The Sustainable Life

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  I mentioned that I was reading it in an earlier post with regard to sustainable agriculture.  Having finished the book and having had some time to mull it over in my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts.

The book itself is written very well.  I give Pollan high marks for his prose, which allows the reader to be engaged in a topic (food chains) that might otherwise be very dull.  His ability to intertwine numerical facts within the recount of his explorations is amazingly smooth; its like going on a guided tour/field trip without having to leave the comfort of your living room.  Overall, it was a pleasure to read.

Another strength of the book lies in the organizational structure utilized by Pollan.  Rather than try to do a side by side by side comparison, he breaks his experiences, and the book, into three sections: the Corn, the Grass, and the Personal.  He analyzes the food chain and concludes each section with a meal derived from that food chain.  In this structure, Pollan is emphasizing what is the base component of the food chain.  By dividing the book into such sections and almost allowing each of them to stand alone, my thoughts and opinions for each section were allowed to gel before being transferred into the next ecosystem.  By the end of the book, I had a very concrete sense of how to compare the three food chains, thanks mostly to this three part division of the text.

As for the subject matter, there is little doubt upon finishing the book that Pollan has a rather pointed thesis — Humans have a huge choice as to what they eat (this is the dilemma), and the current industrial agriculture behemoth that feeds America is unsustainable, and causing change within this industry will only occur if the consumer changes their eating habits.  The industrial food system uses too much energy derived from fossil fuels to transport goods and produce fertilizers.  The monoculture farming techniques deplete the soil of its vitality.  The pollution from over-fertilizing is damaging the environment on the farm, in the nation’s water supply and ultimately in the oceans where the run-off flows.  The massive feedlot style of raising cattle, pigs, and chickens results in unhealthy animals that live unnatural lives and are potentially less nutritious to eat.  Plus, the health and longevity of the nation are imperiled by a food industry that uses over-simplified science to convince us to eat more of less-nutritious food than we need.

That’s not to say that the industrial system is not without its merits — without it, many of the 6 billion people living on this planet would have fallen victim to famine.  Thus, the call for change needs to be measured with this in mind.

So, what needs to be done? As with many things in this rapidly changing modern world, the idea of sustainability is key.  We’re supplementing the bountiful energy of the sun with “cheap” fossil fuels.  Why?  Because we can, because it allows the food industry to extract more profit from every bushel of corn, and because we have become convinced that we need to.  Ultimately, the energy for growing food will have to be derived solely from the sun.  In the book, Pollan develops an argument that such a system is within the grasp of our society, if we decide to embrace some significant changes.  The changes in mind are nicely summarized in the Grass section of the book where Pollan works on Polyface Farm in Virginia.  The entire concept of the farm is to mimic nature through rigorous herd and crop rotation.  The farm is completely free of fertilizers and the animals are able to live symbiotically with each other to keep the land healthy.  The crops cost more for the consumer than an industrially raised analogue, but the hidden costs that tax the environment and the consumer’s health are greatly reduced.  Until the consumer realizes the true cost of choosing food from the industrial complex over the sustainable farm is far greater than they can afford, little will change.

Pollan ends the book with a meal that is constructed from ingredients that are hunted (wild pig) or gathered (mushrooms, cherries, etc.).  The meal, a labor of love, emphasizes the point that our society has come to depend on agriculture.  Returning to our roots of being the hunter-gatherer is not realistic for day-to-day life (feeding oneself would be a full-time job).  Pollan concludes that although this final meal was perfect in his mind, a true celebration of life, it is fantastical to think that this is how modern humans should eat.  Just as fantastical as eating a meal from McDonald’s while driving down the highway at 50 mph should be (this was his Corn meal).

In the end, the concept of sustainable farming is going to be a major issue in the coming century.  In a similar way that the Haber-Bosch process and the Green Revolution allowed for the population explosion in the 20th century, new methods and practices are going to be needed to keep feeding this growing population, but without harming the environment.  As Pollan argues in his book, until the consumer realizes the true cost of their choices, change will not occur.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.  Pollan reaches conclusions, but he does not preach at the reader.  Instead he presents his observations, draws his conclusions, and ultimately challenges the reader to honestly evaluate what they choose to eat.  It is this thought-provoking style that makes The Omnivore’s Dilemma such a worthwhile journey.

For those interested in the more technical aspects of the current science focused on climate change and a sustainable future, I present my latest publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society:

Silvia, J. S. and Cummins, C. C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2010. “Ligand-based Reduction of CO₂ to CO Mediated by an Anionic Niobium Nitride Complex”

Three-step process for CO2 to CO conversion

To summarize briefly, the paper outlines our new contribution to the field of CO₂ chemistry.  Our motivation for this work is to find new ways for converting CO₂ into a useful commodity rather than view it as an environmentally harmful by-product.  The hard about CO₂ chemistry, and why it poses a real problem once it is released into the atmosphere, is that the molecule is incredibly stable and therefore very happy to being floating around freely as a gas. This means that if you want to use CO₂ productively, you have to be very clever to coax it to do what you want. Our approach was to trap the CO₂ using another molecule (here a molecule built around an atom of niobium, Nb), and then transform it into something we wanted. CO, a.k.a. carbon monoxide, is a useful product because it is much more reactive than CO₂ and can be used as either a fuel source or as a building block for more complex compounds such as plastics.

The important part of this paper is that we present a completely new paradigm for making use of CO₂. Such research is vital because if we are to solve the problem associated with producing CO₂ from the burning of fossil fuels, the fundamental aspects of transforming this incredibly stable molecule will need to be understood in as great of detail of possible.

Our entire way of life is built upon an unsustainable process of extracting raw materials from the Earth without considering the impact of our actions.  We take, and take, and take, but we never give back.  Imagine you went over to your friend’s house, raided their fridge, threw the garbage on their kitchen floor, and then left for the next house down the street.  In a way, this is how industrial humans have been treating the Earth.  Unfortunately, we’re beginning to run out of or have already ran out of both houses and fridges to raid.   Plus, we’re not only running low on resources — all that garbage that we threw on the floor is beginning to make our friend the Earth very, very sick.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama invoked the concept of confronting climate change as a national imperative.  I completely agree with that sentiment.  The nation cannot afford to stand by idly as the world changes in unpredictable and likely detrimental ways, especially when our actions may be a major cause of the change.

But this idea is not shared by everyone.  Even more problematic is that the concept of climate change being real is often wrongly regarded as only a slim possibility.  It is not only possible, it may already be underway.  The truly scary prospect of climate change is that it is already too late.  We humans tend to forget that we have only been on this planet for a sliver of its existence.  The climate has been in a constant state of flux long before we arrived, but only now has that flux been adversely affected by a species living on Earth.  We as a collective are altering the natural ebb and flow of the Earth.  This is the fact of the matter.

Nearly all (I’m thinking close to 98%) of scientists would support the idea that humans are going to be a direct cause of significant climate change that will occur in the foreseeable future.  And this is the problem.  People, for whatever reason, think that because they can find 2 scientists out of 100 who are skeptical of climate change being caused by human activity that means that climate change can be ignored.  Why would anyone be able to believe this?! This is like Russian roulette on steroids.  Someone with one gun with six cylinders and five bullets is trying to get lucky!

Climate change legislation is needed now.  The change may not seem drastic, but people have to remember that just because something happens slowly this does not mean that it is not happening at all.  This is no longer a problem for future generations, but a problem for the current generation.  Let’s hope that our leaders decide to embrace the sustainable and fruitful future that awaits us if we embrace the necessary change.