Creating the background for the re-integration of society and nature

Creating the background for the re-integration of society and nature
written by Alexandros Konstantinis
Environmental Management, University of Ioannina, Greece
MSc in Geoinformatics, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
Environmental Manager in Management Body of Rivers Acheron and Kalamas, Igoumenitsa, Greece

If you want to prosper one year, cultivate wheat.
If you want to prosper ten years, cultivate trees.
If you want to prosper one hundred years, cultivate people.
- Chinese maxim -

One of us starts an ordinary day by turning a number of switches on. He drives then to work, he heats his working spaces, etc.. That man has released to the environment so far in this day about 8kg of coal and has contributed accordingly to the global warming. If he eats a 250g veal steak produced in Brazil, he will destroy 5m2 of forest. The production of this steak also needs 750lt of water and 1,7kg of forage (cereals). Furthermore, provided that the animal is one year old, it has released 27kg of methane (a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere via its peptic system. The steak served with 100g of rice needs about 90g of nitrogen fertilizer, 80 of which are released to the environment contributing to global warming, eutrophication and water pollution. If our man takes a 300g trout dinner, he will release of 400g of particles (mainly organic), 19g of ammonia, 4g of nitrate and nitrite, 5g of phosphorus and small quantities of antibiotics, formaldehyde and other disinfectants to a river. The car of our man needed, only for its steel parts and tyres, 160tons of water. Its battery contains about 8kg of lead which has produced 310kg of waste in some Australian mine in order to be extracted. The vehicle has about 10kg of copper which has polluted some mine in Chile or in USA with 990kg of waste in order to be extracted. If the car’s air conditioner is old, uses Freon and is replaced 5 times, it will destroy 500tons of ozone.
Let’s recall a few things about thermodynamics. We know that it is based on four laws. Here, the first and the second are in concern to us. The first, which is the law of conservation of energy for any system, says that the internal energy of a system which receives an amount of heat is increased by that amount minus the work that the system performs. For example, a man eats a quantity of food. His internal energy increases by the metabolism. If the man does not eat anything else for a short period, his internal energy starts to decrease because his body on one hand performs some work and on the other loses heat to the environment. The first law of thermodynamics says that the reduction of the internal energy of his body is equal to the heat lost plus the work done. Generalizing to the entire universe, one can say that the amount of energy is always constant, or, otherwise, energy is neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form. The same law, formulated to describe matter, says that also matter is neither created nor destroyed. The quantity of matter we have before a process, physicochemical or other, is the same we have after it. This is called the law of matter indestructibility. Following the publication of the theory of relativity by Einstein, the law was found incorrect. We now know that mass and energy are equivalent so mass could be included in the principle of energy conservation. In addition, when referring to the usual speeds and standard technologies (technologies such as nuclear fission or fusion are excluded), it is safe to assume that indestructibility of matter is valid. The latter law, as we shall see, suggests that pollution is inevitable, regardless of how «pure» a technology is.
The second law of thermodynamics has been formulated in many ways. Without emphasizing on strictness and mathematical formulation, the second law says that if a system is left on its own, the disorder in it will increase. A measure of this disorder is called entropy. The latter is a central concept of many scientific disciplines and in a significant way it is connected to the fate of all things and that of us: decay and death. A little better, the second law says that the entropy of a system that has no interactions with its environment (“closed” system) and is subject to spontaneous internal changes, increases. More specifically, if the changes are reversible, the entropy remains constant but if they are irreversible, the entropy increases. The entropy always increases because there is no process in nature that is completely reversible. Furthermore, another version, less strict, is that the entropy of the entire universe increases because no system can be considered completely “closed” except universe. According to the second law, many things are impossible to happen. Irreversibility of things is an everyday experience. A man ages gradually and the signs of aging appear on his face and the rest of his body. Nobody expects anyone to become younger over time. However, mechanics is full of events which are reversible. Indeed, the solution of differential equations of mechanics, like the one that relates the force exerted on a body with mass and acceleration, may be a function of time (t) or its opposite (-t). Time, in other words, may refer to the future or the past. The subjective sense of time that we all have is not that of mechanics’. Time is an entity that has a specific direction towards what we call the future. The subjective time moves from situations of smaller entropy to those of greater. Nobody remembers the future but the past. A universe with reversible time where we could remember the future is not unthinkable. However, in our own, time has only one direction and the future is always unknown. The reason is not yet understood. What matters is that the second thermodynamic law is a reality. It will stop to be valid by the day an airplane which collided will be spontaneously assembled, its dismembered passengers will return to their seats and the flight will resume. Perhaps that is why the miracles of various religions, from ancient times, were the strongest weapon in making them convincing. Only a truly superhuman strength may be in breach of the second thermodynamic law.
Let’s return to earth. Energy, whose flow is governed by the two laws we have seen, exists in two forms, available and unavailable. A kilo of coal is available energy since its combustion can move an engine, heat a room or roast a piece of meat. Once released, this energy becomes not available. The heat that moved the engine was converted into kinetic energy while some escaped into the environment. Finally, part of the kinetic energy is converted by friction into heat again, which, because of the first law, is totally equal to the energy that initially existed in coal minus the work that was performed. Only now it is in a form that renders it unavailable. This is another view of the second law. Energy thus has a tendency to be converted from available to unavailable. Our culture is based on the economic processes that handle the flow of matter and energy which are governed by the laws of thermodynamics. And it is matter and energy that pollute the environment and exterminate living species which are essential for the existence of the planet and us.
Like energy, matter exists in both available and not available forms and continuously the first is changing into the second. The force that makes matter unavailable is friction. A car is composed of materials in available form. Some day it will be left to its own in a car graveyard where it will rust and gradually, because of the activity of the nature’s elements, will be destroyed. Because of the damage already happened during operation, a portion of the materials has become unavailable. After a few decades that car will disappear. But as we saw before, its mass does not really disappear. It goes somewhere. This whole matter cannot now be recovered. It is unavailable. Recycling of all materials, theoretically, is possible but time and energy required for this are of such size that the total damage (or increase in entropy) in the environment would be unacceptable.
A closed system that would produce work for ever needs not only energy but also matter in its available form. But since both are converted into unavailable forms, such system does not exist. Regarding to materials, the Earth is a closed system. The conclusion is simple: Sooner or later some materials will be exhausted.
Extraction, production and consumption produce waste. According to the law of conservation of mass, the entire quantity of matter used in the production process is long-term waste. Except, of course, the amount recycled. The amount of recycled matter is always less than the originally used because of the second thermodynamic law and as long as it transforms into new products that are also recycled, this quantity tends to zero. This is the importance of the two thermodynamic laws. All production at some point will reach the environment as waste. If this production is less than the absorbent capacity of the environment, the phenomenon stops there. But in all places around the world we have exceeded this capacity. So the whole production is converted to pollution. Even more important: there is a limit on so-called clean technologies below which they cannot become cleaner. Provided that production exists, pollution exists. Therefore, for the acquisition of material capital, which is the artificial material world around us, we inevitably destroy a part of the environment, often irreversible, like when we exterminate some living species.
Production is the opposite, in some way, of consumption. The first creates low entropy by the construction of high class items by raw materials. This low entropy is what consumption transforms into high entropy (loosely speaking, rubbish and pollution), higher than the original because of the second law. The economic process, through production, is continuously increasing the entropy. The word “production” is not precise, because matter is neither created nor destroyed, as we know from the first law. It is only converted to other forms. Finally, economic process does nothing more than to convert low to high entropy. In the way, we gain some benefit. We enjoy life.
If conversion of low to high entropy had no further consequences, we could continue this course without problems. Consequences, however, exist and are of two forms: environmental destruction and depletion of raw materials. According to the second thermodynamic law, matter is being converted continuously to non-available forms and the stocks of raw materials are depleted over time. The increase in production of material goods is followed by an increase in material “evils”, namely pollution. Why are we interested in the destruction of the environment and depletion of raw materials; Quite simply because as a species we are interested not only in our survival but also in that of our offspring.
The question, therefore, is whether the increase in production, which today is the fundamental economic and political doctrine, could continue in the future. There is nothing infinite in nature. Thus the doctrine of continuous growth is not valid. Somewhere there is a limit. Otherwise the system will explode. Given the state of the environment, I feel that we are approaching to the point (not to say that we have already reached there) at which we must choose between our destruction or the transformation of our value background and institutions that have prevailed in the economic, political, social and ecological field.
In order to survive and achieve a quality of living our decisions from here onwards should be made with regard to the reintegration of society and nature. The path of alternative options will open as soon as we become able, through realization, to achieve a rupture from the dominant social paradigm and its values and transform the institutions that currently demand and propagate economic growth, “representative democracy” (imaginative name to legalize the oligarchic regime), racism etc.. The path we have chosen about 200 years ago has led to destructive exploitation of human by human and the environment by humans. Much work must therefore be done in education and information.
Through the education system and other institutions offering to the cultivation of realization, we should reach the point to encourage such a realization that an individual would be able to challenge the system that encouraged it. Moreover, the individual could then discover, through the scientific method and the process of “ex recensione” (to have a reason for a decision and be able to both give and get reason – to speak and to listen), where it coincides with the system and invent (meaning the introduction of new and the creative criticism) variations from the matrix within which it developed.
In order to continue to exist, as it comes to my knowledge so far, we should nurture individuals able to create solidarity and build on the foundation of «democratic rationality», as described above. Some may argue that our extermination could be a solution of our existential problems. We may be led to the acceptance of this solution by the inability of earth to sustain us forever, if we continue to walk the same path. For me, however, this is not an option. The transformation of institutions to achieve economic, political, social and ecological democracy by making massive the rupture from the dominant social paradigm forms a viable option.
Ecological democracy involves the creation of institutions and a culture that secure the re-integration of society and nature. This means that the goal of economic activity is not the present eco-catastrophic “development” which is necessitated by competition and profit demands, but the covering of the needs of all citizens in a way that secures the true quality of life that only a harmonious relationship between society and nature can bring about. Ecological democracy, therefore, can be achieved neither within the present market economy system and the consequent ‘growth economy’, nor within any system mainly aiming at growth, like the centralized system of ‘actually existing socialism’.
Thinking the above, one can notice how much apposite and diachronic was Gandhi when he said: “You should be the change you seek in the world”.

REFERENCES
FILIS A. GIANNIS, “The twilight of human kind”, Exantas (1994), p.26-33
FOTOPOULOS TAKIS, “Inclusive Democracy – Ten years after”, Eleftheros Typos (2008)