“Gottamnit Leroy!” exclaimed Fritz very irately.  “Ju may play goot pitch. But ju’re a tamn disgrace ta da Jerman race!! … I vent down to Haby’s store and bought some of dat Alsatian sausage vit goot coriander for a nickel-a-link.  Din I cuuked-tit-up and ate dat link sausage. … Din I pooped tit out, and put tit on my jard for da grass ta grow green. … I can’t believe ju Leroy—a Jerman—vasted dat poop like ju tid down da tamn poop-pot.  You’re a tamn disgrace ta da Jerman race!”

“Hell Fritz!” exclaimed Bruno.  “ JU’RE a tamn tschame ta all us Jermans. … I bought dat Haby-link-sausage, cuuked tit up, ate tit, pooped tit out … and I put tit on my wegatable garten. I can’t believe ju vasted dat sausage poop on dat tamn jard-grass!”

Leo jumped up off of his rickety old chair a-hollering. “I caan’t believe ju tamn squandervers … all of ju!  I’m tschamed to play pitch vit all of j’all.  I vent down ta Haby’s and got some of dat link sausage and cuuked tit. Din I cut dat casing and peeled tit off … weeery caaarefully.  I ate dat goot link sausage and pooped tit out.  Din I put dat poop in da casing and took tit down to Haby’s and told dat Leon Haby, ‘Leon, dis tamn sausage tastes like tschit!  Give me my nickel back!’  Leon took a bite and said ‘Tamn!! You’re right! Here’s jur tamn nickel.’”
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This story from the Alsatian-German-Texan land in which my wife Betsy grew up was my usual introduction to the Second Law of Thermodynamics for years in my principles of biology class at St. Philip’s College.  It was my attempt at a humorous story about how the Second Law of Thermodynamics was sort of miraculous circumvented by Leo.  [I’d follow it up in class by holding up some good candy like a pecan praline in my hand, and ask if anyone wanted it. Of course a bunch of these hungry students appreciative of good candy did want it badly, and they pleaded, “I do!!” in unison. Then I plopped it in my mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it, and teased them with, “You can have it after I’m through with it!”]

The Second Law or Entropy Law was, I guess, briefly introduced to me in high school and college biology, physics and ecology.  But it was economist Herman Daly*, Daly’s mentor Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and ecologist David Pimentel and energetics scientist H.T. Odum who really made me cogitate on it.

The Second Law states that in a thermodynamic process, the total entropy, or “disorder”, of the participating systems increases.  Also, as you transform energy which can not be created or destroyed, it tends toward uselessness.  And: … You can’t recycle energy; recycling stuff always comes at a cost; perpetual motion is impossible; and growth economics will eventually hit the wall (or I guess it already has!).

There are many other implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in positively ethical applied community ecology which should be considered.  Leon Haby’s nickel sausage was still useful as poop, but not as useful as it was in its store-bought form.  And in using the sausage, each of the Alsatians did produce poop (or something which tasted like “tschit!”.

Fossil energy resulting from the (inefficient) capture of solar energy through photosynthesis over millions of years can be very useful.  However, rampant transformation and use of this or any energy source also results in pollution, stress and socio-political/economic (ecological) destruction and chaos.  Moreover, BIG, … and Fast, … and Complex–whether it be houses, automobiles; geothermal air-conditioning, photovoltaics, windtricity; conventional or “organic” or sustainable agricultural food/fiber/shelter systems; cities, towns or villages; schools, businesses, governments, churches, or do-good non-profits—can be very problematic for whole systems. … Order (in one system) creates Chaos (in another systems, communities, lives).  Overdoing the built environment is detrimental to the natural resource base, biodiversity, and natural, efficient photosynthesis and biogeochemical and hydrological cycles.  Too much Artificial destroys Nature.

“Small is Beautiful” (from E.F. Schumacher) and so are Slow and Simple. … And I’ll state again my Wendell Berry mantra:

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”
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* http://steadystate.org/thermodynamic-roots/

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/10/14/human-existence-wilson

As a young budding scientist of thirteen years of age, E.O. Wilson may have been the first to report on the occurrence of the red imported fire ant in the U.S. He went on to become a prominent ant research scientist and sociobiologist.

As pasture entomologist in southern Georgia and western Brazil who has done limited research on the red imported fire ant, and as teacher of principles of biology, I have read various aspects of Dr. Wilson’s works, heard him speak at scientific conferences, and found his work to be very compelling.  I strongly feel that everyone should read E.O. Wilson’s recent book, The Meaning of Human Existence.

The 4 major threats to industrialized agriculture — Fred Kirschenmann speaks

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/january-2015/fred-kirschenmann-on-farming-as-a-self-regulating-self-renewing-system.php

Fred Kirschenmann is a leader in “organic” agriculture and a pragmatic practitioner. In this short reading (first url) upon which to reflect, and which I am hopeful leads to your reading of his Cultivating an Ecological Conscience and listening to his YouTube presentations—we are introduced to Fred’s positions on conventional agriculture’s shortcomings (“energy constraints,” “water availability,” “climate change,” and “ecological degradation”) and the hope of a food revolution and changing foodsheds toward resilience and sustainability.

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153031/
http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/socec/downloads/HH_Publi_Feb2013.PDF
http://ourenergyfutures.org/profile-n-Helmut_Haberl-mid-8.html

In the early 1970s David Pimentel introduced me to energetics of agricultural and other living systems … and largely because of an energy crisis at that time, I listened. This was amplified and reinforced shortly thereafter by H.T. Odum and Erich Farber, and then many others, who forced me to study and think more and more about human appropriated net primary productivity, and individual and collective ecological footprints.

Ecologist Marty Bender of the Land Institute connected me to the research of Helmut Haberl some ten years ago when two students and I spent 10 weeks doing research at the Department of Energy lab in Richland, Washington. In this reflection, I wish to introduce my friends involved in a fantastic organization called Ogallala Commons, and others, to the fascinating and critically important efforts of only one hard-working and this brilliant ecologist, Helmut Haberl.

One aspect of Dr. Haberl’s work deals with human appropriated net primary productivity, or the amount of energy captured by photosynthesis and left over after photosynthesizers have met their needs … which humans are utilizing at rampant rates and is largely not available to other organisms in community. The key reading for this reflection is from a small contribution of Dr. Haberl to “The Encyclopedia of the Earth.”
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[“Dr. Helmut Haberl is Associate professor at the Institute of Social Ecology (habilitation in Human Ecology, University of Vienna 2001; doctorate in Ecology, University of Vienna 1995). Helmut Haberl works on both theoretical and empirical aspects of society-nature interrelations and sustainable development – a research field he considers to be the core focus of human ecology. In recent years he has led several research projects on the relation between socioeconomic metabolism and land-use change. His research interests include the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP), ecological footprinting, societal energy metabolism and its relation to sustainable development, and other aspects of societal energy use. Dr. Haberl is member of Working Group III (Mitigation) for the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC (chapter 11: Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses), member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Land Project (www.globallandproject.org) and of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (http://www.eea.europa.eu/).”]

Agroecology, Small Farms, and Food Sovereignty

Old friend, Dr. Miguel Altieri, and “Vía Campesina believe[s] that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people’s food security, and health as well as the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small-scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing the export-led, free-trade based, industrial agriculture model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger, and environmental degradation be halted.” … With global systems of small-scale sustainable farmers practicing de facto positively ethical applied community agroecology, we are closer to Nature and living the Land Ethic.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/living-nets-in-a-new-prairie-sea

In the beginning there was Nature*. With the addition of humans, we added the Land** and the Commons*** and Artificial****. After agriculture ten thousand years ago (see the previous post/reflection), then with industrialization a few hundred years ago, and now with the electronic/information age … humans have become the dominant species and have begun bringing Nature to her knees (precariously, because humans do depend on photosynthesis, sustainable energy flux and biogeochemical cycles, and biodiversity and appropriate dynamics in populations/communities).

There are many reasons the agricultural revolution could be considered to be worst mistake of humans (previous post/reflection), including a major reliance on annuals rather than perennials. The industrial revolution added even more reasons including a move to a greater predominance of monocultures in what had been grasslands and savannas (and other biomes) of great biodiversity.

Wes Jackson and the Land Institute are working to select for and develop perennial crops which:
• more closely simulate natural grasslands and produce grains, beans, and plant oils in systems which protect and build soil,
• are more resistant to damage from other biota,
• do not rely on biocides and high energy/mineral fertilizer inputs, and
• are more sustainable.
Such systems could become key foundations for the regeneration and conservation of resilient/sustainable communities (Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology) across the Great Plains.
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*Nature could be defined as livings systems on earth which are closer to what they were like 12,000 years ago.
**The Land is Nature with humans in it who have significant knowledgeable interactions with and consideration of non-human elements such as soils, waters, plants, animals, and other biota. Aldo Leopold can largely be credited with this Land Ethic.
***The Commons “is a general term referring to the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
****Artificial herein is referring to human-dominated systems which have largely lost touch with the important components of natural systems, health living soils and waters, photosynthesis and net primary productivity, high biodiversity, and sustainable ecological community dynamics. (Much of today’s economy is very artificial and superficial, including conventional and “organic” agriculture, and is not in tune with natural biogeochemical cycles and energetics, and a stable local community social fabric to the extent pre-agriculture, pre-industrialization, or even pre-WW II and the information age.)

http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

Some of what is outlined in Jared Diamond’s “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” has been seriously challenged. However, his opening statement rings true, i.e., “To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image.”

Agriculture has contributed–at least at times and in places—to:
• social and gender inequality,
• disease and despotism,
• malnutrition and starvation, and
• increased human population pressure on Nature.
Only through recognition of this can we begin to right the local and global problems of rampant destruction of Nature and the natural resource base … and of gross inequities, i.e., begin a holistic, comprehensive, and profound process of Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology.

http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/04_Faustian-Economics_R2_032713.pdf

[http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/04_Faustian-Economics_R2_032713.pdf]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNV0xXy5oSg

If there is one author our young and old youth should read, it is Stanford University graduate/Wallace Stegner-Writing-Fellow/farmer, Wendell Berry. One of my favorite quotes of his (which I plan to have on my simple flat tombstone) is: “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”
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For this reflection I am presenting selected jewels from Wendell Berry’s essay, Faustian Economics. Also, I have included above the YouTube presentation on somewhat the same subject, i.e., “limits” by Vaclav Smil. …

“The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such ‘biofuels’ as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that ‘science will find an answer.’ …

… the real names of global warming are ‘waste and greed’—and by now it [‘the American way of life’ … consuming, spending, wasting, and driving …] is manifestly foolish. …

… [In our present economy] All are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable—a license that classifies the most exalted Christian capitalist with the lowliest pornographer.

… [our] credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish, not only for limitless possessions, but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology, and limitless progress. And necessarily it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. That is should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is only a matter of mad logic.

The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be ‘efficient’ at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination—this is the ‘culture’ of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children.

… As earthly creatures we live, because we must, within natural limits, which we may describe by such names as ‘earth’ or ‘ecosystem’ or ‘watershed’ or ‘place’ or ‘neighborhood.’ …

… Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity. Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources, provided they make sense. But also we will have to reexamine the economic structures of our life, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. Where there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and the best of what we have.”

Recognizing limits is a key tenet of Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology!

http://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/

What is education for? … As suggested in a previous blog post herein, I would apply the key points of this wonderful essay by David Orr–which deals with ecology* across curricula and campuses, i.e., ecological literacy—to all campuses of schools, businesses and other institutions and organizations, and to all homes and communities.

Abide by that great virtue of informed and real humility. Slow down and see the beauty of small. Live in concert with Nature and learn from her. Recognize that conventional capitalism, inappropriate development and use of technology and statism are root challenges in this 21st century. Begin an education of young and old which is truly ecological, paideia/logical**, and responsible. Get outside and out of the lecture mode, and study the ecological processes (energy and material input/throughput of campuses; monetary flow; campus psychology, sociology, politics, culture and spirituality) and measure, analyze, evaluate, and assess sustainability indicators. Find the moral and ethical courage to make the world humane and healthy for all humans and all species though the educating toward better world citizens rather than “itinerant professional vandals”.
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* Or Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology.
**Thoughts on paideia for today’s world: Quality of life for individuals and other components of ecological community requires collective efforts to be true to self as a natural organism in Nature dependent on photosynthesis, healthy soil , plenty of quality water, and sustainable biogeochemical cycles. Too many in our current economies are too much in an artificial cloud of computer software, mathematical algorithms, and of data, data, data, … and more data (real, unreal and surreal). [For “data” you might substitute words like information, numbers, bits, 0s & 1s, electron flow, energy, flux, but probably not knowledge!] It is hard to break out of this cloud because so much of fossil and daily solar energy are directed at this creation of an information economy. It is not sustainable, but this is where the power and money lies in a major portion of conventional global economies. (All three of our children work in this relentless cloud.)