From Environment to Sustainability

Since I started on a quest to better understand our environmental footprint, I was exposed to Sustainability as a holistic concept, thanks to James Farrar, I am blogging once again.

Ok. So that interrelationship between all aspects of our lives (social, economic, environmental) should have been obvious. But it wasn't. And for 99.9% of the world that awareness is just dawning. Is this a call to action to work together on unprecedented global scale or is it second fiddle to localized needs of the day. And if it is the latter, what can we do to make enough of an impact to turn things into a direction that will be effective. In the 150th year anniversary of "Origin of Species", how viable are we? That is what sustainability is really about. Is there a Sustainable Footprint for our species on a macro level that translates to an organizational and individual level?

Big Step Forward

Since the beginning of human history, we have observed impacts we humans have had on our surroundings. Whether through over hunting, slash and burn agriculture, diversion of rives for agriculture or changing of habitat through settlement, man has been changing the planet for millenniums.

The fact that we have and will change the planet is not in dispute anymore, except for a few that may subscribe to a modern notion of manifest destiny, it is generally accepted that we are facing a challenging on a planetary scale. And the cause is Mankind.

Part of this awareness was brought about by the changes themselves. Weather that we were accustomed too as kids has changed or become less predictable. Escapism vacation spots, be they winter getaways or tropical getaways, are different somehow, with shorter seasons, more man-made snow, less undersea life and coral, perhaps more severe storms.
But, also, mass communication and media tools have broadened our awareness. "An Inconvenient Truth" is a prime example.

With this upsurge in mass media, and in an attempt to quantify an often complex set of climatological and atmospheric variables, the "carbon footprint" has emerged as the gold standard for measuring environmental impact.

Great benefit has ensued from identifying with a single standard measure and a semi-simplified concept or "bogeyman" that we can rally around. We are all talking a common language, carbon trading and offsets have come to light. The dimension of the problem is coming into focus.

The question is, have we taken something complex, and oversimplified for the sake of building awareness and in fact, should be focused on greater complexities of the planets eco-system? Or have we in fact, by focusing on carbon footprint, found the best proxy for measuring our collective and individual impact on the planet.

Can a data center have less of an impact?

Surpisingly the answer is yes...: Dan Golding from Tier 1 Research writes:


Infoworld's Nancy Gohring has an amusing article on how Microsoft is using biodiesel-powered construction equipment to build its massive new datacenters (http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/25/Biodiesel-fuels-build-of-Microsoft-data-center_1.html). Here's the short version: While this sounds very green, there is a very operational and tactical reason to go to biodiesel: heavy equipment operating in the huge 500,000+ sq ft along with datacenter shells will put out enough carbon monoxide to kill everyone inside unless massive exhaust fans are installed – or unless the equipment uses a fuel that puts out less carbon monoxide, like biodiesel made from canola oil. Apparently, this work-around is performing just fine, except that the smell is redolent of deep-fried engine block.
Needless to say, the backup generators will use good, old-fashioned 'petro-oil' – i.e., oil from dinosaurs, not from corn. Is this the carbon-neutral datacenter that Microsoft says it is? Walking across the street isn't carbon neutral, no matter how many trees you plant, and neither is a datacenter – any datacenter.

So even the "evil empire" can do good, espacially when it is in their interest. As demand for online applications and hosted web 2.0 sites proliferate, data centers are becoming a significant consumer of electricity.

Does our online activity add to footprint? Sure it does, and well beyond on electric bill.

Some ideas on components of eco-impact analysis

Here are some considerations for how you might measure holistically the impact of a product:

Resource required producing extractive equipment for source resource (amortized across life of equipment)
Resource required producing transport equipment for source resource (amortized across life of equipment, if material)
Resource required producing process equipment to convert source resource into component or sellable goods (amortized across life of equipment)
Energy required extracting resource
Energy required transporting resource
Energy required to process resource
Energy required transporting component
Energy required transforming into a finished good

Note that carbon would span across all these elements above, but there is water and other resources consumed as well.


What about social justice? How does that play in? Is that too complicated to look at quantitatively?

Further discussion...

Where most of the focus today is an the use and disposal of a given item, the creation of that item can be far more impactful.

There are social considerations that come into play as well. The impact on the human condition from the extraction, production of a resource as well as the eventual destruction or deconstruction. Species extintion, and consequential damage to ecosystems, these considerations must be accounted for.

Really, this is an extension of environmental economics, which factor in externalities or societal impacts and attempts to value non-tangibles such as an ecosystem. Rather than an attempt at monetary value, with a pure rating system, it becomes a series of trade-offs.

What is our impact in real terms?

Every day we make decisions, small and large, about what to buy, what to eat, where to go and how we get there. Basic lifestyle decisions we make can have obvious environmental impact, but what about the less obvious?

The classic question posed in the mid 90's was paper vs. plastic shopping bags. The impact of that decision had not only implications to how we dispose of these, and plastic bags blowing around your city or town, but also to be considered was the resources and energy needed to make and transport these bags.

If we take that analysis across all the daily decisions we make, without taking hours to research the impact, why couldn't there be some non-biased source of information that rates a given commodity, activity, or decision in terms of it's full consequences on the planet?


First there would have to be a measure that we all basically agree on...
Then this measure would have to be applied against the products and services we use on a daily basis. In our home, work, social life etc...

So I would like your thoughts on what we measure, and how?