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Sustainability Of Sustainability

Decent Essays

One of the few things in the 21st century that is increasing as fast as cell phone technology is the human population and the demand for new biofuel solutions to quell global warming. The human population is estimated to increase well until 2050 topping out at around 9.6 billion people. The increase putting further pressure on agriculture to feed the ever growing world, as well as the dependency on fossil fuels and alternative fuel sources. To many, the solution is to intensify agriculture through the expansion of agriculture into new lands in order to boost production, and take some of the production for biofuel use. This may seem like an easy solution but it has a great toll. As agriculture expands into new ground, the biodiversity in that …show more content…

Sustainability implies that resources are used at rates that do not exceed the capacity of ecosystems to replace them. It easy to tell from this standpoint of sustainability that the current agricultural system of expansion is not sustainable because of the negative effects on the environment. Overall though sustainability is a loosely defined term, to be sustainable means to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. There are three pillars to sustainability. They are society and culture, economics, and environment. Each one of these pillars must be met in order for something to be …show more content…

The solution to this stability issue is through biomass production. Humans have relied on combustible biomass for heat and energy for as long as the existence of man. In recent years, both the U.S. and the world have shown greater interest in generating heat and energy from biomass. This includes direct firing (biomass as the sole fuel), co-firing (biomass burned with coal), cogeneration (heat from burned biomass captured to produce more energy), and gasification (gas captured from heated biomass and then burned). The U.S. is one of the global leaders in export of wood pellets for energy use. In addition, crop residue, grasses, and many kinds of waste materials are increasingly pelletized by the United States for energy. Biodiversity has declined significantly as the grasslands of the Prairie Pothole Region have been lost to other uses. This resurgence of bioenergy interest in the Prairie Pothole Region, and potential to produce energy crops on productive cropland, combine to offer opportunity to produce both biomass and contribute

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