BBE 1002: Biorenewable Resources

With the harmful effects of climate change rapidly approaching, it’s only natural to want solutions. Given how nature has survived for millenia without human intervention, what better way is there than to just step into a place, largely unencumbered by humans, and just look at what nature has built? When I’m in a place like that, and I hope you’ll agree, one of the first things I notice are just the tons of lush, large trees all around. And something pops into my mind: could wood be the answer to the woes of climate change? ...

The things that make up everything we use and consume often seem mysterious, but they don’t have to be. Merriam-Webster defines a feedstock as the raw material supplied to a machine or processing plant1. But everything needs to come from somewhere; we can’t just magically synthesize things out of thin air. Plants grow in a very specific way that happens to make them very suited for use as a renewable resource: photosynthesis. Photosynthesis involves the plants using the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide molecules and water molecules into sugar molecules and oxygen molecules. Plants require (almost) no resources, are able to be planted indefinitely, and can be used in the form of biomass to help us produce products or energy, thus making them the perfect biorenewable resource2. ...

Again and again on the news, there is a constant barrage of news about climate change: tales of people losing their homes and entire livelihoods over natural disasters like wildfires or tsunamis; ever-increasing warnings from experts over parts of the world or oceans being uninhabitable; and above all, an ever intensive growing doom and gloom that seems to surround it all. The ebb and flow of the news may seem dizzying, but with the key details behind how resources and human consumption go into climate change, things might become just a bit clearer. ...