10–15 million other species.
In her book Living Downstream, researcher and author Sandra Steingraber skillfully elucidates the widespread and disastrous effects upon human health by industrial processes, both past and present, that contain various types of carcinogens (cancer-causing compounds). Demonstrating critical-thinking skill and citing extensive credible research, Steingraber explains the effects of various carcinogens upon her own health and that of her associates and friends. Steingraber skillfully discusses the undeniable human misery and financial loss that are spawned by the indiscriminate use of our wide range of industrial toxins. This common practice results in a needless tragedy that continues to deteriorate and shorten the productive lives of innumerable innocent adults, adolescents, and children. In fact, if all the externalized costs of carcinogenic pollutants, such as time off from work and hospitalization, were actually paid by the people who received the beneficial part of the toxic production process (in other words, a situation approaching a free-market system), these particularly injurious practices would be priced out of business. And no one has attempted to assign value to the human misery of cancer.
When compared to our current cradle-to-grave materials system, segregating technical toxic stock and biodegradable materials would deliver major advantages for a long time for businesses and communities. This new manufacturing approach would substantially reduce toxic substances in the biosphere, reduce the volume of virgin materials extracted and energy needed to power the process, establish a return system for nutrients to flow back to our agricultural soils, and reduce raw material costs for manufacturers. Not limited to manufacturing, biomimicry-based innovation is available to all business types for numerous improvements in material use and information flows and in energy strategies for transportation, commercial operations, and residential needs. Let’s now consider an intelligent, nature-inspired approach to energy production for our industrial, retail, and residential world.
2.6Nature’s Energy Path
Most developed nations still primarily rely upon fossil fuels to meet both transportation and stationary energy needs. We extract, transport, process, and burn inordinate amounts of crude oil, natural gas, and coal each day in the U.S. alone. In addition to providing the energy that powers our industrial and personal endeavors, depending on fossil fuels is also costing the U.S. dearly in terms of trade deficit, international military actions, human health problems, and climate change. Clearly, Earth’s major ecosystems have a much preferred energy legacy. We will now look at how the natural world meets its energy needs and consider other possible applications of nature’s wisdom for humankind.
Nature has been remarkably single-minded in her procurement of energy for all of life’s activities. Despite the almost incomprehensible diversity of biota on this planet, life depends on an independent nuclear fusion power plant that is located 93 million miles away for nearly all its energy needs. This power plant has been operating for about 5.5 billion years and is expected to last another 5–6 billion years. This boundless source of energy requires no up-front construction cost and no maintenance and does not lead to air, water, or soil pollution. The vast distance separating the earth from the sun protects us from minor malfunctions and irregularities. Countless power plants such as these exist in the universe. Besides providing a free source of energy for billions of years, these stars are also responsible for the synthesis and distribution of all the known elements of the cosmos. The atoms of this book were previously forged inside a star somewhere in the cosmos. Our natural world is so smitten by this energy source that it has evolved completely dependent upon the sun for all energy needs — without a back-up source or secondary power supply. Any species that might have deviated from this strategy is simply not in existence any longer.
How has nature’s single-source energy gamble paid off? Life on Earth has thrived for an extended period of the last 3.8 billion years. Today, millions of different species populate a wide variety of solar-powered natural communities in the oceans, high alpine valleys, equatorial rainforests, hot and cold deserts, and polar tundra. Green plants are the foundation of Earth’s rich biodiversity as they routinely capture, store, and pass along the sun’s energy to all other living things. Interestingly, energy does not continually cycle in the natural world as materials do; rather, the constant daytime input of sunlight powers the diverse and rich ecosystems. The sun’s energy is stored and then passed along from life form to life form, and it is eventually dissipated as heat, a little at a time, at each life level.
During its long tenure, life has tenaciously survived a number of catastrophic global environmental events. Considerable scientific evidence suggests that one such occurrence approximately 250 million years ago extirpated up to 95% of the species that existed — but life continued. Another cataclysm almost 65 million years ago caused an estimated 75% of all species to disappear. Currently, between 10 and 15 million species are estimated to exist and to continue this resilient legacy of diverse, interdependent, sun-powered fecundity. Solar energy is affirmed in the flight of birds, in our woodstove fires, in the force of hurricanes, and even in the taste of a cheeseburger.
2.7Following Nature’s Energy Path
The continuous success of solar-powered life throughout the ages provides a reliable and durable energy design model for our sustainable business. If we follow nature’s lead, this free, local, abundant, and clean energy source will in time replace our current problem-ridden energy choices as a value-laden alternative. Community-procured solar energy for transportation, industrial, and residential needs would provide stable local employment and would dramatically reduce the dollars leaving cities for distant energy sources and thereby build wealth inside local economies. Electricity, cleanly generated and used inside each of our communities, offers additional advantages such as reduced transmission-line infrastructure and maintenance costs, less energy consumed in moving electricity from a regional power plant to the consumer, and reduced vulnerability of power supply to malfunction or sabotage.
Today, many environmentally conscious energy specialists recommend a power distribution system based on a variety of alternative production schemes available from the existing opportunities within a region. Typical scenarios often include a combination of solid waste and biofuels combustion, hydroelectricity, and “clean” coal technology. This multi-source energy strategy may reduce harmful local effects, particularly in the short term, but it also contains significant conceptual long-term liabilities that degrade living conditions in distant locations. Consider all the consequences from each of these alternative energy sources mentioned above.
Waste-to-energy plants burn solid municipal waste to generate electricity, perpetuate the concept of waste, emit dangerous industrial air pollutants, produce concentrated toxic ash, and encourage linear manufacturing systems and natural resource exploitation. Biofuel production primarily relies upon fossil fuel-powered, mechanized agriculture, which continues to degrade soils, put pesticides into our drinking water, decrease food production, and add carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere. Few new hydroelectric dam sites exist in the U.S. today, and the existing dams destroy irreplaceable riparian habitat, flood fertile bottomland farmland, and obstruct the migration patterns of certain species of fish, including salmon and steelhead. Finally, “clean” coal technology is a misnomer: it is expensive, it only slightly reduces overall pollution, and it concentrates toxicity and moves pollution from one waste stream (air) to another (solids).
If we are to follow nature’s lead and convert to a strategy that would satisfy our energy needs for the millennia to come without negative side effects, then solar energy should be the centerpiece of our energy technology. Nature has ingeniously used solar power for all biotic activities in polar latitudes as well as in cloud-dominated temperate regions of the world. A global commitment to solar technology will provide our species with the available abundant local energy for another 5 billion years with little danger of supply interruption, significant pollution, or climate-changing side effects. Intelligent systems that capture energy from the sun to power our businesses, transportation, and homes will provide lasting and rewarding employment worldwide and will prove worthy of the changeover investment
