The Keystone XL pipeline: Environment be damned

There is a ton of literature and information available about the ecological impacts of tar sands.  These impacts stem from the entire spectrum of the tar sands process--from mining the sand, to extracting the unrefined bitumen oil, transporting the diluted bitumen (or "dilbit"), and refining the dilbit to be burned.

First and foremost, a vast expanse of tar sands, the source of the oil that the northern leg of the Keystone XL will be shipping, lies in one of the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystems in the world--the Canadian Boreal Forests.  Currently, trees need to systematically cut down to gain access to the tar sands that lie beneath the ground.  There is a significant amount of greenhouse gas emission that occurs from deforestation.  (It does not really matter what the deforestation is for, greenhouse gases will be released.)  Of the 767 sq. km of forest that has been destroyed over the past few decades, only 104 hectares has been "certified restored," i.e. only 0.13% of the land has been somehow restored to its "original" state, if that is possible.  If the average age of black spruce is 200 years, and the average age of lodgepole pine is 150-200 years, and if it is likely that this is the average age of the trees cut down, how long will it take to actually restore the land the condition it was once in?

Boreal forest against a Suncor surface mine.
The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Alberta's Oil Sands, from wired.com

The yellow spots are the largest trucks in the world. 
The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Alberta's Oil Sands, from wired.com

Secondly, one the trees are cut, the land below must be industrially excavated and large quantities of water used to extract the bitumen from the sands.  According to the Canada National Energy Board, it takes between 2.5-4 barrels of water to extract one barrel of unrefined synthetic crude oil.  This water is significantly contaminated and the water that isn't recycled is stored in tailing ponds that leak into local water supply.  The Athabasca River is connected to the Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the world's largest freshwater deltas.  Estimates say that by 2020, around 1 billion cubic meters (the volume of 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or the entire area of around 11 Manhattan islands submerged to a depth of one meter) of toxic water will be stored in tailing ponds by Suncor and Syncrude alone.  

A Suncor facility and tailing ponds alongside the Athabasca River.
The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Alberta's Oil Sands, from wired.com

Tailing ponds along side the Athabasca River, seen on the top left.
The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Alberta's Oil Sands, from wired.com

What is the potential for contamination and leakage of this water, let alone the fact that this water is essentially permanently toxic?  Fish in Lake Athabasca, near Fort McMurray (an oil boom town), have unusual red spots on them, likely from the pollutants.

"Ronnie Campbell hauls whitefish from Lake Athabasca, downriver from Fort McMurray, to use as feed for his sled dogs. Locals say their catches are often covered in unusual red spots, and many no longer eat lake fish. While the cause of the spots is unclear, some believe toxic chemicals, such as those released during bitumen production, are leaching into Alberta's rivers and lakes." Peter Essick, National Geographic Magazine, 2009

Thirdly, the bitumen is viscous and dense.  To transport it, it must first be diluted with diluents--other petroleum products--and then pumped at high temperatures and pressures.  Dilbit is much more corrosive than other kinds of crude oil, and the likelihood of pipe leaks and eruptions thus increases.  When the leak occurs in water, the diluents separate from the heavier bitumen, and the bitumen sinks to the bottom of the water body.  This is exactly what happened in June 2010, just weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion occurred, when an Enbridge-owned pipe erupted and spilled more than a million gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River.  The technology to adeuqately deal with such a spill does not exist.  Four years and a billion dollars later, 40 miles of the Kalamazoo river still remain contaminated.  What might happen if the Keystone XL leaked (and its southern leg Keystone 1 has already...twelve times in its first year...more than any other first-year pipeline in the US) or burst over the Ogallala Aquifer, so important for agriculture and drinking water?

Fourthly, the processing of dilbit creates petroleum coke, or petcoke--a solid byproduct with a high suplur content.  Burning it is illegal in the US because it emits significant amounts of smog-forming sulphur dioxide pollution.  Currently, mounds of petcoke line the banks of the Detroit River and Calumet River and contaminate the air of Detroit and Chicago, or better yet, are shipped to poor places to exacerbate the air there.  "You can't have a picnic outside because you are going to get a mouthful of black dust.  It's so bad we have to power-wash the house every week to wash it off," says Lilly Martin of Mackinaw Avenue in Chicago. The petcoke is this sent to countries even less concerned about environmental issues and public health to be burned.

Next, more about the environmental impacts of the pipeline, specifically on public health and the economics of greenhouse gas emissions.

We cannot fight it

We are living in an ever scarcer world, of that there are no doubts. Water is becoming scarcer, as are fuels, as are clean air and nutritious land. We know of the possibilities that climate change will present - flooded coasts, changing weather patterns, hotter summers, and destabilised communities. It should be no surprise to us that in the coming years, not in our grandchildren's lifetimes, not in our children's lifetimes, but in our lifetimes, things are going to get tougher. We cannot fight it.

So what does this mean for our daily lives, particularly of those of us living in the West, full of convenience? Increased expenditures reflective of scarcity? Absolutely. (If you think gasoline is "expensive" now, wait a while. If you think water is "expensive" now, wait a while.) But more importantly, it is now clearer than ever that we have a broken relationship with what sustains and nurtures us. And so we are faced with choices. We are faced with the choice of doing nothing (or continuing to do what we are doing, and continuing to degrade), or grabbing the bull by its horns and doing something. Just as with a broken relationship, we can do nothing, let it worsen, and then feel the emotional effects for longer, or we can mend the relationship, apply bandages where the wounds are open, and care for and nurture to make whole again. For this, we must be able to admit fault and guilt. We cannot fight it.

Of course each one of us individually cannot solve the multitude of crises that are before us. But what we can do is our part. I like to think thermodynamically in these cases. Thermodynamics is a description of large-scale averages. The temperature you are feeling on your skin right now not the temperature that is shared by all of the molecules constituting the air. Rather, it is an averaging of many different individual temperatures - some of the molecules that are hitting your skin have a higher temperature than others, and some have a lower temperature. But if we are to shift the bulk, the whole, the average, things need to shift individually. We cannot fight it.

It is clear to me that the changes in our lives will need to be significant in order to address the array of issues before us - poverty, injustice, climate change, biodiversity loss (all, of course, just different manifestations of the same ethical and moral problems). While "significant" may mean to some as driving less, the significance that I am talking about is a radical reconstruction of our societies, of our daily lives, of our ethics, of our morals. This will be needed, because a factory painted green still pollutes. There must be a peaceableness that we find with this new existence. If this for some of us means driving less, then so be it. But if this means for some of us thinking about how our individual lives affect our neighbours, down the street, and in India, the birds, the rocks, and the river, then so be it. We cannot fight it.

The more we have, the more we waste

Our society has created for us an illusion of plenty (to borrow the title of Sandra Postel's book on water scarcity). Indeed, if we were to look at the lawns of the households in Phoenix, we would think that there is plenty of water to go around for all of us, and plenty to spare, so much so that everyone can own uncovered swimming pools in the driest and hottest parts of the country. (Given even a rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics, you would think that there would be a massive amount of evaporation and loss.) When we go to a grocery store, we see plenty of food, so much so that we buy food not only for today, but for tomorrow, and the next week. Much of this food goes to waste; Americans throw away more than 25% of their food. Based on calories, the National Institutes of Health put this number close to 40%. When you walk into an electronics store like Best Buy, you would think that metals and plastics will continue to be abundant, so much so that you don't mind adding another LCD TV to the one you already have. A stroll through the corridors of Home Depot make you feel insignificant compared to the amount of wood neatly stacked. There must be plenty of trees out there. So plenty, in fact, that cutting one down shouldn't matter. Maybe cutting down two shouldn't matter..or three, or four...

But the issue is a serious one - not only are we maybe over-producing food, or not equitably distributing it, but we are spending massive amounts of energy, and using so many chemicals and so much water to produce that food, and that waste. As I mentioned previously, one quarter of freshwater used in the US goes into food that is thrown away. Electronics are thrown away as soon as new models appear, with little regard to what goes on to produce each cell phone in our pockets, each computer on our desks.Our society has surrounded us with the illusion of copious, even infinite amounts of things we can burn or throw away. When you have a lot, you don't mind spending it, losing it, or throwing it away. Indeed, the value of a small amount is lost. If I've bought four radishes, one radish going bad won't make me lose sleep.

Professor Princen has written at length about the idea of sufficiency, which is a huge step forward from efficiency. When we look at the Earth from space, what we see is not an overflowing, unbound teeming of life, but the finiteness of the space in which all life as we know exists - the thin layer of atmosphere, the brown of the land and the blue of oceans. Yet for some reason we think that within the finiteness of our Earth, we can grow, materially and monetarily, unboundedly. We have founded everything we rely on on finite sources, on ever scarce sources. But we (or the corporations and government...you can always blame them =)) have put on blinders to that finiteness. I encourage you to think about scarcity and finiteness. One thing that each one of us can do is value what we have, and treat each and every thing we have as precious. Whether it is a cup of water, or a dollar bill, or a drop of oil. Many of these things are never coming back. The least we can do is appreciate.

Against the tide

As you may have come to realise, one of the main reasons why we face such dire ecological crises is because contemporary societies have designed themselves to be "outside of nature" with the desire to control our experiences. Our interactions with it have been minimised, and our bubble has been built around extracting energy and material from nature and the environment around us, and depositing degraded materials and energy back outside of our bubble, into nature. Our ethic is defined by doing what we want "in here," and not worrying about what happens "out there," as long as the flow of materials and energy in continues, and as long we can continue dumping what we want out there. We have created this disconnect in order to shirk responsibility in dealing with shortcomings of our philosophies and mental capacities, and in our humility.


I am reading this fascinating book by Alan Weisman, called The World Without Us, in which he envisions how nature might take over human structures and landscapes such as houses and cities. We have many times fought against nature in creating spaces for us to live, eat, and sleep. In having done so, we constantly struggle to maintain what it is we've invested in. For example, in having "reclaimed" land, like in The Netherlands, we are compelled to keep the forces of water at bay by constructing something like Maeslantkering.

Weisman describes the fascinating case of what it takes to keep the New York subway system running smoothly. Everyday, those running the subway must keep 13 million gallons of water from overpowering the tunnels. Because there is little soil and vegetation to absorb rainwater and groundwater, subway tunnels funnel the water into themselves. There are 753 pumps, maintained by crews, that have to pump water uphill constantly, because of the depth of the subway tunnels, and natural groundwater that gushes up from bedrock. Weisman writes, "Following the World Trade Center attack, an emergency pump train bearing a jumbo portable diesel generator pumped out 27 times the volume of Shea Stadium. Had the Hudson River actually burst through the PATH train tunnels that connect New York's subways to New Jersey, as was greatly feared, the pump train-and possibly much of the city-would simple have been overwhelmed." Pat Schuber, superintendent of Hydraulics for New York City Transit continues, "When this pump facility shuts down [because of no electricity], in half an hour water reaches a level where trains can't pass anymore."

There seems to be an ethic, prevalent throughout our interactions amongst ourselves, and with nature, of domination and competition. We want to dominate other people and their principles (leading to armed conflict), and we want to dominate the forces of nature by creating structures that nature wants to topple, and by demolishing violently natural areas for things of monetary "value." What if we were to live our lives not forcefully against the tide of nature, but rather with it?

Objects and materials: Shape and design

Glass bottles have been something that have constantly made me think, of course, not because I drink our of them (although I do at times enjoy those very liquids...draught), but because others do, a lot. Bottles have a lot of value in many ways. They hold liquids very well, and the fact that they have a small place from which to drink from means that they reduce potential opportunities for spilling. They are thick and feel heavy, and therefore, make you feel like you are actually holding something. In fact, they feel very much like pint glasses. But I think it is very interesting how two almost identical objects in function can result in two very different responses after use. (I guess I am talking primarily about Western countries in this post.) After using a pint glass, the natural thing one may do is put the glass in the sink, or in the dishwasher. After using a glass bottle, on the other hand, the tendency for one is to put it in the trash can or recycling bin. We think it okay to reuse one of the objects, but find it odd to reuse the other, in general. The only difference between the objects is that one of them has a curved, narrowing top, while the other opens or is the same area as the base. But if you can pour a liquid into a pint glass, you can pour into a bottle, just gingerly.

On the left is a picture of a big bottle. We can absolutely imagine popping the top and drinking the beer in the bottle, but very few would wash the bottle out and use it as a glass. But what if the top of the bottle didn't exist, as in the picture on the right? In that case, once we would have had a beer from the "bottle," we would probably think that we could reuse it, and then keep it as a glass, just like many people do with Ball jars. But again, we can easily use the bottle to fill water from a tap, and just use it as a glass. (You may know that in many countries, the tops of bottles are cut off; the bottoms then serve as glasses.)

Therefore, it seems that the difference is the social learning that one shape is acceptable to use only in certain ways, when in fact, there is very little difference between many of the objects we think are different. This raises several interesting questions about design and learning and behaviour. There are probably very small things we can do physically to common objects such that we might think they are multi-purpose. These changes can have huge consequences - reduced quantities of things going to landfills, reduced need for recycling, increased reusing, increased sentimentality, increased pass-me-downs, decreased natural resource extraction, etc. etc. etc. 

The other night, Marco raised the very interesting case of the bee in the urinals (here, here). Here's a picture of the bee.

 

What this simple little change has done (you can read why by clicking the above links), particularly in high-volume places such as airports and malls, has been to reduce the amount of cleaning required, the chemicals required for cleaning, the water used for cleaning, and on and on. Maybe it is worthwhile to think about how we can make just small changes to what surrounds us to change our perceptions of use. It would be interesting to see how the learning is passed between people with these changes.

What came first and the wisdom from the world

I hope to tie together a few threads of thought with this post today. I mentioned in a couple of posts (here and here) the fallacies and deficiencies of the current framework of "sustainability" thinking. What the dominant framework does is the following - it puts "economic" sustainability on the same footing as "social" sustainability and "environmental" sustainability. The global North, i.e. the agenda-setter and dominant rhetorical force, has successfully morphed the concept of "sustainability" to mean "sustainable development," the foundation of which are these deeply ingrained notions of what "economy" means (and you can read about that in those posts I've linked). At the very heart of this "economy" is the notion of technology, and the new. The new has come thick and fast in our world, and not a month goes by without us being bombarded with advertisements and images of what other people think is "good" for us. New knowledge is being successfully marketed and turned into products so that people can make money. In fact, it is this notion of new knowledge that the global North, and increasingly the large nations in the global South, thinks will get us out of this "sustainability" bind. But, with this new knowledge has come constantly increasing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.


This world existed long before humans arrived on it. Epochs and eons have passed, species have gone extinct, and new forms of life have constantly evolved and appeared. A tree is the outcome of millions of years of slow and steady and constant evolution. A tree is a beautiful example of the outcome of a dynamic equilibrium; the tree has responded to changes happening so slowly that you cannot see them in happening now. These responses are delicately balanced, guaranteeing the survival of the tree. Such is the wisdom of from world. This wisdom stems from the dynamism of population and the unforgiving forces of air, land and water, driven by the sun. This is the wisdom that has led to the adaptation and evolution of rivers, lemurs, bats and snow leopards. With this wisdom, we realise that how these creatures have behaved and evolved has allowed them to fill a role and fill a place, just perfectly. This has inspired the greatest human thinking. Countless people have wondered about nature, and I hope we all have. The wisdom from the world has imprinted on Onwas and the Hadza, who have survived successfully for thousands of years, and are in tune with place and time. Yet with our definition of "economy," we have moved away from this natural wisdom, and are now desperately hoping we can get it back. But this wisdom exists, and is lying dormant. Our "economy" we feel is the best driver of human action, and is the only raison d'etre for human life. Some hope that the "economy," based on new knowledge, can lead to "sustainability." In effect, we have tried to, in a couple thousand years, tried to accomplish what it has taken everything else on Earth much longer to come to - a dynamic equilibrium, constantly evolving, yet inherently sustainable.

On ownership

One of the defining concepts of our society is the notion of ownership. This goes far beyond the territorialism that animals may display to mark and guard their places of habitat. Human notions of ownership stretch beyond the bounds of their habitat. We have a system in place which monetarily values places other than habitat in a way that drives humans to "own" or "buy the rights" to those places. For example, much of the land in the US is actually leased to oil and gas companies for drilling (and this has not stopped those companies from trying to drill offshore, in virgin waters). But we also want to stretch our influence to the habitats of other humans, too. Fracking for natural gas is a great example - people from elsewhere are trying to buy off people from elsewhere because those people are unfortunate enough to have natural gas bound up in geologic structures under their land. In fact, our knowledge revolves around how we can own what nature hides - physical laws, chemical reactions and photosynthesis. In this sense, ownership leads to another sort of exploitation - how might we use nature and modify how it works such that we can derive the most monetary gain? Our need for ownership stretches far beyond land on Earth. Here is a woman that claims to have bought the rights to the Sun (thanks for this, Sherri!), and she fully intends to charge all users of the Sun.

It is fascinating how humans, that live individually on time scales of decades, can "own" something that has existed long before they did, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. Notions of ownership have in fact produced just the opposite of what we would want - what we would want is for our nature to sustain us for as long as possible, but in our quest to own, we have degraded. Just the reverse of how we think is what might be more logical- we are owned by this land, this air and this water, and our fate is tied to our respect to those forces.

Ownership also plays a significant part in our daily lives, and its influence also leads to much waste and trash. My laptop computer is now seven years old; it hobbles along, and at times sounds like a jet aircraft at full throttle trying to take off. I have not yet bought a new computer. In fact, I have used the computer just a couple of times in the past four or five months. Many of you might say, "How have you been living so long without a computer?" My answer is simple - there are computers in my lab, and all around campus, and so I don't need one of my own. I guess it would be more "convenient" to have one of my own, so I would not  have to bug my housemates to look something up every now and then (although I think I may have asked them just a few times in the past few months). Had I felt the need to own a computer of my own, I would have had to acquiesce to all of the trash and violence associated with such a purchase. (I know there are tons of people who hoard used computers and sell them - that may be an option.) But in general, there are things that all of us don't need to have, and maybe we can make due with just one lawnmower for a row of five homes, or and older family may be able to hand toys down to a younger family. A refusal to have one's own may in fact lead to stronger, more resilient social bonds.

Guest blog #11 - Dr. Jack Edelstein's thoughts on conservation and entropy

"What do we mean by the term ‘energy conservation’ or more generally ‘resource conservation?’  At first thought, the answer seems obvious:  conservation means using less stuff, thereby making a smaller environmental footprint than would have otherwise been made, and avoiding a certain disruption to the resource base (e.g. biodiversity) that would have otherwise occurred.  What, exactly, is it that needs to be conserved, and how does conservation actually work?

From a practical point of view, absolute conservation would completely preserve the current status of the earth’s biodiversity -- by neither depleting any natural resource (e.g. wildlife, trees, water), nor by depositing any man-made matter onto the environment (e.g. trash, smog, and carbon).

There are four ways that we can conserve energy, and any other [non-renewable] resource -- 1) consume less, 2) eliminate waste, 3) increase efficiency, 4) substitute renewable.  We will describe each of these four conservation methods through the simple example of a shower. 

The first way to conserve is to actually consume less water by reducing the shower time, and/or by reducing the flow of the showerhead.  Another way to consume less is to lower the water temperature, thereby reducing the amount of energy used (in heating the water).

The second way to conserve is to eliminate or reduce waste.  We distinguish waste from excess by defining the former as the act of consuming resources without deriving any value -- as in the case of a dripping showerhead. Excess is much more subjective than waste -- e.g. taking a very long shower is not wasteful in the strictest sense (since some marginal benefit or utility is being derived), but at some point it becomes excessive in that the derived benefit is miniscule.

The third way to conserve is to increase efficiency by utilizing less resources in the creation of a given unit of output.  In the case of a shower, improved efficiency can be a low-flow showerhead, or a more energy-efficient water heater.  However, efficiency by itself does not lead to conservation, due to the Jevon's paradox (as explained in an earlier post by Darshan).

The fourth way to conserve is to substitute renewable resources for non-renewable ones.  An example is utilizing solar collectors to heat the water (instead of fossil fuel), and harvesting rainwater instead of drawing water from an underground aquifer.


                    Reduce         Eliminate     Maximize      Substitute   
               consumption        waste         efficiency      renewables   
Cost               Zero             Low       High          ???    

The expenses associated with these four conservation strategies range from zero to high cost -- depending on the level of technology required. Reducing consumption costs nothing since it is entirely a behavioral strategy.  Similarly, eliminating waste generally entails a behavioral approach augmented by a low input of technology. The ‘efficiency’ approach is generally technology-intensive and therefore expensive, and often risky.  Finally, the cost of substituting renewable for non-renewables is quite variable.  It is generally high in that it usually involves an advanced technology component, but it can also be low, as in the case of rain-water collection discussed above. 

A review of the academic literature as well as the general media reveals a strong bias toward energy conservation strategies that are based on the efficiency and renewable options -- the two more expensive options.  In other words, the two conservation approaches that cost the least and could have the most immediate impact -- i.e. to use less and to eliminate waste -- are the ones that are least supported, and often outright ignored. (There are a number of reasons for this, which will be addressed in a future post)

The power of Darshan’s project is that it represents by far the most cost-effective approach to conservation --  simply using less (though it may not actually be that simple to do).  By using absolutely less matter, Darshan is impacting the entire production chain associated with the consumption of physical goods.

Perhaps that’s why the name of this project is “Entropy”. If I understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, one of the ideas it posits is that the physical world is constantly seeking a state of equilibrium, through a process defined as entropy.  As an outcome of the forces of entropy, the planet attained a state of equilibrium many millions of years ago, and this equilibrium was maintained until homo sapiens started roaming the earth.  The activities of humanity are increasingly disturbing this equilibrium, and the newly resultant equilibrium may become (or already is) inhospitable to sustained life.

The essence of conservation, then, is to understand that the equilibrium into which humanity entered was ideally suited to the evolution of homo sapiens and all other life.  Conservation entails respecting that equilibrium, and reduces our interference with it. Using less is the most powerful way we as individuals can conserve the planet."

~Dr. Jack Edelstein.


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I love his last paragraph.

Why not trash Yellowstone?

It is fair to say that most of us think that trash is worthless; trash is indiscriminately thrown “away” and banished. It is rare to see someone adorn spaces with trash, the objects in our lives we choose to discard. Landfills are located in remote areas (both geographically and from those with the most power - instead they are located closest to people who are treated as worthless). Our society have become desensitised to the existence of trash, and have condoned its production for the sole aim of “moving forward.” Fully extending this line of thought, however, leads us down paths our society refuses to consider. When we say trash is worthless to us, that means that the places that the trash ends up are also worthless to us. This means that land, air and water are worthless to us, or can be minimally respected, as long as they can continue to provide services to us unimpeded, or through human intervention and “ingenuity.” A second thought will not be given to a piece of land, any piece of land, as long as industrial agriculture can produce monocultures of crops that can provide people with “food.” As long as it continues to rain, we are fine with trash ending up in our oceans. As long as we can breathe, incinerators can continue to spew toxic chemicals into our air. 

Trash continues to flow as a fluid, down paths of least resistance, ending up degrading the sources of our existence – land, air and water. Let us focus on trash and the land and landfills. Trash continues to fill landfills unabated, with complex politics and policies now surrounding their operation. But what is forgotten, or not considered in these politics and behaviour, is that a landfill is actually a piece of land. This land, unfortunately, has been so "undervalue" that people have chosen to take some of our most "worthless" objects, our trash, and store it there. Some may say that the land we use as landfills wouldn’t have been used any other way. That land would be a "waste" of space; indeed, given our ethic of man over nature, this space must be used to take full advantage of what we as humans have been granted by nature – ample space to spread our influence. Such a space, desolate and uninhabitable in some cases, now can bear scars of our humanity, and become a place that is no longer left untouched. Yet, just because a tract of land is not being used by man, or cannot be used by man does not mean that it is of no value. Now one might ask, "What is the difference between this land, converted to a landfill, and another tract of land, say Yellowstone National Park?" I would say there is no difference in their values as pieces of land that make up this Earth. Each is mystical, each cannot be comprehended fully through science, numbers and technocratic, money-minded thought. The only difference is the difference in human perception through the assigning of monetary value to something purely aesthetic to human senses – we have monetarily valued one piece of land to be much greater than the other. Some may argue that, actually, Yellowstone is invaluable culturally and represents the pinnacle of human conservation of nature, that it represents the grandiosity of nature, its rugged, uncompromising terrain, and the complexity of ecosystems and the geological activity the Earth can support. (Yet this thought has not stopped people from blowing up the tops of beautiful mountains to reach coal laying below the surface; land is "valued" monetarily. If rare earth elements were to be discovered below Yellowstone, Krishna/Allah/Buddha/Science forbid, I am positive the mining industry would line up outside a Congressman’s office seeking approval for mining plans.) But I argue that this land being used as a landfill is as valuable as any other space on Earth, including Yellowstone. A landfill is a piece of land that is made of Earth. It is a piece of land that has been exposed to the weathering elements of rain and wind, that supports complex ecosystems of organisms and the magnificent creations of nature that we barely comprehend. Each piece of land is unlike any other piece of land on Earth, and has been exposed to the forces of nature in a different way than any other place on Earth. 

Now we have two vastly differently valued pieces of land before us - a storied national park, where people from all over the world come to see, to experience and to feel connected to nature, and a landfill, a place valued by humanity so insignificantly that we have no qualms with sending what we value the least, the trash of our culture, to sit there. But if we were to value the uniqueness of each piece of land (as well as each square mile of ocean, each parcel of air), there is no reason that we should send our trash many miles away. Indeed, if we were to produce trash anyway, why not trash Yellowstone, or our backyard?

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Here is a post about experiencing nature, and the trash borne of it.
Also, here are two links (1, 2) that Arnab shared with me regarding the trashing of Mt. Everest.