Nature and us.

I wanna talk about a recent experience that I had with the non-human world, which is the most magical engagement that I had during college. Due to the fact that I live on campus, it’s not allow to keep pets in dorms. In order to have some “pets” as well as for my research purpose at first place, I purchase some bush beans seeds from whole foods and start to plant them in small pots. I used to keep some plants at home, which that already mature enough to sell on the market. This is my first time of planting from seeds. This feeling is really interesting comparing with just watering some plants that purchase from the market. I planed to use these seeds as my experiment subjects and the purpose is that to examine whether there is a relationship between plants growth rate and carbon dioxide emission.

          

            I started with soaking them in water for one night and then plant them. What is very disappointed is that most of the seeds did not sprout. So I searched online about planting technique, then I finally get about 8 out of 10 seeds sprouted. This process is like taking care of a baby. You can observe the growth of a seed, how it get sprouted, how it grow up quickly and you can observe all the changes that happened with it. I like to play a trick that changes the direction of plants that facing with the sunshine. Within hours, the plants will react with it by changing the directions. This process makes me feel something that I grow and I plant, and see it grow up. It's really exciting to watch the whole process that a rice size seed can grow up as a 10 inch tall plant in 20 days. The only thing that I did is watering the plants regularly and make sure that they get enough sunshine by put them along the window. All of the work was finished by these tiny seeds. The whole process remind me of how precious the foods that we eat are. Vegetations start with seeds and then sprout, flourished and produce foods that we need. We should not waste food especially meat products, because it requires even larger amount of energy and water and nutrients comparing with the production of vegetations.

            I think we should concern about saving nature. As this week’s reading, we put ourselves in the wrong position in nature. Nature should not be something that we want to conquer but we are part of it as well as we are a product of it. Human history is a blink of eye comparing with the history of nature, even though we made tremendous changes of nature; this did not make us anything superior than nature. It’s hard to predict what nature will do to us. Just like how things happen in the hurricane Sandy. People can tell the power of nature from how powerful and how damage it could be. We are so tiny when we facing with the force of nature. We should concern about our future in terms about how we should place ourselves in the nature. We can never beat the nature, we should be respectful to it as well as protecting it. It’s our mother and home. We should not do harmful things to it.

A vision of food

Currently our food system is organized around the idea the food is a “commodity” to be “produced” by a few specialized individuals for the rest of society.  Much of our food is grown on large scale industrial farms and then funneled to a small number food companies which process the food and ship it to the consumer. Thus the food we consume is completely removed from the ecological and social context in which it grown and becomes a nothing but a “product-for-consumption.”  In spite of the fact that everyone must consume food, only a very small percentage of people actually participate in this process.

I hope that the next 50 year will see a dramatic shift in this food system. Part of this shift will be radical relocalization of the food system. In urban and suburban areas, rooftops and abandoned plots will be transformed into agricultural space for community gardens or urban agriculture operations. There will be hydroponic and aquaponic systems in large workplaces, schools, and homes to provide meals those who attend them. Rural areas, which used to focus on monocropping, will now focus on biodiversity and maintaining a local ecological balance. Farmers markets will replace supermarkets as the dominant place for the purchase and trade of food. This is not to say that national or international trade of food should not occur at all, it should just occur on a less massive scale then now. Local food will replace industrial food as the norm, while industrial food will replace local food as the exception.

The way in which people relate to the earth and food will undergo a radical change as well. Our current food system is linear. Food is produced, consumed and the excess is thrown away. This has led to the production of large amounts of waste and ecological harm. Our new vision will be circular, as waste is minimized and reuse emphasized. People will have a better intuitive understanding of how their agricultural actions affect the larger ecosystem. Inedible food waste will be composted, while excess food will be given to those who are hunger instead of thrown away. People will see food, not a as commodity, but instead a community resource and giver of life

Gardening and agriculture will become part of our common life, as more people than before will take part in growing and producing food. Agriculture will be integrated into the public school system, and school will run their own gardens and food operations. Community Colleges and University will offer more courses in practical gardening and agriculture. This is not to say that everyone will become a full time farmer, but working for a few hours in a community, workplace, or school garden will be considered a valuable use of time that is rewarded.

Our new food system will based on the idea of fresh, healthy food as a human right, to be grown by communities for communities. While in our current food system decisions about what crops are grown and how they are to be regulated are imposed from the top down, with corporations and regulators making most of the decisions. Our new food system will be community-centric, as communities will be able to make their own decisions about what type of foods will be grown.  Further food will be considered a human right, not something whose control can be ceded to market forces or corporations.

Food of the Future

Increased globalization has resulted in massive amounts of food imports from outside of the United States.  Americans literally have a world of choices at their fingertips when they shop at a supermarket because a large amount of our meat and produce comes from other countries.  Traditionally seasonal items are now available year-round for us to purchase at any time.  Our increased globalization is heavily tied to rapid technological advancements.  In the case of food production, current examples technological integration include hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticide resistant GMOs and synthesized meats.  A possible vision 50 years from now, is shift towards lab-produced food with less dependency on traditional agriculture.

It's very difficult to say exactly what Americans will be eating 50 years from now and where it comes from, but we can be certain it will be very dissimilar from today.  The American diet is currently drastically different from what is was several decades ago.  We are currently incorporating larger amounts of "food-like substances" into our diets than generations prior ever have before.  There also have been great improvements made in food sanitation within the past 50 years.  Robert Paarlberg's article on organic food and world hunger points out that industrial-scale technical improvements have made American foods significantly safer over time.  Since 2000, instances of E. coli contamination in meat has dropped 45%.  Surveys from the Centers for Disease and Prevention also show that most fatalities and hospitalizations from unsafe food in the United States today are due to mishandling or improper preparation inside the home. 

A trend that could possibly take off in the future is artificial meat grown in laboratories.  One statistic from an article in The Guardian discussing the future of food says that 70% of the grain and cereal grown in the United States are fed to farm animals.  As more animals take up land space and more crops go towards feeding them, this option would use much less water, energy and land than our current method of harvesting livestock.  The United States is currently the highest meat-consuming nation in the world but other developing countries, such as China, are catching up.  Much like the green revolution in the 1950s, artificial meat could feed a larger number of people using fewer resources.  Transportation may also prove to be easier because it would take longer to perish and could allow for more storage time.

Converging Interests: A New Food Supply

Avenging the environment does not require a sacrifice of our national interest.  In fact, in the next fifty years I hope we see a convergence of environmental issues with national security issues.  To demonstrate this, I focused on a vision of a more secure and environmentally friendly the food supply chain for the United States food chain, fifty years in the future.

As it stands now the food supply chain in the United States is largely centralized.  Large corporations control processing plants that the majority of the foods that end up - in one form or another - on our grocery shelves must go through regardless of where they were locally grown.  Local farming does still exist in our country, but on a minuscule scale compared to the big business farms.  One of the issues of this centralization is the inherent weakness it brings in regards to national security.  If these mammoth processing plants were attacked, the United States food supply chains would be in disarray and shortages would quickly follow.

To protect our food supply and the well being of citizens, in fifty years the United States would have regional food hubs instead of a centralized system.

Within these regional food hubs, each section of the country would focus on the local crops that grow well in their area, be it using large swaths of land for pasture for livestock, tropical climates for fruits, or adequate rain and mild temperatures for corn and other crops.  Each region would aim to supply itself with the crops it could cultivate - in laymen's terms -  each region would depend on local farmers for its food.  In the public, farming would be held in high regard again, and work and school schedules would be such that even small local gardening of simple vegetables and fruit was encouraged at the family and community level.  

When a region cannot cultivate a certain type of crop within their land, they would simply buy that crop from another regional hub that does specialize in the crop they want.  For example, if Maine wanted oranges from Florida, the Northeast Regional Hub would trade something they cultivate - say, corn - for oranges from the Southeast Regional Hub.  Changes in culture would push communities to value seasonal foods over non-seasonal foods to keep the focus on locally domestic grown foods as opposed to flying out of season fruits around the world just to keep them in stock.

These regional hubs would be managed by the United States Government, and to encourage food both staying in the country and being bought locally as opposed to globally, the government would offer incentives for corporations and business owners that stayed within the regional hub framework.  

Overall, this system would cut down on carbon emissions because less food would be traveling across the country and across the world to satisfy niche American tastes.  It would also foster communities and 'greener' living as farming culture would be integrated into modern life in every aspect, and valued as a honorable and absolutely necessary profession.  As farming life becomes modern, and communities are living with it in their front and back yards, livestock abuses would hopefully diminish because chickens, cows, and pigs wouldn't be hauled off to a kill yard in the middle of the country, they would be visible in the community.  

Lastly, this regional food hub system would make the United States food infrastructure less vulnerable to attack and collapse.  With five regional areas being mostly self-sufficient and relying on local business, an attack in California would not mean devastation in Maryland.

The regional food system I have described as happening in the next fifty years is admittedly idyllic, and I'm sure I have ignored many structural and political factors that would make this vision problematic.  I paint this gilded image to poke at the problem. Our current food system should alarm people.  It is vulnerable to attack, there are many injustices built into it.  The mere difficulty of tracking food back to its source is concerning in regards to the public health and keeping our food clean and safe.  I have suggested one avenue to explore in regards to improving our food system for all involved.  Dare to dream bigger than I have.  

In next 50 years.

Fifty years from now, there will be even less people working in the cropland comparing with what we have right now. From planting seeds to harvesting, the entire production process of food will be totally done by machine. We need only couple of people run the farmer company that may responsible for 1000 acres or much bigger area of cropland. Their only duties may only be check the status of machines in the cropland, enter command code into the planting system; irrigation frequencies and amount, pesticides application time, how much of the sunshine needed for crops will be accurately calculated. They don’t need to go to croplands at all since there will be different kinds of machine monitoring the growth of plants and do proper adjustments based upon the real time monitor observed. There will be barcodes attached with foods that coming from these lands so buyers are able to check the entire growing process online based on the codes they have. On the other hand, the production will increased for having multiple layers of “land” in same place. The layers of cropland will be shifted in order to have same amount of sunshine. The shifting will be calculated by the computer system automatically, which allow a more accurate outcome. With the population increasing in next 50 years. The city will take more land than now and there will be much more smaller size cities emerged as well. This may lead to the fact that the shipping distance for foods decreasing a little bit. But on the other hand, available cropland become further and further away from the central of cities that will increase the mileage of food. The way to use all the available space for food may include that using building roofs and building land on the top of parking lot to plant foods, which may be the food sources for local communities’ farmer market.  

On the consumer side, we can order the foods we need online and system will find the food with best price and also smallest mileage. The food we ordered online will be delivered to our home so that we do not have to drive to buy food. The quality and price are guaranteed. For people who cannot afford to buy fresh food, there will be another substitutes for that. It has low price but enough nutrients, calories and proteins inside of it. It is easy to preserve and also carrying around. My guess is that it would be something like a beverage and there are lots of different flavors in it. It uses the foods that are not sold but still fresh that blend all kinds of food together? 

Technology: A prescription with serious side-affects

Technology is completely integrated in my everyday life.  To give you an idea of how ever-present it is, I will outline my typical morning routine: Wake up to the sound of my alarm on my iphone, hit the snooze button two or three more times until I finally decide to get out of bed and turn on the lights.  The room is stuffy and hot so I'll turn on the a/c while I'm up.  I then go to the kitchen to flip on the hot pot to boil water.  I pour water for tea and instant oatmeal for breakfast.  As I'm eating, I check my email on my laptop.  After breakfast, I'll get changed and head out of my apartment with headphones plugged in, listening to my iphone on the way to class.  This routine requires me to use 5+ different types of technology, from my personal phone and laptop to all of the devices installed in my apartment, just within the first 15-20 minutes of my day.  While all of this is going on I don't even stop to think about all of the technology that went into the creation of my iphone and macbook or the light fixtures and air conditioning unit.

While the American public generally views technology as being a positive force overall, it is important to remember that it can just as easily be turned into a negative one.  In this era, mankind can research and develop vaccines to save millions of lives, or use medical advancements to create biological weapons and wipe out millions.  These examples require certain motivations behind their implementation, but in the case of global warming, our techno-centric way of living has its negative consequences despite how positive we view its role in our lives.  There is a clear correlation between industrialization and the amount of carbon dioxide we end up putting in the atmosphere.  Whether we like it our not, technology is going to play a major role in the progression or regression of global climate change.  It has been predicted that if we continue to consume at our present rates, we may face an unsustainable Earth in our future.  The question we face is: how much am I willing to alter technology's presence in my life to slow the warming of our planet?  Global warming is a collective action problem, so if citizens of the world don't act as one, we shouldn't expect to see any results.

As we face the consequences of global climate change, methods to remediate the damage we've done may be found in future technology.  If this proves to be the case, then we may be able to credit human ingenuity in creating technological advancements to make the world a better place to live.  But we must not forget the negative impact high technological consumption has had on our planet through pollution, increased carbon dioxide emissions and many other planetary repercussions that come with global warming.  Either way, if a technological solution to global warming presents itself, we cannot return to our current state of consumption without harming the planet.   

Technology Depends on Structure

 It is impossible to say anything about technology in the abstract. Some, often referred to as “cornucopians” have tried to argue that technology is inherently beneficial to both the climate and society; while it may cause temporary problems, continued technological growth will eventually solve all the problems it creates. Others have argued that technological growth because it is accompanied by economic growth and consumption necessarily increases environmental impact. I would argue instead that technology is neither inherently beneficial nor harmful. Instead it is entirely contextual as different technologies will interact in different ways with both the climate and society depending upon the social, political, and environmental contexts they are developed and deployed in.
Take GMO crops for example. GMO crops are often touted as technologies which will both decrease poverty and hunger, by increasing crop yields, and decreasing irrigation and environmental problems. While the potential might exists for gmo technologies to provide these benefits, for the most part they have not as many areas that adopt them suffer even worse environmental problems. (For instance, Mexican farmers who have planted GMO maize which produces its own pesticide have seen the development of “super bugs” which are resistant to the pesticide). With the introduction of GMO crops, farmers are encouraged to which to Western style monocroping, which leads to erosion and soil degradation. Further, because GMOs are often patented by a company, farmers are banned from saving their seed and often have to pay high premium for the “rights” to certain crops. This has created a cycle of dependency and debt which turn farmers into corporate vassals. Why in this case is technology harmful? GMO technology is owned and controlled for the most part by corporate interests such as Monsanto, who are concerned mostly with profit. Thus, for the most part they produce GMO crops which are designed to benefit them primarily. For instance, Monsanto makes a series of crops which are designed to be resistant to Roundup pesticide, which they also own.  GMO crops because of the context they exist in.
However, other technological advancements such as improvements in municipal recycling do seem to benefit the environment and society at large. This is because the technologies are utilized as a public service. Further, the internet, while it require the use of electricity, has greatly increased the ability of new environmental ideas to spread. Many environmental NGOs and activist have successfully used the internet to increase the reach of their ideas in ways never before possible. The internet, as concept is relatively cheap and accessible to a large amount of people. Thus it has a larger potential to be a force for environmental and social good.
Other technologies such as appliances, cell phones and other personal items, tend to be harmful to the environment because they are created and used in the context of consumerism. Consumerism encourages people to consume large amounts of stuff, most of which they will throw out in a few months. Further it encourages people to ignore the origins of their products and the environmental harm their production has caused.
Overall, it appears that because much of the technology we use exists within the context of corporate greed, consumerism, and industrial capitalism, it tends to be harmful to the environment. That is not to say that it is inherently harmful however. If you change the social structure in which technology is embedded, you will change its effects.

Technology: a life saving straw?

It's hard to simply make a judgment about technology when we talk about its position in the environment. The invention of light help people to see clearly during night, but it causes light pollution that impacts animals. The invention of car, airplane and trains help us getting much further away places in much shorter time, but they causes serious air pollution and also severe depletion of fossil fuel. the invention of varieties of electronic devices that help us a lot during daily life, but also generate enormous amount of electronic wastes that pollute the environment. The invention of plastic water bottles allow us carrying water with us no matter where we go, but tons of plastic bottles piled up everywhere. Whether the technology is a negative or positive force in our lives depend upon how we are going to use it. It is a tool for us to use not something that will dominate our future. I think the best example of it is the nuclear power plant, where is we use it properly, it can generate enormous amount of energy that supply our energy instead of burning coal to get electricity. on the other hand, the nuclear power also generates hazardous wastes that are very difficult to deal with. For some unstable countries and terrorists, nuclear power has become a powerful weapon to help them strive for hegemony. The whole debate about technology is like the coin has two sides. There are negative aspects of technology though there must have something else that have positive impacts of it.

As the I=PAT equation mentioned, the environmental impacts that we have are decided by population times human affluence and technology. We can tell from this that technology plays an important role in terms of environment. When we talking about environmental protection, we can not eliminate the impacts of technology that it will have over the entire issue. The level of technology determines the degree, the range and the area that we may influence, which under most circumstances, by damaging and over exploiting the resources. This kind of going to the debate of whether the developing of new technologies is compatible with environment protection. Facing with the situation right now, I think technology would work in a more positive way for correcting the mistakes that we made before. If we made changes of our current technologies to make them have higher efficiency, save more energy and pollute less; these all the benefits that we get from improving our technology. If we use technology in a more reasonable and environmental friendly way, technology will have bigger positive force than negative forces. In order to use it in the right way, stronger regulations and policies that aiming at different technologies needed to be done before the technologies spread to the entire world because once it get widely spread, it will be difficult to control people how they will use it. 

To Boldly Go...

Technology is perhaps one of the most uncertain variables in human history.  In 2000, the iPod did not exist, neither did social networking as we know it today.  In 1950, the internet did not exist. The advent of the internet and computers revolutionized communications technologies and infrastructures; it paved the way for globalization and fundamentally changed the way people related to each other. Instantaneous communication became possible.  Woah. Take a moment, and think about that.  Just try to list all the ways modern technologies have changed the way you live your life.  The natural thought, then, is what next? What will be the next internet?  

Before I continue down this particular road of thought, I'm going to take a step back.  Hold the idea of the revolutionary ability - and precedent - of technology throughout history to fundamentally shift the way the world functions, I'll get back to that eventually. Right now, though, let's take a page from last week with a return to author Michael Maniates. In an article written in Global Environmental Politics Volume One Number 3  titled Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? that was in my required reading for this week, a passage struck me with familiarity: 

When we asked our students - who were among  the brightest and best prepared of the many with whom we'd worked over the years - why, after thirteen weeks of intensive study of environmental problems, they were so reluctant to consider as "solutions" broader changes in policy and institutions, they shrugged. Sure, we remember studying these kinds of approaches in class, they said, but such measures were, well, fuzzy, mysterious, messy, and "idealistic" (36, Maniates). 

This struck me, because this past Monday in my International Environmental Politics class, I was one of those students.  Our professor asked us to divide into groups and write out how we thought the Washington DC area would change in fifty years if A) substantial sustainable policies were enforced and B) if life continued as usual. When we returned after a half hour or so, our solutions were modest, showing small changes, but nothing revolutionary - exactly like the students in the Maniates quote above.  Now think back to how I began. Fifty years ago, the internet as we know it, computers as we know them, did not exist. Why couldn't we - a class of students that are the progeny of this modern technological age - come up with more creative advances for the environmental future of Washington DC?

I realized the analytical step I had missed last week in my blog post while contemplating how to respond to this week's discussion question.  Last week, I was - I most definitely still am - guilty of "a privatization and individualization of responsibility for environmental problems [that] shifts blame from State elites and powerful producer groups to more amorphous culprits like 'human nature' or 'all of us'" (43, Maniates).  It certainly is much easier - and palatable - to blame human nature, or society, or normative cultural values on the current state of environmental degradation we face in the world.  It is hard for me to actually internalize and comprehend that I should be taking civic action - moreover that I can take civic action that could influence change in an environmental context. In this same vein of thought, it is easy to consider the small changes that could be made.  Anything more would involve work. It would involve tackling hard problems, hard issues, it would require me to stop pointing fingers and to start doing something about the situation I find myself in.

This brings me back my original point (yes, there was one!) about the potential for technology and the environment.  I want technology to be a positive force in my life - in the life of the world and the environment.   While I will neither confirm nor deny the positive or negative impact of, say, Facebook, on my life I do hope that technology has the potential to help us surmount the environmental challenges before us.

This potential can only be realized if we imagine it, though.  Small advances - higher efficiency cars, sidewalks that generate power for the streetlights at night by people walking on the sidewalk during the day - aren't enough.  We - and I'm very hesitant now in my use of "we", lest I fall back into the trap of individualizing the blame - need to imagine bigger.  We need to throw some crazy ideas into the mix.

At the end of our class on Monday, one of my classmates mentioned a contest she had heard about where a company is challenging universities and colleges to come up with designs for toilets that do not use water.  The winner of this contest will have their design produced, and these super-efficient toilets will be on the market.  This is the kind of innovation we need: groups of people posing problems, and other groups solving them - or at least attempting to.  Much is gained in the attempt of a concrete solution. So think crazy! I've heard of sidewalks that generate the energy to power streetlights at night from the people who have walked on the sidewalk during the day.  What if roads generated energy for cars from the cars that drive on them?  Everything has to be considered possible. We should also look to the natural world for ideas; plants photosynthesize, they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.  What if we could find a way to engineer photosynthesis on a grand scale?  Can you imagine?

Granted, there are many problems that technology might not be able to solve - for example, the overfishing of most of the world's fisheries.  Technology will not re-populate the schools of fish that industrial fishing has devastated.  In that regard, technology has had a negative impact as it also has in the lumber industry - in the destruction of the world's forests. There are also a plethora of variables and factors that hinder technological advances which I do not have the time to get into at this juncture.

My overriding, perhaps 'messy', perhaps 'mysterious' and definitely 'idealistic' hope is that there are problems technology can tackle if we have the creative drive to try.  If we can dare to imagine.

Do it for the Children!

One statement that is reoccurring in environmental legislation and literature seems to always be along to lines of, "a better world for future generations" or "ensuring the future for our children and their children".  It is an alarming idea that someday the Earth may not a suitable place for future humans to live, and one that that has clearly not penetrated the hearts and minds of society.  Americans have grown numb to the notion that we are compromising not only the lives of future Americans, but future generations around the world.

I'm just as guilty as the next citizen in assuming my recycling and energy saving household rituals will somehow slow global warming, and I never find myself thinking that these practices will prove beneficial to future generations.  This is because I, like many Americans, seem to be occupied with remediating the immediate problem.  I don't want my life to be negatively impacted by climate change, so I make small adjustments to my habits and hope somehow that will do the trick.  I realized this after reading an article by Oren Lyons of the Onondoga Nation discussing the American Indian philosophy of making every decision "On behalf of the seventh generation to come".  This way of living seems much more sustainable than our current American lifestyle and has been lost at some point in our history.  Maybe we still think that we hold this philosophy true from the way we constantly throw around language about well-being of future generations, but the fact is we aren't putting it into practice, hence our current climate predicament today.

Michael Maniates is right in criticizing our leaders for selling us short.  They have little faith that the people can understand the scope of the climate crisis we face, so they dull the magnitude of the problem.  The result is citizens putting in what they think is an honest effort to "live green", when in reality we aren't doing nearly enough.

So instead of being "treated like children by environmental elites and political leaders", maybe we need to be reminded that we are, in fact, putting our children in jeopardy by living the way we are.  This is a harsh wake up call that nobody wants to hear, but as Maniates says, "it has been the knotty, vexing challenges, and leaders who speak frankly about them, that have fired our individual and communal imagination, creativity and commitment."  Maybe this realization will shift our values and encourage people to make more conscious decisions while keeping future generations in mind.