Ecological Design - Inventing the Future

Winner of 7 film festival awards, Ecological Design-Inventing the Future, is a 64 minute documentary history of ecological design in the 20th century, from its early antecedents in the thinking and work of Buckminster Fuller, to modern-day incarnations of Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute's hyper energy and resource efficiency, and a host of pioneers in between and beyond.  It sets up the big sustainability question and challenge of the 21st century:  bringing sustainability to scale quickly enough to blaze the new trail to the durable security and prosperity of an ecologically sustainable economy and society before the window of opportunity closes over the next 20+ years.

The original website seems to have disappeared (oh, here it is: http://www.designoutlaws.org/),  but the following links capture some of the content of the Design Outlaws that produced it, Brian Danitz & Chris Zelov (I believe it has moved to the first link at Chelseagreen Publishing; and the 2nd link at geniusloci has info on the Design Outlaws book):

• http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/ecodesigndvd
• http://www.geniusloci.com/eco.html
• http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Design_Outlaws   
• http://home.comcast.net/~flickhead/Bucky.html   (good review)
• http://www.filmwest.com/Catalogue/itemdetail/8/
• http://www.dirtcheapbuilder.com/videinfu.html

Climate Protection Manual - Natural Capitalism Solutions

[Excerpt from Natural Capitalism Solution's (NCS) website.]  The Climate Protection Manual is developed by Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS), a 501(c)3 non-profit whose mission is to educate senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society about the principles of sustainability. NCS shows how to restore and further enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and groups, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and implementation strategies for companies, communities and countries. See NCS's website:  http://www.natcapsolutions.org/

Nature is a Strategy for Design by Peter J. Pearce

Cross posted from BFI:

Welcome to Vol. 9 No. 3 of Design Science News, the e-bulletin of the Buckminster Fuller Institute Design Science News brings you news from around the world related to humanity’s option for success and comprehensive design science. It also features updates from BFI and periodic special offers for our members.

FEATURED IN OUR ONLINE STORE: Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Design by Peter J. Pearce The structural designs that occur in nature - in molecules, in crystals, in living cells - appear in this fully illustrated book as a source of inspiration and study of the design of man-made structures. In particular, the book reveals that when the geometrical modular systems developed by the author are applied to building design, the result is adaptive, structurally sound, and economical environments. Pearce’s work follows in the tradition established by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Konrad Wachsmann, and reflects his earlier close association with Charles Eames and Buckminster Fuller. Order your copy today!

Aspen Environmental Forum (3-26/30-2008)

http://www.aspenenvironment.org/

The Future of Our Shared Environment -- Today

March 26-30, 2008, Aspen, Colorado

Watch video from the Forum

The Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine host the first ever Aspen Environment Forum, in Aspen, Colorado—a powerful, three-day exchange examining the future of our shared environment.

Inspired by intellectually rich exchanges with today’s foremost thought leaders on the environment, participants will come away with a better understanding of the challenges of preserving the environment within a robust economy.

Paul Heltzel, senior producer for National Geographic Magazine Online, blogs from the 2008 Aspen Environment Forum.

Be Heard! Teens get top interviews at the Environment Forum: Gov. Bill Ritter, E.O. Wilson, Jerome Ringer, Elizabeth Vargas, Michael Totten, Jeffrey Berkus, and David Monsma. Go to BeHeardTV.com and click on Be Heard! TV at the top.

Online environmental magazine Grist covers the Environment Forum.

David Monsma, Exec. Director of the Energy & Environment Program, tells radio program Earth & Sky that the purpose of the Environment Forum is to "get at the issues." Listen.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

VIEW ALL SPEAKERS »

Patricia Nelson LimerickPatricia Nelson Limerick
Faculty Director and Chair of the Board of the Center of the American West
University of Colorado

Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute

Consider “re-engineer[ing] our relationship with engineers.” ... “If our engineers have made environmental messes—and they have—they made them at our request.”

Frances Beinecke, Executive Director, NRDC s Beinecke
Today we have a temporary aberration called “industrial capitalism” which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital.. the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that. "Now we must press our leaders to confront climate change head-on. Our message to Congress and the whole nation is: This can be done. "

HRH Basma Bint Ali, a Bint Ali
Chair of the Jordan Royal Ecological Diving Society, the National Environment Wildlife Society and the Red Crescent Society. My ultimate goal is to have integrated the green way of living in our daily life and that environmental issues no longer are regarded as a separate entity, but instead are the way we should live.

Mark Armstrong - Do-It-Yourself Alternative Fuel

Mark Armstrong's Alternative Fuel Philosophy -- If you don't like the vehicle or the fuel it drinks, make some of your own

James Nestor, Sunday, March 16, 2008  (SFGate)

[excerpt].  [Local Santa Rosian, Mark] Armstrong brushes his oily hands against his oily jeans and walks to the back of a cavernous concrete-floored warehouse, through a maze of Frankensteinian inventions: an electrolyzer that splits hydrogen and oxygen fuel, junky gas cars that run on golf-cart batteries, gutted petrol engines that gulp alcohol and a Mercedes motor that bakes bread and spits out edible olive oil.

"What I'm trying to do here is teach people to quit complaining about what they can't get," he adds, pushing his 6-foot-2-inch frame beneath a gutted 1976 Porsche 914 that he and his students are converting to a hydrolic hybrid. "I say if we really want alternative fuel vehicles, let's get off the couch and start making them."

Full Article:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/16/CMC1U1GJ6.DTL

A Paradigm Shift in Planning . . . ?

The following article weaves a few interesting strands of classic environmental planning, ecological footprint, and early sustainability and planning innovation, such as the Awhanee Principels and New Urbanism together, into implications for planning practice that points to, but does not illuminate, the needed paradigm shift.  The opening of the article is excerpted below.  So the question remains open: what is the new paradigm for planning that would be an effective response to the sustainability challenge?

A Paradigm Shift in Planning: Dealing with Climate Change and the Ever-Increasing Human Footprint, By Billy Riggs, AICP

Source:  The American Planning Association website (3-30-2008) (click here for the full article)

Existing patterns of urban and suburban development seriously impair our quality of life. The symptoms are more congestion and air pollution resulting from our increased dependence on automobiles, the loss of precious open space, the need for costly improvements to roads and public services, the inequitable distribution of economic resources, and the loss of a sense of community...¹

So begins the preamble to the "Ahwahnee Principles," written by some of the world's leading planners at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park in 1991. These principles emphasized the challenges facing planners who design cities, and worked to establish a "new urbanism" that could guide planning in the future. The truth and breadth of these thoughts are now of increasing importance as the human race considers the impacts of cities on our very existence. Statesmen and authors such as Al Gore and George Monbiot have brought to light the huge issues facing the globe in regard to climate change.

In his book, Heat, Monbiot notes that just a two-degree rise in global temperatures will lead to massive impacts, including the loss of all arctic permafrost, the death of 18 percent of plant and animal species, and a rise of one meter or more in sea level.² Water will increase in salinity, coral reefs will die, and crop yields will become minimal. Low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia will be inundated.

Many public agencies, such as. . . . [click here for the full article:  http://www.planning.org/thenewplanner/member/2008winter/paradigm.htm]

Greening San Francisco Video (2 mins)

http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=276

The Wilderness Society

We are advocates for the land. At the heart of the work we do is the land ethic, which defines a set of principles in how humans should relate to the land:   "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (Aldo Leopold). Our work is steeped in science and infused with a passion that has lasted for generations, just as the work that we do must last for generations. Since 1935, we have helped protect more than 105 million acres of America's wildest places. Our goal is to ensure that future generations will enjoy, as we do today, the clean air and water, wildlife, beauty and opportunities for recreation and renewal that pristine forests, rivers, deserts and mountains provide.  http://www.wilderness.org/index.cfm

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

WWF's unique 21st century strategy is leading the way toward massive, large-scale conservation and a sustainable future.  WWF has long known that our entire planet is an immense delicate fabric and complex set of relationships between species, people, habitats, governments and global market forces. We also know that meaningful conservation cannot take place without focusing on all of them. Through rigorous scientific and economic analysis, we have integrated our deep knowledge of conservation with an understanding of the global market forces that influence and challenge our natural world. WWF is transforming the most significant forces that threaten people and nature.  http://www.worldwildlife.org/

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

About the Pew Center on Global Climate Change: A Preeminent Resource.   The Pew Center is a non-profit, non-partisan, and independent organization dedicated to providing credible information, straight answers, and innovative solutions in the effort to address global climate change. The Center was formed in 1998 with a large grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew Center strives to inform the debate by publishing reports in the areas of domestic and international policy, economics, environmental impacts, and practical solutions relating to climate change. To facilitate dialogue among business, government, and non-governmental organizations, the Center hosts conferences and workshops on selected topics that have included: the timing of climate change policy, technology policy, and improving the state of the art of the economic modeling of climate change. Finally, Pew Center staff participates in meetings on international climate change issues, including the ongoing negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  For more information about the Pew Center visit www.pewclimate.org.

Stop Global Warming Virtual March Tops 1 Million Members

Stop Global Warming Virtual March
03/11/08   ONE MILLION STRONG AND GROWING!
We did it! The Stop Global Warming Virtual March has barreled past the one million marcher mark with a diverse range of Americans from all 50 states demanding solutions to global warming!

MORE PROGRESS!
* More than 800 cities have signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

* Over 500 Universities and Colleges have signed the Presidents Climate Commitment working to make their schools carbon neutral.

* Businesses are stepping up to the plate and taking global warming seriously as well:

• Potato chip and snack food-maker Kettle Foods has installed 18 wind turbines on the roof of its new Beloit, Wisconsin manufacturing facility.
• Kohl's Department Stores says it will pursue LEED certification for every store to break ground in 2008.
• Marriott Hotels are saving 65% on hotel lighting costs after replacing 450,000 bulbs with compact fluorescents last year.

Lenders for Community Development: (LCD)

LCD invests in people who are working to build financial, personal and shared assets in low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. LCD is the largest provider of microfinance loans in the San Francisco Bay Area, manages the largest Individual Development Account (IDA) and financial education program in the country, and is a leading financer of high-impact real estate projects. LCD channels resources into Bay Areaʼs communities that have been underserved by conventional financial institutions, and gives their residents the tools they need to build personal assets and transform their own lives. LCD has a staff of 20+, an annual budget of $2.5 million, and total assets of $25 million.  For more information visit : WWW.L4CD.com

Pharmaceuticals found in drinking water

Surprise at this development only reveals ignorance of basic principles of ecology -- the on-going cycling of compounds and elements.  With human impact beginning to reach a point of saturation, and only slated to increase continuously, the amount of compounds introduced to the system is cause for concern.  Recycling is not only an issue for manufactured products, but needs to be extended to pharmaceuticals and other chemical compounds as well.   As with hard goods, the key is initial design for deconstruction or break down back to initial elements for chemicals.  http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/homepage/x1574803042

A Green Economy Is Affordable, Stronger, and More Prosperous

The US energy industry will invest $3 trillion in power plants, refineries, and other energy infrastructure over the next 20 years.  Will this investment amplify the industry's existing contribution to the accelerating global-climate-change induced ecological-economic disaster or create a carbon-neutral, stronger more prosperous renewable energy economy and society?   McKinsey & Company's analysis of 250 technologies to reduce global warming concluded that we can accomplish the reduction without a net cost to the economy (Dec. 2007).  The EPA's economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act concluded that the cost of reducing global warming pollution will have an imperceptible effect on economic output (July 2007).  The bottom line:  we can avoid the biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis in human history without disrupting economic growth and create a stronger more prosperous economy in the process.  As Fortune 500 company executives' interest and support for national polices required to accelerate the implementation of green energy technology, but will government live up to its systems management responsibilities and implement a smart and powerful set of the needed policies? That is the legislative challenge ahead.

See Frances Beinecke's commentary (President of the NRDC):  http://www.onearth.org/article/a-strong-economy-is-a-green-economy
McKinsey Report:
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions_Executive_Summary.pdf
Only EPA Report found in search of EPA site:
http://www.epa.gov/climateleaders/documents/events/dec2007/Reid_Harvey.pdf 

Architecture 2030 Challenge

The Architecture 2030 Challenge -- development of high performance building technology so new buildings are  carbon-neutral in 2030 (using no fossil fuel green-house-gas emitting energy to operate).  Architecture 2030 is an innovative advocacy initiative focused on the architectural profession to maximize the profession's contribution to sustainability success. It has -- and is developing -- a wealth of resources for the architecture profession and other sustainability practitioners alike.  Visit the site.  Take the challenge.  Advance your sustainability architectural practice.  http://www.architecture2030.org/2030_challenge/index.html

Is Solar Right for You?

Check out Solar4SF.org, a solar energy consumer advocacy and information site. Although some of the information and discussion is SF-specific, most of the information is useful for anyone considering going solar.  Solar4SF.org's mission is to increase awareness of solar electricity applications for homes and small businesses for San Francisco and Bay Area residents. They were motivated to create Solar4SF.org while investigating solar for their own home. Researching solar electricity is daunting, particularly given the amount of jargon, technical concepts, complex electricity metering, and myriad government regulations. Once they were fully educated they realized that solar is a no-brainer for many of us, particularly since making information readily available and easy to digest is critical in accelerating conversion to this valuable renewable resource and reducing our carbon footprint.   http://www.solar4sf.org/index.html

State Carbon Footpring Data and Maps

Erudx.com provides tools and resources which foster neighborhood-level social networking about the environment.  Check out the carbon footprint tool and the rest of the site (http://www.eredux.com)

• Data Table:  http://www.eredux.com/states/
• Map:  http://www.eredux.com/states/#CarbonMap

The Seven Principles of a Sustainable Global Economy -- The Missing Insight

[Rough Draft, 2-24-08]

In a recent World Watch Institute e-mail, Tom Prugh, State of the World (SOW) 2008 Project Co-director and Editor of World Watch, describes seven principles for a sustainable global economy (see  "Green Economics": Turning Mainstream Thinking on Its Head and Chapter 1 of SOW 2008 for a more detailed discussion).  He leads with the statement that "Ideas about how the world works that don't accord with reality can be unhelpful" and goes on to say that it "is especially true about mainstream economics. But in recent decades, economists and researchers have suggested a variety of reforms that would make economics truer, greener, and more sustainable." 

Although the seven principles are likely to be characteristics of a sustainable global economy, there is no discussion of how these reforms would be implemented or how the principles would actually be incorporated into dynamics of economic commerce, either as drivers or results.  In addition, although correctly noting that the human economy resides within and receives many inputs from the environment, the discussion still resides within the traditional paradigm of most discussions of the economy and environment, that the environment is somehow non-economic, and secondary in value to economics. Thus, when push comes to shove, and hard decisions need to be made between "environmental" values vs. "economic" values, the environment always loses, because, after all, economics is about core bread and butter human needs whereas the environment is simply about secondary (at best) aesthetic values and no true import, or none that can be afforded, for human life and society. 

The key and truly transformational insight that ecology and ecological economics have been pointing towards, but as yet not illuminating (either fully or sufficiently), is that the environment IS the economy. Damage to the environment is not simply environmental, it is economic in it's truest sense of wealth (read life support) production or destruction.  Without reforming the accounting system of economics, let alone the tools and processes, all reforms to date will not produce an ecologically sustainable global economy.  Current accounting actually values much economic activity as wealth production when it is in fact wealth destruction.  This fact is only revealed when the environment is seen for what it really is, the planet's economy. Correcting the accounting system would be the key change that would drive the current economy towards sustainability.  Of course there are many other aspects of the transition, but those are topics for other journal entries, papers, and books, some of which have already been written.

World Water Day (03-22) - Net Impact

Water is crucial for sustainable development, including the preservation of our natural environment and the alleviation of poverty and hunger.  World Water Day - Saturday, March 22 - is a global day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than 1 billion people world-wide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Celebrated since 1993, World Water Day was designated in 1992 by the United Nations General Assembly, and with each passing year the observance grows larger and stronger with events and activities around the world.   (Source:  Net Impact Weekly, Feb 20, 2008;  http://www.netimpact.org/associations/4342/files/20080220.htm)

California's Climate Action Team Embraces the Climate Challenge

  California's Climate Action Team embraces the innovative challenges of reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 - a reduction of about 25 percent, and then to reach 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.