He talked about the need for clean energy, more information technology and strategic alliances between Earth and other organizations and universities. The things that really stuck out for me, however, were related to the visible impacts of climate change in Costa Rica.
The 50% of people in Central America who now live in the dry tropics will soon be 80%. Not only that, but the dry season period has now lengthened, and the amount of the rain received in the wet season has almost doubled from 1.4-1.5m each year to 3.2m. This places enormous stress on the irrigation systems in place on the farm and elsewhere.
He mentioned that materials need to be managed properly in a way that eliminates or reduces waste. In order to assure that people will want to "go green," we have to make the more sustainable option cheaper and easily replicable. This is something more product and system developers in the US should pick up on. Green technology here is still the expensive option, which pushes people away from it. For Costa Ricans, it is just as important, as they don't have the kind of waste infrastructure we do. In fact, there are no certified landfills in Guanacaste nor a regional recycling program (though materials are being separated when disposed).
We, the students, then presented to Carlos our material explorations. We received feedback on possible routes our materials could take as well as more information on how rice straw and sugarcane are collected to further our knowledge on the life cycle of the materials.
I really appreciated Carlos' comments as well as his vision of the future. If we are successful, we will create new materials that nature can eat up with time and materials that are useful within existing industries.
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