Group items tagged

This entry in the "Green" blog section of the New York Times talks about the progression of lighting products and their efficiency. For the most part it focuses on the movement from fluorescent lights to LED lights which are slightly more efficient. This movement relates to the idea of modernization and technological development as being a positive feature in addressing environmental issues.

A challenge to the idea that vertical farming may be more energy efficient than traditional approaches. Like the debate around local food though, it bothers me that we focus on energy and/or CO2 emissions when we measure environmental impact. In a much bigger picture, I'm not even so sure that another agricultural revolution, like this, is really what's best for the planet in the long run.

Good points all. While the excitement about vertical farms is good for attracting investors, the economic realities of all the systems involved are definitely questionable. That said, the Economist left out some things that are worth mentioning, both for and against the idea. First of all, the use of hydroponics is thrown out pretty willingly and easily, but its hardly simple. For one, you're moving away from the use of soil (and fertilizer, manure, other related mediums) as the primary medium for agricultural production. We are simulatenously just realizing that we don't really know much about soil as a medium. And even with water we have the same problems. The "known unknowns" are pretty great either way, and scale plays in. Most hydroponics (though there are major exceptions) are run by research organizations or universities, which means there is a lot more free and regular support, particularly from the sciences, than most commercial operations will be able to afford. Its much easier, when things go wrong, to have a cadre of free sciences hovering around. As for "you can grow anything in hydroponics", speaking from work I've done with those systems, you can - but good luck with a lot of it. Plus water filtration becomes an issue, though there are biological ways of handling that (even then you're creating a very limited ecosystem - they can get thrown off ridiculously easily). On the other hand, while light inputs are definitely a notable consideration, light science and "light engineering" is making leaps and bounds. So while I'd say issues with light are writing it off just yet, I wouldn't count on that as the everlasting limiting factor. Along with the various spinning, rotating, window side containers there are also various types of windows, "light tunnels", and even the good ol' basic efficient lighting systems and such to consider. And design, rather than technology, can also contribute - several vertical farm designs "stagger" floors to reduce

shading from the building itself. Also, for anyone following alternative agriculture from the technology/commerce/urban ag side, there are two details the Economist got wrong. Sweetwater Organics, featured on NBC a few weeks ago, is already running a commerical hydroponics farm out of an old railroad warehouse. The nutrients for their water chemistry come from fish (poop), who are also raised in tandem with the plants, also for food. Also, at least one vertical farm plan has moved off the drawing board (sort of) into fundraising stages, and the land for it is cleared (both physically and legally) for building. This is at Will Allen's Growing Power, in Milwaukee, WI. Will, the "father of modern urban agriculture" and a frequent visitor to the White House with Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" program, is hoping to build the five story building within a few years. It will be located (and provide food to) in a food desert, in one of Milwaukee's largest low-income housing projects. So the world will soon have a test case for this idea. Other cities may follow, but as far as I know the closest one (in terms of multiple floors of greenhouses) is planned for Toronto, and is at least two decades out - which probably means its anyone's guess whether it'll happen.

Light pollution? As in real pollution? Interestingly, this article was sent in a weekly email from the Environmental Protection Agency, which means they actually take this as a legitimate environmental concern.

Promising research on the science side of environmentalism. Solar panels that are thinner than the wavelength of light allow for longer "captivity" of the proton, and thus "absorb more than 10 times the energy predicted by conventional theory." This relates to our ENVS 160 unit regarding the limits to growth. More technology = changing limits, once again. The article ends with a slightly unsettling note however: Fan, one of the researchers is quoted, "Where this will have a larger impact is in some of the emerging technologies; for example, in organic cells." Oh technology, are you a friend or foe?

In this Mother Jones piece, we learn about how consumers angry about Frito Lay's noisy new SunChip bag -- which, as the company touts on their website, is 100% compostable, and which you can actually watch it happen over the course of 14 weeks in your backyard compost pile -- have somehow applied enough of their angst against the company, and have gotten them to drop the noisy bag. Most likely because they couldn't hear the television over it. The author also has some interesting discussion of aesthetic concerns in our consumer choices from fluorescent lights to plant fiber bags, and how sometimes, at the root, it appears we value softer light and quieter bags more than we do environmental impact.

Here's one of those studies that apparently shatters our intuition: energy efficiency won't help reduce the use of energy??  Read on for the reason why, all about the "rebound effect" and indirect vs. direct energy consumption.  Again, looks like sustainability requires that we address the bigger picture.

This brings up some concerns I have about the environmental movement in general. I often feel like our emphasis is in the wrong place. Even before it was acceptable to question environmental activism (without being labeled a no-good capitalist hippie-hater) I have felt uncomfortable with some of the campaigns and goals out there. Alternative Energy is a key one for me. I dont think we have an energy source crisis, I think we have an energy use crisis. I dont just mean "energy use" in terms of petroleum (CO2 emitting) energy either. Even if we find alternate energy sources (like the solar panels article I posted on the LCENVS220 group), or more efficient machines/lights, we still will expect the same (or more) amount of work to be done from external energy sources. I think we should focus on realizing what energy already exists in our natural systems and learn to synchronize with that to accomplish our goals, instead. This, I think, will address broader (and dare I add more important?) problems than CO2 emissions.

No light read, at 39 pages, but a good source for anyone doing research on the value of ecosystems from an economic perspective. My scant review of it indicates that it brings together a lot of different studies on the benefits people get from natural systems, and how much it would cost us to replace those with artificial systems. From the preface: "Applying economic thinking to the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services can help clarify two critical points: why prosperity and poverty reduction depend on maintaining the flow of benefits from ecosystems; and why successful environmental protection needs to be grounded in sound economics, including explicit recognition, efficient allocation, and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources." This report has been cited a lot lately in efforts to create some sort of system that would remove externalities from the pricing of all sorts of goods, and account for the costs of natural capital (i.e. the environment) in producing more or less everything. That would be a major environmental achievement, and social achievement in general.

A better read: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1116/the-economics-of-ecosystems Summarizes the report well, and also puts out the big question: can we put a price on everything? I personally am frustrated by how often debates turn into a cost-benefit analysis about the "practicality" of an idea - and I say that as a fan of the field of economics. Should we be resorting to that to defend environmental things that we value, or are there larger ideas and principles at play? Do we weaken the strength of a principles-based argument with a practicality/economically based one?

We'll be discussing several issues connected to this in ENVS 160 come spring, not only related to the technical and political drawbacks of pricing ecosystem services, but also the naive notions of "natural" vs. "artificial" that it often presupposes. The whole exercise reveals about the very best mainstream environmental thought can deliver…which is not good enough, in many recent scholars' opinions.

In 160, Elijah asked about some of the plus sides to climate change. Now, this isn't talking about the plusses, but it is a fundamentally different approach to the stories we tell about climate changed, and the future we see ahead in a changing climate. Particularly interesting given this, from the same site: http://www.good.is/post/why-climate-change-ads-should-cheer-up-a-little/