beauty.   One of these poets was Joseph Rodman Drake, commented on the river, “Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, and sounds exciting, / Oh! ‘twas a ravishing spot formed for a poet’s dwelling” (Drake), soon mourning, “And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand / again in the dull world of earthly blindness? (Drake).

Edgar Allan Poe

Words like Joseph Rodman Drake portray how the natural landscape can heal the heart.  That the environment serves a greater purpose than resource use.  Joseph Rodman Drake wrote that poem, and though he died at age 25, his presence can still be seen/felt in the green, pastoral cemetery named after him.   The Bronx’s sanctuary from the city, and particularly Fordham university’s land, also inspired another poet, Edgar Allen Poe.  Although Poe never made direct references to the Bronx River, it no doubt inspired his poetry.

An early advertisement for St. John’s College (Fordham University)

Similar to the work that Dr. Sanderson, Gov. Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and many New York organizations are doing, many people at Fordham University are trying to do something similar.  Efforts have been made to understand the historical, ecological past of Fordham’s surrounding area to figure out how to be more sustainable.  Fordham University can trace its roots back to manor developments after the Revolutionary War and then the creation of St. John’s college (a collection of old buildings, including a church and some buildings for classes and administration that finally connected to a rail line in October of 1841).  Rose Hill was an ecologically diverse and agriculturally productive land that over time has been developed into the modern day campus.  The old campus had a pasture with 30-40 cows, fruit orchards (where the Gymnasium now stands), a wooded hill (where Keating Hall now stands) and salt marshes (where parking lots now cover them).

Fordham is working toward being a more sustainable institution.  The university sustainability policy tries to be as minimally invasive to the environment and as naturally beneficial as possible, including efforts to minimize energy waste and material waste (via more efficient energy and recycling programs), achieve LEED Silver status for all new buildings, encourage forms of walking and biking over cars, cut the university’s carbon emissions 30 percent by 2017, increase environmental awareness in education, and utilize the schools’ partnerships with the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Gardens, the City of New York, and other organizations (also wanting students to participate in these organizations for internship/real-world experience opportunities).

Fordham Students of SEAJ (Students for Environmental Awareness and Justice) at the Washington DC Rally. SEAJ is participating in a divestment campaign.

There are a slew of national organizations that primarily focus on development of sustainable college campuses.  AASHE offers opportunities for institutions and individuals to forward environmentally sustainable practices, hosting conferences and working with universities to reach their sustainability goals.  ULSF (Association of University Leaders for  Sustainable Future) similarly focuses on environmental sustainability outreach, teaching, and research at colleges and universities nationwide.  The National Wildlife Federation works with universities though their Campus Ecology Program, which at Fordham University, manifested itself in Sodexo’s campaign to spread the world about the environmental impacts associated with eating certain foods.  Additionally, 350.org is leading a massive divestment campaign called “Fossil Free”, encouraging university students and faculty to halt their school’s investment(s) in dirty energy and allocate those funds in green energy and sustainable technologies.  Fordham’s own student-lead environmental organization, SEAJ (Students for Environmental Awareness and Justice) is leading a Fossil Free divestment campaign against the university, as well as operating St. Rose’s Garden (a garden that raises locally-grown, organic food to sell to students as well as donate to local charities, and more).  Additionally, St. Rose’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a cooperative vegetable buying club that invests in local farms, like Norwich Meadows Farm, providing the capital needed to cultivate a certain amount of food and distribute the final produce to student customers throughout the year.

Nissan Leaf exhibition in Tokyo

I think it’s heartening to know that national organizations, the City of New York, and Fordham University are all making efforts to increase sustainable practices.  Even the auto industry is starting to do something, for according to the Environmental News Network, electric Car sales have more than tripled in 2012, the Obama Administration has invested 7.5 billion dollars in electric cars, and General Motors and Nissan combined have invested 6 billion dollars more.

Automobiles caught in highway traffic. Compare the amount of natural resources, power, and pollution to travel daily by car instead of living close enough to school and work that biking and walking are options.

Granted, these statistics can be potentially disfiguring of the real environmental impact.  This movement toward electric, zero-emission cars does boost the economy and lessen CO2 pollution (in comparison to a gaz-guzzling automobile), but it isn’t fully embracive of the interdisciplinary nature of sustainable living.  From a technological standpoint, these  electric cars still need to use large amounts of natural resources to make the car and run the factory that produces the cars.  From an environmental science standpoint, natural resources would be extracted at high rates that disturb natural environments and destroy habitats/wildlife species.  From a design standpoint, cars aren’t elements that contribute well to a high density, low impact infrastructure and transportation plan.  However, these cars do increase environmental awareness and are less environmentally degrading than producing Hummers.

After all, to connect back to New York City and the readings for this week, the usage of cars, sprawl, and highways systems wouldn’t respect our knowledge of how to live sustainably in NYC’s environment.  The Lenape knew how to live on only the local resources of the land, they respected wildlife (did not exceed nature’s hunting, fishing, logging capacity), and understood how to survive throughout the four seasons.  City design that is build for cars does live locally and the huge size of New York’s infrastructure systems has demolished entire ecosystems.

Google Maps application on an Apple IPhone

The grid structure of Manhattan’s streets makes driving efficient and easy to run, but the grid structure destroys a person’s connection to the earth, making mathematics and numbers the way people understanding place instead of ecological landmarks.  This enters deep psychological territory, for instance, NYC’s paved and structured grid disorients a person’s brain and disconnects them from the earth so much that they cannot tell which direction is north unless they look at the street numbers or an IPhone (instead of the position of the sun). In a world of concrete, Google-Maps, and cars, a deep understanding of the local environment falls at the wayside (and so does their care for the earth).

Children playing by the river. Not only is this river ecologically pristine and free from contaminants, the children can develop a strong understanding of play, culture, and place. Here, the humanities meet science!

I am in full support of the Bronx River restoration projects.  Restoring the river would bring people back to the river, and perhaps it would help people swim in it again.  Being able to walk alongside or swim in the river would bring people back into immediate contact with nature again, and hopefully, will make them care about the earth a little more.  Restoring the river is exactly the kind of project that can reconnect a community to the local land and get people to care about the earth again.  One of the workers on the river restoration project animately described how old tires and trash heaps in the river have transformed into colonies of ducks.  She described how happy it made onlookers feel to see the river come back slowly to life.  Ecological restoration projects like this don’t only restore ecosystems, but people’s souls and quality of life.  Hopefully people in the future will be able to experience the same kind of joy that the romantic poets felt when they gazed upon the Bronx River.  If a community can be reconnected to nature, I see a lot of potential for a positive feedback loop in favor of increased awareness and appreciation of sustainable lifestyles, as well as an overall increase in happiness.

Question One: How can we better introduce children to the environment? What opportunities are there to build environmental awareness into children’s school curriculum?

Question Two: What would it take for Fordham to commit to build LEED Platinum buildings (instead of Gold)? Is that a feasible option?

Word Count: 2,275

BLOG POST 5: Cities, Population, Consumption and Sustainability

Hong Kong skyline at night. Population: 7 million

Urbanization, or the growth of suburban and urban areas, has increased exponentially over the past century and shows little sign of stopping.  The two foremost drivers of urbanization are natural birth factors, when the birth rate exceeds the death rate, and immigration, when foreigners move into a country.  The nature of urban development has four general trends.  Firstly (trend one) is that the percentage of people living in urban areas vastly outstrips the percentage of rural dwellers.  Next (trend two) is that the overall size and scope of urban populations and development are exploding and increasing the number of megacities (population of at least 10 million) and hypercities (population of at least 20 million).  China is an astronomical example of this boom, considering the nation alone will add more people to their cities than the entire current population of the United States by 2013 (Miller).  Urban growth (trend three), is dramatically faster in less developed countries.  Finally (trend four), these less developed countries will be the greatest breeding ground for urban poverty in the forms of “crowded and unsanitary slums and shantytowns” (Miller 589).

Cities have massive ecological footprints that far exceed city limits (taking up 2 percent of the land yet using 75 percent of the land’s resources) and are unsustainably structured.   Paving over vegetation and natural ecosystems combined with high-density development in cities create an unnatural and unhealthy environment that concentrates pollution and destroys natural chemical cycling systems.

Basket weave of Los Angeles highway systems

All cities (both dispersed ones like La or dense ones like Hong Kong) require a mass means of transportation that includes planes, trains, and cars, as well as walking and biking.  Each mode of transportation has its advantages and disadvantages and some modes make more ecological sense.  Currently, the most environmentally destructive means of transportation spawn from dispersed cities and suburbs in the form of cars.  Cars provide convenient mobility but are heavy polluters and require a colossal network of infrastructure and urban sprawl as well as continue our dependence on fossil fuels.

High speed train

More environmentally conscious options would require people to use less cars (possibly through gradual tax increases, such as the taxes employed in many European nations) and more high-speed trains and buses, especially areas of high population density and congestion.  Trains (including high-speed, heavy-rail, and light rail) tend to use less energy then cars, reduce land use for car-based infrastructure and sprawl, and cause less pollution, especially in dense areas where shopping/living/working areas are built alongside train lines.  For less developed nations, however, bikes can be one of the most financially feasible options (and are increasingly popular in US ‘complete streets movements’). 

Constructed wildlife bridges to connect large tracts of fragmented territory

Land-use planning, or determining the best use of each plot of land, has the preventative power to reduce environmental degradation and increase sustainable systems of living… or not.  Land-use planning that emphasizes environmentally sustainable development is called ‘smart growth’.  Sample principles of smart growth include protection of open/natural spaces, limits and regulations on development, creation of greenbelts, concentration of development along mass lines of transportation, tax incentives for ecologically sustainable practices/businesses, conduction of environmental impact analysis surveys, and much more.

The Arboretum is a mix of conserved, cultivated, and maintained green space that cuts through a neighborhood near downtown Seattle.

Public transportation in Curitiba, Brazil

To make cities more livable and ecologically sustainable, people are trying to develop the ‘ecocity’ model, which can be thought of as “a people-oriented city, not a car-oriented city”.  Ecocities thrive on walking/biking/mass transit for the majority of the population’s transportation, recycle most of its waste, grow its own food, and preserve the surrounding land and ecosystem biodiversity as much as possible.  These cities emphasize walkability, mixed-use and diverse centers of living/commerce, environmental education opportunities for citizens, minimal environmental impact, and smart transportation systems.  Ecocities are not ‘a futuristic dream’ as some of these intelligent cities are already taking place (take Curitiba, Brazil for example).  Additional urban sustainability movement includes the global eco-village movement, which brings together cooperative groups of people to live in a sustainable community between each other, and living buildings, which construct sustainable development on a microclimate scale, creating structures that operate local (and sustainable) sources of energy, reduce waste, and aim for self-sufficiency.

World population growth chart

Biking is a popular form of mass transportation in 3rd and 2nd world countries

As Lester R. Brown says, “Our numbers expand but the earth’s natural systems do not” (Miller 144).  People who advocate for ecological sustainability are not only looking at city design, but the population growth that cities will have to sustain.  This is the idea that the “Impossible Hamster” tries to communicate; that nature sets caps on infinite growth, so why do economists and politicians assume that human population and economies can grow infinitely?  The human population has been exponentially growing over the past hundred or so years due to a sharp decrease in the death rate (accompanying better sanitation and health technologies in developing nations, causing longer lifespans).  However, this growth is not distributed equally around the globe, and developing nations around the world are growing far more rapidly than developed nations (affording 99 percent of the new [baby] births each year) (Miller 127).

Population growth patterns chart (taken from Miller’s “Living in the Environment”)

However, instead of aiming to discover the number of people the earth can support, a better goal is to access the number of people the earth could sustain well, with reasonable comfort and freedoms (known as the cultural carrying capacity).  There certainly is such a limit because no population can ever grow indefinitely while being supported by the earth (this is proven by science).  The human growth rate can either grow, decline or remain stable depending on the ratio of the crude birth rate and the crude death rate.   In actuality, women are indeed having less children (2.1 children average per woman in developed nations and 2.5 children average in developed nations), but since the death rate is still low, the population is still growing, and growing fast.  In the United States, a huge swell in population occurred during the baby boom generation (immediately after the end of WW2 to about 1964).  However the number of births per American woman decreased sharply in the following decade and has remained somewhat the same since the 1980s.  Overall, there are four general stages of population growth.  The first stage has a low population because the high infant mortality rate cancels out the high birth rate, the second stage has an increase of population due to high birth rates and low death rates, the third stage levels off the population due to slower birth rates and death rates, and the fourth stage has a population decline as the birth rates equal and fall below the death rates.

Vinage stamp from the 1970’s

In order to reach somewhat of a fourth stage reality, many acts can slow the population growth.   Empowering women (via education, economic opportunities, and birth control/family planning) have shown to slow the birth rate and mostly need to be implemented in more developing countries that have less of those services than most developed ones.   Lowering the reliance on child workers and increasing the average marriage age of women can also contribute to taming the population growth.  However, even with a worldwide decrease in the natural birthrate to an average of 2.1 children per woman (the current baby to woman ratio in developing nations), the population would continue to grow for another 50 years because of age structure, which takes the percentages of a population with attention to age (pre-productive, reproductive, and postreproductive).  For instance, populations with substantially larger pre-productive generations will experience exponential growth in the coming years, whereas populations with smaller preproductive generations will experience declining growth.  The United States is considered to have slow growth because the preproductive generation makes up a slightly greater percentage of the population and nations like Japan will have stable growth because they have a relatively balanced percentage of preproductive, reproductive, and postproductive populations.

Sustainability efforts concerning population also consider immigration to be a key issue.  Most people who migrate to other places or nation are primarily doing so to gain economic wealth (but there are also other issues like genocide, disease, political oppression, environmental degradation, etc).

If we are going to make serious strides to be an environmental conscious world, I firmly believe we need to slow the population boom in developing countries and reduce the amount of resources used in developing countries.  There should be a move for equality between developed and developing nations.  For developing countries this means ecocities and living locally and frugally. This means no car, no excess water/electricity use, no excess gadgets or household objects, use of sustainable products.  For developing nations this means establishing birth control, women education, sustainable and cheap housing, environmentally conscious jobs, and living locally (not exporting everything they have for the use of developed nations).  Developing nations could also use some population control as well.

Words of Henry David Thoreau

I also think there is a lot to be said for the Good Life parable.  Why would you wait for decades to enjoy life, working for years, accumulating capital, using an overload of natural resources, and pushing the earth’s ecosystems to the brink when happiness can be something immediate, sustainable, and not material-based?  The Good Life parable asks for a change in the human consciousness and a reevaluation of modern paradigms that dictate what a successful life really means.  This new human consciousness increases a persons reverence and gratitude for the simple pleasures of life that nature gives naturally.  If this kind of mindset was treasured as seriously as Americans treasure fame, power, money, recognition, and material consumption, the world’s economy would be so much more environmentally sustainable, if not beneficial!

Scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life” when everybody comes together to pitch in money to save the business

This new mindset would mean a brand new kind of economy and the Center for a New American Dream offers one that I agree with on many things.  We could really use a plentitude economy, based on the idea that we need to change the way we live our lives to create more jobs, reduce our environmental impact, and increase the quality of life.  This means sharing the wealth but it does not mean a militant, socialist regime.  If we spread out the work (allowing more people to be employed and share the nation’s wealth more equally) and work collectively together, we can support ourselves in a much more sustainable way.  This means we don’t each need to own our own lawn mower, we can borrow it from our neighbors. This means when kids get tired of their toys, share them with friends and family who are raising kids. This means instead of working insane hours to pay for your own expensive medical care, work collectively to make medical care as available as public education.  Work less, consume less, and build social capital.  Of course, there are other factors that must be worked on to achieve a sustainable world, but these factors mentioned have the potential to go a long way.

Question One: When I look at many Chinese megacities, I am disgusted by the sheer volume of development, energy/resource use, and industry… but, since they are dense and have the potential to be a lot more sustainable, should I look at these cities with hope?

Question Two: Since many highway systems in the United States will probably be neglected/unused in the following century (or two) with the increase of train travel, higher costs of gas, etc, what is the most ecologically sustainable way to deal with all of that concrete? Do we install sod/plantings on top of them like the High Line? Do we reuse the concrete in infrastructure to build our buildings? Do we build housing underneath these highways and connect them with rail lines?

Word Count: 1,775

BLOG POST 4: Economics, Politics, Law, and Sustainability

Economic systems, or social institution that facilitates the production and transfer of goods and services, utilize three types of capital, including human capital (services and labor of humans), manufactured capital (machinery and equipment), and natural capital (natural resources).  To meet the growing needs of people, the economic systems wants economic growth, increasing the amount of goods and services production and transfer.  Market systems are the most popular of economic systems and free market systems function on the basis of supply and demand, hoping to achieve market equilibrium by where the buyer agrees to buy a certain quantity for the seller’s price.

Many economists differ about the relationship between the humanity’s growing economic systems and the natural world.  Neoclassical economists believe there are always new resource substitutes and that natural resources are a subset of the human economic system.  Ecological economists disagree, viewing the human economic system as a subsystem of the Biosphere and considering natural resources to be limited and irreplaceable.  Another branch of economists, environmental economists, have values somewhat between the two, seeking to encourage sustainable business and discourage environmentally destructive business.

Determining the value of ecological resources and services is tricky and the most operative system to designate resource value is the discount rate.  The discount rate estimates a resource’s future value and assumes that today’s value for the resource might be higher than it will be in the future.  For example, Miller’s Living in the Environment says that at a zero discount rate, one million dollars worth of timber from a redwood forest loses 10 percent of its value every year (a commonly applied rate for resources in business), which values at only 10,000 dollars in 50 years.  This system of discount rates ignores most any of the ecological values a resource like redwoods can provide for earth cycling systems and habitat formation and has a tendency to encourage rapid resource exploitation because of it.

Under the assumption that ecological systems and resource can have measurable value for human welfare, many environmental specialists and organizations have accessed the value of 17 ecosystem service for 16 biomes and published their findings in the article “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital”, accessing the value of the entire biosphere to be a minimum estimate of US $16-54 trillion dollars annually.  This estimation of the natural world’s collective resources and services value hopes to assert the monetary value of the environment to stop environmental degradation and emphasize sustainable business, business that has little to no adverse effects on the environment.

There is an increased push to discover ways of implementing environmentally sustainable economies that meet humanity’s needs and development as well as protect the planet’s natural resources.  Proponents of sustainable economies argue for a more environmentally honest market system that clearly labels the full cost of its products, including both the internal costs of production and marketing as well as the external costs of effect on human health and the environment.  Product eco-labeling and certification is another means of sustainable business by helping the consumer identify which product are manufactured with the highest sustainability available.

A long term effort to phase out environmentally harmful products is also underway.  Phasing out these harmful products is most often facilitated by subsidies and tax breaks for companies who practice sustainable business practices in the harvesting, manufacturing, and delivering of their products.  Currently, these subsidies are tax breaks are heavily distributed to environmentally destructive companies and encourage environmental waste and resource depletion (very often via lobbyists), but some environmental regulation efforts are being made to transfer this government aid to sustainable companies.  Other efforts include propositions for an economic model that focuses on a service-flow economy, as opposed to the current material-flow economy.

For the most part, the world’s current economy operates as a high-throughput economy, or an economy that boosts economic growth by increasing the flow of natural resources though the production and consumption process.   While the linear nature of a high-throughput economy hasn’t shown to be very sustainable, a more circular matter and resource recycling and reuse economy, one that employs methods of biomimicry, and recycling the economy’s outputs, is a more sustainable option and gets closer to a low-throughput economy.  This could possibly call for an economy succession, or the replacement of older companies with new ones that are better adapted to thrive in our changing world conditions (aka: that are more sustainable).

This kind of economy is called an eco-economy, full of green jobs, companies built on sustainable technologies, organizations that educate and implement sustainable services, and an overall system that works in an interconnected way to follow the three main laws of sustainability.  There are many jobs, services, industries, and live style changes that come with an eco-economy, including (but by far NOT limited to): biodiversity protection, environmental chemistry, environmental education, geothermal technologies, sustainable agriculture, eco-villages, water conservation, solar cell systems, etc.

In many ways, governments can have a powerful role in curbing environmentally destructive economies.  A government’s power to rule and regulate are put into place via policies, and environmental policy (as determined by Miller) are laws and regulations concerning the environment that are designed, implemented and enforced, as well as government sponsored/run programs that deal with environmental issues.  These policies are the product of many voices in a democratic government, and in democracies like the United States’ constitutional democracy, the system of government allows for gradual changes over time.  This means environmental policies will be the product of citizen input and will be constantly evaluated and changed/terminated if need be over time.

US Dept. of Agriculture

According to analyst suggestions, people should evaluate environmental laws under the guidance of a few foundational principles, including (but not limited to): the humility principle, that humans don’t and won’t fully understand the natural world, the reversibility principle, that irreversible decisions shouldn’t be made in case the decision backfires, and the polluter pays principle, that regulations and economic tools make polluters pay for the pollution they create.

Policies in these democratic systems of government must jump through a series of hoops to be implemented.  Policies have to be made by politicians who are voted into office, who then must pass the law, get the appropriate funding (via Congress in the United States), and implement the contents of that law with more restrictions within the government organization that does the implementation.  One major environmentally beneficial thing the United States has managed since the 1800s is the nation’s conservation of public lands, facilitated by the National Park System, National Forrest System, and the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Miller also emphasizes the important influence individuals can have on environmental policy.  Grassroots efforts can be exceedingly powerful and the growth of technology and the internet has made it easier than ever for individuals to raise their voice.  Outside of individual/grassroots activism, individuals have the power to lead an environmentally conscientious lifestyle, recycling their waste, consuming less, and leaving a smaller carbon footprint.  Individuals have the power to support environmentally friendly organizations and companies monetarily (choosing to buy a company’s products/stock) and have the ability to become influential leaders on a local to national level and be an active source of inspiration for the wider community.  The idea is that each action of an individual collected on a national (or even local) scale, even the smallest ones, can collectively aggregate into a great deal of change.

Also believing that change begins with the individual, Ernest Partridge criticizes Americans of becoming mindless consumers and forgetting what it originally meant to be a true American citizen.  Citizens, he argues, must have engendered within them, a “lifelong sense of compassion and of justice… educated to a condition of knowledge and critical intelligence sufficient to assume the personal responsibility of conducting one’s own life and the civic responsibility of participating in the governance of a free and democratic society” (Partridge 4).  Partridge argues that to be a citizen, someone who is free and rational thinkers of a functioning democracy, cannot be today’s standardly isolated, ignorant, and consumerist civilian.  Instead of examining the full, environmental cost of the United States’ developed lifestyle, these consumers (not ‘true citizens’ under his definition) are chained to corporate and consumerist America and should develop a higher code of ethics that embody the true nature of an American citizen.

Although many environmental laws have been subject to attack, many organizations including NGOs, global public policy networks, and grassroots communities continue to fight for environmentally sustainable legislation.  These groups (depending on the type of organization) will lobby, fight for the creation and maintenance of laws, conserve tracks of land, educate civilians, and peacefully protest (like Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a Redwood tree for 2 years to prevent loggers from clear cutting it down).

Environmental security is increasingly gaining international traction as well as the recognition of being an interrelated issue with national and economy security.  NGOs, the United Nations, and many others are doing a great deal of work to make environmental security an international priority, understanding environmental security as an essential and underlying measure for protecting the world’s various economic and national securities.

Two things become very clear for me as I read these chapters; the poor need to achieve some higher level of sustainable development and the wealthy need to cut back on high energy and resource usage (both of these things unchecked would cause extreme environmental degradation).  Poor people of developing nations are ecologically unsustainable by their rapid population growth, their propensity to place economic profit over environmental care (our of a need to survive) when developing.  As the Core Case Study of Chapter 23 emphasized, microloans are wonderful tools to bring people above the poverty line, which has shown to lower the birth rate, increase the quality of life, and bring a large section of people out of survival mode.  This paired with environmental education and guidance (so people pursue jobs that contribute to helping the earth) can do a lot of good work, especially in countries where their civilians dump chemicals and waste into their waterways, strip their land of trees, and overuse agricultural soils.

Developed nations need to consume a lot less and make the transition to environmentally beneficial goods, services, laws, programs, and companies.  This isn’t a dream, it’s already starting to take place.  According to the Environmental News Network, the coal industry is failing to compete with other types of energy technologies on the sole basis of merit.  Only one new coal plant opened in 2012 and “over the past six years that share has fallen from 50 percent to 38 percent. Plans for more than 150 new coal-fired power plants have been canceled since the mid-2000s” (ENN).  As Denis Hayes says in the Core Case Study for Chapter 24, “Democracy works when people are paying attentions to the facts” (Miller 637), or when people (as Partridge would say) become citizens instead of consumers. People are becoming increasingly aware about how the economies and lifestyles of developed nations are causing serious environmental detriment (just take a look at the largest Climate Rally in United States history on February 17^th 2013) and many new industries that are environmentally beneficial, like the restoration of wetlands and clam beds for depolluting waters or solar energy companies to harvest the sun’s power are happening.  Certainly there is a long way to go, but the small and strong efforts of today can magnify in the coming years.  There is no one, single way to approach climate change, the world will have to employ many means and methods of spreading awareness, changing policies, and reversing ecological degradation. This means eco-labeling (without green-washing), this means including the full cost of products, this means business must compete for environmental sustainability, this means consumers must buy less and ask for a service-based economy instead of a material-based economy.  The issues at hand are much more complicated than what I have described, but essentially speaking, change for the better is possible if enough people have the willpower to take well-intentioned and educated action.

Question One: I imagine that part of the new, green economy that is supposed to develop will include the demolition of factories, businesses, homes, and infrastructure (scaling back the economy…).  In what other ways could humans participate in the industry of “scaling back”? Hence, in what other ways can people gain money/their livelihood in an industry that dismantles the industries of the past?

Question Two: At what point would we have to reach to make green technologies the most cost effective option in the mass media/industry?

Word Count: 2,000

BLOG POST 3: Environmental History and Worldviews

Stonehenge, built anywhere between 3000 BC to 2000 BC in Wiltshire, England

A particular branch of history, Environmental History tracks the entire timeline of interaction and influence exacted between humans and nature, beginning with the creation of the universe and our planet.  Earth’s estimated date of creation is situated 4.6 billion years before the 21^st century and 10 billion years after the universe’s conception.  Humans emerge in a comparatively new era, coming into being around 150,000 years ago as Homo sapiens.  Soon enough the world would enter a geological area that specialists denote as the Anthropocene, or the past 10,000 years that the earth has transformed from the influence of humans (as the world’s most dominant species).  After successions of civilizations have risen and fallen over the years, historians that examine the rational behind their successes and failures point to a common factor in their descent: unsustainable use and destruction of the land’s natural goods and services.

Lenape Indians

Environmental history in the United States can be separated into four major periods, each with a slightly different set of characteristics that explain how humans relate to the natural world.  First is the Tribal/Native American Era (11,000 BC—1600 CE), second is the Frontier and Industrialism Era (1607 CE—1890), the third is the Early Conservationist Romantic Era (1832—1870), and the fourth is the Environmental Era (1870—Present).  The earliest Tribal/Native American Era ended with the introduction of European colonization, soon making way for the Industrial Era that is defined by exponential increases in factory/industrial development and mass consumption of products.  In reaction to an era that bulldozed the earth into cold factories, steel, and urban sprawl, many Americans since have developed an awareness and appreciation of the natural world throughout Romantic and Environmental Periods.

Example of a Romantic painting. “Chalk Cliffs on Rügen” (1818), Caspar David Friedrich

The Romantic Era attempted to counteract the progress of human industry and realigned its faith in untouched sections of nature, finding the natural world to be a transcendent means to God and a tranquil escape from increasing societal change and stress.  The Romantic love for an environmental escape eventually developed into a conservation movement that began to critically reevaluate the paradigm that recognized human progress and economic progress as synonyms.

Initially, the conservation movement sought to preserve tracks of land for the long-term maintenance of natural resources and their attributed economic value, but soon the movement advocated for an inherent goodness in the existence of untouched nature itself.  With no clear tipping point for the environmental movement, a slew of environmental activism ignited in the 1960s and 1970s with developments like Earth Day, the creation of the EPA, and the passing of resulting acts like the Clean Water Act of 1972.  Interestingly, the next decade or two would bring a rise in conservatism (mainly in the Reagan Administration), pushing environmental consciousness to the wayside, but a resurgence of environmental support rose in the past decade or so, manifesting in a nationwide and polarized “owls vs. jobs” attitude (which some argue, is a line that’s beginning to blur).

What is “case studies optimism?” – Ask Sarah

Just as Environmental History is a subset of history, Environmental Philosophy is a subset of Philosophy, examining how human nature and belief systems pertain to the natural world.  Environmental Philosophy especially investigates the worldviews that designate humanity’s place in relation to nature, and from these values, evaluates the ethical right and wrong human behavior toward the environment.  Three of the main worldviews and ethics associated with the natural world consist of (1) Planetary Management, (2) Stewardship, and (3) Environmental Wisdom.

Biosphere 2, a prime example of Planetary Management solutions

A Planetary Management worldview is highly anthropocentric (existence is human-centered) in nature, assuming that humans (who are separate from ‘nature’) have the right to control the world as we will, can pursue eternal economy growth, and use our technological ingenuity to solve any environmental/population/resource problem that arises.

Selective cutting forestry and some replanting of trees that were cut down is a Stewardship way of forestry

Less anthropocentric than Planetary Management and increasingly attentive to biocentrism (life-centered), the Stewardship worldview only allows humans (who are still separate from nature) to manage world systems if and only if we operate under a strong enough ethical responsibility to extract natural resources thoughtfully and with as much frugality as necessary.  A powerful branch of Stewardship is the Environmental Justice Movement, which focuses on equal and frugal distribution of natural resource and land wealth between the generations of people living on earth now, which leads into Duty to Future Generations Ethics, which practices the same code of ethics in an intra-generational sense, or between current populations and future, unborn generations of people.

Aldo Leopold observing the world from a cliffside

Departing from the anthropocentric realm, the final major worldview, Environmental Wisdom, understands humans as a limited and integral part of the natural world and completely dependent on the environment.  Environmental Wisdom finds intrinsic value in nature and considers that our survival is contingent upon our ability to employ biomimicry of the earth’s three, natural principles of sustainability (solar power, biodiversity, and chemical cycling). Many movements exist within the boundaries of Environmental Wisdom, including but not limited to Ecological Theology, Deep Ecology, and Animal Rights.  A notable example of Environmental Wisdom worldview and ethics come from a man named Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), a forefront conservationist who is accredited with many environmental good works, including his Land Ethics.  His core environmental ethics, or the limitations he sets on environmental involvement, pleads for us to,

“…quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Aldo Leopold).

Careless litter on the ground

Leopold constructs this belief on the premise that each human is one organism among a community of interdependent parts, and therefore is required to cooperate (not just compete) with other organisms for survival.  People can easily forget how integral land and humans really are and people forget that they themselves are as interdependent and biotic as the land they trod.

While all three of these primary worldviews (Planetary Management, Stewardship, and Environmental Wisdom) are in operation, I strongly believe that a combination of Environmental Wisdom and Stewardship is the only set of beliefs and ethics that allows the earth to naturally and healthily survive long-term under human presence.  Planetary Management simply does not work and there is no greater example of the failure of humanity’s ego than the Biosphere 2 project.  Biosphere 2 aimed to employ the very best of human ingenuity and technology to create a completely fabricated, self sustaining world (almost playing God if you will), sealing themselves off in a mass, interconnected chain of glass domes containing various biomes, life systems, and organisms while operating under the assumption that humans know so much about the natural world that we have the power to control and manage it.  How wrong we are.

Tampering with the natural landscape led to desertification. Man doesn’t have as much control over nature as man might think

Within two short years, everything went wrong, most of the life systems perished, and humans lived a sickly, bitter existence (even needing outside support to survive).  In Biosphere 2, Humans failed to master nature and received a grand slap of humility.  Simply put, nature does it best on its own.  Humans will always be ignorant of the world’s processes and we should approach the natural world with constant respect, observation, and awe, working happily within the system; not trying to manage it.

So what does this mean? This means human should look at the local knowledge of native cultures that have lived and known the land firsthand for generations upon generations (for example, restoring wetlands/clam beds to filter water pollutants instead of water treatment facilities).  This means our desire for mass production and consumption must halt, only fulfilling our most basic necessities, to be replaced by the mysterious joy of being part of a grander ecosystem.  This means we need reestablish humble, sustainable practices that show extreme reverence for the earth.

Deforestation in Indonesia

Take for example how the Asia Pulp Paper received 1/5 of their paper resources from clear cutting Indonesia old growth rainforests to make toilet paper (Environmental News Network).  Not only are we destroying vital ecosystems of biodiversity and slashing the lungs of earth’s carbon cycling, but we are unsustainably doing so for a basic product of human hygiene (not even something as superfluous as a handbag or leather armchair).  If our current population can’t support a sustainable yield of our basic hygienic supplies, our population double in the next few decades will be catastrophic.  After all, there is no difference between healthy people and a healthy environment.  If natural systems collapse, we collapse with them.

Question One: What would be the best ways to dismantle a Planetary Management Worldview? This gets into deep ecology issues, so there is no ‘cure all’ answer (getting into the Interdisciplinary issues of living by the three principles of sustainability), but what would some of the top methods be?

Question Two: What will the next environmental era look like?

Word Count: 1,400

BLOG POST 2: A Scientific Window to the World

A scientific understanding of the earth’s natural mechanics starts with a fundamental basis in observation and testing of the physical world. Scientists observe and test within a universally recognized system called the scientific method.  For researchers to solve problems in the natural world scientifically several stages of the scientific method must be implemented, which include formulating a hypothesis (a reasoned explanation to the problem), testing control groups against variables to isolate causes of change, and submitting their clearly articulated findings to be peer reviewed, retested, and hopefully sanctioned by a large body of qualified scientists.  Since the believability of scientific work is entirely contingent on its ability to be reproduced time and time again with the same results, work that doesn’t undergo intense peer review and replication can only be considered ‘tentative science’ and not ‘reliable science’.

Like most disciplines, scientific inquiry has its limitations.  These limitations mainly pertain to margins of human error, unavoidable degrees of uncertainty (regardless of size), inabilities to sequester a single variable from the complex nature of physical sciences, and reliance on imperfect collection and unavoidable estimation of statistical data.  If nothing else, these limitations are a reminder of the diligence and accuracy scientists must employ to make their experiments as watertight of error and constant as possible.

The Energy Cycle: Solar energy is considered to be a perpetual source of energy for the earth. With every transferral of energy (ex: primary to secondary producer) some energy is lost and must therefore be energized by the sun continually.

The extensive timeline of scientific discovery congeals into a smaller number of overarching laws, principles, and structures that act as necessary underpinnings of support for most all scientific inquiry.  Three of the most primary of these laws include the Law of Conservation of Matter, which dictates that no matter can be created nor destroyed via physical or chemical means, and the two Laws of Thermodynamics (thermodynamics being the study of energy and heat relationships).  The first law declares that no energy can be created nor destroyed and the second law declares that all transferals of energy between forms must lose a fraction of its energy and become lower quality energy.  Understanding these laws (and concepts that spawn from them) is incredibly important because their defining characteristics are inherently interwoven and have real world implications within every ecosystem on the planet (the subject of later chapters).

A few of the most important of these concepts are as follows: energy in living environments that have a high capacity for useful work (important energy sources for ecosystem survival, including humans) is considered to be high-quality energy, as opposed to low quality energy, which has a much lower capacity for work.  Also in the grand scheme of energy transfers and cycles of life/carbon/etc, living environments are structured within a system of various inputs, such as energy/matter resources and information, through systems processes into outputs, such as work, product, waste/pollution, and heat.  Finally, positive feedback loops that cause a system to move exponentially further in a given direction (and negative feedback loops, the opposite), account for system changes and are included in the many important factors that operate beneath all living environments.

Our process of observation and research begins with examining the most basic and interlocking components of earth’s grand system of life support.  Life on earth takes place in four most essential zones, the atmosphere, which consists of the thin layer of gases that blanket the surface of the earth, the hydrosphere, including any form of water that covers the earth’s crust and glistens in the air, the geosphere, mainly the earth’s largely unexplored inner core/mantel, and the biosophere, perhaps the most familiar and home to the majority of living organisms and walks of life, including us humans.

Click to enlarge!

In all these areas, the sun’s flow of energy through the biosphere, the property of gravity, and the processes of nutrient cycling are the primary sustainers of life.  For organisms to live, they may either consume the nutrients the need directly from the sun (producers) or within the hierarchical food chain of consuming energy found in other organisms (various layers of consumers).  But while humans are second only to decomposers on the hierarchy of consumers, human activity continually alters most all of earth’s systems, including nutrient cycling and food chains within ecosystems.  This can enter especially dangerous territory, for while humans have flourished from their ingenuity, our gift of great advantage might commit withstanding damage to the systems that have been in place for billions of years.  The “Call of Life” video questions whether or not we should consider the past history of human ingenuity as ‘advantageous’ or ‘self-imposed destruction’.  Scientists interviewed in the film described how the loss of salmon (mostly exacerbated by human overfishing and habitat loss) means more than the detriment of a single species, but rather, a detriment to an entire ecosystem because the land’s marine life provides over half of its essential nutrients.  They argue that human health is entirely dependent on the land’s resources and that by transitive property, hurting salmon ends up hurting the land, which ends up hurting humans in a positive feedback loop toward their own decimation.

At the end of their life cycle, salmon swim upstream to mate and die. Their remains provide high amounts of essential nutrients for the surrounding ecosystem.

This influx of human impact on existing ecological systems is partly counterbalanced by the earth’s biodiversity, but only to a point.  Each species has a specific part to play within their given environment.  Biodiversity of earth species is the result of genetic mutations that end up acting beneficially to an organisms survival and are passed on to offspring, and account for differences in organism attributes.  Since earth’s organisms are able to survive in various networks and ways, the planet’s net of life isn’t totally destructed when one of it’s knots are undone. However, the accelerating rapidity of species and habitat extinction under human hands might untie more knots then web of life can restring and do irreparable damage.

Man participating in efforts to restore a forest

I believe scientific exploration is one of the best ways to understand how our natural living systems function.  Discoveries in the scientific field can vastly expand our knowledge about the earth and the effects humans have on it.  Even the smallest discovery can quickly snowball into an extensively useful guide for us to respond efficiently and appropriately to ecological problems.  Human understanding of photosynthesis, for example, would lose significant portion of its value without its real world application to ecological problems, such as the study conducted by Carbon Balance and Management that identified a precise estimation of how mass reforestation of North America and Europe could yield measurable results against climate change (Environmental News Network).   Combining a scientific approach of the environment with the laws of sustainability (see blog post one) can effectively teach us how the natural world’s mechanics and better inform us on how we should treat the earth.

“Heal the World” artpiece

Scientific information is an important part of the interdisciplinary nature of environmental issues.  How can we decide upon a proper course of action if we don’t have some kind of understanding about how ecosystems work? Yes, it is important to have an understanding about the economical, political, religious, technological, and cultural implications that come with human impact on the natural world (because all of those drivers play an important role in human activity), but a solid basis of scientific fact is crucial to understand what exactly needs protecting and fixing in nature (the same way medical information helps a doctor operate on a patient and save that person’s life).

Question One: Are there ways of harvesting the sun’s energy that haven’t been explored?

Question Two: How can understanding the Law of the Conservation of Matter and the Laws of Thermodynamics help the average citizen make informed decisions in his or her daily life?

***For this post and Blog Post one, I know I need to write a little more. I think the question is more about what I need to add and how exactly I should alter what I already have***

food.for.thought

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”                                    – Henry David Thoreau

The Bullitt Center: The Greenest Commercial Building on Earth

Seattle is leading the green building movement in their construction of the Bullitt Center, which is currently the world’s greenest-ever commercial building.  Located in Capital Hill, a populous neighborhood adjacent to Seattle’s downtown core, the Bullitt Center aims to fulfill all the sustainable requirements set forth by a new system of green certification (similar to LEED) called the The Living Building Challenge.  Founders of the Bullitt Center hope to implement the newest, burgeoning technologies in harvesting green energy sources and combining efficient, sustainability with humanity’s move toward a modern lifestyle.  As stated from the foundation,

“The Living Building Challenge is premised on a belief that the 21st century will require a rapid, worldwide movement to ultra-high performance buildings. But for this movement to realize its full potential, these buildings must also be a source of beauty, joy, well-being and inspiration. They will marry Sullivan’s “form follows function” precept with the highest levels of efficiency currently achievable. Learning from nature’s preoccupation with maximizing return from scarce resources, they will also be beautifully functional”

 

Among a range of sustainable building materials and practices, the building sports an extensive solar panel roof that is productive enough to large amounts of solar energy, even beneath Seattle’s cloudy skies.

This project will implement a drastically improved practice of building, and in doing so, will do something particularly and fundamentally American: rethinking and revolutionizing the structures of our past to support a better life in our not-so-distant future.

Are there programs like this going on in your city? What sustainable changes could you see happening in either your community or own home?

For more information about the Bullitt Center, please feel free to visit their website.

Blog Post 1: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Environmental Studies

Girl drinking from a pipe in India

Understanding our impact on the world is an interdisciplinary venture because it requires the integration of many complex and interrelated issues.  This area of research combines both studies of Environmental Science and Environmental Policy, the former concerning “how humans interact with the living and non living parts of their environment” (Miller and Spoolman 6) and the later concerning the “creation, evolution, implementation and effectiveness of environmental policies” (Environmental Policy 1).   Jointly comprising Environmental Studies, this field requires an intensely interdisciplinary approach to grasp the complex affairs between human and environmental issues, supplementing the scientific disciplines of Biology, Chemistry, and Ecology with areas of Sociology, Religion, Technology and the Humanities.  After all environmental issues do not live in a vacuum, they often have real ethically-trying implications for humans.

This interdisciplinary nature to Environmental Studies differs from that of singular disciplines, considering that “inter’, means, “between, among, and in the midst” and, “derived from two or more [areas]” (Repko 5).  For even unlike trans-disciplinary examinations that supplement a preliminary locus with many disciplines, or multi-disciplinary inquiries that investigate (but fail to integrate) many disciplines, interdisciplinary studies depend entirely upon combining each related discipline’s unique technique of truth-seeking to derive its solutions.  Environmental Studies weaves the implications of each discipline together, creating a brand new, and constantly transcending, body of knowledge.

Birds-eye rendering of Central Park in Manhattan (current state)

Commonly, people hold one of three possible life stances about their relationship to the environment.  These worldviews are usually either ‘Planetary Management’, which establishes humanity as separate and rightful users of nature in any way we desire, ‘Stewardship’, which considers humans as rightful managers of the earth if pursued with ethical responsibility, or Environmental Wisdom, which grants all species the right to nature’s bounty and considers humans to be are a part of and entirely dependent upon the natural world (Miller and Spoolman 24-25).  These three worldview hit the core, interdisciplinary meat of Environmental Studies and are always at play in the world, defining and informing our population’s economical, humanitarian, and environmental practices.

Humans unavoidably inflict damage to the environment whenever the process of their activities exceed one what is known as the earth’s ‘sustainable yield’, or the highest rate of renewable resources humans can use while maintaining the earth’s ability to replenish them.  Materials that are non-renewable (such as oil and coal) do not have a sustainable yield because their amounts are fixed and irreplaceable.  Against mounting ecological degradation, nations are pushing for increased sustainability, or the capacity “to survive, flourish, and adapt [our means of living] to changing environmental conditions into the very long-term future” (Miller and Spoolman 5).

Sustainable development chart

The Core of Miller’s text, The Living Environment, discusses certain part of nature as well as the kinds of natural capital and ecosystem goods and services, but most importantly, connects these things to the three principles of sustainability.  According to Miller, sustainable activities are modeled after the of the world’s natural processes that work to support the earth’s long-term survival.  These processes consist of Solar Energy, Biodiversity, and Chemical Cycling.  The indefinite power Solar Energy makes it a ‘perpetual resource’ of life, the grand scheme of Biodiversity offers solutions for environmental changes, and the restorative rotation of Chemical Cycling forever repurposes waste into repurposed material for subsequent life forms.  Humans can potentially gain a lot from mimicking these processes.

Many research organizations and tools track the scope of our destruction and inform our decision-making when creating solutions for these issues.  From 2001-2005, the United Nations launched the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, collecting a detailed snapshot of the world’s ecological health and it’s roots causes.  The interdisciplinary structure of environmental studies is clearly shown in the UN’s chart (see left), demonstrating the intricate relationships between human well-being, the ecosystems, and both direct and indirect ‘drivers’ of change.  From the project, they found “60 percent  (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services examined during the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are being degraded or used unsustainably”, including areas of fishing, fresh water, air, and climate regulation, and “over the past 50 years humans have changed ecosystems more than in any period of time in human history” (Sarukhán and Whyte 1). The past 50 years has also brought over 60 percent of the world’s increase of carbon dioxide (32 percent overall) while destroying or seriously damaging 40 percent of the world’s coral reefs, and the past 30 years has seen more land transformed into cropland than the 150 years between 1700 and 1850 (Sarukhán and Whyte 2).  There are many root causes of this, one of them being population overgrowth.  Between 1950 and 2000,

“The world population doubled to 6 billion people and the global economy increased more than sixfold. To meet this demand, food production increased… two-and-a half times, water use doubled, wood harvests for pulp and paper production tripled, installed hydropower capacity doubled, and timber production increased by more than half (Sarukhán and Whyte 5).

Clear-cut deforestation in the Amazon

I firmly agree that Earth has limited resources cannot support an unlimited human birthing, for every person born is another mouth to feed and body to shelter.  Second, and touched upon in the above quote, most of our swollen population harvests resources at an alarmingly unsustainable rate.  According to a recent example provided by the Environmental News Network, this overabundant call for resources is as strong as ever, citing that industrial palm oil companies in Borneo are trying to cut down large tracks of forest that provide 50 percent of the largest remaining orangutan population.  The need for resources does not just involve the economy, it involves environmental science (the implications of destroying entire ecosystems), religion and cultural tradition (what spirituality is tied to the land), politics (who owns property rights, etc), and much more.

An impoverished boy outside a multinational foodchain

Small plant brings a little bit of nature into a household, and no doubt, into the psyche of the homeowner

I believe another primary reason for the world’s over-harvesting of resources can be traced to our next major problem: disparity of wealth.  Affluent nations request unsustainable amounts of natural capital, the combination of earth’s natural resources and services, that far exceeds basic necessity to the point where “19 percent of the world [i.e. developed countries] use 88 percent of the world’s resources and produce 70 percent of the world’s waste” (Miller and Spoolman 12).  To meet the needs of more affluent communities, poorer people will more often then not destroy entire ecosystems (clear cutting rainforests and polluting rivers for example) to survive, let alone increase their small margin of economic profit.

However, doing nothing to change our habits only exacerbates these issues for future generations and the actions we take as individuals can make a real difference.  Our ingenuity has grown substantially over the centuries and we have the heart and intellect to potentially reverse our environmental deterioration.

While people can justly argue about the various rights and wrongs of human activity they cannot ignore current existence and causes of injury to our world’s ecosystems.

For in the wise words of Margaret Mead,

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has” (Miller and Spoolman 26).

Question One: Does an interdisciplinary understanding of Environmental Studies favor one of the three worldviews? For instance, would someone who thinks that the environment is an interdisciplinary issue be more inclined to follow a certain worldview (management/stewardship/wisdom)?

Question Two: How can an interdisciplinary outlook on environmental and economical issues help save the natural world from destruction and unsustainable use?

Word Count: 1,150

Green Concrete Systems

A California-based company, Soil Retention®, offers systems of concrete manufacturing in roads, parking lots, retaining walls, and other forms of infrastructure that provides space for natural vegetation growth and ecological processes.  Taken from the Soil Retention® website, the company’s first product is a plantable retaining wall, called ‘Verdura’:

“Verdura® is a fully plantable retaining wall system that can be used in many applications from small garden walls to large commercial structures.  Verdura® can be installed professionally or do-it-yourself.”

In addition to retaining walls, the company also offers a multi-purpose product called ‘Drivable Grass’.

“Drivable Grass® – a permeable, flexible and plantable concrete pavement system for fire lanes, access roads, driveways, parking lots, bioswales, ditches, and various post construction BMPs.  Drivable Grass® can be installedprofessionally or do-it-yourself; and Enviroflex® – a tapered, vertically interlocking articulating concrete block (ACB) revetment system for channels, culvert outlets and wetland traffic crossings. Enviroflex® can be installed professionally.”

The company cites many benefits that are attributed to these products, including erosion control, lessening of heat island effect, elimination of storm water run-off, creation of habitats, and cost effectiveness.

To learn more about these products, visit:                                     http://www.soilretention.com/drivable-grass/professional/