[SustainableTompkins] Cornell and Biofuels Research

[northsheep at juno.com]

Hi Elan,
 
If biofuels will properly be only a drop in the bucket of the solution,
as Thomas Shelley says (my view as well), do Cornell's energy R&D
priorities really reflect that?  
 
Also, Larry Walker's language: 
 
"organic 
wastes that can be used to meet energy and 
product needs of the Northeast Region.  We have 
embraced an "industrial ecology" approach"
 
reveals the same purely reductionist mindset in science that I have found
rampant at Cornell in twenty years of attempts to interact productively
with the institution as a non-faculty citizen stakeholder. "Organic
wastes"? There are people in CALS who still call manure a waste. Once the
energy descent is in full force, I doubt that much of anything organic
will be judged a waste. It wasn't in pre-oil eras, and it should not have
been in the short history of industrial civilization. And no holist would
be comfortable speaking an oxymoron like "industrial ecology", even in
quotes. 
 
Sorry, I am not impressed. 
 
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
     www.geocities.com/northsheep/
"Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
   
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:43:33 -0500 Thomas Shelley <tjs1 at cornell.edu>
writes:
> At 10:11 PM 12/20/2007 -0500, you wrote:
> >Maybe I'm naive, but I am impressed and moved by
> >the tone and substance of this exchange. I'd love
> >to hear others' take on it.
> >Elan
> 
> 
> Dear Elan and Friends--I have met Larry Walker, on a number of 
> occasions.  I don't know him personally very well, but I think that 
> he is 
> overall a pretty good guy.  He is a great researcher and he and his 
> 
> research staff have done some outstanding research in area of 
> biological 
> and environmental engineering.  I do believe him when he says that 
> he has 
> not (in my words) sold out to Big Ag industry and that 
> sustainability has 
> always been an important focus of his research.  He is one of the 
> younger 
> generation of researchers that was never aligned with the military 
> industrial complex in the usual sense of the terms.
> 
> All that being as it may, we are still faced with the pending energy 
> 
> decent.  Appropriately developed biofuels will have a place in our 
> future, 
> hopefully not in a Big Ag mode, but in a more sustainable mode.  
> Even 
> so,  we will all need to reduce our energy requirements by 50-80 
> percent.  Biofuels will be a drop in the bucket in the long run.  We 
> will 
> need to reduce our consumption of other resources by even more as 
> they 
> simply won't be available.  We need to reduce our global population 
> to less 
> than 1/5th of our current levels--or it will reduce itself one way 
> or 
> another.  The energy decent is about using less, making less and 
> procreating less and being happy about the fact that possibly we 
> will 
> survive.... and enjoying what we do as humans at higher levels, most 
> of 
> which is free and consumes no resources to speak of.  My $.02.   
> Tom
> 
> Tom Shelley
> 118 E. Court St.
> Ithaca, NY 14850
> 607 342-0864
> tjs1 at cornell.edu
> http://www.myspace.com/99319958
> P I thank you for printing this e-mail only if it is necessary  
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