place as any to start. It is true that in terms of energy and matter, the initial system state is always more organized than the final state. That means that energy degrades in a system over time and that only by adding energy to a system can you bring it back to a state as highly organized as that in which it originated. This, through way of analogy, is similar to the way that the Earth works. Though matter and energy can be shown conclusively to be one and the same (in a paper about 50 to 100 times as long as this) for practical and human things, they can be considered separately.

It is true that the materials that are in our planet, when removed from their resting-places do not return readily to the planet. They tend to spread out and disperse. Also, in the process of extraction, much energy that was originally stored as a form of ordered energy, molecular bonds, is released as more chaotic energy, namely infrared radiation. These two facts when taken with the speed of geological processes and the limits of biological ones imply that we need to keep our usage and extraction of resources from the planet under a certain level if we expect the it to support us for any appreciable span of time.

This means that we need to work on using energy sources more efficiently,

reusing and recycling materials instead of replacing them, and making sure that regenerative energy sinks and waste storage systems are not used faster than they regenerate. It also means that when we use a natural system, such as a forest, that we need not only to replace them, but to replace them in some approximation of the structure they originally held. A stand of trees traps carbon dioxide, but if it is an artificial stand, it doesn’t function as efficiently as a natural system that evolved for efficiency.

I do not hold entirely to the concept of embodied energy. Yes, all of the energy that was used to make a system such as a car and to make it run is connected through the matrix of space-time to the system, but that connection is linear and one way. I agree that buying a new car every two years is not an acceptable option, but you do not need to look at the energy used in that system to make it run, only that energy which was used to produce the system. Only that energy is really embodied in a system, the rest is transient.

Using the example of a car, there comes a point where the energy and materials that would be saved in running a new one plus those which would be returned to the system by recycling the older car pays for the energy and materials that are necessary to build the new car. If you accept that, then the only question that remains is what time period of use do you use as a marker? Over what time period does it make sense to judge potential energy saved over the cost of producing a new one? One year? (If you would save enough energy in one year to make up for the production of a new car, you NEED a new car.) How about ten? Perhaps looking at the suggested lifetime of the car could be beneficial.

I have been learning something over the last few years of my life. Sometimes

it is not necessary to be completely accurate when you are presenting information to the public. In fact, all you are going to do is bore them, and lose any support they might have given you. It is in this light that I find Dr. Vann’s presentation to be quite useful. I originally had a gripe about some of the information he presented being less than 100% accurate or complete. Upon further reflection, I realized that his goals were good, and the few problems that he had were of interest only to some one who is trying to implement it.

I have begun to realize that sometimes it is better to get a rough concept across to everybody than to give a detailed knowledge of a subject to a mere handful. Still, I think some of his reasoning was perhaps a little too simplistic and general, though his conclusions about what we need to do and why are generally right. I suppose that I would speak the same way about environmental management, marketing, accounting, or certain areas of biology. All in all, the concept of industrial ecology seems to me to be sound and perhaps needed.

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