Yet another dimension to sustainability

The hysteria over global warming continues to obscure the broader issue of sustainability. Though, in a 'rising tide lifts all boats' sort of way, it may still be a good thing, I still worry that the broader point is getting missed as most people try to sort out the global warming debate.

Since I haven't posted in a while, let me summarize my view of climate change. Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in at the current rate (or anything like it) will cause the planet to keep more of the sun's energy than it radiates. The temperature of the planet WILL rise. This is pretty basic physics and thermodynamics. In the short term, the dynamic systems of the biosphere will adjust (and have been doing so for 100 years), and we won't see many effects. However, virtually every biological system that has been stressed in a similar manner has snapped at some point. We see this in small systems as well as the climate record in response to other changes. What happens next is unclear, it may start snowing more for all we know, but it will probably cause a global crisis.

My bigger point is that we need to take some action and move on. Carbon dioxide emissions are not the only environmental threat that has the potential to cause global instability. There are more out there. Fresh water is a big one you here about. Simply running out of fossil fuels is an issue that will get solved by alternative energy solutions. Environmental contamination may not cause a singular crisis, but it may be a severe burden that opens the door for something else like the next pandemic.

Sustainability is broad philosophy that will help curb the effects of most of these. If every process can account for every input and output, then most of these problems are solved and we can get back to dealing with the political and social issues.

I bring this up again because I just read an article about an issue I hadn't thought of that fall right into this line of thinking: peak phosphorous.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/20/peak_phosphorus

Protein sources

The Green Lantern at Slate just addressed a question that's been bugging me for a while now. How does tofu stack up against meat for environmental impact? Soy protein is better than animal protein in most regards, but there is a whole lot of processing involved in making tofu. How does that tilt the balance?

Rastogi references a Dutch study that ranked Dutch made tofu slightly worse than Dutch raised chicken. She then takes a stab at adjusting the results for the US and decides that US tofu is probably better than chicken, but not dramatically. The change is mostly because the dutch get beans from South America.

The Dutch study is worth a look, even if the results cannot be translated directly to the US. It covers every protein source from veggie patties, to cheese, to fish and back. A quick look at the graphs (I haven't read the whole thing) revealed to surprises to me. First, cheese is horrible in this regard. Second, lamb is the worst thing ever. Which is too bad, because I wanted lamb to be a earth friendlier alternative to beef. Ah, well, I guess I'll have to live with the guilt.

Eggs, nuts, chicken, tofu, and most fish are all about the same. Milk is a slightly better and local seafood is even better than milk. Their numbers also indicate that cutting out dairy reduces greenhouse gasses as much as going meatless. That must be mostly the cheese.

Keep in mind that this is a Dutch study and the focus is greenhouse gasses. So if, like me, your concern extends to other pollutants and effects, don't treat these numbers as gospel. However, I haven't seen anything else half as useful.

A mark against frozen foods

In an effort to reduce impact, we've tried to avoid buying too much fresh produce that's not produced locally. It's certainly not the 100 mile diet, but that vast majority of the produce we ate this winter was either canned (mostly by us) or frozen. It seems to me that you'd get better tasting food for less energy if you preserve produce at it's peak and ship it preserved rather than try to ship fresh food around the planet.

There are some obvious costs to preserving food. Canning requires a fair bit of heat, and frozen foods require refrigeration. But it gets worse for frozen foods. Apparently, even the non-CFC refrigerants are nasty and being emitted in mass by supermarket freezers. They don't kill the ozone layer, but the are potent greenhouse gasses. Wonderful. At least there are alternatives, it's just that most places don't use them.

Blue is the new green? WTF?

Greenwashing (to use a loaded word) and global warming (as real and important as it is) were good to get the movement going, but are beginning to distract from the need for sustainability across the board, not just the carbon cycle

sustainability-is-not-a-color-sustainability-is-transparent/

Hot, flat, and crowded

I just listened to an interview with Tom Friedman, author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

He makes the case that we need systemic change in the way we live to face the coming challenges. The primary challenges are global warming (hot), a globally growing consumer class (flat--yeah, I don't get it either), and overpopulation (crowded). It doesn't sound revolutionary in its content, but he makes very strong arguments in the interview and seems to avoid the moral imperative that seems to get many green proponents pegged as emotional extremists. Although, he does get pretty emotional about it all. Who can blame him?

I also recommend the TED presentation by Mark Bittman on the problems with the western diet. He explicitly avoids the emotional reasons to reduce meat consumption, and makes a strong argument for going (mostly) vegetarian.

100 mile diet for America!

In the not too distant past, energy conservation and renewable power sources were just the concern of tree huggers and "cocaine sniffing sierra club yuppies." I think it was 5 years ago, I first read something arguing that energy conservation should also be the concern of hawkish conservatives. This was the first time I saw the term "energy independence". Now, with the addition of religious groups who see humans as the stewards of God's creation, there is some momentum to take on climate change.

However, as I've complained before, global warming is just one of many bad things caused by unsustainable practices. The reckless burning of fossil fuels is just one of many bad things we are doing to the planet and ourselves in the name of short-term profit. There are very few regulations on what can be dumped into landfills and waste water. Nor are there enough controls on what goes into food and consumer goods. This is a problem both for the planet because chemicals and antibiotics that we are dumping both commercially and from our homes will do bad things to ecosystems. It's also bad for people, because there has been no testing for what these chemicals do to people in small doses. This is just one more of many things that is going to come down harder on those without the resources or education to speak up for themselves.

Anyway all this is why we decided earlier this week to try to reduce the amount of prepared and mass-produced food in our diet. It's not the 100 mile diet, but it's more small producers and locally grown stuff. Not long after we made this decision, it came out that something else was contaminated in China. While the tainted Chinese milk likely was not a terrorist act, it underscored to us just how easy it would be to sicken and kill a whole lot of people by putting something in the food supply. The chain is so long with mass produced food that it'd be pretty easy to do.

In addition to making me a little uneasy, it got me thinking that, like energy independence before it, food security will be the next formerly eco-friendly idea to get taken up by the right in the name of national security.

Irrationality

I was flipping through AM radio on the way back from work on Wednesday (because my walkman/phone is broken) and, out of curiosity, listened to a few minutes of a right-wing rant against everything climate change. There were a few nuggets of truth mixed in with a whole barge-load of rubbish.

My first thought was remembering how I wish that the issue weren't so narrowly focused on climate-change. Sustainability is about everything on this planet. Climate change is about a single nutrient cycle (carbon) and one hell of a bad outcome if we mess with it too much.

Next, the host went on about how China and India refuse to accept caps until they match the per capita carbon output of the west. This was used to argue that caps will needlessly hamper our economy. However, the alternative is continue to increase our output so that we stay ahead of the developing world. Otherwise I don't see how letting the indians catch up to us is any better than meeting them in the middle. At some point in the future we'll all be on equal terms, it may as well be on a livable planet.

Finally, I noticed how emotional the arguments are. The scientific community is worried about climate change because it has constructed a bunch models, crunched endless numbers, and performed numerous experiments that say we are doing our best to bump the climate out of the stable state it's been in for a few millenia into a completely unknown region that will likely be warmer.

The thing is, the earth is so complex that it just might get cooler instead. However, if you shift the chemistry as much as we are doing, something will change. Our food production system will be challenged severely and if we can't respond sufficiently, billions could die or be displaced. The problem is, since our current state is so stable, once things start changing, it'll be too late to stop. So all this arguing over whether Katrina and the floods and fires can be linked to climate change is pointless. The details don't matter because (look up chaos theory) we can't predict the exact outcome even if we had them all right (which we don't).

The details don't matter for another reason, though. Models, predictions, and robust scientific theories aren't going to spur the kind of change we need. People are not rational. Science is the application of rational thinking to the natural world. It turns out this is useful. It is also very hard because people are not rational. To change behavior and future outcomes, sustainability needs to be sold with broad, sweeping, emotionally-charged arguments.

There is this idea among those who wish to keep the status-quo that capping emissions will hurt the bottom line. This idea is not limited to greenhouse gasses. Chemical plants that produce waste products fight regulation worrying that it will cost more to clean up than they can afford.

In the short term these fears are probably real, but in the broader view, there is no reason why emitting no waste products would cost more than emitting lots. Look at the word waste. Why do we want to waste stuff. Let's use all the resources we have as fully as possible, not just as little as we need to to make a quick buck.

I have lots of thoughts on how an unchecked market leads to these self-destructive short-term solutions (ask John Nash) and how governing bodies need tilt the balance so companies take the long view. I am not an economist though, so they are just my thoughts. Anyway, no-one cares about the details.

Sustainability means to many that resources are limited, therefore we should conserve them. People need to see the positive side of sustainability. Dumping gasses into the air, chemicals into the waters, and trash into the land is waste. That's not a judgment, that's the definition of the word. These are waste products. Waste is bad. Companies should be made to feel the cost of the waste they produce. This won't cost anything overall, we are just shifting the cost from society back to the producers of the waste.

Upstaged by global warming

Al Gore and global warming have put the idea of sustainability on the map. Combine it with the instability of many of the world's oil producing regions and the idea of energy independence and we are on the verge of turning a corner to the tipping point (to steal and mangle a few phrases) on how we view energy usage.

However, sustainability goes beyond energy usage. Yes, the combined threats of global warming and rising oil prices make it the most important component at the moment, but there is more to sustainability than being carbon neutral.

For the last few decades, our society (meaning the US primarily, but also most of the westernized world) has become dominated by disposable things. It is cheaper to throw something away and replace it, than to get it fixed. This is WRONG. It does cost the consumer less and makes money for most everyone else involved (except for the folks who repair things), but in terms of real resources and energy expenditures, it should be the other way. Instead of a few hours of work, we're spending all the materials and work involved in a new product (plus distribution) as well as all the work and resources (land) devoted to disposal. So we are wasting energy, land, and physical resources because it's too easy to just throw something away. That was true twenty years ago when the current torrent of toxic electronic waste was just beginning.

An (amazingly) overlooked resource that doesn't affect global warming, but will affect billions of lives, is water. It's been called the oil of the next century.

Land is another good one. Why is suburban sprawl invading the flood plains of the Sacramento River? The land is among the most productive in the world and the homes will be washed away in the next 50 years without a question.

Sustainability is about more than just being carbon-neutral. (And don't get me started about paying to be carbon neutral...). Its about conservation of everything. It's a law of physics, people. You can't create matter and the earth is only so big.