Sustainable Earth

Currently the world is depleting resources faster than it could be replenished. It is a very dangerous task as we are destroying the source of our resources, which might end up losing them forever. There is the normal scope of looking into non-renewable resources such as fossil fuel, but there is another field which is biodiversity. By selective breeding plants and animals, we risk those species by concentrating the gene pool. The entire species might be wiped out by diseases due to the small gene pool, which does not have the immunities from diversification. That is why we should focus on sustaining the bio diversification and the environment, so that natural habitats would not be destroyed for human activities.

As we know from Gun, Germs and Steel, food plays a crucial role in the development of science and technology. However, with the growing population, the earth might not be able to support the agricultural activities which need arable land for food as well as fuel. The world’s production of food might be enough for the world’s population, however there is disparity in the distribution; hence world hunger is still a problem. Plumpy’Nut, as presented in class by our guest lecturer, is a good way to nourish people who lives in poverty and has malnutrition. I find that this is just a temporal solution to the root problem, very much like putting a stopper on a leaking tap. To solve the root problem, economically strong countries should not take advantage of the products that is produced by such countries. There should be a price floor to protect their welfare, so that they would have accessibility to daily necessity like food, water and sanitation.

The idea of growing meat in laboratories is appealing, such that we are able to grow other body parts for replacement. However growing meat for human consumption just takes too much resource, as compared to breeding them in farms. I believe that if the lab meats are able to be grown using less resource than the normal farm bred meat, and then it would be a good substitute as it lowers the overall consumption on earth’s resource. As we know energy could not be created or destroyed, we should retain as much energy as possible to prevent wastage. However, before the lab meats can be used for consumption, test and trails must be made so that it remains in health and food regulations. Genetically engineering (GE) meat or plants should be accepted as they are isolating bad genes, and adding useful ones. The process of GE does not add any chemicals which most people have misconception. One day human can also be genetically modified to remove bad genes such as cancerous cells and diabetes.

On the issue of conservation of energy, the sun is the only provider. So in order to have a sustainable form of energy, sunlight must be harvested to add on to the “energy level” of the earth. And since animals are unable to convert light into food, plants must be used to produce energy through photosynthesis. I believe that using plants for fuel is a viable source of energy as it is renewable. I did a presentation on Algae Biodiesel, which explains the benefits of using such technology. It is able to produce more energy per acre of land than any other plants, thus giving a higher yield in biodiesel with enough arable land used for growing food. There isn’t a real clash in interest for growing food and fuel in this case, which benefits the entire earth as a whole.