A blog from University of Borås

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Sustainability: A complex question!

I have recently watched a documentary film "The Magical Forest" on YouTube from BBC documentary, and I recommend everybody working on biofuel and bioenergy to watch this film. It shows how different species such as salmon fishes, bears, flying squirrels, fungi, catterpillar, etc. have imporant functions for a nordic forest to survive. It is usally hard to imagine that a lot of nutients for the trees in a forest come from the ocean by salmon, or the squirrels help the trees to obtain water during the dry season.

It shows perfectly that nature has a very complex balance, that is not so easy to predict all the aspects. For example, dams and hydropowers are probably the best way of producing electricity. However, it can damage the Amazon forests as mentioned before, or damage the nordic forests by stopping the nutrients that should come from the ocean by salmon fishes. These aspects are not so often considered and are not highlighted in media. We should also think about such aspects of other lovely bioenergies such as wind power, solar power, biogas, ethanol, biodiesel, etc., and also the fossil fuels such as oil, gas, tar sand, nuclear plants. All the discussions are usually limited to CO2 or some other simple aspects that are easy to measure, but the question is much more complex!!!

(The Magical forest by BBC documentary) 

No comments:

Post a Comment