A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY, TO BE PROUD OF?

Not only do we ask ourselves, can we make a sustainable society? We also wonder, can we make it now or within one generation? Some of us even wonder, what is a sustainable society? And what does it take from me as an individual to be a part of such sustainable society? Is not the individual too small to even make a small difference…

We have one clear goal; make the society and all what comes with it more sustainable.

United nations (UN) is on board, the IPCC panel is very convincing in their communication on change of policies needed and what to expect if we change or do not change our behaviors and acts on this planet earth, Tellus, “the blue planet”. The planet, often described by austronauts looking at it from miles and miles out in space, as the only thriving planet within distance of stars. “Houston, we have a problem”.

We need to start working much more focused with renewable resources, for all thinkable applications used today including; fuels, constructions, commodity plastics and food. With this initiative, Wooden Bucket, I try to summarize with all my previous background and personal interest what I see is important and could help us in this change. The wood revolution is near, and the answer is reforestation, the growing and spreading of forests. Trees and plants thrive on our planet, with the large amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and just perfect (Swe: “lagom”) amount of sun and good soil. We refer to the good growing climate as having a “greenhouse” here at Tellus. Despite being largely dominated by water, we have many good growing fields to be utilized for forestry. When trees grow they suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and therefore grow. Trees grow using the photosynthesis to produce fresh made oxygen and different sugars for its construction materials such as cellulose, the macromolecule (polymer) made from the small molecule building blocks (sugar monomers). The greenhouse effect exists thanks to our “planetary cover” of atmosphere maintained gases (for example water and carbon dioxide) that absorbs the energy of the radiation from the sun, that enters with certaint energy and then is reflected by the surface of the earth to leave the atmosphere. But instead of going all out in space again some is maintained by these gases in the “planetary cover”, i.e. that helps to maintain our “lagom” climate on the planet. We simply need to maintain the cover neither thinner or thicker.. i.e. not increase the amount of gases or types too much, or else we change the climate, so called “climate changes”.

“Imagine kind of sitting in a tent a warm summer day, or actually walk into a greenhouse in cold Sweden…its warmer!”

It is without any need of further argument, we therefore need to increase the use of forest as renewable material for more applications than today, since the increase of growing trees contribute to counter-act in the balance to the increased usage and burning of materials today i.e. release of more carbon dioxide than ever before. There is no valid and good argument against such claim.

With that said, there are however those who even call themselves scientists of today, mostly old men, also from famous institutions such as KTH Royal Institute of Technology, that keeps argue that carbon dioxide does not contribute to the increasing temperatures measured here at Tellus our Mother Earth. It is said to be due to other reasons. “Houston, we have a problem”.

The problem

When energy and focus maintains placed on proving people who wants to make our habits more sustainable, such as all people arguing for lower emissions of the greenhouse gases (water, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides as a few examples) to be “off” or simply “wrong”, we have a problem. There is not at any scenario interesting to discuss whether the effects are “man-made” or “lower than expected”. Imagine this, what would you want to say or do when someone adds another isolation layer on your tent that warm summer morning on the camp? Is your first reaction,

“I need to discuss whether this extra layer is actually the reason why I am sweating like a pig at 7 pm and cannot sleep in the tent”

or

“I will remove this extra layer since it is too warm in my tent to sleep here”

I have to be honest, if you like some choose the first option, you are probably a great scientist in some ways but you will not be contributing to making a sustainable society within 25 years. And therefore is not interesting to either listen to or even discuss with. However, I am happy to listen to your biggest fear with instead trying to be part of the solutions.

The only interesting thing to consider is to solve the equation with actual doing. We do not need more people saying how it is not necessarily the only reason why the tent is warmer. Tellus, needs doers who do things in the right direction, towards using renewable resources. If we make the revolution, the “renewable revolution”, we can whilst continuing usage of practical materials and convenient utilities maintain a sustainable society and feasible climate on mother Earth. When the carbon cycle is around 100 years (renewable) instead of 1 000 000 (fossil) we see the decrease of emissions and release to the atmosphere within a materials for what ever purpose, full life cycle since the making of the material actually do absorb carbon dioxide to grow.

“Houston, all clear”.