Water Archives - Achieving Sustainability

SustainabLINKS April 30, 2015

April 28, 2015April 30, 2015 by Aaron Redman

There is a lot of really interesting news that accumulates over two weeks but don’t despair, I promise these are worth your time :).

The trends indicate that batteries are going to make a hugely positive impact on clean energy sooner than expected. Batteries are already being used to keep utilites from stopping the clean energy movement… even in AZ!
Great story about how and why water is sold in bags in Ghana. Brings back memories of picking plastic out of my teeth in El Salvador.
How can we expect people to care about nature when we are working so hard to “conserve” it by isolating it from any human contact? The Spatial Paradox of Conservation.
It makes me sad that our Sustainable future may come down to who can tell the best story. But perhaps we can treat science deniers like those detailed in Merchants of Doubt as a virus for which the best treatment is to use educational inoculation. Or maybe we can just all watch/read Game of Thrones.
I am skeptical that our consumption choices can really improve our challenges with water Sustainability but Wired has the best guide I have seen yet for giving it a shot. It wasn’t your shopping choices that brought water back to the Colorado River Delta it was policy w/o which no amount of water saved during teeth-brushing was going to matter.
I found the news of the collapse of the pacific sardine fishery to be extremely disturbing. While numerous fish are being eaten out of the ocean, I thought that at least the ones in well-managed fisheries such as pacific sardines were safe…
Chipotle is eliminating GMOs. I don’t see this as a great leap towards Achieving Sustainability but the logistical challenges are very similar to anyone that wants move towards Sustainable food at SCALE.
On the other hand: Bill Gates reviews a book that asks the key question about the Sustainability of our food system, “Should we eat meat?” Not convinced? How about the environmental case in one sentence? Or maybe this video:

Print This Post

Print This Post

Email This Post

Email This Post

Water: why it’s no good for introducing Sustainability

April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Aaron Redman

When I tell people that I am working in Sustainability well over half the time they immediately bring up water (the probability increases if they know of my ties to Arizona). Yet I have come to believe that water is perhaps the worst topic with which to have an introductory discussion about Achieving Sustainability. The … Read more…

Print This Post

Print This Post

Email This Post

Email This Post

SustainabLINKS August 26, 2014

August 25, 2014August 25, 2014 by Aaron Redman

On our global food system:
- “Just 55% of the world’s crop calories are consumed directly by humans”, sounds like some room for improvement.
- “The biggest problem facing modern day manure management: farmers and stockmen often work in separate geographic areas.” Sustainability will require bringing them back together.
- In depth, well-informed and critical look at Vandana Shiva’s knee-jerk and extreme anti-GMO stance.
- Glad to hear that this project has only grown since I got a chance to check it out some years ago. Inspiration!
Good news in continuing setbacks for coal in the Midwest and their aspirations to export it out of Oregon.
Stephen Bocking contends that universities divesting from fossil fuels is mostly window dressing–divest from parking lots instead!
A long, wandering account of a voyage to sample plastic pollution in the South Atlantic, interspersed with somewhat sensational claims about it’s impact.
Feeling disillusioned about hopes for conservation? Joern Fischer suggests that connecting to colleagues and focusing inwards can help propel you forward.
“Giving people an opportunity to have fun while doing “good” is far more effective than asking people to make a sacrifice for an abstract notion of the common good. If water agencies throughout the state could come up with a water conservation equivalent of the Ice Bucket Challenge the results could be pretty powerful.” and more good stuff like that.
The incentives to produce and publicize “surprising” study results (regardless of their validity, robustness or repeatability) are powerful. All consumers of news must be more aware and those knowledgeable enough must publicly provide critique and counterpoint.

Print This Post

Print This Post

Email This Post

Email This Post

SustainabLINKS August 18, 2014

August 23, 2014August 18, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Stimulus money spent on rail has gotten nearly as much scorn as Sloyndra but Michael Grunwald¹⁾Who wrote a whole book defending of the impact of the stimulus. that this is completely undeserved.
Buying bottled water from drought stricken California. Crazier than buying water from Fiji?
“For more Americans to choose healthier food they must have a basic sense of security about their future.”
A decade and a half after Bowling Alone (which I reviewed here), our un-neighborliness continues to increase–with consequences for our health and our politics.
If you have tried to walk anywhere on windy, overly wide suburban roads with no services for miles, you know the frustration that would make anyone give up walking-and active lifestyles overall.
The small minority of scientists who maintain contrarian views on climate change are asked far more frequently to pontificate to the media than their peers, which feeds the continuing unbalanced coverage in the media of climate change–see John Oliver for a more balanced approach.
Meanwhile, the worst case scenarios for climate change are looking worse as Antarctic ice has the potential to cause more sea rise and faster than previously thought.
Is air-conditioning Sustainable (in the multi-faceted capital-S sense)? Well we can certainly agree that it has remade us.
Title says it all: “Not a single person has died using bike share in the US.”

Print This Post

Print This Post

Email This Post

Email This Post