The issues of climate change, availability of natural resources, and the overall sustainability of our planet, have been a increasingly popular topic. Being able to sustain an environment for our growing population is complicated and not an easy thing to answer. While some solutions have been developed like solar energy and wind energy to tackle our need for renewable energy, neither are solutions that work globally; solar energy is expensive and not very efficient while wind energy is efficient but is only feasible in regions with large expanses of land with enough natural air currents. There’s also algae that can be made into biofuel, but its far from being implemented into society. So what can be done now and what else is being done already? In hope of some answers, I attended Ruth Defries’ talk at Columbia on October 7th, 2014, which promised a discussion about science solutions to sustainability.
Title: Science-Based Solutions for Sustainability: The Big Ratchet
Date: October 7th, 2014
Speaker: Ruth Defries, Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Ruth Defries opened her talk with an overview of the human species and how we have transformed in the midst of certain obstacles and drastically affected the Earth. Through natural selection, the bipedal human survived and began a food system. We created languages and technology, and soon our population increased 5 fold. To cope with the increase in population, we soon developed some conservation techniques like using feces for fertilization and to synthesize nitrogen from the air following initial industrialization. Now, we’re facing issues like monoculture, which began in effort to feed more people, but is susceptible to disease. In response, we modify plants to fight disease and breed shorter so they grow stronger.
Defries, the writer of “The Big Rachet” has a very human-centric approach to sustainability. Defries focuses on the problems we as humans create — rachets, hachets, and pivots as she calls them — and the solutions we make, which then spiral into more problems until we’re just doing downwards.
Ending at that point, Defries shifts to a Q&A session feeling it will be a better use of time for both new listeners and those who attended her other talk a few days prior. Hands shoot up surrounding sustainable ideas and her thoughts on the prospects of certain solutions, but aggravatingly, her answer always seemed to be the same without much more discussion: there is a defining problem cycle with any solution and there isn’t an upside.
In effort to garner some sort of “science-based” answer, longer elaborated questions with proposed solutions were made, but to no avail. I think I received more ideas about possible solutions from audience questions than from Defries herself. I cannot speak towards her book as I have not read it, but her lecture failed to show me “How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis,” her book’s subtitle.
I left her talk without “science-based” answers to a sustainable future and frankly, her discussion left me frustrated. While I had no intention to leave the talk with all the golden answer to our problems, I had hoped she would at least pose some solutions or give me a little insight on research and projects I had not yet heard about, alas something more to ponder. Instead, I deeply questioned the credibility of her book and hoped she didn’t dissuade anyone from believing or working towards a more sustainable future. Just because there may a negative cycle, there is no reason we should not try to lessen the extent that the cycle’s effects are happening.
Title: Green City Planet
Date: December 8th, 2014
Speaker: George Smith, Program Administrator of the Sustainability in the Urban Environment Graduate Program
Being unhappy with the “we’re doomed” mentality, I also attended a second lecture regarding the sustainability of urban areas on December 8th at CCNY. While this talk did not go in depth about the mechanisms within a urban system, the speaker George Smith began his talk with a more positive look at what could be in store for us in the future. He showed us this infographic for the Sustainability in the Urban Environment graduate program (shown below) and asked us, what’s the issue?
Answer: The image evokes an idea that in order to be sustainable, we must revert back to nature. Rather, Smith proposes, that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel of human development and that we can become sustainable through better practices, technology, and choices. He also says that while it may not be feasible to create sustainability plans for the next 4.6 billion years (the expected lifespan of the planet), it is possible to look at the next 100 years and devise plans based on what we know now.
As addressed in his Q&A, he believes in order to tackle these issues it must come from growth in technology, but also social understandings of how to implement plans. While Smith is wary to use the buzzword “sustainability,” he left us with a more proactive and complex understanding to what a sustainable future could mean.
