Sustainability is not only a political issue, it is also a scientific and technical one. Sustainability engineering is an upcoming discipline. Generating renewable energy by means of solar cells and windmills is one important topic. Active and passive heating of houses is another one. Furthermore we need water production, economic use, treatment and recuperation. Waste minimisation and handling is also a key topic.
Sustainability engineering requires multidisciplinary knowledge and skills. Chemical and biochemical engineering, materials science, civil engineering, agricultural engineering, electrical engineering, meteorology, etc. I already expressed my belief in the possibilities of interdisciplinary research and development.
The R&D will cost a lot of money but there will be a good return on investment. I'm glad my country is working on the Princess Elisabeth Station in Antarctica to create a sustainable station. In such remote places, it is very useful to build semi-autonomous facilities, so that you are not dependent on a permanent provision of fuel in your station. This makes economic and ecologic sense. Moreover, the experience with the Antarctic station will lead to innovation, to new products and services that can be offered on the market by the participating companies.
And yet the reason why we should deploy an Antarctic station needs to be seen larger than economy and ecology alone. We even need to see this research as a long term survival necessity. Suppose a man-made or natural disaster creates a severe unbalance in the composition of the earth's atmosphere. According to scientists, this is not so unlikely. We have to be aware there is simply no emergency exit here. We need to build semi-autonomous and autonomous life systems that will give our children a chance of survival when it goes wrong with the earth's atmosphere. We don't have to consider space travel if we are not even capable of building semi-autonomous facilities on earth. And we have to start now to be ready when it is really needed.
I also refer to earlier articles such as: "Durban", "Heat" and "Biosphere 2". The Biosphere 2 experiment received a bad press, but I'm convinced our descendants will consider it to be one of the most important experiments of the past century.
The picture is from the International Polar Foundation.
1 comment:
WIm, I couldn't agree more with your statements! Unfortunately, governments (including our own) are quite short-sighted when it comes to adequate countermeasures regarding climat change, pollution, use of scarce resources, ... Luckily, more and more people are starting (small-scale) initiatives related to a sustainable way of living. Let's hope that as a result of this bottom-up society movement, a new generation of politicians wil emerge who will take the sustainability challenges seriously, and make the necessary R&D funds for supporting sustainability engineering at a large scale available :).
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