Where did the week go?

Gosh - it's Friday already! I'm definitely ready for a weekend, and yet it seems like the week just started. Class-wise, we will conclude our second official week of class, but really we're just concluding our first week of having course material to learn (much of the first week was learning where stuff is on campus -- even though it's only five buildings, learning people's names, and so on). Our first exam is next Wednesday, and for the most part I feel like it's a review of high school biology, chemistry, and physics all rolled into one... it will cover things like the biogeochemical cycles and the four sustainability principles.

Biogeochemical sounds complicated... and for sure it can be if one goes into great depth. But it can also be relatively simple -- essentially it just refers to the basic flows within nature. Most of the energy on earth comes from the sun (there are two other sources of energy: one is the nuclear reactions that occur at the earth's core, the other is the energy we see in the tides which is caused by planetary motion).

If you take time to think about it, you'll realize that the other kinds of energy that we access today are linked back to one of these three energy sources -- usually the sun. Windmills turn by the power of wind -- which, as we all remember from 7th grade science when Mrs. Christiansen not only taught us that "wind is caused by the uneven heating of the earth's surface" but also encouraged us to share this simple fact with her husband at every opportunity because he "liked" little factoids. The earth's surface, obviously, is heated unevenly by the sun. Oil... is hundreds of thousands of years of material settling and being compressed and heated... the material having been living organisms that used the sun's energy.

So. The sun's energy. Plants use it to create simple sugars through a process we know as photosynthesis; energy + carbon dioxide + water creates a simple sugar + oxygen. Animals (including people) then eat the plants to take in the simple sugars, and in our bodies we combine those simple sugars with oxygen in a process we know as cellular respiration to produce carbon dioxide, water, and energy... the energy we then use to go about the business of keeping our bodies healthy and active.

So that's where energy comes from.

Along those lines, oil seems to always be an issue... Al Gore's film is now out... the big oil companies have run ads disputing facts in the film... it's all very entertaining, until you take time to think about what it means. Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus that the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity. That's the fact.

Scientists may not (they don't) agree on how fast global warming is happening. And it really doesn't matter... it is happening, and some day it's going to prevent many challanges. Just as the fact is that there's a finite (limited) amount of oil in the earth... there is an increasing population... there is an increasing demand for oil as countries like China and India and many others become more industrialized... so go back to the funnel analogy I presented on Sept 1.

This does not need to be a doomsday threat -- as many on the left often present it to be. Rather, it's an incredible opportunity for big business to invest in alternative techonologies today that can lead the way into future sustainability. I just wish that we'd do it intelligently, instead of as a stupid herd of elephants...

Dave Hurd, retired CEO of Principal Financial and past board chair of the Iowa Environmental Council wrote in a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register a couple of years ago commenting that we often think about 3-5 year strategic plans and 10-20 community growth plans, and then went on to ask "Who is thinking about the 1,000 year plan?"

I've found a group that is working on that... at least from the point of ecological sustainability. And rather than trying to agree on what the details of life will look like 1,000 years from now... the idea is to look at the principles of what life will look like 1,000 years from now: what conditions will have to be met in order for life to be able to exist? This way we don't have to argue about whether people will be riding horses or operating vehicles that George Jetson would drive... we just agree that based on science, certain things have to happen or not happen in order for life to continue.

Time for class -- looks like I'm saved by the bell. :)