January 11, 2007
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Green
I wish CaptainScurvy were still around. Then I could link him to this, particularly the latter half which is about businesses and governments discovering sustainability as a much more viable model.
However, the article begins with a section on perception:
It happened to me most recently at Madrid’s new airport. One minute I was admiring Richard Rogers’ gorgeous roof, and the play of light upon curves.
But I suddenly stopped perceiving these effects as aesthetic. In place of elegant forms and vistas, I started to contemplate the vast amount of energy embodied in the artefacts, structures and processes that surrounded me.
A big new airbus, taxiing in to park, made me wonder how many thousands - millions - of pounds of matter and energy must have been used to build it.
Beside me was an elegant concrete pillar. It looked benignly tree-like with a gently curving trunk and branches, higher up, that supported a soaring roof.
But how many carbon dioxide emissions were generated during its fabrication? A ton of CO2 is emitted for every ton of concrete that ends up in a pillar - or the miles of concrete apron that stretched, in Madrid, in every direction.
Millions of tons of concrete visible to the eye. Millions of tons of emissions out of sight.
And you know what? That's exactly the kind of thing I see when I go to an airport, too. Or sitting in traffic, I'm thinking of waste, doing some dark calculation of the expense in terms of all the fuel being wasted by idling cars and lost productivity and standard of living. Or ordering a latté, I appreciate the vertiguous sense of being at the top of a continent-spanning economic chain (I buy fair trade).
Sometimes the systems-thinking vertigo is thrilling, and sometimes it's tiring.
Ultimately, I have selfish reasons for being a sustain-o-nerd, and they involve wanting to be able to go to some public place and 'seeing through' the walls like this to the other side, where something nice awaits for a change.
Comments (2)
The 'infamous' hidden costs to the environment! The infrastructure to support business...the infrastructure to remedy the environmental damage. One makes alot of $$ and one costs alot of $$...businesse's make the money and individual's tax dollars repair the damage! We want less government (incompetent or not), less taxes and a laissez-faire approach to business. Of course; capitalists will tell that this has been going on forever...and it has..through 'slave labor' since the beginning of time. Take the slave market away and then watch the costs go up! But; at least being a slave is a job. And keeps you off the streets where you become a law-enforcement problem!! And; of course the capitalists will have to build enormous pillars and walls around their properties....here we go again!!
CaptainScurvy... amazing that such an obviously intelligent, eloquent, passionate writer is also a Footprints-locking freak.
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