chrisnoonan93

In Week 11, we looked at sustainability metrics, or how we can quantify how we as communities are growing into more sustainable settlements. We looked at the two different forms of sustainable development: weak sustainable development, and strong sustainable development.

If we want to improve in sustainable development, we need to know what kind of policies are working. To do this, we need to be able to measure sustainable development. We measure it with two different types of metrics: weak sustainability, and strong sustainability.

Weak sustainability is where we just look for an overall improvement in sustainability. We accept tradeoffs. If we can improve one sector, while another deteriorates, as long as there is an aggregate improvement, we see it as a positive. There is seen to be an aggregate stock of man-made capital and natural capital.

Scientists will measure different aspects. From environmental issues (like air pollution), social issues (like population density), and economic issues (like GNP). This data is compiled, and passed on to politicians to make policies. The problem that can arise, is that when looking at the average,  details can be lost.

The role of indicators is : to simplify, quantify, and communicate.

Strong sustainability, only looks at natural issues. It has one very simple unit, the Global Hectare (gHa). It measures how much land we need to continue the way we are living. It quantifies, how much, for example, forest land we would need to absorb all of the carbon dioxide that we are producing, how much farm land we would need to feed everybody, how much land do we need to live sustainably.

If we are using more land than we actually have, then we are in an overhang period. I look at it like this. If i have $1000 in the bank, and i spend $10 a week and earn $9 a week, i can go on living like this for a while, but not forever. This is how we are living right now, but replace dollars with the earth’s biosphere. The biospehere is the Earth’s ability to re-generate itself, the organice cycles, that make up for our polluting, and our land use.

As it stands, if everybody lived as europeans live, then we would need 2.5 earths to survive. Ireland is 10th in the world, in gHa/capita.

Basically, we need to imcrease the regenerative capacity of the earth, or much more feasibly, cut our environmental degradation.

We definitely have to make some drastic changes. We are currently using land, beyond, the globe’s biosphere, and with developing nations like India, Brasil, and China, looking to develop more and more, things could get even worse.

In Week 9, we took a look at corporate social responsibility (CSR), what it means and who it affects. It is how a company regulates itself, to comply with society, and to be aware of how it fits into sustainable development.

When looking at CSR, and any issues a company might have, they will look at stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the actions of the company. This would include people like employes, consumers, residents who live nearby a factory, etc. Companies need to know how to prioritise their stakeholders.

A diagram like the one above, was used in the lecture to demonstrate how a company will prioritise different stakeholders. Of concern to us a society, is probably the people who have little power, as a company may have little regard for the well-being of these stakeholders, if they fear no repercussions for taking advantage of them. We have to empower these people. We live in a free market system, so companies are going to look to make money, and only really pay attention to sustainable development, when it helps them make money ( there are exceptions, companies like, as was pointed out in the lecture: Interface Carpets). So I think that we need government intervention to make it economically favorable for companies to aid sustainable development.

Something that I learned about in research for this blog was externalities. An externality is a cost bestowed involuntarily to someone, not through the price of the product, such as pollution. A factory may pollute the air, and locals may have to pay more in healthcare, due to diminished air quality, thanks to the company. The problem with trying to tax the company, is that externalities can be very difficult to quantify.

During the first lecture we were confronted with an intriguing quote, from an American playwright named  August Wilson

You are responsible for the world in which you live. The responsibility does not belong to the government, the church, your social clubs, your schools — it is yours. And mine. You cannot outsource responsibility….

The lecturer asked us whether we agreed with the statement or not.

Personally, i dont wholeheartedly agree or disagree with the statement. I think in many cases it is true. You and I, living comfortable lives in first world countries, with no immediate needs not being met, should be wholly responsible for our actions. But there are many people who have needs which they prioritise over the sustainable development of the world, people who are hungry, people who are struggling. I dont think that its fair to say that these people should have to put the sustainable development of the world over their base needs.

Here is my organisational change challenge project:

Organisational Change Challenge

This week we took a look at our consumption habits as a society, and production, and the life of a product.

First, lets take a look at how consumption is spread over different groups of people.

The richest 20% of the world, account for a staggering 76% of the world’s consumption

While the poorest 20% account for just 1.5% of the world’s consumption

In the developed world, we only retain 10% of the products that we consume, beyond the year that we purchase them.  One in ten products still functions even when discarded.

These stats are pretty jarring, so why, in the developed world, do we consume so much, and seem to waste so much, and how is it available to us?

Well the simple answer is globalisation, but let’s go into more detail. industrialisation, cheap energy (usually fossil fuels) has made for cheaper production, as well as cheaper transport. Oil has led to new materials, such as plastics, which are easier and cheaper to make than other materials. People have more disposable income, and more leisure time, and finally, (and most interestingly, to me at least) is that we are more of a consumer society.

Consumer Society

What we own, often is an indicator of social standing. People feel like they are higher up in society based off of their nice car, or their big house. But interestingly, from the UN Haines report, they found that people who really priorities wealth, are less happy.  Also, the UN Happy Planet Index, which quantified Happy Life Years, and Ecological Footprint into one metric, had Costa Rica on top, surrounded by other low-income countries. I work in a supermarket, and i have had some strange experiences. One day a woman wished to buy some make-up. it cost about E5 if I remember correctly. She thought that it was E5 on sale, but when I told her that, E5 was the regular price, she decided not to buy it. So E5 was a good deal to her, because initially, in her mind, the store had it priced higher, but because the store actually valued it at E5, she decided not to buy it. What the store valued the product at,changed what she valued the product at. I found this very interesting.

So it begs the question: why do we consume so much, if it doesn’t seem to make us any happier?

Personally, i think, that once people have their basic needs met, which most of us thankfully have, we move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

We no longer have to worry about hunger, shelter, safe drinking water, we move onto other needs. We want social standing, and self-esteem, and this is where advertising steps in. Largely using fallacies, it convinces us that buying this new product, will fulfil our needs, they (successfully) convince us that if we buy a newer car, we will have a higher social standing, and gain greater self-esteem, but usually any real gain, is lost over time, the any rush from buying something new eventually wears off.

Also, from an evolutionary standpoint, we have evolved from our descendants, because they consumed, but back then consuming ment eating, and staying alive.

Now we still have that hunger to consume, even though we don’t really need to. Technology has evolved faster than we have as humans.

This week we looked at how European policy is made, and how it’s handed down to national governments, and how national governments (specifically Ireland’s) then apply these policies and laws.

European Policy, and its implications

There are a lot of difficulties in trying to get policies that work across the board for such a diverse group of nations, who all have their own different cultures, and priorities. Later in my post i will look at how Ireland has had trouble co-operating with laws set out under the Habitats Directive from 1999, regarding turf cutting

The general policies of the EU regarding the environment, and sustainable development, are pretty standard and understandable, i found. The aims are generally to preserve, protect, and improve the quality of the environment, protect the publics health, and to promote measure to prevent global environmental problems, such as climate change, and careful and sensible use of natural resources. There is an emphasis on preventive measures, to stop problems at their source, and to punish the polluter.

Then when developing policy, they first look at Scientific Data, the potential positives and negatives of action/inaction, and how to develop the region as a whole, in a balanced way.

These policies are then handed down to national governments, to implement into national law. Failure to implement policies can lead to various punishments.

Irish Peat Bogs Controversy

In 1999 the EU passed the Habitats Directive, and one of its implications was more stringent protection of peat bogs. Ireland managed to get a derogation, to delay the effects of the directive for ten years. But then in 2009, Ireland had still not implemented the directive. Many bogs which were supposed to be left alone, were still being cut, to get peat. Bogs are protected for a variety of reasons. They store carbon, and when they are cut, this carbon is released into the air. Bogs being cut also causes a loss of biodiversity, they are also a method for controlling flooding, and they also purify water, providing clean water for the general population.

Ireland’s failure to implement the policies handed down by Europe has led to a small embarrassment on Ireland’s part, in the international community, after having been given 10 years extra, and still no implementing the policy.

But after Phil Hogan, irish minister for the environment, and Irish Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan had a  meeting with Commissioner Janez Potocnik, things look to be improving, as the irish minister acknowledged the need to get back to the european guidelines as quickly as possible

This week in sustainable development, we looked at economics and the (rather large) part it plays in sustainable development

One of the very interesting things that we looked at was the Kuznets Curve. The Kuznets Curve is a graphical representation of his theory about the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation.

Th theory behind it, is that before economic growth, people are desperate for growth, and very understandably, prioritise it over the environment. This continues until we reach a turning point, where people get to a satisfactory level of growth, and start valuing their environment more, and environmental degradation decreases again.

Pollution haven hypothesis

Another interesting theory put forward was the pollution haven hypothesis. It basically says that companies will go to poorer countries, because they have laxer environmental regulations. So the company doesn’t have to spend as much resources on being environmentally friendly.

I think my big feeling after the week, was that we don’t really have the right to force other countries to look after the environment, while they have bigger issues at hand, poverty being the big one. I think, as developed nations, it is our responsibility to help developing nations to learn how to look after the environment, but it can’t come at the expense of helping them to get out of poverty. We need to share knowledge and technologies to help them get out of poverty, and look after the environment, but I guess what im trying to say is, that we can’t really tell them what to do, even, if as developed countries, we might have that power.

This week we had two lectures, with Con Trass. The first was on the efficiency of energy transfer from the sun, to plants, to animals, and to us. And the second lecture was on how much energy we use in growing, transporting and cooking our food.

While we only talked about Genetically Modified food for a small portion of the second lecture, it was a new topic to me, and one that I  would like to focus on in this blog.

Genetically Modified Foods, are food which, as the name suggests, have been genetically modified, so that they can resist weeds killer, so that farmers can use more weed killer, without harming the plant, while protecting it from the weeds.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding GM foods, and I totally understand why. Just the very nature of it, playing God, in a way, justifiably makes some people uncomfortable. But beyond that, there have been several incidents that would lead one to question the use of gm crops.

For one, the weeds that pesticides and herbicides are supposed to be protecting the plant from, have shown signs of adapting and evolving, creating ‘super weeds’, and if this is really the case, is could undermine GM crops greatly, as more GM crops, would only exacerbate the problem, but there is yet to be much concrete evidence of this happening, only isolated incidents, and speculation.

Also, because of the extra pesticide use, some of this can get into the plant itself, and into the food chain. This can lead to non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of cancer. In Punjab, India, where GM crops are/were very popular, 50% of wells were found to have harmful levels of nitrate, which can be very harmful to humans.

Also, some claim that companies like Monsanto, only make farmers more dependant on pesticides. Also, pesticides are produced from oil, so with the issue of peak oil, dependence on pesticides, could be a serious issue.

Another issue, is intellectual property. Legally, a corporation like Monsanto, has a copyright on a use of its seed, which could case some issues, in the future, as it already has, in a case in Canada. A farmer who hadn’t bought seeds from Monsanto, was found to have over 90% of his crop containing Monsanto genes. Monsanto sued him, and the farmer eventually won out.

Many claim that GM crops don’t actually increase yields, with Monsanto, one of the most successful GM corporations, initially disputing this claim, but then changing their stance, by saying that it reduces food losses greatly, but doesn’t effect the actual yield.

The main uses of GM crops are to make them insect tolerant and herbicide tolerant. They don’t inherently increase the yield. They protect the yield

Monsanto director of public affairs Brad Mitchell

Some countries, such as Zambia, Venezuela, and Hungary, have put an outright ban on GM crops.

I personally, feel that GM crops should be encouraged for the future. While they may not lead to direct increases right now, I feel that if there is any chance of increase productivity, (its pretty up-in-the-air right now whether it does or not) should be ceased upon. It’s very easy for people like us, living without the fear of hunger or starvation, to be able to prioritise things like the environment, over increased production, but many in the world can’t. As long a there are people dying of starvation,I don’t understand how westerners can put the environment above that. Because of this I feel that GM crops are something that needs to at the very least, be explored. I think that it is a continuation of the Green Revolution, and while some may dispute the increase in production that it has right now, it is an avenue that we must keep open. There may be major solutions to World hunger in GM crops, and it would be irresponsible not to look into them.

In Malawi, after an increase in pesticide use, because of government subsidies, they saw a huge uptick in food production, and went from a country largely dependant on food aid, to a net exporter of grain.

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution often credited with saving billions of lives from starvation, began the implementation of GM crops, and helped countries like Mexico, India and Pakistan greatly increase their food production. Crop yields in India went from 10 billion tons in the 60s, up to over 70 billion in the early twenty-first century

Millions of lives, some say a billion, were saved because of GM crops, and an increased use of pesticides, and we are supposed to curb this development because of harming the environment?

The following quote sums up my feelings on the GM foods debate

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.

Norman Borlaug, Nobel laureate

Personal Change Challenge

This past week we studied Energy, and with how it related to population, also how much energy we use on average per day and how we use it, peak oil, how much oil is left, and finally, we touched on the process of hydraulic fracking.

One of the first things we looked at this past week, which intrigued me quite a lot, was the relationshiop between Human Development Index (HDI), and Energy use. HDI is a general metric used to guage standard of living. It is quantified by economics, health, education. It goes on a sacle of 1 to 0. 0.9 or aboce is considered very good. Ireland has a HDI of .908, which is 7th highest in the world. Colin Fitzpatrick, one of the lecturers for the week, presented us with a graph of HDI against Energy usage per person, per day. There was an interstgin relationship between the two. At the lower side of the Energy usage (which was on the x-axis), any small increase in Energy usage correlated with a big jump in HDI, but as it got higher and higher, there was a diminishing return. So  the graph told us that if you increased a country’s energy isage from 0 to 50 kcal per person per day, you would see a huge jump in quality of life (from about 0.4 to 0.8 on the  HDI scale). However if you jump another 50 kcal per person per day, from 50 to 100, the increase in HDI is only from about 0.8 to 0.83. So this all tells us, that while having an ample supply of energy can bring a huge upgrade in quality of life, there is a greatly diminishing return the further along you go.

After this we looked at peak oil, and how difficult it is to figure out how much oil is really left. Many of the world’s greater oil producers are very secretive about how much oil that they believe they have left. We saw that there is less oil being discovered, and that the oil that is being discovered is often in very hard to reach places, deep underground (which makes sense, if you can find easy oil on land, why would you look in difficult places like underwater for it?). This is another piece of evidence that indicates the strong possibility that we have reached pea oil. That the world has gone beyond the half way point of oil prduction. This is verry important. As a society we are addicted to oil. We use it for transport, and to transport goods around the world. All the food you buy got delivered to the store by oil powered transport. The fact that we are running out of oil, and that we are still very dependent on it, could cause huge turmoil. Up to the last 20 or 30 years, oil production has matched the demand for oil, so the price has been relatively steady. It was greatly affected by many things, politcal unrest in the middle-east being the most influential one, but supply and demand was never really an issue, becuase supply always trumped demand. Well once we get past peak oil, this will no longer be the case. There will likely still be a great thirst for oil (likely much higher with developing countries like China and India just whetting their appetites at the moment) but the supply will be diminshing. Thus, there will be great fluctuations in price, as it responds to the demand. We would be at the mercy of these fickle, madly fluctuating prives. This means that stability of things like tranpsort could be threatened. We are built around oil, and this oil is going to run out, and even before this, it will be very unstable.

On the Thursday afternoon, we looked at the average person’s energy use per day. This was quite interesting, as it put everything into perspective, what we can really do to save energy, and what changes will have negligible effect. One of the things that stood out, but that also gave me hope, was that one of the biggest usages of energy, was someone who is a frequent flyer. I believe that this was defined as someone who takes one pan-american flight per year. The enery used per person on this flight was enormous. The other two big usages that stood out, were the energy used in a car journey, and the energy used in transporting goods around the world. While it would be difficult curb these uses, it would still be very possible. Things like heating and cooling would be very difficult to substitute for, but surely in the future as we face these challenges, it would be possible to get people to stop flying around the world on a regular basis, get them to use public transport, or have people by local food, instead of shipping foods all over the globe.

This past week we studied climate change. Firstly we looked at natural climate change, the change that occurs without man’s interference, then we looked at the climate change that many scientists believe is caused my humans, and finally we looked at how the political world is trying to slow down humankind’s negative impact on the climate.