Reposting as PDF. Sustainable Development Project by Simon McCormack
In today’s modern world we are faced with many issues and problems but none more important that food. Food for people of developed countries is a real commodity and luxury. Over the last decade or two we have come to accept the fact that if we see some new exciting food on television or over the internet, that sure enough we will soon be able to purchase this in our local supermarket. We automatically think, WOW that’s fantastic I can go and make my brand new favourite dish. So we go and try and sometimes succeed. More often than not however this recipe will not be used again for a very long period of time. And so we forget about this ingredient, all the while however, the shops continue to purchase and sell this ingredient for a reasonable price. This however leads me to the question, how often do we think about the food we buy?
After people buy food from the shop, their thoughts regarding the food dramatically decrease. Can you honestly say you go home and ponder over the origin of your wonderful new purchases? Take for example the common banana. Bananas are produced in the tropics. Most come from central and South America while others come from important producing areas such as Africa and southern Asia. Bananas are cut while they are still green, 13 to 15 months after the bit is planted. The least ripe bananas are selected for long-distance shipments. The cut bananas are generally carried by truck to loading platforms, then by rail to air-conditioned ships. From the receiving ports bananas are sent to wholesalers who ripen them in special rooms before delivering them to grocery stores. All this, just for a banana. How much more processing goes into the thousands of other products that hit the shelves of our local shops.
The thing I find most interesting is the ease at which we can get food. If we look at Ireland, just 40 years ago, most people would have thought it insane to have to go to shops to buy vegetables or meat or even fruit when they could and did grow their own, on their own land for a very nominal cost. The most energy was used in caring for the land and all it was sustaining.
Nowadays very few people can say that they grow their own. This is very much the blame of urbanisation. People just don’t own the same amount of land they used to. Many have no choice but to move to a more central location in order to be closer to work or local facilities. They have lost interest in growing their own food because it is just so much easier to go and buy some. Fast food take away’s are becoming an increasingly big problem. They act as an easy option for people to go to when they are too lazy to cook for themselves. The trouble is that this laziness is creeping into people’s daily lives which lead them to eat more and more fast food. This fast food is cheap and easy but however is extremely unhealthy and fattening.
There is also the issue of where exactly these places, such as McDonald’s and burger king actually get their from. This brings me back to my earlier point of, Growing your own. If people were to grow their own they would have a much greater respect for the food they were putting into their bodies. They would have a much healthier diet and would enjoy each meal more as they would be reaping the benefits of their labours from the garden.
What can be said about the transport of foods around our globe?
It’s rather appalling to say the least. There are many things wrong with it. Long haul air flights contribute to air and noise pollution but they also contribute greatly to respiratory diseases which are very serious health problems indeed. Air freight uses 37 times more fuel per tonne-kilometre than shipping and emits pollutants at high altitudes, where more damage is done to the ozone layer.
As I also recently learned Cash Cropping is an extremely serious matter, one that I never even thought about before because I had been so blinkered when it came to purchasing and eating food, (i.e. go to the shop, oooo this looks nice, so does this and so on, buy it, bring it home and eat it. I am either distracted by T.V. or rushing off somewhere so nowhere in there do I ever once stop and think. It’s criminal really.) Developing countries have no choice in giving up their limited land and resources for the use of producing and selling “Cash Crops” in foreign lands. If I take for example Brazil, which is one of the largest exporters of food and agricultural products in the world, yet two out of every three Brazilians are malnourished. It astounds me to think that in this day and age injustices such as these are rampant within global society.
Some Solutions perhaps for reducing global food miles some of which I’ve already outlined above. But others would be to get to know your local farmer’s and butchers, see what they have to offer you, often times they will have tastier better meat for a better price which has been locally produced. Where possible, Go to your neighbours and see if they would be interested in a vegetable swap agreement, under which you grow certain veg and your neighbours grow other types and you trade. Highly effective, better tasting, cheaper, and best of all hardly any food miles at all, depending on where your nearest neighbour is. In general will help to create more food security. Also once again, where possible, Grow your own vegetables.
Taking for example, my own home. It’s pretty much your average country home that receives about the same sunlight and rain water as the rest of the country. Last year we set up a small garden with 6 long raised beds. It took about 2/3 weeks to get it ready with 3 people working on it at their ease, evenings and Saturdays. We had also set up a compost heap a couple of months previous which most of went into these new beds. It’s just coming into proper growing season now, and with a bit of TLC these beds produce a wide variety of lovely Veggies right through the Summer, and Winter, with hardier veg like cabbage.
Picture below: Not much to look at at the moment, but b
eds being readied to grow new veg.
Above picture: ↑
Chives, immediate bottom right ↑
Leeks, middle right ↑
Small Cabbage, under green netting ↑
All of which survived winter.
Energy in itself is an incomprehensibly big concept. It encompasses so much in this world that its difficult to even talk about. It is however, not an entirely new concept. From early Neanderthals using fire, to people in the industrial Revolution implementing the use of Coal on a large-scale, Energy has been at the forefront of our progression through time. Now more than ever though, energy is the hottest most talked about subject out there. Our hopes and future dreams quite literally lie with the development and implementation of new age technologies.
The Spirit Of Ireland is one company that we looked at who are trying to be on the Crest of the wave in terms of implementing new age technologies. Thankfully they gave a short presentation a short while after we had talked about them in class. It was nice to see the people who were actually involved, and how they dealt with the pressure of an open floor discussion, which I might add, had a very probing Q&A time. For me it certainly un-earthed some discrepancies within their operation. They were quite uncomfortable towards the end. It makes me ponder the question, If a new company is to start within this sector, should they be under-taking a project of this magnitude? Should they not have extremely professional people within their ranks to ensure that they do not come across as Cowboys when the public asks questions. I think so anyway. that’s enough about them.
Might be a bit what they were like?? ha, sorry, funny image!
When people think about oil running out they never really think about it. Nobody stops to look at the finer details of it all. When you do this its really quite frightening what you find out. The use of oil goes much further into our lives than just a fuel. We benefit from petro-chemicals in such a way that it would be difficult to comprehend what exactly life would be like without them. If they were gone we would be in deep trouble, not only from the point of energy security, or food security, but also medicine security, or consumer goods security, or the security of any and every facet of what we consider to be our everyday life.
If you take for example this simple image below. All of the coloured objects in it have been manufactured with the help of petro-chemicals. Eg. Curtains(Synthetic man-made fibers), Canned Food(food additives), Camera(Ethylene), Washing up Liquid(Made from petro-chemicals). Its staggering really just how much we use oil for.
The million dollar question really is, What will happen to life as we know it, once oil is gone?
If I step back for a moment a look back at a lecture slide I found particularly comical, the Petroleum interval.
It’s exciting to think about future generations looking back at our time on this earth now. What energy sources will they be using to power their world and will they have learned from our mistakes. 
But for the moment I guess we are going to have to put up with implementing world-wide use of solar/wind/wave and geothermal energy sources.
Ireland for example at the moment has only about 10% energy self-sufficiency, if we were to take advantage of the wind energy that passes us every single day, this figure would certainly be at least 3 times what it is now. It would require some strong and innovative engineering and also a very strong government to back it all up, Ireland could certainly move forward in terms of energy production.
Other new types of energy production which I found very interesting was one which Bill Gates is funding. It involves using a core of depleted uranium. Very cool idea, that will have serious long-term potential if it works.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid42529855001?bctid=8596453001
And also just as people were getting caught up in the use of Lithium within batteries they go and use ordinary everyday metals to form a great new battery. A little dangerous to say the least but still has massive amounts of potential. The idea basically employs the use of basic physics and chemistry along with 700 degree molten metal. They find that the metal is able to hold a significant amount of charge. Scientists involved say that a battery the size of a shipping container could deliver a Megawatt of electricity. That’s enough to power 10000 100 Watt light bulbs for several hours. If they could adapt this technology for use with electricity generation from wind energy, it would definitely have significant world-wide applications.
A catalyst by definition is-A substance which accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being used up in the reaction.
If I apply this basic definition to this weeks very thought-provoking lectures it clear that yes Humans are to blame for the climate change we are experiencing right now. However, humans are not solely to blame.
As we found out from the lectures this week, climate change has not just been happening for the last number of years, it is in fact some-what of a cycle that our planet goes through. Evidence has been recovered from a number of places such as polar ice drilling’s, soil and from samples of trees, all of which are thousands even millions of years old. This solid evidence showed us trends and allowed us to plot basic graphs :
This as we can see is only from the last 400000 years and already a consistent graph is visible, but what is worrying about this graph is this particular portion:
We are already way above the relative norm of our planets climate change cycle. How could this be you say? hmmm, Perhaps a small thing called the industrial revolution. With this came the technology of harnessing fossil fuels and exploiting millions and millions of years of Carbon that had been locked away so nicely not causing any harm.
By burning such fuel it releases this carbon into the atmosphere and before you know it we are over run with the stuff.
Industrial Revolution was a period between the 18th and 19th Century, funny thing is that it coincides with the relatively latest rise in temperature and increase in Green house Gas emissions..
Few people can seriously slate facts at this stage. Its plain and easy for everyone to see. Greenhouse gases that we are releasing are causing the planet to heat up faster than usual! This is what some people have called “Climate Forcing”.
What’s that you say? What do we do about it?
Well let me put your mind at rest and give you a simple answer. Cut down and ultimately STOP releasing harmful toxins into OUR Environment.
People may snigger and laugh but the fact of the matter is with more heat comes more responsibility. More heat causes more water evaporation, which leads to more water vapour in our atmosphere which in turns leads to more heat being trapped. This causes things such as the Polar Ice caps melting. Images from NASA satellites show that the area of permanent ice cover is contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. If this trend continues, summers in the Arctic could become ice-free by the end of the century.
This little fact has extreme consequences. One of which is rising sea levels. Places like Shanghai, The Maldives and Lagos all lie just 6 feet above current water levels, flooding of these areas would spell DISASTER for millions of people.
It is now time to implement some new laws and regulations not just on a national scale but on a GLOBAL SCALE, in an attempt to drastically reduce air pollution and create a much better living environment for generations to come.
I felt that this was an appropriate title for week 2 as we were given the chance to learn about human civilisation and how we have impacted upon the earth, and how we are cotinuing to impact it.
Beginning the week I was unsure as to how exactly all aspects of life made a connection with nature. It seem’s as though many people go through life, living there relatively ordinary lives doing relatively normal human things. However, what we may consider a normal way of life today was not so in the way in which early human populations lived their lives. Our thoughts on the world around us have changed dramatically.
It was evident from the way in which Peadar Kirby was conveying his numerous facts that he has an incredible passion for the greater good of our planet. I found his particular style of lecturing very thought provoking. I thought to myself while sitting there, hanging on his every word, if only more people had the oppertunity to get such an enthusiastic person to speak to them about our world, our society, our way of life.
What we may see as lesser more primitave early human beings, I think, had a much greater grasp on the way we should think about nature. The name “mother nature” seems to be loosing its meaning. It seems to me that many large corporations and indeed the general public are forgeting that our humble little planet is not an object which can be continuously exploited to meet the ever more demanding needs of our generation, but is a place that can provide us with a great deal of sustainable resources if it is treated in the right way.
Destruction or Restoration:
Our lecture with Mags Liddy highlighted a few important issues for me. One of which was the notion of, Origin and Impact. I found this to be something that I had never really payed much attention to before, but for me kind of sums up the way in which we think. Companies producing massive amounts of toxic gases, do so in order to provide a service for their customers, but they also do so ultimately to make large amounts of money. However, how often do they sit down and examine just how big an impact they are creating in the environment. One example of which is acid rain.
A Rural society in harmony with nature:
This video may seem a little extreme but it gives a good representation as to how life can thrive without causing damage. How humans could learn once again to live with the land. I find it funny how many people harp on about how we must set an example for future generations when it is many people in our generation who need to be shown this good example first.
Sustainable development for me is where we will sink or swim. I have come to form this opinion through the help of our last lecture. Showing us the 5 major areas of society, allowed me to clearly see where the battle over climate change could and can be won. Since the first signs of environmental awareness in the 1970′s, peoples views and opinions have been changing, but I really believe that now is the time to implement serious changes to the way we live.
This picture illustrates the challenges we face when we try to change towards sustainable development. Each of these three topics must be changed, new laws, legislations, ways of thinking, but we cannot change one without changing the others. It is obviously a tough and arguous process, but we can all clearly see that it so badly needs to be done. The hope is that we can learn from our mistakes in the past and not have future generations looking back wondering where exactly it was, that it went so horribly wrong for us.
This was our very first week of sustainable development and for me was a very useful one. It began fairly conventionally but ended quite unconventionally. The idea of doing a large group activity was very good as it gave us all a chance to get thinking about not just the class but what the class actually meant.
Our sub group on thursday had the title of “DEVELOPING COUNTRIES”. This I felt was a nice topic to get as it can so easily be talked about. One of my firm beliefs is that developing countries can possibly leap-frog developed countries in the sense that they can create a completely fossil fuel free society. Because of the lack of infrastructure, they have immense potential to create a completely eco-friendly one, which they will be able to sustain themselves.
I read an article recently in a book written by Al Gore, called “Our choice”, in which he describes a boy “who harnessed the wind”. He talks about a young man from a remote village in Malawi who used scrap parts from around the village to create a working windmill. From here he went on to educate himself and create more windmills. He now also uses solar panels and a car battery to store energy. Not only does he collect enough electricity to power his households needs, but his whole village too. He has also been able to build wells with working water pumps and help irrigate the land. This man has now gone on to appear at conference’s around the world. I could not help but feel great joy as i read it and only wished there were more like him. I also liked the fact that this young man was so much more than a think-er, but was a do-er.
In our groups it was very easy to see just how many connections developing countries had with the various other topics. Two I felt were most important and they were food and Deforestation.
- cattle ranching+deforestation on the amazon
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Thousands of acre’s of rain forest get destroyed, completely disregarding the well-being of natives and habitat’s so that large companies can come in and put cattle on it to graze. Not only does this help release more CO2 into the atmosphere but also methane.It can be 21 times more harmful. And even more than that, the food that gets produced in this example of deforestation, people in the surrounding areas never see because they are often too poor to buy it.
As you will hopefully have seen from this blog, the class has really begun to get me thinking, instead of the normal mumbo jumbo that college dishes out in lectures, information I receive in SD(sustainable development) is exactly why I chose to do this course in the first place. To make a difference. I hope that each week from here on in only gets better and better.
Just checking to make sure everything is up and running ok!!
