The Infernal Trinity

Source: https://files.brightside.me/files/news/part_58/580360/4094260-11015810--2-0-1533716210-1533716214-1500-1-1533716214-728-93f9acf6d1-1534321326.jpg

"Harvesting methods like clear-cutting precipitate soil erosion" (Cradle to Cradle, 2009, p. 96). Where I live, January was a record-breaking month for rain. Our usually trickling creek is a roaring Class III rapid. Our duck-dotted wetland is a lake, sandbagged to keep it from spilling into the road. The rain garden I built this summer might as well be a koi pond, though it's still contained by its berm. Worse yet, the clearcut on the mountainside that I fume about every time I drive home from work – the one that ripped a swath of large trees stretching from the crest of a hill to the side of the road – has turned into two mudslides covering both lanes of the only road down the mountain. No one can get in or out. And this road winds just yards from the Green River, following its turns in many places. The combination of mud, rain, flooding, and rapid flow directly impacts the salmon that spawn in these waterways by disturbing their spawning grounds and making the water turbid and polluted. I'm quite annoyed that doing this on public forestland is permitted.

https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_1024x576&url=1JebFa_0O5OEP7k00

In the three pillars of sustainability, the economy is nested within society, and society is nested within the environment (as discussed in class on 2/6/20). I wonder whether the FEW Nexus could be argued to follow a similar hierarchy. If so, which resource is the foundation for each of the others? I think most people would say Energy, since the Sun is the foundation of our solar system. But why is Earth the only planet that has life? All the planets receive at least a little sunlight, and some have Energy in other forms (Jupiter is wracked with lightning storms; Neptune has the fastest winds in the solar system; and even moons can have volcanic or tectonic activity). The reason is likely that Earth is the only planet that has liquid Water. For this reason, I would say that in living systems, Water is the foundation, followed by Energy (though it takes energy for water to be the right temperature to flow), followed by Food (though I would argue that Food is a type of frozen Energy, a kind of solid sunlight).

Source: http://www.seasky.org/solar-system/assets/images/earth07_sk12.jpg

Life has another ingredient though: life has the language of creation, the "letters" of DNA and RNA, which make Food distinct from raw Energy. Nutritious materials were synthesized by living things in this language, and that's one reason they're able to meet metabolic needs. In fact, to me genetic assembly distinguishes Food for animals from waste or inorganic matter: everything animals (heterotrophs) eat is a page torn from the book of life. Waste, however, is alphabet soup - scattered components (often torn to smaller pieces by simpler and simpler organisms) that autotrophs reassemble. But hidden within the state between death and disassembly is a flame of Energy, which can be liberated by decomposers like archaea, bacteria and fungi (or other processes like burning); or buried like peat or fossil fuels, waiting to breathe fire when exposed to oxygen. The former is a Dragon, a process of life, like biodigestion; the latter is a revenant, the reawakened ancient dead – which has the power to shift the energy balance of the planet, as long-sequestered carbon is released in an abrupt, furnace-like roar.

Source: https://www.scientistcindy.com/uploads/8/5/1/2/85124478/slide19_11.jpg

That's something that struck me about the authors of Cradle to Cradle distinguishing between biological nutrients and technical nutrients. They assert that in order to form sustainable resource loops, these two types of nutrients should not be mixed. This implies that humans have generated a new form of life, one parallel to that encoded by genetic material, and this form of life has its own industrial metabolism. On the one hand, it makes sense that biological resources should not be contaminated by chemicals or metals that can't be handled well by living things (or that can, but only in medicinal doses). And it makes sense that technical materials, which often rely on purity or careful calibration, shouldn't be contaminated by matter that would be better left to decompose into soil. But really, what have we done? We've created a system of generation, energy consumption, and waste (hopefully recovered) that is separate from, and in some ways hostile to, the flows of biological life.

http://water-purifiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/heavy-metals.jpg

Is what can only be produced by the forge and the lab really compatible with life in the long run? From a certain point of view, we have set something in motion that no form of life but ourselves can either create or eliminate – and when it comes to radiological material, even we can only bury it. Radioactive forms of Energy tear cells apart and introduce errors into the words, sentences, and encyclopedias (painstakingly written over millions of years) that form our bodies. This poison is the opposite of Food, tearing our bodies apart rather than building them up. We rot from the inside when exposed, dead marrow silent within dying bone.

Source: https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2014/thepromiseof.jpg

Or look at plastic suspended in Water that animals try to eat instead of Food, starving in the ubiquitous presence of a technical mimic of life.

Source: https://www.fredfoundation.org/app/uploads/2018/03/Albatross-760x600.jpg

Is simple separation between biological and technical materials during the manufacture and recycling processes really sufficient? If Food, Energy and Water are a Nexus, then perhaps that Nexus has an adversary, or inverse trinity, in the form of non-biodegradable plastic, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, and radioactive isotopes. Cradle to Cradle calls some of these dangerous materials "unmarketables," meaning they can't safely be integrated into industrial ecology, but they are everywhere - even recyclable plastic is far more likely to end up in the ecosystem or the landfill at this point. It is probably too late to go back to the world as it was, given the profusion of goods that use at least trace amounts of toxic materials, or the fact that once certain materials are dispersed they are very hard to remove or recover. The sheer scope of this global experiment - and our environment's saturation with materials incompatible with life - should be taken seriously, and pondered as the novel, unpredictable, and dangerous situation it is. The most crucial cycle is the lifecycle, relying on uncontaminated flows of food, energy, and water to persist.

Source: Vhttps://sites.google.com/site/xiaoboxuealbany/_/rsrc/1472089385806/home/food-energy-water%20nexus.png

Braungart, M., & McDonough, W. (2009). Cradle to cradle. London: Vintage.