Le piante moderne

Una pianta colleziona le sostanze nutritive di cui ha bisogno attraverso il complicato intrico di radici che sprofonda nel sottosuolo.

Guardando la mappa della nutella nel mondo, si ha l'impressione che il singolo prodotto collezioni le sue componenti tramite un lungo e complesso sistema che viene alimentato dall'energia contenuta nei combustibili fossili.

Una volta creato, "l’insieme dei processi e delle attività che un’azienda segue per produrre e vendere un prodotto" si apre in una nuova fitta serie di rami, che portano il prodotto nei singoli scaffali, fino a casa nostra.

Easter Island

Another interpretation of the story of Easter Island. "What if the planet's ecosystem, (...) is reduced to a ruin, yet its people endure, worshipping their gods and coveting status objects while surviving on some futuristic equivalent of the Easter Islanders' rat meat and rock gardens?"

An abundant world

An abundant world  is the hope that many peoples do have in order to keep going on with the current needs of energy without deep changes in roots on the way we do things.

How would you create all the solar panel you need to create such an amount of energy to cover everybody needs? You need expensive materials and a lot of energy to install them, and still you do not have electricity at night.
Furthermore, the energy density with solar is much less, to power highly intensive activities, like for industry. To store electricity you would need lot of short living polluting batteries.

How much land you have to drill to extract enough geothermal power? Do we have a better use for it? Even having a lot of electricity, it cannot be eaten: to transform solar energy into food, no one can do better than the efficiency of what nature does with photosynthesis in plants.

To just mention the problem of the transportation system, almost totally based on oil, that it would require a widespread effort, resources and time for a complete conversion to electricity.

I agree with the point that we need to change the market rules in a more sustainable form. Today the energy from fossil fuels is still relatively cheap, with respect to other sources, still the inequalities in having food and housing are quite large. The inequalities will not be smaller with cheaper energy clean without changing the distribution of wealth.

I think we need to better design the way we produce food and warm up houses, while looking at the energy problem.

Wicked problems

Sustainability: this is the problem I would like to contribute in solving.

I start thinking the scientific method alone needs some external help. Of course we can only do our part, that it is what we are able to do.

However, knowing where to connect to the other pieces would make our task more accessible to non scientific peoples, since the problem we are thinking of is a wicked problem.

 Why peoples realize and do not act, or do not even try to realize while accepting all their miserable lives. But those that act, are not always successful, and that is another point I want to understand. I am thinking about cognitive dissonance, negation, power of authority, etc. But looks like there is much more to know to motivate sustainable behavior.

I like to interact with peoples, and I would like to have constructive conversations, it looks like that using good questions might help a lot, and it is something that we can do almost everyday with different peoples.

Skills needed in the future

Here you will find a nice list with links of skills that will be needed in the future.
It is quite large and allow to satisfy tastes of many peoples. If you have time, learn some of this!

Science and the future

Questa sembra una conferenza interessante, un'occhiata alle presentazioni va data...

Ad esempio in queste slides di Ginatempo si spiega come la produzione di rifiuti sia inevitabile in un'economia lineare come quella in cui viviamo.

Conseguenze sono visibili in studi che mostrano dove si muore di inquinamento.