The remarkable thing about the environmental crisis we are facing is that the answers are clear and available. Some of them are so common sense and obviously beneficial that I am surprised they have not been entirely adopted. Green engineering is a the path mankind needs to go along but first it must overcome the inertia of a shirt-sighted, profit minded world.
Green engineering is based on three tenets that radically warp how we deal with development and waste but are totally logical intrinsically. Solar income is an underutilized resource. There is essentially an endless spherical battery floating in the sky that we are not taking advantage of. The argument that it is too expensive to harness this energy is misguided. The movement to solar will have to happen at some point, whether it is before we run out of oil or not. Any time spent not utilizing the sun as a resource adds to a pile of money and time that has been wasted. The sun supplies energy that can be used to convert useless matter into useful matter and sidesteps the need for unclean fuel sources.
This segues into the second tenant. Waste is food. Green engineering seeks to close the loop, transforming the linear relationship of resource to waste into a circle of recycling and valorization. During the black rock forest trip, I came across a toilet that did not flush. Instead, it allowed any material going into it to fall down a chute into a composting pit. All this waste went to provide nutrients for crops in the area. This is not the most elegant example of waste as food but it is the most direct. Applied to a more urban area, plastic bottles can be melted down and reused. Perhaps buildings can be outfitted so that wastewater from dishes and restrooms is routed to a rooftop garden.
The third tenet, which is the least tangible but the most important philosophically, is appreciation of diversity. People who claim not to care about biodiversity can shrug many of the problems that the environment faces. These people need to be made aware of the benefits of wetlands, the good that can come of mosquitos, and the knowledge that the intricate equilibrium nature has cannot be fully understood but must be respected. There must also be respect for local diversity. Each environment faces its own problems and has its own challenges. Urban areas specifically have unique challenges that environmental initiatives need to take into account in order to catch on. Green engineering is the path we need to take. Hopefully society realizes the benefits in time.
