Blog # 1 Complexity/Sustainability

Ben Daubenspeck

Blog #1

9/27/10

Complexity/Sustainability

When I hear “complex”, I think of something challenging such as math, getting a new couch into a 3^rd story apartment. But nature gives the word complex a whole new meaning. The word “challenging” flies out the window and “fascinating” takes it place. Tom Wessels talks of complex systems when referring to our bodies. He paints a vivid picture in my mind when he tells how, “during out development we witnessed one cell growing into more than 30 trillion cells”. Then he goes on to say how the 30 trillion cells consist of 254 different types. It baffles me when I think about this stuff because I am someone who likes to make sense of everything, and human existence and the complexity of nature makes no sense to me. I just chalk it all up as a miracle and don’t look very far into it because like I said, the complexity of our bodies, the environment, co-existence, etc, all of that leaves me speechless. Co-evolution is another extremely truly amazing part of life. Wessels says that each species’ plays its own ecological role, meaning that every single species plays an important role in the life cycle. Co-evolution is species adapting to one another, all with the common goal of survival. He mentions the bee and the spider, and how over time the spider has learned to avoid being caught, while the bee has learned tricks on how to lure the spider out in the day time.

With all of these miracles taking place in all forms of life, we are starting to realize our impact as human beings, and how every little thing we do plays a role in the size of our footprint. Over time we have established a very large footprint, and recently we have been concerning ourselves with way to reduce our impact on the earth due to our realizations of the damage we are causing. People are wanting to live more sustainable life styles, mostly meaning that they are looking for way to go green. More people are driving hybrid cars today than ever before, mainly for the reason of saving money on gas, but at the same time they are reducing the size of their foot print compared to someone driving a truck. Also you see more and more people recycling, and looking for “green” labels when shopping. I bought the energy efficient light bulbs for my apartment for example. They are more expensive, but they are proven to use less electricity, in turn lowering my electric bill. So as you can see, a lot of people go green just to save some money, but it is great because at the same time they are reducing their impact and living more sustainable lives, weather they realize it or not. Maybe they are just trying to maintain their budget, but I think that they are being more sustainable at the same time. Going green is typically more expensive at first, but in the long run it proves to be worth it both in the environment and in your wallet.