The movie 11th Hour talks about the use of ancient sunlight such as fossil fuels as an unsustainable practice. So in order to become sustainable, we need to switch from reliance on ancient sunlight to current sunlight. Bioproducts are one way of doing this. “Bioproducts are non-food products developed from biomass – biological or renewable material which can come from agricultural, food, forestry, marine and industrial or municipal sources.” Most people are familiar with ethanol fuels, but bioproducts can also include decks made from plant fibres or plastic bottles made from corn oil. Statistics Canada is the first national statistical agency among OECD countries to measure the amount of bioproducts being produced and developed. See (http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/21-004-XIE/21-004-XIE2006003.pdf) to find out more about the bioproducts being made in Canada.

A common concern about bioproducts is that it causes food prices to go up and as a result cause famine in third world countries. But this is a myth. The article at the following link dispels this myth (http://www.greenfuels.org/mythbust.php?id=a71c1033-4328-102b-b3dc-0030488d2a96). The most relevant point is that rising energy prices make have a larger impact on food prices that the rising price of corn. So anything that alleviates energy price increase will have a net positive effect of food prices.

Overall, in my opinion, bioproducts are the way to reduce the reliance of fossil fuels and lead the way to a sustainable future.

Jerry

I just want to test the Blog (I also have no experience with a Blog up to now) by giving some comments on the film we saw this afternoon. As far as I am concerned, there were two things which really made me think about the subject.

First of all, it was the comment that we are “no longer in touch with our ressources”. Thinking about this sentence I have to admit that it is absolutely true for myself. Things are so easily accessible in the supermarket so that you really have no idea, how, when, or with which ressources they have been produced. And there are often situations where people just don’t want to have all that information, for example when they buy a cheap product suspecting that the principles of sustainability – which they appreciate very much of course – didn’t play any role in the production.

Secondly, I thought about the effects of globalization, because in the film it has been said that globalization had a rather negative effect on sustainability. I agree so far, as with the globalization it has been much more difficult to set up rules and laws. Regarding the European Union it can be seen, that it is already difficult to agree on rules and laws if 27 countries are concerned. But to set up – above all – to control the implementation of such rules is nearly hopeless in my opinion. If each country would have its own rules, multinationals could shift departments to countries with a more favourable law, as in the domain of taxation. Additionally, a multitude of laws would be less effective. On the other hand, the globalization offers the opportunity to concentrate forces of a lot of countries. Communication has become much easier and problems having been an issue of a specific country in the past become a more global matter with the globalization and the awareness that we are all living on the same planet. So I see also positive aspects of the globalization with regard to sustainable development.

See you tomorrow morning in the course!

This movie will be the subject of discussion in this course. Needless to say, the subject matter is pretty depressing. Importantly, however, there is a focus at the end of the documentary on solutions, and how business can be a part of this: