As we proceed further into the Anthropocene, we are entering the unknown as a planet. Many aspects of our world are behaving less predictably than ever as a result of human impact. Shocks to the complex global food system can come in many forms, from natural disasters to world trade disputes to pest outbreaks. How resilient is our food system,… Read more »
I am so grateful for the opportunity to have taken this course. Some the information I had some previous knowledge of, such as some of the politics behind the world trade and how corn, soy and wheat dominated our grocery stores, but much of the information was new. I was challenged in my thinking in some modules, but in other… Read more »
Our relationship with our food has changed, as has the perception of our impact. These two elements of our introspective analysis have come together in our search for a better way address hunger, be less wasteful, be more healthy, and become more sustainable. In my own exploration of food and the relationships it has to politics, economics, health, social justice,… Read more »
As I went to get breakfast the other morning from the hot bar at Whole Foods I noticed something that I never took notice too before. The scrambled eggs have citric acid listed in the ingredients. I had just read Amanda Littles essay, “Cooking Oil: How Fossil Fuels Feed the World (and Energy Shortages Starve it).” I was still trying… Read more »
On February 6th, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched and landed the Falcon Heavy rocket. One of the purported goals of SpaceX is to “make life multiplanetary,” locating and extracting resources in space. What happens when we apply the lessons of the biofuel boom and the 2008 world food crisis to SpaceX? This massive investment of earthly resources may not yield… Read more »
I enjoyed reading Karen Litfin’s work in “Thinking Like a Planet.” It goes along with some of the questions I have been asking about using Earth Systems to inform human systems, making them circular rather than linear. It was nice to see ideas and examples of how it is being done, such as virtuous cycles rather than vicious cycles. I… Read more »
The wide range of families and diets portrayed by Menzel and D’Alusio’s illustrate both the diversity in cultural foods, while also highlighting the wide spread disparities. When looking at the dietary contents of the various cultures, a striking number of cultures were consuming a lot of processed and pre-packaged foods, this was more prevalent in areas that would typically be… Read more »
Hunger is a biological state that practically all humans experience in their lifetime, to varying degrees. In contemplating the experience of hunger, I was struck by the universality of the sensation. It is an issue that has persisted, unsolved and unchanged, throughout human history. On a global scale, an overwhelming range of complex forces and feedback loops are at work in… Read more »
There are two contrasting approaches to understanding human being’s responsibility and capacity to change difficult social or environmental problems. One perspective places accountability on the shoulders of the individual; this is the idea that a single person has the power to make changes in their personal conduct that could alter the course of complex issues. In his essay on… Read more »
Having previously learned anatomy and physiology while studying nursing, this crash course in systems theory reminded me of the complicated interconnections of the inner workings of the human body. When Western medicine attempts to use drugs as proxies to replace, enhance, or repress failing systems without looking holistically at the patient, while the patient may get some relief, the… Read more »