“We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.”
This is well articulated Irina. I especially nudged with the fact that many are now forgetting the biodiversity impact too. In Europe countries like Estonia are currently fighting back for their trees. Many of which are now going down to fuel Europe's biomass demand.
and then on the limited land use; we could also add landmass wind turbines too. looking at what's happening with land seizes and all.
I didn't know about the forest situation in Estonia, this is very sad. I find it particularly problematic, too, that in the quest for lower emissions we seem to overlook other destructive effects of our activity, namely loss of biodiversity, which should be top of the agenda. Destruction of ecosystems has never gone without adverse effects.
I recently read an interesting journal article trying to quantify a holistic global impact metric that could have interesting use cases for some of the issues you presented:
Very interesting, thank you. I think, however, that we're beginning to overfocus on those "environmental impacts" of human activity and we might bring ourselves to a point where we do nothing lest we damage something. We do damage nature on a daily basis but we're also part of nature, so it's really a no-win situation.
People forget, when building solar farms in the desert, that deserts are ecosystems as well as forests. The destruction of slow growing Joshua trees and the death of relocated desert tortoises are just a couple of examples of the destruction these invasions of the desert ecosystem inflict:
Yes, we do tend to forge there's life in the desert, too. Reminds me of that study about covering half of Sahara with solar panels and how that would literally change the global climate. Fascinating study.
Irina, as usual great article. Thanks
Thanks, Stu.
This is well articulated Irina. I especially nudged with the fact that many are now forgetting the biodiversity impact too. In Europe countries like Estonia are currently fighting back for their trees. Many of which are now going down to fuel Europe's biomass demand.
and then on the limited land use; we could also add landmass wind turbines too. looking at what's happening with land seizes and all.
I didn't know about the forest situation in Estonia, this is very sad. I find it particularly problematic, too, that in the quest for lower emissions we seem to overlook other destructive effects of our activity, namely loss of biodiversity, which should be top of the agenda. Destruction of ecosystems has never gone without adverse effects.
I recently read an interesting journal article trying to quantify a holistic global impact metric that could have interesting use cases for some of the issues you presented:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2db1
Very interesting, thank you. I think, however, that we're beginning to overfocus on those "environmental impacts" of human activity and we might bring ourselves to a point where we do nothing lest we damage something. We do damage nature on a daily basis but we're also part of nature, so it's really a no-win situation.
People forget, when building solar farms in the desert, that deserts are ecosystems as well as forests. The destruction of slow growing Joshua trees and the death of relocated desert tortoises are just a couple of examples of the destruction these invasions of the desert ecosystem inflict:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/science-and-technology/desert-tortoise-deaths-raise-concerns-as-solar-farms-solve-energy-need-2408456/amp/
Yes, we do tend to forge there's life in the desert, too. Reminds me of that study about covering half of Sahara with solar panels and how that would literally change the global climate. Fascinating study.