[SustainableTompkins] Cornell and Biofuels Research

[Tony Del Plato]

Ditto Karl
Tony

On 12/21/07, northsheep at juno.com <northsheep at juno.com> wrote:
>
> 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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