Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Osmeña: Achieving sustainable energy, food and water By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
JUST as an economy runs on money, the ecosphere runs on energy.
The source of the radiant energy that sustains all life on earth is the sun. Thus, the sun is a giant nuclear fusion reactor located 150 million kilometers away from the earth.
Every second, the sun converts about 3.7 billion kilograms of its total mass into energy. It has probably been in existence for six billion years. According to estimates, it has enough hydrogen to keep going for at least another eight billion years.
The direct input of essentially inexhaustible solar energy alone provides 99 per cent of the thermal energy used to heat the earth and all buildings free of charge.
Most people think of solar energy in terms of direct heat from the sun. But broadly defined, renewable solar energy includes not only direct radiant energy from the sun but also a variety of indirect forms of solar energy.
The major factor limiting the direct use of renewable primary resources based on the essentially limitless supply of energy from the sun is flux – the amount of direct sunlight of indirect solar energy in the form of time compared to the rate at which it is being used.
For most uses, direct solar energy and indirect solar energy must be stored as thermal, electrical, chemical or other forms of energy for use when the sun isn’t shining, the wind isn’t blowing, or water flows have been reduced.
Today, about 82 percent of the primary energy used throughout the world is provided by the burning of three types of non-renewable fossil fuels—oil (36 percent), coal (27 percent) and natural gas (17 percent)—and by nuclear fission of non-renewable uranium atoms to produce electricity (two percent).
The era we now live in is a unique and temporary period in human history. No one knows when affordable supplies of oil, natural gas and coal may run out. However, a catastrophic rise in crude oil prices will trigger a global economic depression and intensifying international tensions as nations compete for available supplies.
Looking at the race between food supplies and population growth as a problem of merely producing more food is misleading.
Poor people either do not have enough fertile land to grow their own food or enough money to buy the food they need, regardless of how much is available. Thus, poverty is the chief cause of hunger and malnutrition for individuals throughout the world.
Today, 60 percent of all households in the United States are growing some of their own food, amounting to a retail value of at least $20 billion. Increasingly, parts or all of manicured lawns are being replaced with small garden plots and city residents are tending gardens in apartment and condominium grounds, church and school yards, factory and shop lots, public parks and utility rights-of-way.
Window box planters, small greenhouses, and rooftop and patio gardens, where tomatoes and other crops can be grown in small containers, are widely used. Raised beds are being used to produce high yields of a large variety of vegetables in a small space, a gardening method used for centuries in China.
The US Department of Agriculture estimates that a family of four could well be fed without animal products by using high-yield intensive gardening on only 800 square meters of land.
Although the average country-wide water supply seems to be sufficient, many areas are experiencing serious water resource problems. The availability of adequate water resources will be the most serious long-range problem confronting the Filipino people.
Meanwhile, the greatest challenge of the Filipino youth today is whether they are willing to redefine politics. Politics is no longer just a question of what candidate, party or issues you vote for. Today, politics can be as much concerned with how you live your life as with what you think about national security issues or energy policy.
An important measure of the government’s technology commitment is the national budget for energy research and development. This administration needs to raise the annual energy research budget for wind, coal, solar, biofuels, etc., which remains to be a meager amount until today.
