The most interesting questions raised in class today:
1. Why bother about sustainability? If the earth is finite and our population is growing exponentially, what do we propose to do (apart from killing ourselves off, as the alternative seems to be)?
2. Are green businesses really green?
Well, of course they're not really green... no employees could stand one color in the workplace for so long...
No, really, there have been many efforts toward sustainability, with varying success.
For instance, ethanol production from corn: fairly ineffective when you account for the 0.74-1.29 gallons of oil put into every gallon gasoline equivalent of ethanol (Wang, 2005 and Pimentel, 2001).
Hybrid cars: mixed results. Yes, they recharge off of usually wasted energy. However, the advertised milage rates do not hold up over continuous usage, and extraction of materials for the batteries requires strip mining on large scales.
Ethanol from municipal wastes: if this product made it to market, as innovator Coskata claimed in 2008 would be possible by 2011 (Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn: http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23) then we might see some real reductions in fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. As it is, with the economic recession, we are still looking for this to happen.
The point being, it is up to us (the critical consumer) to delve into the facts behind the labels.
On to the first question: in the next few weeks we will see if we can't in some way lessen our impact on the planet.
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