Why do I care about the Environment?

Ok, so you may ask yourselves, why does she flip her nuggets with giddy glee every time someone mentions an environmental buzzword? Answer: everything we do matters.

First and foremost, environmental issues affect health. Pollution and toxic chemicals exist in every waterway, every breath of air, your mattress, your clothes, your electronics, even your food. If you think this sounds alarmist, start looking up some of the ingredients in those long lists of ingredients, and see what you find. Behind most diseases exists environmental causes or contributors.

Secondly, environmental issues affect quality of life. People are happier and healthier in well-planned neighborhoods. By that, I mean that people are happier when they have green spaces, community gathering spaces, and strollable neighborhoods. Sprawl kills community and decentralizes vibrant downtowns and neighborhoods (and adds to pollution through increased driving, chemicals, loss of open land, etc.). I grew up not knowing my neighbors, for pete's sake.


Thirdly, I love the outdoors and want to keep this:



from turning into this:






Not that I'm against cities, because I think that cities could be possibly our most sustainable way of housing all our population, but I'm against development that is unhindered, unplanned, unattractive, unsustainable and environmentally and public health degrading.



Fourth, I'm a Christian. Please don't run away screaming "AHHH!!!" To my sadness, certain facets of Christianity have been really slow to adopt, or are even against, environmental-friendly outlooks. The Catholic Bishops, and to a certain extent, the Evangelicals, have started to change this. The Catholic Bishops have released several treatises on the environment which plead for industries and the government to be socially responsible by changing environmentally damaging actions.

Now, I'm not Catholic, but I agree with much of what the Bishops are doing in this respect. Jesus calls us to live a simple life, in service of others. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to be stewards of the earth. Instead, we pollute, we partake in extreme consumption patterns, we release toxic chemicals, we put polluting industries in poor neighborhoods, we treat meat-animals as no more than factory items. I do not see the glory of God in rivers filled with trash, people dying of cancer caused by pollutants, or clearcutting.

People of all faiths have come out against these atrocities that we humans have done. From the Buddhists to the Catholics, the Hindus to the Muslims, people of faith join in solidarity saying this should not happen to our fellow man or to us or to the animals or to the earth.


Fifth, protecting the environment can be profitable and smart. I'm serious. I am definitely not a socialist nor am I a libertarian. I believe in free market and I think Adam Smith is a smart dude (although not a great writer, Wealth of Nations is really annoying to read).

Our current system, of global food production, for example, is plagued by inefficiency that needlessly expends fossil fuels, produces less-nutritious food, and creates health problems in a myriad of ways. By going back to local food production, we rely less on other nations for our food supply, we rely less on fossil fuels, and we have real connection with our food. Typically, food that is produced locally using sustainable methods is more nutritious, due to the increased emphasis on healthy soil. More nutritious food and eating habits will lessen our spending on health care, which is the highest in the world. If the burgeoning organic movement is any key (although, of course, the organic movement by agribusiness is hotly debated), profitable models of business are increasingly available and attractive to the consumer.

For too long we have subsidized socially irresponsible businesses, and then we taxpayers pay the price in clean-up and health costs, whilst the perpetrators pay nothing. (look up Superfund as an example). Yes, some subsidies are necessary, but not to the extent that they exist today.


Sixth.. I guess that's it, really. But my caring about the environment not because I'm anti-business, anti-growth, anti-cities, anti-people, anti-industry, anti-government. All of these are necessary and can be good things. The problem is, with "great power comes great responsibility", and we've been shirking our responsibilities. All of us contribute to the problem, from George W. Bush to me.


So, I support the environment out of a love for people, the outdoors and God. Why do you?

Hummingbird

This picture was taken by a classmate of mine , the insectologist Kim, when we all went to Costa Rica to study sustainable business. In Monteverde, they have a hummingbird garden. I love these little guys, and they can show us a bit of how everything comes around. Read on to see how.

A google search tells me there are 320 species, some of which migrate from Central America to as high up as Alaska each year. How they manage to make it in Alaska, I don't know, but perhaps they drink whiskey instead of nectar. In the fall, the migratory ones, including the most well known, the ruby-throated hummingbird, migrate southward and then cross the Gulf of Mexico. They're freaking smaller than my hand and they cross a giant gulfy abyss! Makes me wonder why I have trouble crossing my bed to get up in the morning.

Anyway, currently there are several hummingbird species that are endangered, and others are experiencing population declines. This is due to habitat destruction along their migratory path, here in the US, and in their wintering home of central/South America.

Currently, the rainforest is being cut down for agriculture by slash and burn methods and for growing crops to make ethanol.

First thing not too good about that: nutrients are held within a rainforest trees' roots. So when the trees are cut down, the nutrients go with them, and thus, there are only a couple of years of good growing before the soil is nutrient poor and unable to grow anything. A better way for both agriculture and the rainforest is to cultivate small squares and move on - creating a patchwork effect. Most crops can be grown in and amongst rainforest trees, and indeed that's where they first evolved.



Second thing not too good about it: ethanol's no better for the environment than gas, and in some ways is more harmful.




Why, you may ask? Aren't I being environmentally unfriendly by not supporting ethanol?

Ethanol uses no less energy to produce as gas/oil. The crop used to make it (here in the US) is corn. I'll write another post about our love affair with corn. The journal Science has published studies on ethanol, and concluded that corn-based ethanol has similar greenhouse emissions as gasoline. It's also less fuel-efficient, and requires more trips to the gas pump, and has to be trucked around, which further contributes to our gas needs. And, we can't forget that corn grown with un-sustainable, un-environmentally and people friendly methods doesn't really further any environmental cause. Plus, it's genetically engineered corn..

Ethanol is being embraced because it allows us to continue our dance with corn and maybe possibly get less reliant on foreign oil (see ethanol's largest coalition's website here) while creating a new industry to invest/profit from. Proponents say that ethanol will get cheaper as more people invest in it. Right now, it's more expensive than gas, even though the US heavily subsidizes it....My question is why we don't do this push with solar energy, which makes a whole lot more sense.

All this said, there is a place for ethanol. Refineries are substituting ethanol for a water-supply-polluting oxygenating agent (MTBE). However, it's a mistake to think that we should make ethanol our prime supply, or make it beyond an oxygenating agent. And, the ethanol we make should be from sustainably grown sources.

Cellulostic ethanol looks better to me - cellulostic ethanol uses all parts of a plant whereas ethanol only uses corn kernels. Canada and I think.. Minnesota?.. are looking into this with switchgrass, a native grass that's easy and fast to grow, and would be easier on the earth. Currently it's not cheap enough.

However, I think the best thing now is probably be bio-diesel, which reduces volume from our waste stream and runs clean, and for which a converter can be put on any diesel car. We can continue experimenting with ethanol, but right now, I say it doesn't do anything better for the earth and us.

See summary of Cornell's scientists findings about ethanol not being better here and here
See Business Week's Q+A on ethanol here
See CATO Institute's (and Chicago Sun-Times) article on ethanol here

You can also type ethanol into google and see tons of lobbyist sites from corn growers and ethanol companies.

When Is Science Science and When Is It Verbal Toiletry?

The great thing about global climate change science is that it helps to popularize environmental problems. The problem with global climate change science is that it's a wide and varied field that's hard to separate from politics. And the only people that really stick in peoples' minds negatively or positively are the ones that have political agendas. Which stinks like New York City's trash shipments.

But it's a mistake to think every scientist has a political agenda. True scientists will argue til they're blue in the face that science is all about peer-review and proof and can't be conducted under the auspices of political gain, because it ruins the integrity of experiments.

Like in every academic field, you can find a whole host of ideas, experiments and results. Results that are similar which are worded differently, which politicians and lobbyists use to their goals. Research on the same subject can be run differently and have differing results. People will even use the same argument to prove two different things.

The most important thing to remember is that global warming science has been around for 30 years, back when NASA scientist oh-what's-his-name started blowing the whistle, and was continually rebuffed. (see BBC's article on global warming scientists getting hushed) Global warming science has only really hit the popular mindset in the last 10 years.. Thus, it's still very much a young science that is developing its methodology and standards. The discipline will define itself with time. It has to, for the sake of continuing the discussion, assessing public policy and its own sanity.


So where and how do we find the truth in climate change science reports?


Truth might be found in the moderation of two extremes. Or perhaps it is found in finding the research done by professors/researchers whom you already know and trust.... Or you can read everything yourself, do a few experiments. The fact is that most scientists do believe that human-made emissions do have a warming effect on climate. The quabbles exist over whether humans caused global warming, how much they contribute to it, and how severe the problem is.

My whole shebang is that ultimately, it doesn't matter.

We need to cut emissions anyway, whether it's for global warming or public health. Emissions from cars and coal are on the top polluters to air quality. They result in billions of dollars in health care from all sorts of illnesses. (see National Institute of Health and EPA articles here)

Industrial waste and fertilizers, deforestation and strip-mall-building has endangered our open spaces, our farming and degraded our water systems. We should be working on these things because they are real demonstrated effects of real problems with solid research with real tangible solutions. Waiting around for people to reach a 100% consensus on how much humans contribute/cause global warming before acting is silly. Let's fix what we can while we can with the knowledge we have.

Ultimately, there's no way to tell how much of the global climate change effect is from humans. My argument is that it's all moot, and if we start working on our real problems, it'll help us to cut emissions, which in turn, may help.

See What A Mess You're Living In

A commenter, Karen, (thanks!!) brought to my attention this website from Earth Day Network. It has a map with major cities of the US on it, and you click on whatever city to learn it's environmental scores. If you scrol down, it breaks down its averages into smaller numbers, based on things like public health, sprawl, air quality, etc. All in all, it's pretty interesting, and probably gives a great start to understanding the issues surrounding your hometown. I'm not exactly sure about the methodology or the exact science, but use it as a guideline and maybe you can start getting involved in efforts to fix the worst problems.

My original hometown of Philadelphia got a pretty bad rating.. including a 4.1 (1-5 with 5 being the worst) in air quality. We're a rather obese and asthmatic city. Whoops a daisy!


San Francisco has started an aggressive recycling program which is trying to reduce waste going to landfills to zero in the coming years (they already recycle 60% of their waste). They're also starting a local food system to encourage efficiency and community in food production. They got pretty decent scores..better than Philadelphia, anyway. Portland got even better scores, probably due to its incredible land planning.

No cities' without its projects. It's a really hard problem to tackle - how to not only reduce and cut pollution/emissions from cities, but clean former pollution as well.

Anyway, food for thought. Check out your city!

Be This Guy: Sloth in the Jungle

I mean look at this guy. We're all this guy. Replace the leaves with TV and you've got America...er...me.

Funny how nature repeats itself!

Maybe there's a deeper issue within all life that incites us to laziness, greed and over-consummption?