clarifying societies’ need for understanding sustainable systems

W. Emanuel, C. Dickens, J. Hunter and M. E. Dawson Jr. JIBMR - Volume 2, Issue 4 (2011), pp. 29-39

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CLARIFYING SOCIETIES’ NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS

William Emanuel1, Corey Dickens1, James Hunter1 and Maurice Eugene Dawson Jr.2 1Morgan State University, USA and 2Alabama A&M University, USA

ABSTRACT ustainability is a difficult and complex issue that encompasses the scope of almost every aspect of human life. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to provide the reader with a glimpse of the issues affecting humans with the actions and steps that humans should be

taking to implement sustainability in their everyday lifestyle. It will give a general knowledge of what the global citizen should be aware of as it affects him or her. This paper will make people aware of the different issues and complexities surrounding sustainability. But this is not attended to give a comprehensive explanation of this complex subject but to serve as an introduction to different communities in our society and to help them understand the need for sustainable systems. This can be done by considering sustainability from four major perspectives: the industrialist (business), government, the engineer / scientist, and the global citizen. Keywords: Climate Change, Greenhouse Effect, Non Renewable Resources, sustainability, Triple

Bottom Line. INTRODUCTION Sustainability is comprehensive therefore a complex subject. It is of vital importance to all because it deals with the survival of human species and almost every living creature on the planet. At the rate the developing world is using the scarce and limited resources found in the earth, it is becoming obvious that unless there are major changes in our thinking and behavior, the future of civilization as we know it today, is uncertain. This complex subject has no simple straight forward solution, especially considering that sustainability is a goal for us to reach as we continually strive towards it. This is so we can preserve human life on planet earth and for the future generations to come. Since we cannot reach this goal over night then we must set up a process to obtain sustainability in our life time. It will lead to a better life for the present generations and survival for generations to come; equipping them with the ability to cope with the world that they will inherit as our children” (Munier, 2005). The thinking that we can engineer ourselves out of any problem has been brought to my attention. Only time will tell, because we have delayed so long to address this outstanding issue. But let us continue to address the issue and fix what we can before it is entirely too late.

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Clarifying Societies’ Need for Understanding Sustainable Systems

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BACKGROUND One of the major impacts humans are making is related to energy consumption which robs the earth of its scarce and limited resources while it pollutes the air, land and water. What can we do to address this issue? Since the predominate energy used today are non-renewable energy sources, coal, oil and gas. These are heavy polluter which must be located away from the major concentration of the people. One of the reasons why we usually do not have power plants located in the urban areas is so its pollution can mostly affect the least amount of people at one time. Since the power generating centers are located in the rural areas and the load centers (primary users) are located in the urban areas, the utilities must figure out a way to transport this generation of power from the rural areas to the urban centers or load center. Therefore a power system grid is set up to transfer the power generated to the load center through an infrastructure of High Voltage Transmission, Sub-transmission and Distribution lines. Transferring this large amount of energy across these transmission lines causes losses in the transmissions lines which are an added expense to the utilities which is passed on to the customer. The developing world should not have to go down the same path as the developing world has, by setting up an expensive infrastructure for non-renewable energy sources. The developing world can set up renewable energy systems, non-polluting and safe energy systems located next to the load centers. This will eliminate the transmission line infrastructure cost which is extremely expensive. Also this will reduce the line losses in the power system. The renewable systems I am proposing are solar, wind, geothermal, bio-fuel, fuel cells and hydro where it is appropriate. Different locations on the earth will be able to use the best combination of renewable energy systems that best fits their needs at the least cost and minimal environmental impact. This will utilize the triple bottom line. It meets the needs of the community while minimizing their impact on the environment with the best combination of renewable energy that is the most cost effective system in the long run, but with a large upfront cost. WHY DO WE NEED SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS? There are many reason that tell humans why we need sustainable systems to help us survive in this present age. To list a few:

1) Air pollution problems due to cars have moved from the cities in America to developing countries regions like China because China’s car and population concentration in the cities are much greater than the USA. According to the World Health Organization, 3 million people die every year due to problems related to air pollution (Munier, 2005). As the developing world starts to become developed and start using advanced technologies more for their use then we will find ourselves at the risk of increasing the air pollution around the world. The USA with a population of roughly 300 – 350 million people compared to the total population of roughly 6.5 billion people, we find ourselves around 5% of the total population of the world. But we consume around 22% of the world’s energy and 25% of the natural resources (25% coal, 26% oil and 27% natural gas). Now China with about 1.37 billion (20%) people, have moved from a developing country status to a developed country and they are consuming 17% of the world’s energy and natural resources, 47% coal, 10% oil and 3% natural gas. Soon they will be consuming the same amount of resources and energy as the USA and Europe combined and will move to the number 1 consumer and polluter on the planet. India with about 1.21 billion


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(17%) people consumes about 3 – 4% of the world’s energy and will find their country in the same position as China in the near future.

2) Climate warming is an issue talked about today. Since the industrial revolution until today the temperature of the earth has increased by approximately 5 degrees. It is based on the Greenhouse Effect. The Greenhouse Effect is the increase of CO2 in the earth atmosphere which is produced by the non-renewable fossil fuel being used by the big industries and buildings of today. These large amounts of CO2 gases collect around the earth’ atmosphere and it traps the heat in the earth, raising the temperature of the planet.

3) We find ourselves changing our landscape when we cut down rain forest; this removes and causes an unbalance in the oxygen to carbon ratio. It increases erosion of the top soil reducing the amount of nutrients in our farm land and placing these nutrients in the water. This adds to storm-water runoff in the cities which pollute the streams by dumping waste (sewage) water that is being mixed with the high level of run-off during and after heavy storms.

4) Water pollution through acid rain. Emissions from smokestacks at electric power plants and other industries, which makes for acid rain, a combination of sulphur and water vapor that generates sulphuric acid (H2SO4). This burning of low – quality coal usually makes for sulphurous air (Munier, 2005).

5) The Greenhouse effect is due to the production of CO2 and methane gas (CH4) not only from automobiles, power plants and factories, but also from farm operations. These gases increase the greenhouse effect and the temperature of the planet which produces the melting of glaciers all around the world, as well as the creation of enormous icebergs in the Antarctic, which are broken from glaciers, because of the warmer weather (Munier, 2005).

WHAT ARE SOCIETIES’ NEEDS? Let us look at societies’ needs and the challenges before us: 1) Feeding our population of over 6 billion people with nutritious food on smaller amount of farm land but with the population reaching 9 billion by 2025. 2) Supplying everyone with clean drinking water. 3) As the cities get larger we will need to meet the need for sanitation, 4) How do we make sure people have adequate housing, 5) Educating the masses is vital for everyone to understand our approach to keeping everyone alive, 6) Employing people so they can support themselves is important, 7) Energy seems to be an critical part of this western society with that comes communication devices which are powered through energy and 8) transportation is the number one pollutant in the world. By 2025, the planet will have about 9 billion people. Will the next generation be able to cope with their needs for shelter, food, jobs, health care, and education? Most probably not, well, if not, then what will happen? One does not need to be a futurologist, or to consult the Oracle at Delphi for an answer. Humankind needs to reduce its consumption of everything: water, minerals, meat, paper, computers, cars, chemicals and land. Society has to increase the efficiency of its production, to generate less garbage, to create more natural agriculture, to reduce atmospheric pollution. In all probability, the key idea is that we have to erase from our vocabulary the word Waste.” Another way of putting this is that the human race has to emulate and try to achieve the same efficiency as nature, where every organism’s waste provides the food for another, in a perpetual repetitive scheme… Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed” (Munier, 2005, pg 5).


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DEFINING SUSTAINABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS Sustainability addresses the triple bottom line which is also referred to as the three E’s: 1) Economics (cost), 2) Equitably meeting societies’ needs and 3) Environmental protection of the eco-system. In short sustainability is the balance between an Equitable Way of Supplying Human Needs economically while preserving the Eco-System for today and the future generations. Figure 1 is the graphical representation showing how sustainability is the perfect blending process for brings together a balance between the triple bottom line spheres, mapping them together as one cohesive unit. Since humans are the ones changing the landscape of the earth, affecting everything we touch usually in a negative way. The engineers and scientists jobs should be developing alternative ways of living on the planet with minimum or no impact on humans and the earth. Let me give you an example of one sphere affecting another sphere. When one dumps waste and or chemical into the water and or land it first destroys the environment and then once it enters into the water and or land it can affect the water and or food chain which humans use. Say someone dumps waste and chemicals containing mercury. As it enters the water some marine life ingest the mercury, for example, tuna, did you know that tuna is high in mercury so when people consume tuna today they get mercury in they body. When chemicals are dumped on land it penetrates into the water system where we drink high levels of mercury. It can finally enter into the animal food chain by animals grazing and eating the effected grass which has the mercury in it. In light of understanding the health effects caused by Mercury on humans, animals, fish and the eco-system; one can easily realize that the effects of mercury are far beyond what most people think. All or most of these issues can be minimized and avoided if engineers and scientists could implement a sustainable system that are in harmony with our eco-system (Emanuel: 2010).

Figure 1: The Three Spheres of Sustainability


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Now it should be clear that sustainability is an economic, social, and ecological concept. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society and its members are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and the natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals indefinitely. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire globe. It is sometimes a controversial topic (WordIQ, 2011). Government was designed to protects its citizens not big business and help its citizens get their needs met. Now we know why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stresses the need for government policies and strategies for implement sustainability. “What is sustainability? The traditional definition of sustainability calls for policies and strategies that meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (EPA, 2011). Many definitions have been proposed for sustainability but regardless of the definition that is used; credible definitions all contain some characteristics of the triple bottom line or the three E’s. Put in simpler terms, sustainability is providing the best for people and the environment at an affordable rate, both now and in the indefinite future. In terms of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainability is: "Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs" (WordIQ, 2011). This is a technical definition. Alan Fricker, quotes a definition by Veiderman where he says that, “Veiderman may have come closest to a definition [by stating that] … sustainability is a vision of the future that provides us with a road map and helps us focus our attention on a set of values and ethical and moral principles by which to guide our actions” (Munier: 2005). The Native American and aborigine view of sustainability can be easily understood and they passed it on to us in a very graphical description through a Native American Indian chief in 1854. “How could you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If you do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? We do not own them. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore every mist in the dark woods, every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. This beautiful earth is the Mother of the Red Man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The rivers are our brothers. We give the rivers the kindness we would give to any brother. But the white man does not understand our ways. He is a stranger who takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his friend but his enemy. And when he has conquered it he moves on. He kidnaps the earth from his children. And he does not care. I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways” (Toronto Truth, 2010). This simple message from 1854 makes it clear that the aborigine people of all lands understood and implemented sustainability for centuries and millenniums. If we are smart we should learn these concepts from any aborigine that we have not converted to the western way of thinking. I wonder could we ever have a real sustainable system in a capitalist society. The two paths seem to be in total conflict and opposition to each other. This is one of the reasons why we are having so many issues with the government and the internationalist of today.


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The challenge of sustainability is neither wholly technical nor rational. It is one of change in attitude and behavior. Sustainability therefore must include the social discourse where the fundamental issues are explored collaboratively within the groups or community concerned. The government of the USA tries to keep the common person out of the loop concerning discourse, fundamental issues, collaboration and community decisions. For some reason we have not done a very good job in this area, this might be due to certain characteristics of the dominant paradigm that are seen as desirable (Munier: 2005) and everyone else is looked at as undesirables. Sanford University considers that energy is the lifeblood of modern civilization and their design / specifications or requirements for a sustainable system are listed. Today everyone is concerned about the national security aspects as it relates to human energy independence of our energy supplies. This could make our energy supply secure, reliably and abundant. The requirements for designing a sustainable system in the 21st Century is found in figure 2 and are listed in detail below.

1) Looking at this system from a society view point, we will need this system to be accessible to all people on the planet. It must be reliable (dependable), useful (practicable) and it must be shared equitable or equally among all people on the planet.

2) The economic dimension must take into consideration affordable systems including energy supply that are predictable (can be depend on), the cost needs to be competitive (manufacturing cost is inexpensive everywhere), resilient against stock and it should a profitable business.

Figure 1: A General Model for Sustainability


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3) The most important thing we need to protect is our environment which we have not done a good job protecting. We need clear air to breath, a good climate, stop raising the temperature of the planet, maintain clean water resources which protect us against disease and finally protect the eco-systems.

MEASURING SUSTAINABILITY WITH INDICATORS How does anyone measure sustainability? “While the principles of green engineering provide a framework for designers, many engaged in sustainability efforts has develop metrics or indictors to monitor their progress in meeting sustainability goals. A sustainability indicator (SI) measures the process toward achieving a goal of sustainability. Sustainability indicators should be a collection of indictors that represent the multidimensional nature of sustainability, considering environmental, social and economic facets (Mihelcic and Zimmerman, 2010) see table 1. BIG BUSINESS AND THE POLITICIAN VIEW POINT ON SUSTAINABILITY Many businesses usually prioritize towards their bottom line with little or no regard to sustainability. A perfect example of sustainability which is a controversial topic that is at the forefront of many political debates. In order to effectively debate the topic, people must understand what is meant by sustainability. But, some of the controversy surrounding sustainability is derived partly from the lack of a clear definition of the word. It seems that it is conveniently made vague for the politicians’ use, so they can keep denying its existence.

Table 1: Characteristics of Effective Indicators

Sustainability is designed to protect the common people from the internationalist and big business who are making merchandise of our souls. With sustainability kept vague in the minds of the common folk, people will stay confused and not clear of what is going on around them every day. When one looks at the political issue surrounding this subject one is left amazed that this could happen in America. Under the Bush administration we found that he deregulated the power utilities, the banking system and almost every industry. This crippled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Admission (FDA), and other major organization that had checks and


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balances for big industry because they could not be trusted to police themselves. Deregulation removed all the checks and balances that were placed on big industry during the 1970s to protect the common people from big business that is why we found poisoned waters ways, polluted air, ground and our natural resources. Table 2 shows the Dictionary of Sustainable Management list for many business organizations bottom line criteria for determining sustainable products, services, and other activities (The Dictionary of Sustainable Management: 2011). Table 2: Bottom-line Criteria’s

THE GLOBAL CITIZEN VIEW POINT As we can see sustainability is not merely the jurisdiction of government, or something to be left to local authorities. People have to think in a certain way while putting a little extra effort to sort out domestic items for recycling or when deciding to ride the bus instead of driving downtown on a errand. Sustainability at the individual level means thinking about how each one within our own sphere can contribute to improving society’s welfare, to take a series of actions, most on a daily basis (Munier: 2005). The global citizen or common person, especially women usually are interested in maintaining their lifestyle for the present and the future needs of their children and grand children. They are usually more willing to perform tasks that will help lower our human impact on the environment especially if it will affect the next generations. THE ENGINEER AND SCIENTIST VIEW POINT The engineer creates and designs systems to meet the needs of their society. In the past the engineers did not always keep in mind the full life-cycle of the systems they were creating and the unintended consequences that were produced by their product being introduced on the market place to meet societies needs at that time. “Sustainable engineering is defined as the design of human and industrial systems to ensure that humankind’s use of natural resources and cycles do not lead to diminished quality of life due either to losses in future economic opportunities or to adverse impacts on social conditions, human health and the environment.” The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, known as the earth Summit where the Brundtland Commission report defined sustainable development as ‘development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future to meet its needs.’ (Mihelcic and Zimmerman, 2010) The engineers and scientists must have a far reaching insight to consider the environment around us and it long term effects.


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FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABILITY We need a schematic and matrix (see table 3) which shows how different systems in our Environmental Life Support System vs. Human needs relation and interact with each other, so we can determine trade-offs and co-benefits of each newly designed system, which relate to the different areas that cause harmful effects on the eco-system and/or human. We must consider what human needs encompass and sustainable healthful lifestyle for humans. What can we conclude from these different areas of interaction, as it relates to tradeoff and co-benefits? How do we determine what is really sustainable in the long run and what is not? See table 3 with the matrix tool used by Stanford University (Stanford University, 2009) that helps people take a look at some of these interactions and impacts humans have on our eco-system. This should be used to evaluation new approaches in technology. This tool can evaluate tradeoffs interactions with unintended consequences and impacts on the eco-system. There are cost benefits that are used today but they do not show the real value or cost of a life, treatment for diseases cause by a produce and destruction of the eco-system. Cost factors need to be developed that can be added to the non-renewable energy systems like coal fire planets. There is a need to develop an energy accounting system to take into account these unintended consequences that are directly and indirectly related to one’s product or services offered to the community.

Table 3: Framework of Interaction between Human needs and Protecting the Environment, our Life Support System

SOLUTIONS Sustainability is a process involving people, institutions, natural resources and the environment. Can it be implemented collectively and does it really point to the future? It is a process that involves changes – most of the time, considerable ones - in behavior, attitudes, consumption patterns, spending and purchasing habits and how society perceives and values the environment. It is also


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depends on policies being enacted and enforced, such as recycling and reusing (Muniter: 2005). Obviously, the rights of people must be set over the business people profits, which is not the case today. Once we have everyone on the same playing field we have a win, win situation. Everyone’s true cost can be considered without hidden cost factors being left out like today’s non-renewable energy systems. The basic rights for everyone must be enacted: 1) everyone’s rights to shelter, 2) education, 3) health – care, 4) the protection of the environment, 5) the right to work and earn a decent income, 6) the right to live in a clean environment with access to basic infrastructure and 7) the right to participate in the management of one’s city. Nothing can be done regarding sustainability without people actively participating in the process (Muniter: 2005). People should be willing to recycle which uses less material for the same amount of items they use and reduces wastes. Lowering the temperature in the home or building to save energy which reduces the use of non-renewable power plants from being on-line. We should plant more trees to help the environment produce more oxygen to combat the CO2 which increase the Greenhouse Effect. CONCLUSION There are a lot of things we can implement to build a sustainable society. We can start by addressing what we have learned so far from this paper. Learn from nature what happens to waste or output from one creature is the food or input for the next creature. This we can call recycling of waste. Water pollution is a problem because fresh clean water is probably the scarcest resource on the planet. In buildings one can decrease the water usage by colleting rain water runoff, using shower heads that reduce the amount of water used. Reusing our handed washed water for the toilets which can use two levels for flushing the toilets, one for liquid (urine) and the other for solid waste (bowels); composting ones food waste except flesh from the kitchen that can be used for creating soil for food and plants. Recycling all solid waste produced so they can be reused for other products. Reuse paper plastic bags from the grocery store. Reuse printing paper and make sure you print on both sides of the paper. Land pollution is done through the soil by using fertilizers on the grass and farms, rain water run off, oil spills, waste from the animals. Plant trees and plants around one’s home instead of grass; when using land usage one can build homes on mountain land instead of farm land. Transportation with cars is the number one air polluters especially in the urban environment. Try riding a bike and walk more than driving one’s car; this will also help keep one in shape. Emissions from smoke stacks for electric power plants and the industrial companies must learn to use renewable energy sources. We can lower our use of energy in buildings by turning off lights, TV and other appliances when we are not using or watching them at that moment, so we do not have to generate as much power from energy plants. REFERENCES Emanuel, William. (2010) The Environmental Impact of Mercury, Intellectbase International

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(EPA, 2011). Basic Information: What is sustainability?. Retrieved February 14, 2011. http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm

Stanford University (2009) . video lecture 28: Sustainable Energy Systems: Scale, Tradeoffs, and Co-Benefits . Retrieved February 14, 2011. http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2711/Energy-Seminar/28


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Mihelcic, James R. and Zimmerman, Julie B. Environmental Engineering: Fundamentals, Sustainability, Design. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2010 pages 4, 7, 300

Mousdale, David. Biofuels Biotechnology, Chemistry and Sustainable Development. CRC Press and Taylor & Francis Group, 600 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Boca Raton, FL 33487-274, 2008 pages 260

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Toronto Truth (2010). Video Flow-Water Privatization. Retrieved February 14, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAdA6FIODyY

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clarifying societies’ need for understanding sustainable systems

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introduction sustainability

complex issue

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life time

aspect of human life

limited resources

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