A New Story: Reversing Global Warming
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Very exciting times:)
Yes, you are right we are fighting for our Earth, our home and our lives.
I walked the streets of Seattle and the streets of Quebec with thousands of other citizens. I talked with them, protested with them, laughed with them and threw canisters with them.
We can talk about the problems of our present system and it's unacceptable situation. We all may boycott and protest, which are very important. But what I feel is needed is a plan - we need a new story, a new vision, a new place we want to go and arrive at in the future.
If I may, may I spark your imaginations?
We see a world that is infinitely connected, where our cities are forests, cleaning the air and being homes for many species.
Our homes create excess energy through ecological design architecture made of local materials. This anticipatory design science uses the abundant solar energy when it is cost-effective. Therefore perhaps some day paying for part of our home taxes by selling hydrogen back to the grid. This energy is created all the time by the way our homes are designed. Meaning by its very existence it creates energy (assets) for our economy.
When cities are built like these centralized power plants of today will not be needed.
Our food is all organic and safe, grown in huge neighbourhood farms using our biological excrement to create rich, black healthy soil where families of young and old citizens work together among their crops.
Political and economic power is in the individual citizens hands because they have control over energy, food and locate materials.
Clean fresh water, clean air, healthy soil and safe materials replace cancer, garbage, toxins, pollution, pesticides, herbicides and nuclear waste because everything we make and use are designed from the start to be totally safe for soil and biology (biological nutrients) or totally safe and perpetually up-cycled as products for industry (technical nutrients). This is where the molecules are designed to come apart and go back together again forever, therefore eliminating the concept of waste.
When this happens nothing goes to the landfills or incinerators and we stop mining the Earth’s lithosphere because we have an abundance of healthy and clean, perpetually up-cyclable materials for our culture’s use.
The tops of our factories, buildings and homes are native grasses and native bushes creating habitat for the children of the natural world.
The pollution from the factories is extinct because we have designed out the mercury, the cancer, the bio-accumulative substances, sulphur dioxide, nutrius oxide, carbon dioxide and the chlorine because the filters of the future will be in our heads not on the ends of pipes – intellectual filters.
Instead the factories are in residential areas because they delightfully nourish biology. This is where our factories produce oxygen, clean water, organic food, and healthy soil and they are also favorite places for children to play.
The factories use the abundance of solar and wind and geothermal energies. The solar collectors and the wind turbines are perpetually up-cycled after their 20-30 year life of collecting energy. They then are redeployed after being refurbished in cities. Each farmer could get one turbine so they can stay on their farms and produce another cash crop: hydrogen. This hydrogen is then sold to factories and the auto industry.
The farmers will grow hundreds of different organic crops making livelihoods far more secure instead of insecure monocultures. This is where we ask nature what it wants to grow here, instead of telling it what we want.
Humanity instead of trying to reduce global warming like the Kyoto Agreement is trying to do; humanity begins to be engaged in reversing global warming.
People come and relax in front of these huge 600 foot slow, silent wind turbines because they soothe and relax people like they were at the beach or coast.
This is where sustainability like politics is local and war is unheard of.
This is where global business and local business act together for mutual benefit, meaning global business supplies up-cyclable electronics and nutrious vehicles etc in locally run factories while local and family businesses supplies organic food and local materials.
This is where the 20th century business strategy of only measuring the bottom line or economics is thrown out the window and replaced with the triple top line business strategy where it measures health and fecundity in ecology, social equity and economy. This way when all of these cornerstones are optimized the multiplier effect is unbelievable.
This is where the question of capitalism is also replaced from being “how much can I get for how little I give?” to “how much can I give for all that I get?” therefore this is where capitalism is replaced by eco-effectiveness.
This is where instead of nature being resources for humanity’s use, humanity becomes resources for nature’s use.
We celebrate the fact that we are all different and we respect and celebrate those differences. We grow different cultures and rituals while continuing to question and love everything.
William McDonough’s work, eco-effectiveness is a unified philosophy that - in practical and demonstrable ways - is changing the design of the world. (Time Magazine 1999)
Books:
Silent Spring (1962), The Ecology of Commerce (1994), Natural Capitalism (1999),
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002),
Biomimcry: Innoviation Inspired by Nature (1999)
Online Lectures:
http://wesley.stanford.edu/Multimedia/lectures/mcdonough.ram (Feb 2003)
http://wesley.stanford.edu/multimedia/Lectures/Benyus.ram (Jan 2003)
Audio:
http://talktotara.com/health_mind_body.php under Cradle to Cradle
http://evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=378
http://www.savvytraveler.org/show/features/2002/20020628/interview1.shtml
http://wpr.org/webcasting/ideas_audioarchives.cfm?Code=hoe under McDonough
http://www.kpbx.org/news/poverty/mcdonough.htm
http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/mcdonough/
Academic Journal on the Triple Top Line (2002):
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6VNW-46SFFYP-8-...
I feel it is time to engage and wage full-scale peace. What do you feel?
Peace and Opportunity