Currently viewing the tag: "sustainability"
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we held the first of our series of Climate Talks, to explore with more depth and more detail some of the intricacies of the climate crisis, including social, philosophical and political, dynamics, and the way we frame our perception of global-scale phenomena. It was a construtive conversation, from four points of view, each of which was able to benefit from a kinship of interest, so that whether we were discussion environmental justice, political solidarity, economics and collaborative politics or Villanova’s ongoing commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, there were ways to deepen and broaden our understanding of each facet of the problem from each of the different perspectives.
Overfishing has depleted fish-stocks the world over. Subsidies and lack of enforcement of sustainability measures drive the fishing industry to deplete the very stocks on which its existence depends, while climate interference and global contamination are leaving oceans so hypoxic (oxygen deprived) they cannot support marine life. At least 405 such ‘dead zones’ have been identified across the globe.
In a tucked-away corner of the New Zealand coastline, a couple, both architects, Lance and Nicola Herbst, have designed a self-sustaining “off-the-grid” home that lends flavor and mood to everyday living. Their cedar-clad bungalow is designed to interact with the natural environment and optimize its use of resources, such as energy, water and nutrients.
Earlier this year UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank teamed up with World Resources Institute to publish a report focusing on the concept of resilience “for cushioning the impacts of climate change and delivering continuing benefits to the poor”. Recently, the Volvo Environment Prize was given to the “father of resilience theory”, C.S. Holling. But what is this resilience-thing really all about? We thought it was about time to try to sort this concept out once and for all.
As the “perfect storm” gathers from inchoate, deceptively non-threatening winds, we can look ahead, backward and into the mirror and ask how crisis comes, or why, if it is inevitable, if we might just fall right out of it, as we fell into it. But the answer is simple: human crisis comes from excess, from inordinate ambition, from misplaced aggression, from over-exploitation of resources, each of which generates real and problematic tension across the landscape of human experience.
Food prices are skyrocketing. Initially, many put the blame on the rising demand of biofuels in the transport sector, but bio-ethanol is far from the only thing driving up food prices. New diets, soaring oil prices and climate change are all in the complex soup of explanations behind the recent development putting food beyond the reach of the planet’s poor.
The former vice president of the United States, Al Gore, yesterday announced an ambitious goal, which he says the nation can meet, of transitioning its entire domestic energy production to clean resources by 2018. The speech marks a major moment in the process of transition to the green technology boom, which will be the next step in the ongoing economic development of the United States and the world. Gore, however, warned that failing to meet the challenge to date means “the United States of America as we know it is at risk”.
Former US vice-president Al Gore is calling on the nation to marshal its resources and divorce itself from the combustible fuels economy. Gore says the US can produce all its energy requirements from renewable resources within 10 years, if concerted action is taken. The bold initiative is designed to drive debate on the topic and move discussions about how to deal with high fuel prices toward the new opportunity they provide for funding renewable infrastructure development.
During the concluding half of the last century, the world was making steady progress in reducing hunger, but during the transition into the new century, the tide began to turn. In February 2007, James Morris, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), announced that 18,000 children are now dying each day from hunger and related causes. For perspective, this loss of young lives in one day is almost five times U.S. combat deaths in Iraq through four years of fighting. Although these huge numbers of dying children may be an abstraction, each represents a young life ended far too soon.
Special transparent dyes coating glass or plastic panes concentrate the Sun’s rays, guiding them to solar-voltaic cells lining the edges, allowing a window to act as a solar panel with 10 times the electricity generation capacity of solar cells, by current standards. The ‘organic solar concentrator’ (OSC) system also reduces cost, by reducing the surface area that needs to be coated by solar-voltaic cells and by eliminating the need for large concentrating mirrors and sun-tracking mechanisms.
The green technology transition is gaining momentum. Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota has announced it will add solar panels to some of its fleet of hybrid vehicles. The “high-end” third-generation Prius models will sport Kyocera-produced solar panels on the roof, aimed at assisting with powering the air-conditioning and other peripheral operations, freeing up battery energy to give the hybrid engines more non-combustion mileage.
Reforestation is a necessary part of the process of any ecologically responsible development strategy. Forest cover is not only a potent natural resource feeding the overall resilience of an ecosystem, but the hydrological and soil-quality stability, along with the biodensity it can generate, mean it is now more clear than ever that natural levels of forest cover have a very high economic value over the long term.
The Tigray Project in northern Ethiopia sounds too good to be true. It is said to demonstrate how sustainable agriculture can lead to increased crop yields, raised water tables, improved soil fertility, increased incomes and empowering of women. The government has now adopted the project’s approach for combating land degradation and poverty in the whole country. SDU went there to check out if the project is as good as rumour has it.
In a period of roughly 18 months, the price of corn across central American markets has doubled, making staple foodstuffs too expensive for many in the region. Today, what is described as an “angry mob” of protesters suffering food scarcity attacked the government palace in Port-au-Prince; UN peacekeepers responded by firing teargas, while food markets remained closed throughout.
One of the questions I am most often asked is, “How many peo-ple can the earth support?” I answer with another question: “Atwhat level of food consumption?” Using round numbers, at theU.S. level of 800 kilograms of grain per person annually for food and feed, the 2-billion-ton annual world harvest of grain would support 2.5 billion people. At the Italian level of consumption of close to 400 kilograms, the current harvest would support 5 billion people. At the 200 kilograms of grain consumed by the average Indian, it would support a population of 10 billion.
As part of the Crisis Policy Forum, the HotSpring collaborative innovation initiative is now planning an effort to tackle the problem of food supply management and chronic food and water scarcity in Africa. The lessons from this experiment in collaborative research will be applicable in many cases to other situations around the world, and we are open to spurring dialogue in those areas as outgrowths of this ongoing discussion.
On Thursday of last week, we found on the same day reports that mortgage foreclosures were at an all-time high in the US, the US dollar had fallen to an all-time low against the euro ($1.56 to 1€), the Federal Reserve joined with other central banks to infuse $200 billion into capital markets, oil hit an all-time record of $111/barrel, gold hit an all-time record of $1,001/ounce, Asian and European markets plummeted on news that Carlyle Capital —one of the world’s largest capital management funds— was in collapse, and Chrysler would shut down its entire corporation for 2 weeks in July, with no pay, to “increase productivity”.
The emergence of ecological economic trends, methods and industries, means that a wave of job creation could be the stabilizing factor which helps American industry recover both momentum and public appeal, potentially helping to ease pricing pressures and banks’ concerns about lending to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses.
The ongoing transition to an environmentally sustainable economy, focusing on energy and agricultural resources, is already opening the door to a range of new industrial and engineering services related to resource and ecosystem resilience (now understood to be vital to the stability of the natural environment whose own services underpin every element of our civilization).
The private investment fund Ceres, a group of institutional investors, has promised to devote $10 billion to investment in clean energy sources. The news comes as 3 of the world’s major oil companies call for coordinated policy on how to face climate change, constrain emissions, and a couple of months after 150 global corporations asked for a major boost in subsidized research into transitioning to clean energy technologies.
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