Human thinking tends to adhere to a default framework of linear causality and predictable outcomes, often at the expense of insight and resilience. Similarly, human-created systems are often constructed according to linear thinking and a centralized structure model. In practice, both natural and human-made systems often present complexity in the form of nonlinearity that cannot be predicted or accounted for… Read more »
Shortly after the turn of the century, the developing world shifted from food independent to food dependent. In his book The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Michael Carolan argues that this shift was due to both an inability to compete in the increasingly globalized agricultural market, and strategic bestowments of food aid from developed countries. From about 1960 on, developing countries began to… Read more »
Many people care about keeping their house clean. We always think of ways to improve our quality of our home. People care about what is happening in their house. Most of us would be offended if someone came into our homes and made a mess. In the film, Anthropocene, watching the Earth from outer space allowed us to stop, take… Read more »
The carbon footprint we are collectively leaving on the world is actively and increasingly destabilizing the climate (Litfin) and the severity of human intervention in nature and natural processes has created equally severe consequences that need to begin reversal, if that is even possible. In Lester Brown’s Full Planet, Empty Plates, he highlights the effects of exponential human population growth… Read more »
The power of food is such that it can shape the surface of earth and reroute human history. The industrialization of the food system introduced the idea that food could be engineered, as well as grown. Through the addition of supplements and rapid genetic manipulation, what Carolan[i] calls the Green Revolution, we are beginning to see malnutrition brought about by… Read more »
Through watching the first couple videos about the complexities of systems and systems theory, I found myself asking, how can I make the connection from systems to food? Understanding that systems are made up of interworking parts, input and output energy, and have complex reactions with the environment was easy for me to process. But what I found difficult to… Read more »
This week’s lesson noted a significant observation among different global class demographics in relation to their ecological footprint and dietary trends. The global poor contribute about 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the global rich contribute about 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This greenhouse gas issue stems from the differences in diets depending on people’s wealth. Poorer people… Read more »
The interconnectedness of the topics discussed in the course thus far offer a thought provoking global view on the future of the human species on Earth. The issues of populations growth, the recognition of the impact that we have on our ecosystem, the global food system, and the water and ecological footprint we are leaving on our planet, are huge… Read more »
The current model for industrial meat production is not sustainable and severely damaging to the environment. At the current time about 30% of the world’s ice-free surface is used to grow crops that support industrial livestock (Time). Most of this feed is grown using mono-cropping techniques on large industrialized farms. This form of farming strips the Earth of its nutrients… Read more »
The Anthropocene, encompassing our impact on the world’s ecosystem and climate through human action, stands out to me in a very polarizing way, in that we have clearly monumentally altered the course of earth, and yet there is this vulnerability to the entire process that is screaming for attention. For one thing, as Michael Carolan discusses in The Real Cost… Read more »