Biomimicry

Biomimicry – Janine Benyus

I watched a total of three videos, each approximately twenty minutes long where Janine Benyus talked about biomimicry. She believes that we can mimic structures we see in nature to create useful products that work closely with our natural world. One topic that stood out to me is the use of 3D printers. Generally in our manufacturing systems people take materials and cut away from them to make the products we need. This creates waste and ends up depleting natural resources in the process. Instead Janine is pioneering for the use of additive manufacturing. This is where we figure out what product we need and layer by layer build it. In this way, we have theoretically no waste. She also spoke about using common polymers that exist in any ecosystem and layering this same material in different ways. This will allow us to create structures from one material and give them color, structure, breath-ability, and be abrasion resistant just by the way we layer them. She later spoke about using the “recipe” or “blueprints” from nature to create products that we will use every day. The example she used for this idea are the wings of a dragonfly mimicked to create durable types of plastic. This type of plastic made from polymers is biodegradable so it can return to nature after its life. I really enjoyed the thoughts and ideas that she expressed in these videos. I feel that it would be beneficial for people to continue research on these topics and start utilizing these ideas in the real world. The overall theme that Janine was trying to display is how human beings can live gracefully on this planet for the long haul. It is no secret that we are destroying our natural world, if we adopt these new thoughts and practices of manufacturing we may be able to reverse some of the effects of what we have done.

Damn, Another Ecologist

I also read the first two chapters of the book The Nature of Economies. Many of the ideas that I grasped from this reading are along the same lines of what Janine Benyus was saying about biomimicry. The book begins with mentioning four characters that have differing opinions on nature and the way in which we currently interact with it and possibly the way we should. The character Hiram speaks about the possibility of manufacturing products with life-friendly materials, without toxic chemicals. He went on to say that by imitating nature and its chemistry we can create products that are benign; therefore at the end of their useful life they can be returned to the land and sea. From here was a discussion primarily between Armbruster and Hiram about how economics can be learned from nature. This statement was made by Hiram who stated that development is what brought him to this conclusion. Later in the book Hiram goes on to explain how development can be defined as, “significant qualitative change, usually building up incrementally.” There are three fundamental principles to development, according to Hiram. The first, “development is differentiation emerging from generality.” He chose the example of the solar system. There are astronomers and physicists that believe the solar system is a vast cloud of matter, which is a generality. Then differentiations occurred: the sun, planets and their moons, and various other debris. Then once the Earth emerged as a differentiation, it became a new generality from which further differentiations could emerge. The second principle of development is that differentiations become generalities from which further differentiations emerge. These occur simultaneously in parallel and others in successions. The last principle is that development depends on co-development. Meaning, that development can’t usefully be thought of as a ‘line,’ or even as a collection of opened ended ‘lines.’ Overall, what I was able to grasp from this reading is that there are ways in which we can interact with nature and learn from it. That continuous development is necessary and it happens without our notice or concern. We need to understand development as a means to interact with our natural world. Specifically, “development isn’t a collection of things but rather a process that yields things.” I look forward to reading more about how and for what reason we have so many developments. Also, how we may change some of these new developments to work better in our world as opposed to stripping it of something.

Science for the Future and The New Science of Sustainability

                 Science for the future

Trying to think systematically when it comes to the big problems we face in our world is difficult; but, people like Dr. Khosla from India, (pictured above) are making these topics much easier to grasp. I watched a video that was recorded at UC San Diego where Dr. Khosla spoke about ways we would need to change our infrastructure to be able avoid an inevitable collapse in the future. He started by pointing at our linear way of thinking, that is, that when we think about our economy and how to improve it we often only think of business and technology. In fact, we need to take into account the environment and social issues to truly improve anything in our economy. Each of these factors plays a vital role in each of the others. Next, he talked about the over-consumption that is taking place in America and Japan and mentioned the champagne glass effect (income distribution, where the top 20% have 80-90% of the wealth). Over-consumption is a real problem in American and we are wasting a great deal of energy to move desired products from other parts of the world. Overall, Dr. Khosla was trying to make the point that we need to make major changes if we want to avoid a collapse in the future. We need to change the way we farm, use energy, transportation, and even the way we design our dams and buildings if we want a future in this world. The video had a tremendous amount of information and I would encourage anyone to watch it.

The New Science of Sustainability

To continue my effort of understanding sustainability and using systematic thinking, I read the first chapter of the book The New Science of Sustainability: Building a Foundation for Great Change. The first point that the author makes is that sustainability is not about saving the planet but instead about saving civilization as we know it. For background and easier understanding the author brings up the various changes that society has gone through. These include: Medieval society, where people believed the world worked according to God’s design. Second, the modern society, where we saw a clockwork universe, this is what brought free citizens, presidents, and freedom of religion. Lastly the integral society, which is now pondering the interwoven nature of all things. Specifically, the integral society looks at holistic alternatives in medicine, a renewed concern for community, and the sustainability movement. What I was able to absorb from this reading is that the Darwinian way of thinking (dog-eat-dog) is not necessarily true. That a society who organizes around selfish thoughts, and who turn a blind eye to the corrupt policies that continue to destroy the world we live in, will not be able to continue on for much longer. The new evolution that the author believes we will start accepting is dynamic evolution. “Dynamic evolution encompasses the same facts as Darwinism, but it replaces the old vision of life created by accident and run by selfish genes, with a much more logical and fully physical explanation of how natural dynamics produce the common patterns of emergence, development and adaptive change seen in biological organisms and societal systems.” What the author is trying to portray in this argument is that the world works more like a system where everything is interconnected and the idea of constant competition will eventually be a thing of the past. Fortunately, we now can see the side effects of capitalism, where companies are producing more than what we need and our natural resources are being depleted. I look forward to reading more of this book to see what I can do to help combat the issues we are now faced with.

Sustainability

I should start by saying, this is the first class I have ever taken about sustainability. So when I was posed with the question about what experience I have with sustainability I had to rack my brain to see if there was anything I’ve done that would be considered sustainable. The only thing that came to mind is that I try to recycle regularly, pick up trash when walking on the beach, and believe in e-mailing more than printing out documents to save paper. Other than that, I have no experience. Because most of my classes are in business, I often hear the term sustainable but have never really understood exactly what it is. People are starting to pay attention to the way in which we treat the world we live in and starting to understand that we need to make changes now if we want to have a place for our future generations to enjoy. In the business world, being sustainable is usually more expensive (in the beginning) because companies have to research and develop different ways to produce products and services for their clients. Therefore, many companies have yet to adopt sustainable business practices. I am hoping after I finish this course I can take the knowledge I’ve gained and utilize it in my professional career. One way in which I hoped to gain a better understanding of sustainability was by watching a video from a leading thinker on creativity and innovation in the workplace, Sir Ken Robinson.

During the hour and a half long video Robinson spoke about many things. He spoke about the way in which American’s thinking is short term for many reasons. Mainly we can blame it on the fact that we haven’t been around as long as many other civilizations, namely Europe and China. He also spoke about the way in which our minds work. That creativity and imagination is possible for humans because we have the ability to recall past events, and have a way of “predicting” certain outcomes. The unfortunate thing about some of our innovations is that they are in fact hurting the world we live in, and we are over consuming so many of our precious natural resources. When speaking about this, Robinson mentioned the overuse of water in Las Vegas; where they constantly water golf courses to keep them looking pretty regardless of the amount of water being wasted. Robinson also made a good point about innovations like the first car. Henry Ford was only concerned with helping people to get from one place to another easily, not about the way in which it would impact the world with its emissions and use of oil. This is where innovation and creativity has unfortunate side effects. Robinson believes, and I agree, one way in which we can change our future is to work on our education systems. If we allow people to learn the way in which it comes naturally to them, and let them learn things that are interesting to them not just whatever the government has decided is important, then it may lead to a smarter more productive future. If we allow creativity to thrive, future generations will have the tools and knowledge necessary to create new and better ways of doing things that may save our world from what we have done to it. He mentioned more than once the short amount of time that humans have inhabited the earth, 150,000 years; while the earth has existed for billions of years. The earth will go on; it is us who may not. Robinson made many good points in his lecture and I hope to someday read his book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. For me, this video was informative and I believe it can help shed some light on the idea of sustainability. A link to the video is provided below.

http://video.csupomona.edu/streaming/videosearch.php