1. Create a system diagram describing a local issue covering sustainability or conservation in your area.
2. Describe how the issue is being approached in the area and the affect of action or inaction with regards to the the issue.

This is once again addressing the drought that has taken hold of California. While there are actions that are accounting for the loss of water from the reservoirs and the lack and of rain. California’s reservoirs almost function cyclically and the cycle is based around El Nino. The reservoirs, the farms, and local water sources all work with the existing interconnected water sources, melting snow cap, and El Nino mostly to replenish their supply. An increasingly hot couple of non El Nino years coupled with increased farming and increased population have lead to the current drought situation in California which has created a dynamic that requires governance to preserve the water sources in California. There were restrictions that were placed on water usage for watering yard plants and were placed on the use of water with regards to washing your vehicles, and recommendations for general water use reduction in the household. Those restrictions are a look at the micro, whereas there was innovation that was required when looking at the macro, looking at the larger water reservoirs and possible ways to prevent the loss of water. One such innovation was the use of millions of black polyethylene balls in major reservoirs to prevent the evaporation of such water sources, the balls were also used as a preventative measure for preventing the production of bromide by chemical reactions activated by sunlight between bromine that occurs naturally in the water sources and chlorine which was used to disinfect drinking water. “Called shade balls, 80 million of the hollow black orbs are needed to cover the reservoirs in Los Angeles to stop sunlight from triggering a potentially dangerous chemical reaction between bromite, which occurs naturally in groundwater, and the chlorine used to disinfect drinking water.”(Plastic News, 2014). These innovative new practices and restrictions coupled with the most recent El Nino have shown that net positive changes can be made.

Net positive changes are good, even though after the most recent rainy season we are still a great distance away from recovery from the drought a more pessimistic view can look at the cycle and see the repetition. The approach to the water crisis has been reactionary, the consensus from everyone I have met has been a tiredness from governance and contrary to a sustainable approach to the idea. While innovation like the black polyethylene balls with be permanent changes, governance and water use restrictions will not be, once the state is clear of the drought the restrictions will be lifted and relatively unrestricted water use will be restored. What needs to happen is massive education on conservation and sustainability, or complacency will take hold and there will be a return to the situation that got the state to the situation that it is in. The water sources have shown a significant amount of resilience with regards to the the drought and the significantly warmer and dry periods between El Nino’s and the dwindling snow caps. What needs to happen for proper sustainability is the maintaining of the water use policies by the government to assist in sustainable water use as a permanent policy not as a reactionary policy.

References

Plastic News. “Plastic balls protect California Water Sources.” Last Modified January 3, 2014. http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20140103/NEWS/140109973/plastic-balls-protect-california-reservoirs

1. I wanted to try my best here to show how climate change was the initial cause for political action. Personally I found the information provided by the leaks to be difficult to include in the assignment but I believe I have a grasp on how the information was meant to be used here. The key points here being that the Kyoto Agreement and the Copenhagen Accords were a function of climate change and in order to address the issues and to ensure that action was taken, there was some what I like to call, political maneuvering. As it turns out the real world does not work where you can rouse all nations with bolstered speech and rhetoric, but the world is a very complicated place where something that is seen as a necessity for the entire world, or for the human population can be used as leverage to get some sort of means to an end. For example like discussed in the article, some countries such as the Maldives which backed the Accords after financial aid was introduced as a resource. Then there is the more harsh view of the negotiations with the leader of Ethiopian Prime Minister which served as a sort of ultimatum to withdraw support for the country (The Guardian 2010). These actions are examples of how the United States was determined to gain support for the Copenhagen Accords and how the necessity for action was determined by the looming threat of climate change. Overall it should show progress and shows positive action from climate change, and ideally if the Accords are enacted and followed, could show significant impact towards climate change.
2. These actions shown in the leaks come down to ethics and show a determination to make positive changes. Climate change is a significant factor in determining the future of the human race, I do not believe that these leaks show a lack of ethics and honestly do not have an opinion whether they should have been released or not. There is a necessity for transparency in government, that is something most people today will agree upon, however these seem to be normal political dealings and do not imply unethical behavior. These leaks are not damaging and do not affect my opinion of the US government. The dealings themselves are how I believe political dealings to occur. That may be a slightly sardonic view of political dealings but the world is a complicated place, perhaps financial backing for foreign countries to entertain the idea of furthering renewable energy projects is something that the US government should invest in, and maybe not, but I see this as a means to very noble end. Now perhaps if there was something more sexy and thrilling like political intrigue like an assassination attempt or something of that nature that you could see in a movie, I would be singing another tune, but I believe the actions were ethical and just, and this is the way international politics occur. As far as what should be done, the only thing this article shows me is that something has to be done, leadership shows making hard decisions and the United States is a world leader, you lead from the front and pick your metaphorical battles hoping to get the right (calculated) outcome.

References

The Guardian. “WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord.” Last Updated December 3, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord

1. I will start with addressing the final thought posed in the question, these maps are frustratingly hard to read accurately, and possibly more frustrating for my situation because of micro-climates that make up a majority of California. The micro-climates are areas where the weather can differ within miles because of the hilly or mountainous terrain that encloses smaller areas. While the map does clearly show that I have wetter El Nino, higher mean temperature than most areas, low precipitation and a susceptibility to earthquakes, the temperatures in my county can vary from 10-20 degrees at any given time of the year, and while north county can get awful heat, south county may enjoy the pleasures of a light sprinkle cool weather and unusually foggy mornings as you head towards Avila Beach. Earthquakes do occur here very frequently, I check this pretty often because the small twos and threes on the Richter scale have a tendency to wake me up in the middle of the night. We even just recently had a four on the Richter scale out in Bakersfield that shook my entire work site.

2. Let me start with the thought that I will possibly spend every night on this site, coming from the Navy we spend a lot of time with incident reports, and it was one of my particularly strange obsessions. I justified it by saying it was a need to know the basis of procedural policy or design, but there may have been something a bit more to it than that. I picked a forest fire in Mark Twain National Forest. Unfortunately there was not a whole lot of information available that you would normally see with a forest fire report. There was no listing of acreage that had been burnt up, and there was not listing of residential areas affected. I was assuming and hoping that no persons were injured which is what the site indicated but it was definitely a good segue into my current home. Living in the central coast which has a particularly hilly yet barren of trees terrain, primed for grazing and farming, we have the occasional wild fire. We come fairly well equipped for fighting wild fires as I have seen at work because of the response small fires that may or may not of occurred at work have seen. There are numerous planes and helicopters on standby in the dry seasons to drop water from lake Santa Margarita and the towns are fairly small and compact with little brush in the towns. Being in California everyone generally has a heightened sensitivity to these fires so even people who are a little further out of the established towns have taken precaution to not allow any dry brush or grass near their homes to establish a natural fire boundary. So while having plenty of brush and dry land to catch fire we generally have immediate response and fires can usually be contained to a couple hundred acres to minimize the severity. While the scale could get out of hand our installed practices prevent any loss of life or hazard to human life. That also being said the lands that do catch fire usually sprout into greener areas months after the fire event because of the carbon left over and is actually very good for the environment sometimes.

3/4. The San Luis Obispo Officer of Emergency Services details out the possible disasters or events that could occur in the county at any given time, to account for smaller areas like Los Osos which is technically not its own township but unincorporated land. Living along the coast we naturally have Tsunami preparedness and the site includes a Tsunami history of the county to included the 500,000 dollars of damage to boats and docks in the area from the 2011 Tsunami that took out the Fukishima Daichi plant (San Luis Obispo OES, April 1, 2016). The detailed plans that are listed out here even cover nuclear fallout because of the local nuclear power plant Diablo Canyon located at beautiful Avila Beach, which makes sense given nuclear power plants generally need large water sources for emergency cooling heat sinks (That does not mean a place to discharge radioactive liquid) and as small as storm preparedness. If I had to make some adjustments to the plan or to the area as part of my assessment I would say it comes down to city planning. The towns and cities particularly in this case Atascadero and Paso Robles have an issue with wanting to rezone their land and build another home to split the property and to sell the home. That is all fine until you remember that is it a very hilly area, homes are built on the hill sides, and sometimes fairly steep. This does not bode well with the occasional earthquake, and with the lack of rain, as we get less and less rain for extended periods, once an El Nino comes around where you get rain in the bulk your home becomes a landslide risk, and mudslides are a common occurrence in the county. Overall we are fairly prepared, but city planning needs to be re-evaluated. As far as what I can do, I suppose I can run for mayor, or city council, or I could work with the city council however having only lived here for 2 years I do not have much pull with the locals.

References

San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services (OES). “Office of Emergency Services.” Last Modified April 1, 2016 http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/OES.htm

Where I live

I live in Atascadero, California, its a relatively small town that stretches parallel with 9 exits of the 101 in California, but that is about the majority of the town and does not stretch too far off from there. It is part of San Luis Obispo County population of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand, where there have been significant green initiatives, it was also one of the first counties in the US to ban smoking in bar and has always been in a way ahead of its time. The County has made for several designated Park and Ride areas to promote carpooling amongst people who have to travel for work, like myself and my coworkers who has a forty-five mile drive into work, we carpool into work with groups of as big as five people carpooling together. Carpooling saves gas, saves money, protects your vehicles, and keeps two to four more cars off the road for the drive into work. We also pride ourselves in our farmers markets which occur every night of the week in different parts of the county which minimize food miles for the traveling and promote healthier citizens. The San Luis Obispo world famous farmers market is actually very bike friendly, the roads in the county have been modified to be more bike friendly, and the farmers markets all have bike valets to promote the initiative for bike traveling.

Copenhagen, Denmark

I want to compare my situation to the situation in Copenhagen. Their urban planning parallels some of the things that San Luis Obispo County and Atascadero have done in the last two decades to promote healthier lifestyles. The biking initiative and more bike friendly roads has made commute in San Luis and the surrounding towns very accessible and made it easier for college students at Cal Poly to commute as well as anyone living in the area and working in their respective cities. The really big difference in the respective initiatives is the population density, the density of the area is at its highest near the county, but is fairly dispersed around the county because of the rural nature of the county. The bike initiatives have like in Copenhagen, created more social spaces and pushed towards a more social community. Though it has not been as fully adopted as the community in Copenhagen it is a step forward in the right direction.

Bogota Colombia

I think the largest takeaway from the Bogota Colombia urban planning is to take away the importance of what kind of impacts better public transportation and infrastructure can have on the population and the environment. While where I live does not have nearly the population density that Bogota has, I believe that there can be an argument to be made for the increase in public transportation. The county I live in has four major towns, Atascadero, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, and Paso Robles, though they are connected by the bus system. I believe that something like the train system in Bogota that traveled throughout the county would keep even more cars off the roads. I believe the bus system is under utilized because they are significantly less reliable to than a train system, and poorly maintained, perhaps if the bus system were expanded and better maintained it would be used more, but I believe there is a stigma people inherently place on a bus service vice a subway or train service. I know that when I buy train tickets to travel the coast I ensure that I avoid any train services that do not cross connect with bus services.

Heres a link looking at how San Luis Obispo County was promoting tougher smoking bans as far back as 1990.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-02/news/mn-1350_1_san-luis-obispo-support

Social norms have dictated the way I have been eating for a very long time now. When I joined the military I did so to travel across the world and to experience new things, and one of those things is always getting to try the local cuisine. When I lived in Hawaii I ate mostly fish, a lot of Ahi, however now that I live in California, specifically the central coast, which, is mostly rural, and the majority of restaurants are based around Red Meats and local vegetables. My first meal I ever ate in my new hometown was local steak and potatoes with steamed vegetables at the Guest House Grill. That has been a recurring theme for the food I have eaten in the area. The farmers markets all have local barbeque, local trip, local ribs, and local burgers, usually paired up with the numerous local farmers and their respective vegetables.

The societal issues with this are actually fairly well intentioned. The majority of farmers only sell locally. There is a different farmers market in a different town in the county every day, and two on the weekends. This minimizes the food miles and makes for a more sustainable process. The other side of the coin is the local factory farms, which are a major contributor to Methane and a dangerous greenhouse gas. The factory farms are a function of the local barbeque culture that developed in the area over the last thirty years. Other issues that may come about are the use of land, though I did not discuss this in the system drawing the use of land for luxury items, such as wine, (because I am in California) medicinal marijuana, and for the use livestock free-range farming. There is also the shipping of goods, and the transportation of agricultural items, though minimal, will have an effect on the environment with the release of more greenhouse gases. Overall I believe the issues for the area are approached well with the emphasis on locally grown and made but the counterweight to that is the emphasis on cattle farms with the Methane release.

The first case¹ I want to look at was accessed through the Colby College link. It is a case study investigating the water management in in Latin America, specifically Mendoza Argentina. The historical geography of the area behind its water use has been slightly turbulent, from the 15^th centuries Spanish colonizers to the point where independence was gained by the countries. It highlights a history where Europeans have introduced their own brand of agriculture and crops that contrasted the local needs of the indigenous plants. This made way for the people to adapt their water needs to make ways for arid environments with ill equipped irrigation methods to meet the new needs of the farmer. Grapes and specifically wine became a major asset and when countries gained independence and discovered ground water, attempts were made to regulate the near impossible to regulate ground water sources. This created a point where governance became necessary because of the lack of community action. The history here parallels the lessons in the video showing how technology were transferred as civilizations migrated like how the migration out of the fertile crescent allowed for the advancement of farming technologies throughout Egypt and Europe, but to a slight extreme because it did not share the longitude that allowed for the ease of transferring crops and technologies and required the countries to adapt methods and finally end up with governance over their water sources.

The second case study I wanted to visit was found on Science Direct and it highlights the European Union attempting to use its geographic history and water sources to dictate better methods for the implementation of irrigation water. The two cases shown are comparing the Sinistra Ofanto, case used in multi crop areas of Italy, versus the Portuguese Monte Novo case. This shows how two different methods of irrigation established by local government, the first Sinistra Ofanto is a routing of Ofanta River into irrigation channels and irrigation systems. The system uses extensive PVC piping and modern SCADA technologies to monitor usage, but, not being a perfect system, farmers have to rely on well water when it comes to the water shortages. The Monte Novo case was almost reverse engineered, it was a water system comprised of a reservoir and irrigation system that was created to incentivize farming vice boosting an existing market. This caused a problem because of the crops that came in due to a lack of dialog. The crops that were introduced were high water demand crops and ended up turning lower water prices into higher water prices than originally. These cases show a couple of parallels to the Mendoza Argentina case because of the increased need for increased irrigation services to enable or incentivize farming in environments that do not naturally lend to their respective crops, and then eventually led to governance injecting itself into the situation and regulation water prices and usage.

These cases hit similarly to the area I currently live in because they are direct parallels. The Central Coast of California has introduced many different crops in a specifically arid environment much like the Mendoza, Argentina case. The region, which is heavily involved in California’s drought, has become a region where the economy has become very dependent on farming even to the point it has turned into a point of tourism for the region. The Wine industry similarly to all the cases has become a point of contention with respect to water use, governance has come in conflict with the local industry and now similarly to all the previous cases ground water is coming to the point at which it will be regulated because ineffective methods or insufficient methods of irrigation and supplying water. The things we can learn more importantly from the Sinistra Ofanto case where innovation and expense was put forth into creating a more effective method of water irrigation where governance over ground water sources became a last resort. We can look at these case studies and see how a comparable environment and comparable necessity for similar crops required innovation and increased irrigation. Then take these methods as a way to change the local policies and how we get our water.

• “Water Management” accessed on 21 Feb 2016, http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/wat-arg.html
• “Improving water-efficient irrigation: Prospects and difficulties of innovative practices” Accessed on 21 Feb 2016, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037837741400211X

I live in California’s wonderful Central Coast but with that is the problem of California’s drought and rapidly depleting watersheds. The water source in my area through Atascadero Mutual Water Company comes from really two different sources, the deep well and the shallow well. The deep well is from the deep water basin and the shallow well comes from the underflow of what is left of the mostly dry Salinas River. The water is then treated with chlorine at the Nacimiento Water Project and distributed throughout homes in the northern part of San Luis Obispo County. As the grey and black water leaves the homes into the sewage systems it is then transferred to the Atascadero Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) where through a series of polishing lagoons and percolation ponds it is then transferred to numerous water sources, for example the man-made Santa Margarita Lake, Salinas River, and aquifers. Notably being right next to the Chalk River Golf Course, the irrigation and watering for the golf course uses a water table almost exclusively compromised of reclaimed water, so I will not be taking up golfing there anytime soon. That however is really only half of my water source, if you account for the number of hours a person spends at work, and the forty plus hours I tend to spend there I wanted to take that water source into account. Like I have previously mentioned I work at the Topaz Solar farm, located in the Carissa Plains, which is about thirty miles out from any sort of tradition water system.  The site which exclusively works on a well with installed reverse osmosis unit from the one hundred and fifty foot well. The water is then distributed to our fire tank (used for fire extinguishing) and the building bathrooms and kitchen. From there it is transferred to the leech field and then from there drains back to the watershed. The majority of the county being an interesting mix of suburban and rural actually works off of wells, especially due to the number of farms and vineyards in the county.

While trying to keep track of my own water usage I did not want to be overly considerate to the activity. I used the water usage calculator that was referenced from my local water company to put together the following list. (1)

• Morning and Night Shower – 8 minutes- 35.2 Gallons
• Brushing Teeth morning and night – 2 minutes of water each- 5.2 Gallons
• Coffee Pot- 0.15 Gallons, 2 times in the day- 0.3 gallons
• Toilet Flushing- 2.07 Gallons – 3 times – 6.42 gallons
• Bottled water at work- 9 bottles in a 10 hour work day in the Carissa Plains on a very warm day- 500ml each coverts to 0.132 gallons- 1.188 Gallons
• Nalgene Bottle at home- 1000 ml- .264 Gallons
• Dishwasher- 9.3 Gallons

All together I used 58 gallons. This is ignoring some intrinsic losses for example, the losses associated with Reverse Osmosis unit at work, which based on my work with RO units in the Navy you get about 30 percent of what you put into it and given the low TDS content from out output and the High TDS from the areas water, that seems accurate. Basically water usage at work with the RO units has losses already built into it, but may be over thinking because brine is returned to the watershed.

For trying to live off of 2 gallons of water was too much of an undertaking for my current job. It is very active and as shown in the list, I drink a lot of water at work out of necessity. That is driven by the fact that I work in the desert and can be relatively active while out in the solar fields with high irradiance and little to no shade cover. Also based on the fact that I am in an active work environment and it can get relatively muddy, dusty, or generally dirty because of work with oils, hazmat, or lubricants I would not be allowed to work without showering. The shower, as rated by the Atascadero Water Mutual site links is rated at about 2.2 gallons per minute, so that becomes tough to accomplish as well. However by showering the night before I was slightly able to cheat that, except it was an exceptionally busy day at work and I needed to shower. Things I was able to cut out of the total overall were fairly small, I removed luxury items like coffee, cut back on leaving the faucet running while brushing my teeth down to estimated 20 seconds. I hand washed my dish at lunch vice letting my dishes fall in to the collective after lunch dishwasher cycle our admin likes to do and only ran the faucet for 30 seconds. As far as toilet flushes go, I used the portable toilets in the field, so that was able to count, but sort of a cheat and not a sustainable method. Overall it was not a successful test, methods used are situational and my job and position do not allow for the kinds of sacrifices that would need to be made to be able to perform my job properly.

Overall, geography very specifically attribute to the amount of water accessible and the amount of water necessary. California’s drought driven by the lacking snow pack in the mountains and the minuscule rain we have gotten over the past decade without an El Nino has driven the county and state to invoke policies regarding water usage. San Luis Obispo County is in a strange position with a bustling farm and wine community and a drought fighting side by side. While the cities in north county are passing legislation on the control of well water by farms, most of the lakes in the county being dried up, the rivers run near dry, and the aquifers almost completely gone, California’s Central Coast and its many microclimates are an excellent example of how geography can affect water use.

1. “House Water Saver,” Accessed on Feb 8th 2016,  http://www.h2ouse.org/tour/index.cfm
2. “Water Treatment Plant,” City of Atascadero, Last modified Feb 6th 2016 http://www.atascadero.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=644&Itemid=1666
3. “Water Supply,” Atascadero Mutual Water Company, Accessed on 7 Feb 2016 http://www.amwc.us/WaterSupply.asp?sm=f

2. Do the ends justify the means? This is a question comes up a lot and is always a sort of good versus evil argument. Yes, the ends justify the means, but that sort of requires a rethinking of the way we look at the ends. Let’s say that the means is becoming a millionaire, and we can go through many different options, intricate and elaborate bank heist, investing earned money into mutual funds and starting a Roth IRA with a plan to have a million dollars by retirement, lottery scratch cards, high stakes poker, or any other sort of method to accruing the millionaire status. You can say they all have the same end, millionaire status, but let me argue that the ends have changed. When someone says they would like to be a millionaire they do not include the caveat of the situation your life will be in. So this becomes the idea that the means will not change and cannot change that much if the ends are to remain truly the same. The difference between the millionaire who may one day be caught for the masterful bank heist or the man who won it all in online poker becomes the actual ends.

3. The process by which the decisions are made matters more than the outcome of the decision itself. Take for example you are a boss at a worksite and you assign one of the newer employees a difficult work item to complete. When he completes the assignment the final result is a failure setting people back on the work that is completed. Looking at yourself as the boss in the situation which response is going to be the more frustrating one for you when you critiqued the situation: 1) The employee had prepared the tools and required items and had legitimately thought through the expected actions and just fell short of expectations because of inexperience or 2) the employee had no thought legitimate process thought out for the maintenance item. From just personal experience, I have had a much more sound response to the former over the latter. This can be accounted for and paralleled in many ways while the dynamic may change and the situation may change but personally and externally I find that results are a function of the steps that go into them. While 2 + 2 = 4, the 4 being the final result is an important part,  there would be no 4 without any 2s.

4. Ecosystems do matter for their own sake, only because of the argument that is made that humans also matter. This is a case of perspective, while we can look inwardly and look to ourselves and out families and friends and say that we matter. The same bonds and connections, the same instincts of self preservation all exist, very differently at times but these bonds are there that cohere families together. The major argument I want to be made here is that our own self preservation, or in fact every creatures self preservation, is a selfish instinct, but for the very sake of self preservation there is no goal other than a continued existence. When you look at a singular existence and you take away any sort of self appointed level of importance, and once everything becomes just a matter of absolutes, does a thing exist or not, if we matter, then so does everything else. They are complementary, and at times mutually dependent.

Entering into this I tried not to make any gross assumptions about the cultural expectations or the propensity for industrialization for the population that was discussed in the video given it was only five minutes long, which is why I wanted to keep it simpler.

So the BioGas Generator plant has positive feedback, as discussed in the video it has many different positive effects, such as the slush that produces the high quality compost which increases the productivity of their farming which in turn assuming that their farming will eventually move away from being subsistent to becoming commercial and being able to increase their overall financial well being. That is assuming it does not become communal and also assuming the increase in productivity of the farming is substantial enough to become financially productive.

The one part I thought was the most interesting, was the effect on the personal health, which I think has a lot of effect on the personal well being of a less modernized culture, this is also taking I think a slightly extreme view on the effect on their health. Looking at the overall positive effect on their personal health and assume an absolute of just a net positive, assume their families can become bigger, a longer lifespan, longer effective working ages, it becomes a large net positive which leads to overall in a farming community an increase in the production from the farm and like discussed earlier increased production of the farm leads to increased financial stability.

The last part which is where my discussion may get a little bit cynical and takes a bit from another class I’m in which I found interesting, is the combination of deforestation and the effects of the increased financials. The initial effect of the Biogas generator is a decrease in overall deforestation locally because it requires less overall use of wood fire stoves. However, the final effect may lead to more deforestation, the effect of being able to afford more, say afford an education and eventually with education and expansion comes the building of homes and purchasing of cars. The building of homes and the luxury of cars, (I will call it a luxury compared to them because they currently are getting by based solely on the video without them) leads to more deforestation. It may be a bit extreme, but it is assumptions in absolutes, and significantly long term results overall.

Hello, my name is Kevin Francis Berthoud, I currently live in Atascadero, CA part of California’s beautiful central coast, and I am originally from California, PA. I am currently working as a Field Service Technician for First Solar at the Topaz Solar Farm in Santa Margarita California and I would like to pursue a career working on the contract and business side of the company. My big gain I would like to get out of the course would be a more expanded view on the concepts of sustainability, as of right now my view of sustainability is resigned to Solar concepts and the ideas of land usage, manpower, irradiance, weather concerns with little concern for other concepts i.e. wind power or hydroelectric and any sort of geographic concerns. I’ve moved towards sustainable energy from the nuclear field mostly for a quality of life concern, time off was few and far between and the civilian nuclear field is made almost entirely of Navy so much where the structure follows into the civilian world, I was in the navy for 8.5 of my best years and stationed in beautiful Pearl Harbor Hawaii on board the very fine ship USS Columbia.

I think the most interesting thing mentioned in the first module was the discussion of governance, sustainability, and ethics, mostly because of discussions outside of the module, the political atmosphere tends to never agree on a lot of things, and climate change and the effect that people have on the environment is always treated as a subjective, it is personally a major player in my choices I make, has been a relatively large deciding factor in the decisions that have gone into my career choices post military. It is a hard conversation to have because it deals in compromise, but compromise in a routine, in a business, in the way you live your life, and it evolves with technology and our population and our energy needs.