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News :: Environment |
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Reversing Global Warming. |
Current rating: 0 |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
07 Mar 2004
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China has already started. |
Take down the coal towers and see the carbon and nitrogen as assets for huge organic farms.
China has already started in 2003
http://www.npr.org/programs/npc/2002/020424.wmcdonough.html
The proposal for reversing global warming is this link, while we transform into the solar hydrogen economy.
http://naturealways.tripod.com/transformationofthe21stcentury/id10.html
Peace and Opportunity. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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A New Story: Reversing Global Warming. |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Apr 2004
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Very exciting times:)
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, building 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-8-1&_cdi=6189&_orig=search&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2002&_sk=999909996&view=c&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkWW&_acct=C000051238&_version=1&_userid=1067228&md5=ff0cfd505daa841c5537b6610d8f357e&ie=f.pdf
I feel it is time to engage and wage full-scale peace. What do you feel?
Peace and Opportunity |
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Wind Turbine Factories in Thunder Bay’s Future? |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 Aug 2004
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Appeared in Thunder Bay’s Chronicle Journal July 10th, 2004
Wind turbine global demand is exploding at 40 per cent a year. Yes, those huge, slow, quiet, elegant energy producers. In the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, energy from wind is now cheaper than natural gas which is why Warren Buffet and his son are building a 310 megawatt wind farm in Iowa.
The city of Thunder Bay, Ontario on the north shore of Lake Superior is an ideal location for wind turbine manufacturing plants because it is in the middle of Canada and North America. Thunder Bay itself is an industrial city with the second largest inland port in the world. Both the port and city are essentially sleeping. It is time to wake both of them up. We can build wind turbine factories here, manufacture these gentle giants designed for disassembly and ship them everywhere.
Wind turbines enjoy the benefits of mass-production where the more we make the cheaper they become. In factories around the world only 3,000 wind turbines are manufactured, in contrast to the automobile industry, which makes 17 million vehicles a year. Imagine when we get to scale!
Would you like to build good long-term jobs and the clean, green economy of prosperity where we profitably fly passed Kyoto. Thunder Bay would you like to build these factories here, you have all the assets? |
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Design for Disassembly |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Oct 2004
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Published in Lakehead University’s campus newspaper The Argus on October 11, 2004
In the First Industrial Revolution businesspeople and engineers designed products to be cheap and look nice so that the masses could have access to them. However, what happens to these products (cars, computers, toys, clothes, etc) after we are finished with them? Well, they are sent to the landfills or incinerated. Then industry goes out to look for new resources to make more cheap and pretty products.
We all know that waste is strangling our system; just look at Toronto’s situation. Whether we are talking about solid waste, pollution, water or soil contamination or highly toxic nuclear waste; waste is strangling our system.
The official proposals for the waste management are reduce the waste, reuse the materials, recycle the products, refuse to buy them and regulate the toxins. However good-willed this strategy is, it does not address the inherent problem of our system: our system creates waste.
The Next Industrial Revolution is geared to eliminating the concept of waste. Yes, eliminate the very concept of waste by design. Where in nature do we find waste? Nature has no concept of waste; in nature waste equals food for another organism. Why not design our system do the same and cycle nutrients either for the natural world (biological nutrients) or for the world of human industry (technical nutrients)?
Imagine this: Factories in Thunder Bay manufacture wind turbines and ship them everywhere for deployment as clean energy producers. Then the molecules of these wind turbines come back to the factories after their 20 – 30 year lifespan. Yes, I mean design these wind turbines for disassembly so they constantly come back to the city.
What are the advantages? Well, firstly, if these machines were designed to come apart then industry would get new high quality resources for new wind turbines. Therefore we could stop the mining of the Earth for new material. Secondly, all the materials would be totally safe for children of all species because why would we want to circulate materials that were toxic? Thirdly, the workers in these Thunder Bay factories would have endless work because every time these turbines come back to the city their molecules need to be taken apart intelligently and effectively and then rebuilt into new technical nutrient wind turbines.
To date, industry has created technical nutrient carpets (Shaw, Honeywell, BASF), polyester (Victor Innovatex), window shades (MechoShade), and the 2002 treeless book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is itself the first technical nutrient designed for disassembly and infinite up-cycling.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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The Nation of China has adopted Cradle to Cradle Design |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
30 Oct 2004
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Published in Lakehead University’s Argus Student Newspaper October 25th, 2004
The nation of China has 1,300,000,000 citizens and is the fastest growing economy in the world. This summer steel prices rose significantly mainly because China bought up so much of the global steel production showing the economic power of the Chinese nation.
Now imagine if the Chinese economy industrialized using the same design as the United States and Europe with toxic garbage everywhere. In the epic documentary The Corporation Ray Anderson states “every life support system is in decline…there is not one published, peer reviewed paper published in the last 25 years that would contradict this scenario”.
The designers of Cradle to Cradle Design, William McDonough and Michael Braungart, presented to Chinese officials in 2002 showing that the circular industrial design powered by the sun is actually based very much on the ancient Chinese practice of precise nutrient flows for 4,000 years of permanent agriculture. The Chinese recognized this immediately.
Now through the China US Center for Sustainable Development the Chinese are converting their entire economy to work with nature. They are taking down the coal towers in Shanghai and Beijing to use the carbon in greenhouses (http://www.npr.org/programs/npc/2002/020424.wmcdonough.html (43: 55/ 58: 30)), they are rebuilding 5 cities, they are redesigning the building construction protocols to be green, they are setting up huge manufacturing facilities for wind turbines and solar panels and collectors.
Ford announced this summer that they are building a 3rd automotive plant in China. Since, Ford is very excited about Cradle to Cradle Design this factory will be a model of human industry working with nature.
“The authors, McDonough and Braungart, and China share the goal to make the book ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ as widely accessible and affordable throughout China as possible” www.chinauscenter.org.
The ship of human industry is turning.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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The Model U and Ford’s Transformation |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Nov 2004
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Published in Lakehead University’s Argus Student Newspaper November 15th, 2004
Imagine a vehicle powered by solar derived hydrogen, the tires are biological nutrients made of corn providing vitamin C and E to the natural world. The seats and interior are nutritious fabric and material. After a 5 year lease the vehicle and its molecules were intelligently and effectively taken apart and reassembled into new vehicles infinitely.
This vehicle is Ford’s Model U concept car, the first Cradle to Cradle vehicle. The designers call it the Model T of the 21st century.
Environmentalists will cheer because these vehicles create no carbon emissions therefore no global warming, they require no new metals because of closed loop cycles so mining is not required, they give nutrition to all surrounding life by giving positive emissions. The workers will cheer when these vehicles come back to the factory to be up – cycled creating constant employment. The business people will cheer because the vehicle constantly generates revenue every time a vehicle is leased, there are no regulation fees because there are no toxic emissions, there is no waste management because everything is valuable nutrients for the automotive industry. The entire process is powered by the solar hydrogen economy.
Ford began this transformation in 1999 and their largest factory in Dearborne, Michigan which I visited this past summer, now has the largest habitat roof in the world (12 acres), new wetlands, and a new young forest.
Globally, Ford has 67 square kilometres of roof space which will be replaced with habitat for local birds because the habitat roof in Dearborne saved the company $35 million.
Yes, Ford is still building gas-guzzling SUV’s but the transformation of working with nature on an industrial level has begun. Consider this: over 5000 companies supply Ford with materials. So if Ford changes they change.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Cradle To Cradle To Washington |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Jan 2005
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Cradle To Cradle To Washington
Andrew T. Gillies, 12.15.04, 6:00 AM ET
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Last month's U.S. election results elicited the predictable laments from the enviro crowd. "The re-election of President George W. Bush means that polluters will enjoy four more years of lax enforcement," moaned the Natural Resources Defense Council.
But the political winds don't seem to ruffle one prominent environmentalist: William McDonough, a 53-year-old architect and man dubbed a "hero for the planet" by Time magazine in 1999. "We don't focus on politics, because they come and go," McDonough said in a phone interview last week, adding, "Republicans are very attracted to what we do."
Indeed, last January, McDonough was back at the White House, where he had previously accepted an environmental award from President Bill Clinton, expounding his ideas on ecologically sustainable design to a meeting of government officials arranged by Bush's Office of Management and Budget. "We've met with many of the departments and agencies many times since," McDonough says.
The subject of those meetings is what McDonough calls "Eco-effectiveness" and "Cradle to Cradle Design." In short, it's an effort to refashion architecture and industry so that they emulate the ecosystems found in the natural world.
An example: A regular old building acts much like a machine, powered by a central furnace and releasing sewage and other waste out through pipes. By contrast, an eco-effective building mimics a tree, drawing power from solar energy and using plant systems to purify effluents into clean water. "Waste equals food," goes a Cradle to Cradle mantra, suggesting a world where everything industry churns out can either be composted, reused or recycled into something else.
Loopy? Maybe, but some very big businesses don't seem to think so. As reported by Forbes (see: "Fabric Softener"), McDonough and his two firms, William McDonough & Partners and MBDC, have worked on projects for clients such as BP (nyse: BP - news - people ), BASF (nyse: BF - news - people ), Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ), Nike (nyse: NKE - news - people ), and Visteon). Perhaps most famously, McDonough advised Ford on how to green its gigantic Rouge manufacturing facility in Dearborn, Mich.
And, as the meeting at the White House last January suggests, there's also plenty of appeal for government. Why? While McDonough is not reflexively anti-regulation, a key Cradle to Cradle tenet is that regulation itself is evidence of design failure. In other words, if you can build a factory that emits nothing harmful, there's no need for heavy regulation.
A good chunk of today's environmental law, McDonough argues, doesn't aim for this ideal. Instead, he says, it sets out to make something less bad--reducing pollution and so on--rather than encouraging a fundamental redesign to turn the bad thing into something good.
Again, that notion has a fairly dreamy ring to it, but McDonough is quick to fire off an illustration of how it can work. In September 2002, MBDC partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste to find ways to reduce the plastics and other undesirable layers of waste found in packaging of shipments from online retailers. They issued a design challenge in March of 2003 and by October of that year had a winner: a collaboration between Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), the Allan Schluger Company and Shorewood Packaging, a unit of International Paper (nyse: IP - news - people ).
Their product, called the "Bevelope," can be adjusted to accommodate everything from DVD cases to thick software manuals and is made from recycled paperboard that can be recycled again or composted. Shorewood Packaging says big customers now using the Bevelope are Microsoft and Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group (nyse: MO).
McDonough has also been working with the U.S. Air Force on assessing chemicals used at aircraft and missile factories. "It's an odd place for us to be working," McDonough acknowledges, "but the idea is that the whole world is cradle to cradle, so it involves everything."
Everything? Not a bad business proposition.
http://www.forbes.com/home/manufacturing/2004/12/15/cz_ag_1215beltway.ht |
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End Goal of the Next Industrial Revolution |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Feb 2005
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William McDonough, international architect, industrial designer, business leader and Hero of the Planet, was given a standing ovation by all departments of the United States government after he presented this end goal and the Cradle to Cradle Design strategy in the White House on January 21st 2004.
“We hope for a delightful, safe and healthy world
with clean water and renewably power,
economically, equitably, ecologically
and elegantly enjoyed”.
The central question of Cradle to Cradle Design is:
“How do we love all of the children of all species for all time?”
In Cradle to Cradle Design we are talking about conceptually sound and hugely profitable strategies that are socially equitable and environmentally intelligent that celebrates healthy closed-loop industrial production while we regenerate the biosphere.
The latest audio (31 minutes) of William McDonough, designer of Cradle to Cradle Design is with Canadian Massive Change radio on March 23rd, 2004 (half way down the page)
http://www.massivechange.com/interviews.html
Along with many other brilliant thinkers like Janine Benyus, Wade Davis, Jeffery Sachs, Jaime Lerner, Gwynne Dyer and many more. Fabulous resources!
Now is the time to profitably and strategically build the renewably powered world together.
The decentralized, regenerative solar hydrogen economy
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=450
http://www.newstarget.com/001029.html
http://www.hydrogenus.com/advocate/ad81sol.asp
As of today February 16th, 2005 the Kyoto Protocol is now international law with 141 countries on board! |
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Changing the Design of the World |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Mar 2005
|
Imagine a world of Abundance instead of limits and fear. Where everything we make flows in healthy cycles powered by the sun.
http://www.youwerehere.com/mcdonough/
This audio of William McDonough is from the Monticello Dialogues. The Monticello Dialogues is 6 hours of dialogues with the leader of the Next Industrial Revolution.
http://www.newdimensions.org/NEW/audio-books/S986.shtml
Found through:
http://www.mcdonough.com/#
Instead of minimizing the negatives of less destructive design; we maximize the positives of healthy and regenerative design. |
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Eternal Optimist |
by Aaron Vallejo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Apr 2005
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Architect William McDonough has witnessed China’s rapid modernization and sees hope for sustainable development.
McDonough is working to bring to cradle-to-cradle protocol to China, where old buildings are being demolished as quickly as new ones are constructed.
For the past several years China has been modernizing at a frightening, almost unfathomable pace. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no precedent for it. As China has plunged headlong into the twenty-first century, American architecture and planning firms have followed, more than willing to assist government officials and newly “privatized” developers in the massive effort. China is still, for the time being, where the action is—and the scramble for work by Western firms resembles an architectural gold rush.
All this raises serious questions: What are the long-term consequences of this feverish activity? Can the Earth survive a gas-guzzling (Americanized) China? Is it already too late to develop ideas that would help China realize a more ecological future? Not surprisingly, architect William McDonough—a man whose solution to the SUV was a sustainable SUV—is cautiously optimistic on China. Like countless other American firms, William McDonough + Partners has an active presence there. Recently Metropolis executive editor Martin C. Pedersen talked to McDonough about his work in China, the future of sustainable development, and the gifts China might bestow on us.
What are you doing in China, and who’s the client?
We’re working with the China Housing Industry Association (CHIA) and a group of developers to create templates for cities based on the cradle-to-cradle protocol. What we do is examine sites—some of which are as big as 20 square kilometers—through a different set of lenses. We look at them, for example, as if we were a migrating bird: What would we want to see there in terms of evolution? We also look at it from the ground: What am I doing here? That’s one lens. Another lens would be hydrology. What if I’m groundwater, or a raindrop? So we work from the sky into the earth. We’re the master planners for seven sites. And the basic point is that if you look at the world through a new set of lenses, suddenly the ecosystem becomes your infrastructure.
Who hires you?
The government asks private developers if they would be interested in working with us. They give out the properties and work with CHIA, which is the consortium of private developers charged with building housing. It used to be central government planning, but it’s been turned over to regional authorities as well as developers because there’s so much to do. The Chinese are going to house 400 million people in the next 12 years. It’s the largest migration of humans in history. Essentially they’re rebuilding the housing stock of two Americas—in 12 years.
Is there any precedent for this pace of modernization?
Of course not, except for, say, rebuilding Chicago after the fire or Tokyo after the war.
You grew up in Hong Kong. When you returned to China in 1994, were you appalled at the environmental situation there?
I’ve never been appalled. When you see how much can happen so quickly, it’s very frightening; but at the same time, it is what it is. Our job is to work with reality, start on the ground, and then imagine what a future might look like. A number of years ago someone asked me, “Mr. McDonough, how long is this sustainability stuff going to take?” I said, “It’s going to take forever. That’s the point.” And it will take forever. Can I turn it around tomorrow? No. Nobody can. What I’m simply looking at is how we can chart a course.
These Chinese projects are huge. Where do you start?
We look at the existing situation. Everything in China is under way at a fierce rate, so it’s not a tabula rasa. Some of these projects have been master planned, and we haven’t reworked them yet. We adjust some existing plans as best we can. Others we do from scratch. What we’re looking at is developing planning templates that people can take and use for their own projects. We want to spread the word as fast as we can because this is a fierce commotion. CHIA did a mass-energy study on what would happen if all 400 million units were built with brick. They’d lose all their soil and burn all their coal. You’d have cities, but you wouldn’t have any food or energy. That’s how big this is. In fact, 174 jurisdictions have made brick illegal.
In addition to planning, your firm is also involved in the countryside.
Yes, we’re looking at how to upgrade rural housing so that we can maintain the historical farm villages. There’s a movement in China to move everyone into cities. We’re looking at how people can stay in the country and still afford to live there, where now there’s abject poverty. We want to design a house for $3,500, which represents ten years of income to a family. We’re working with BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, to develop a way of using toxin-free polystyrene foam. We’d put thin concrete skins on both sides. It’d be like big foam-core board, which we’d run on the outside of the house, like putting a big sleeping bag over it. It’s a one-time use of natural gas to make a building that’s superefficient and doesn’t need natural gas. That’s the strategy to replace brick on the large technological scale.
Can China modernize at this pace without causing long-term consequences for the planet?
This is the same as asking, Can we continue to operate the way we do without creating long-term consequences to the planet? We recognize now that no large-scale system that has deleterious effects can produce anything other than long-term tragedy. For me, we’re all dust, so the question becomes, What can we do—given the information we have—to celebrate the abundance of the planet? China offers unique opportunities as well as grave concerns. It will be the first country to do massive solarization, and that will be a gift to us because they’ll bring the price down. This has to happen because coal is the default resource for future energy use.
And that would be a doomsday scenario.
Yes, as far as I’m concerned, the discussion about coal and hydrogen is all talk. The real question is, When do we become solar? With China and India coming online, and us still trying to grow our fuel-fed economy, coal and solar are the only forms of energy available widely enough to meet soaring demand. Clearly we must create something that is cheaper than coal. Everything else is noise. It’s not a public-policy question, it’s an economic question. Don’t forget that solar energy is a form of nuclear power—nuclear fusion. It’s just that we have our reactor exactly where we need it: 93 million miles away. That’s one of the things I’m working on most vigorously in China. When I explained this to the White House, they said, “Oh no, the Chinese will get all the jobs again.” But for every job produced making a solar collector, there are four local jobs created. The Chinese will never be able to capture an American kilowatt. They can’t capture our photons; they’re inherently local. So there can be huge amounts of job creation implementing this stuff.
What has to happen in China for them to modernize in a way that’s consistent with helping the planet?
If we look at the history of production since the beginning of the industrial revolution—which followed 4,000 years of agriculture, which followed a million-plus years of evolution—we can see that the first instincts, the hard-wiring of the human species, are as hunter-gatherers. We’re opportunistic people. Then we see, with the dawn of agriculture, that we become nurturers, because we’ve become settled in place and need to understand nutrient flow. We have to keep refurbishing the soil every year in order to perpetuate ourselves, and our population grows.
In the first industrial revolution there’s a whole new range of opportunism that arrives with fossil fuels. We make ammonia to get the nitrogen out of the air. We mine phosphates, we develop a mineral-based supplement to agriculture. Suddenly, within three generations—even in China, where agriculture has been going on for 40 centuries—we adopt chemical agriculture. Why? Because we’re an opportunistic species. If we can take it, we’ll grab it.
And this supersedes our other better, impulses?
Clearly, the nurturing instinct is soft-wired. We’re hard-wired hunter-gatherers; we’re programmed nurturers. The next opportunity is to run that out. Einstein said, “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” If we look at the consciousness involved in the first industrial revolution, it was “take fossil fuels and burn them,” with the only design principle being that if brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it. That’s pure opportunism, hunter-gathering.
That’s playing itself out in China. We’re getting a huge quantity of haves against a huge quantity of have-nots. Everybody on the planet understands that’s not a tenable long-term relationship. The next consciousness we need is to merge opportunism with the nurturing instinct of ecological and social systems. What we want is a social market economy that honors both. What’s been missing is ecology, which is the famous triad of sustainable development: economy, equity, ecology. That’s what we’re bringing to our work.
So instead of a planner just coming in and drawing a grid like they typically do—and forget the contours, because bulldozers take care of that, pipes take away the water—what’s sewage treatment but a liability that you try to deal with? We look at sewage treatment as an asset. We’re going to auction [the rights] off to the highest bidder. They’re fertilizer factories that make gas. Who wants it? Who will pay the most for it? It’s a nitrogen phosphate factory that produces the cooking fuel for the city.
So I think the optimistic view would be that we come up with a way to understand opportunism and connect it to nurturing, which creates profit for business but also restores ecological systems. The pessimistic view would be that we continue with the present system—lean production producing dangerous things.
From your experience, where do you think we are now?
We’re at the very beginning of the next run. What’s fun is, I was just in Tokyo for Fortune magazine last week, giving a talk to senior business people. The positioning was really interesting, because what we were talking about essentially was our strategy in adopting the principles of Deming. Do you know Deming?
No.
W. Edwards Deming was an American statistician who went into the factories during World War II to study how woman were doing, while the men when off fighting. They out-produced the men. They had no failures, no lemons, no rejects. When he looked he found that they sat in circles, they talked to each other. They didn’t accept the idea of inspection because they didn’t want to make anything flawed, they didn’t have hierarchies, they didn’t have quotas…
They had a different culture…
They said, “We’re going to make a perfect thing, and that’s as many as we can make.” The men came back and threw Deming out, saying, “We just won the war, we have quotas, get out of here.” So he went to Japan. The highest industrial prize in Japan is the Deming prize.
I’m really interested in total quality. Now Toyota’s production system, for example, is lean manufacturing. They’re lean, very smart. They talk to each other all the time. But it’s lean production of technologies that we’re discovering to be dangerous. They’re degenerative from a planetary perspective. So we have lean technologies—lean tech making dirty tech. What we’re looking at for the future is clean-tech.
Which would be lean tech, by its very nature.
That would be clean production: Lean vs. clean. Instead of dirty tech, clean tech. The question is no longer, “How efficiently can I make this and sell it in the marketplace?” The question is, “Am I making something the right way?” Efficiency has no value, per se.
What if you’re a Nazi, right? An efficient Nazi is worse than an inefficient Nazi. So the questions is not, “Am I doing it the right way?” The first question is, “Am I doing the right thing? Then I’ll go about doing it the right way.”
If we keep doing lean production of dirty technology…well, that’s why cars are so scary. What if we did clean production of clean technology? That’s where we’re focusing in China. What are the massive, large-scale, clean technologies that the rest of the world needs that would serve in China as well? What would benefit everyone? Because if they could come up with the technologies that allow us to capture our photons, purify our water, these are inherently sustainable strategies. Sustainability, just like politics, is local. It can be only be measured locally.
If China could use its ability to mass-produce things at very low cost, then allow local communities to access their abundance of resources in healthy, delightful ways, that’s a gift that China can give the rest of us, and we’ll be very happy to outsource the production.
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1130 |
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Designing Cities of Our Future |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2005
|
Sustaining cities of our future can be seen as organisms that are alive. Cites are the sources of products from industry (technical nutrients). They flow to the countryside and then back to the city to be refurbished providing constant employment. These products are the tractors, vehicles, windmills, solar panels etc. While the countryside is where the products of nature (biological nutrients) flow from the natural world to feed the cities and then return to the countryside to rebuild or recarbonize the soils. These two giant flows of healthy material circulate providing perpetual food for industry and nature while all the children grow up healthy surrounded by rich culture and a healthy and diverse natural world.
This is a 2:24 minute video of Mr. McDonough describing cities of our future. There are now 17 new template Cradle to Cradle cities in China. Mr. McDonough is also helping Chicago to be the greenest city in the United States.
mms://ms.groovygecko.net/groovyg/clients/trueblue/billmcdonough_hb.wmv
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Building a World of Abundance |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
30 Jun 2005
|
In January 2005, William McDonough spoke to the Instituto de Empressa Spanish business school at which he is chair of the Centre for Eco Intelligent Management. He spoke of measuring legacies rather than activities for future generations and of the massive undertakings he and his associates are involved with around the world.
McDonough’s team is working with over a trillion dollars in global commerce and with the nation of China. The Chinese have adopted Cradle to Cradle Design as national industrial policy and will be building new housing, based on this circular design, for 400 million people over the next 12 years!
In November 2004 the President of China stated in front of world leaders:
“We should put in place a conservation orientation management system throughout the process of exploitation, processing, distribution and consumption of resources with the view of building a resource effective national economy and resource effective society. A well protected ecosystem underpins the growing productive forces and betters the lives of the people. We should optimize the economic structure and advocate an environment friendly way of production, life and consumption and bring about a virtuous cycle in both our ecological and socio-economic systems.”
Click here and listen to the 33:54minute presentation: http://www.ceim.ie.edu/
The strategy of tragedy has now been replaced with a strategy of change. The human culture now has an end goal:
“We hope for a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, clean water, clean soil and clean power, economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed”.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Total Quality and Global Quality is the Future of Design |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Sep 2005
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An Environmental Problem Slipping Through the Quacks
By Linda Hales Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 27, 2005; Page C01
Environmental architect William McDonough made a powerful case for a "new industrial revolution" when he planted a living roof in 2002 atop Ford's sprawling, grime-choked River Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Mich. The feat of green design is said to have saved the beleaguered carmaker $35 million in environmental cleanup costs. Birds now lay eggs in the flourishing 10-acre blanket of sedum, which cleans runoff naturally.
On Wednesday, the visionary from Charlottesville made an even stronger argument for change with a little yellow rubber ducky.
In a speech to the Industrial Designers Society of America, which is meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park through Saturday, McDonough noted that in California, the $2.99 bath toy comes with a warning. Toxic chemicals in that sweet, squishy body have been known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.
"What kind of society would make something like this to put in the mouths of children?" McDonough demanded. "Design is the first signal of human intention. What is your intention?"
No designer rose to defend the duck.
McDonough moved on to the usual suspects: belching smokestacks, chemical fumes in carpets, hazardous high-tech garbage. IQs are declining in industrial Ohio. A graveyard of plastics is growing in the Pacific Ocean. Acidification is turning coral, the bottom of the food chain, to jelly.
"Our current society has a strategy of tragedy," he said. "These are the things that are happening because we have no other plan."
McDonough has been practicing, writing and preaching ecologically sensitive, socially just design for more than 20 years. Style is one thing, but in terms of transforming the planet, no designer is more important to watch now.
He argues that a "diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, water, soil and power" is attainable by redesigning the way we make things, without waste and in harmony with nature. PepsiCo, Shaw Industries, Steelcase, BASF and Nike have signed on. But change comes in fits and starts.
On the other side of the wall, the year's neat new products and prototypes were arrayed in an exhibition hall. An Erik Buell motorcycle and Gerber's new plastic snack-and-sippy cup drew admiring glances. On the edge of the bazaar, companies that supply designers with polymers and other synthetic materials were marketing their wares.
"Benzene coming off gaskets," McDonough warned as he passed through. A clear danger of phthalates, the chemicals used to soften plastics, which have just been banned in toys in Europe. McDonough's 10-year-old son, Drew, was briefly mesmerized by a display of hot pink, green and orange plastic guitars.
How much time before we self-destruct?
"Twenty years," McDonough guessed. "We have 20 years to figure this out. We have to work quickly, we have to work systematically, we have to integrate this into everything we do."
McDonough, who is designing American University's School of International Service, was just past 30 when he kick-started the green architecture movement. Born in Japan in 1951, and raised partly in Hong Kong, he earned degrees at Dartmouth and Yale before opening a studio in New York. He designed a solar-heated house in Ireland. A 1984 commission from the Environmental Defense Fund led to a landmark eco-friendly office.
In 1994 he moved the firm, William McDonough + Partners, to Charlottesville to become dean of architecture at the University of Virginia. By the time he relinquished the post in 1999, the firm had won awards for a daylight-filled factory for the Herman Miller furniture company in Holland, Mich., and a campus for Gap in San Bruno, Calif. President Clinton gave him the only White House award so far for sustainable design.
On campus, McDonough was known as the "Green Dean," who promoted "zero pollution and total recycling." That philosophy defines the work of MBDC, the product design firm he formed in 1995 with German chemist and Green Party figure Michael Braungart. After producing clean carpeting for Warren Buffett's Shaw Industries, they published their ideas in "Cradle to Cradle" in 2002. The book has made McDonough a welcome visitor in enlightened executive suites.
Tenets of the eco-design revolution include waste equals food; effectiveness is better than efficiency; and being less bad is not good enough. Biological materials can be recycled back into the earth. Hard goods ought to be designed for dismantling and reuse. Regeneration is "the infinite game." Regulation is a failure of design.
It would be easy to close the book's synthetic cover -- no trees were destroyed -- and dismiss the dream, except that the Chinese have adopted the concepts wholeheartedly. The government plans to provide new housing for 400 million people in 12 years, McDonough says, and has published "Cradle to Cradle" as government policy. (There, the title translates into "virtuous circle.") McDonough has been hired to develop entire cities as model eco-urban environments -- without sprawl, congestion, pollution, waste or reliance on fossil fuels.
One plan shows a compact urban zone with solar-powered buildings layered with commerce and housing. Rooftops support solar panels or agriculture. Aerial bridges would allow farmers to travel from field to field six stories off the ground.
McDonough does not worry that the Chinese may beat the West to clean, efficient, affordable modernization in the 21st century.
"It's not something to be panicked about, it's something to go after," he says. "Let's go after global quality."
That pro-growth, capitalist optimism has made McDonough palatable to business. The pressure he puts on designers is relentless. Shaun Jackson, the IDSA conference chairman, expected the audience to be "inspired but uncomfortable." They design the cars, computers, skateboards, diapers and rubber duckies, not to mention the packagings, that are piling up in landfills.
"You may be making a beautiful car, but it's causing global warming," McDonough said. "What have you done?"
After his speech, a General Motors executive was waiting to shake McDonough's hand. Douglas Soller, a senior research designer for S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., maker of Ziploc, Windex and Drano, said, "He struck a nerve loud and deep."
The MBDC consultancy is about to raise the bar. Next month, it will begin to certify products for "eco-effectiveness." A Web site is imminent. One day soon, consumers will be able to shop by the cradle-to-cradle label.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601888.html
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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In Cradle to Cradle Design there is no overpopulation |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Sep 2005
|
Dr. Michael Braungart here in this 5:10 minute video explains Cradle to Cradle Design.
http://www.big-picture.tv/index.php?id=58&cat=&a=135
Human population is not a problem for the world if humans cycle nutrients and use the abundance of the sun. The astonishing reality, that he points out, is that ants weigh about 5 times more than humans. But rather than destroying the world ants build healthy soil because they circulate nutrients. They support biological systems.
Humanity can support biological systems too. Humanity can celebrate 10 billion or more people on the planet if we circulate nutrients like other biological systems. This means we will eliminate the concept of waste and conceive, design and manufacture all products to enter closed cycles: biological nutrients for the biological cycle or metabolism and technical nutrients for the technical cycle or metabolism.
Humanity requires a whole new generation of teachers and designers to make inherently healthy and safe chemistry and clean, abundant, closed loop industrial manufacturing where our systems love all of the children of all species for all time.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Building in Green |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Sep 2005
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Sept. 26 - Oct. 3, 2005 issue
Can China move 400 million people to its cities without wreaking environmental havoc? Eco-urban designer William McDonough says yes—and Beijing is listening.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9378521/site/newsweek/ |
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Bullish on the Big Easy |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 Oct 2005
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Oct 3 issue
Of course we'll rebuild New Orleans. But doing it right will take both art and science.
Whatever the guiding principle turns out to be, the country's top minds agree that a strong, coherent reconstruction plan at the outset is essential to the city's rebirth. But just how creative are we willing to get in our planning? Bill McDonough, one of the nation's most prominent architects and a world-recognized expert in environmentally sustainable design, has been doing a lot of thinking about the city's reconstruction, which he calls "Jeffersonian" in scope. The cleanup and environmental issues alone, he points out, will be immense. McDonough has some surprising solutions in mind. "All the areas that are dead should be allowed to die," he says. "We don't want to bring children back to where it's dangerous. We can use a process called phytoremediation, which uses plants like mustard or indigenous species to decontaminate instead of burying soil and burning."
Indeed, McDonough sees an opportunity for New Orleans to serve as kind of testing ground for the potential of environmentally sound planning. "We need to turn hard to soft and gray to green," he says. "That means as often as possible we need to mandate that paving be porous and make parking lots like giant sponges that slow runoff. And what we don't need paved—and you'd be amazed at how much doesn't need to be paved—we need to turn back to earth." As for planning and housing, McDonough says the city should turn low-lying areas into lakes and create habitats for ducks that would be a "celebration of species" as well as great hunting grounds. At the same time, he says, "We could build and inhabit mounds—create high ground."
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/streetlife/0,15704,1105679-2,00.html
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Manufacturers Embrace 'C2C' Design |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Oct 2005
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Beyond Recycling:
Manufacturers Embrace 'C2C' Design
March 3, 2005
By REBECCA SMITH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
With its slightly curved back and adjustable armrests, Steelcase Inc.'s "Think" chair doesn't look particularly radical, but it embodies a lot of forward thinking by the nation's biggest office furniture maker. The $900 chair can be disassembled with basic hand tools in about five minutes and most of its parts are recyclable.
The "Think" chair is Steelcase's first product to meet a design ideal being embraced by a growing number of furniture, carpeting and other manufacturing companies: using parts that can be recycled several times, and manufactured in ways least harmful to the environment. The goal is to abandon the cradle-to-grave path of man-made products that end up in garbage dumps and instead make them C2C, or "cradle to cradle."
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1186091444562.html
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Hydrogen from water using solar driven wind in Colorado |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Oct 2005
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Article Launched: 10/18/2005 01:00:00 AM business
Wind energy gets even greener
A pilot program uses wind to create hydrogen fuel, creating a "battery" to store currently unused power. By Steve Raabe Denver Post Staff Writer
Two big players in Colorado energy are searching for a way to store the energy generated by wind farms. In a pilot program, Xcel Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory plan to use wind power to create hydrogen fuel. The idea is to increase the efficiency of wind generation by using it during off-peak hours to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen would be stored, then used later to produce electricity during periods of peak demand. "In effect, hydrogen becomes the battery to store wind power," said Ben Kroposki, a senior engineer at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. Ultimately, the technology might be employed at every wind farm in the nation, officials said.
The pilot program in Colorado will be one of the nation’s first attempts to use off-peak wind generation to produce hydrogen fuel. That fuel can be stored for use during peak electric demand. It works like this: Power is generated from wind turbines during off-peak hours primarily during the night, when demand for electricity is low. The electricity powers an electrolyzer, a device that extracts hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is captured in storage tanks. The hydrogen is used as fuel in an internal-combustion engine, running a generator to make electricity during peak daytime periods.
http://denverpost.com/business/ci_3126273
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Solving the energy problem: Our SUN |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
31 Oct 2005
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The Earth has an abundance of energy; our challenge is to connect our infrastructure to it. The sun provides our Earth with about 5,000 times more energy than we need to power human systems.
Wind, one form of solar energy, is now going commercial because in many place it is cheaper than burning fossil fuels (11:28/33:53 min). Just last week 200 business people attended a wind workshop in Manhattan. In 2004 Dr. Archer published her paper concluding that we have at least 35 times more wind energy available than our human system presently uses. With the economies of scale through mass production the price of wind energy will continue to plummet.
Direct solar energy is catching up to fossil fuels within a very short amount of time. We can actually precisely calculate when that time comes. With China going solar on a massive scale this will help the rest of us by quickly lowering the cost.
“We will solve the energy problem by working with current solar income” (17:18/33:53 min)
http://www.ceim.ie.edu/index.php?item=325&lang=eng
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Nuclear is Bad Quality and Bad Design |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2005
|
To use the reality of anthropogenic global warming as an argument to pursue nuclear energy is one of the great farces of modern linear, short-term thinking. Nuclear waste will force thousands of generations to maintain constant vigilance while living in fear of leakage or spillage.
From a quality perspective this is bad quality because you not making healthy and safe products you are making something inherently highly toxic this is irreversible and irresponsible.
From a business perspective why would you make something no one would buy? Businesses should make things that either go safely back to industry forever or safely back to the natural world forever not unmarketable products. Also the idea of a free market is an illusion if massive subsidies remain tragically in place. We are not against the idea of using an economic argument as a primary one for action.
From a design perspective do you really intend to generate toxic nuclear waste? If we understand the inherent flaws of our designs then we can not say that we did not intend for them to happen. At this point in history it looks like the making of poison is intentional.
For the engineers, business people, politicians going to work everyday and making these decisions does nuclear energy love all of the children of all species for all time? Nuclear is bad quality and just bad design. The absurdity and idiocy is that this is not a trade off that we need to make!
Our future is to connect our system to the abundance of natural energy flows and celebrate our astonishingly brilliant friend every glorious morning.
The Monticello Dialogues
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Peak Oil and the End of Cheap Oil |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Nov 2005
|
Quoting the 2005 CBC video:
“Peak Oil is a theory that goes something like. The global production of oil will hit its peak and then start to decline. It doesn’t mean that the world will run out of oil. What is means is that the world will run out of CHEAP OIL. The idea has been around since the mid 50’s. Back then a Shell oil geologist named Marion King Hubbert predicted that the US oil production could hit its peak in the early 1970’s. Well, remember that oil shock back in the 70’s. It’s nothing compared to what the supporters of the Peak Oil concept think we’re in for once the decline starts. Economic collapse, geopolitical conflict and the end of your lifestyle as you know it! Here’s why.
The US (5% of human population) consumes about a quarter of the world oil production. It’s used for everything from transporting food to making DVD’s. But demand in China and India is increasing. I mean they do account for one third of the world’s population! So if China’s consumption rate holds then by about 2030 it’ll guzzle as much oil as the US does today. Factor in the rest of planet and their growth and their needs and what you’ve got is an increasing demand and shrinking supply of an infinite resource.
OPEC is the source of about 40% of the world’s oil and while it doesn’t set the price it does determine how much gets produced and that more or less determines the cost. And the price per barrel is getting higher. The record so far about 58 bucks US. Both the IMF and CIBC have warned of $100 barrels. One of the leading energy analysts (Matthew Simmons) says that could happen within the next three years. As for a date when we could hit Peak Oil? Well, that’s hotly debated and hard to determine but depending on who you talk to it could happen sometime between next year and 2020”.
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video/synd/20050505-Setup_peakoil.ram (1:57 minute video)
Suggestion: Leave behind all the SUVs and buy hybrids as we build the clean, circular, solar hydrogen economy as quickly as possible. Then you may have your SUV or rather the Model U back. In this strategy we use energy eco-efficiently while we transition towards the eco-effective cradle-to-cradle global economy of abundance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7774777/site/newsweek/ (7:59 minute audio)
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Cradle to Cradle Certification Launched Globally |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Dec 2005
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MBDC Announces First-Ever Cradle to Cradle™ Environmental Certification for Six Industry Products
Charlottesville, VA (October 12, 2005) – McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) today announced six products as the first to qualify for Cradle to Cradle™ certification. MBDC's new program evaluates and certifies the quality of products based on Cradle to Cradle™ Design principles by measuring their positive effects upon the environment, human health and social equity. "We are delighted to announce that six international firms have products which are the first to be awarded the Cradle to Cradle™ certification” said MBDC Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Alston. Named today as the first products to qualify under the rigorous evaluation system, are:
Athletic Polymer Systems, Inc. Tartan® Track
Haworth, Inc. Zody™ Chair
Hycrete Technologies, LLC Hycrete® Concrete Additive
Pendleton® Woolen Mills Classic Wool Flannel
Steelcase, Inc. Think™ Chair
Victor Innovatex, Inc. Eco Intelligent Polyester®
“All have met stringent environmental and human health standards in product design achievement," said William McDonough, the internationally recognized environmental architect and designer who, with Dr. Michael Braungart, co-founded MBDC and developed the Cradle to Cradle™ Design approach. These are the first of many firms who have engaged MBDC to evaluate their products for potential certification, which aims to help companies design and manufacture the highest quality products. Dr. Michael Braungart said, “Cradle to Cradle™ is real, not just a good idea. It supports the triple top line, improving revenues, the environment and equity - and it's fun!”
MBDC's Cradle to Cradle™ certification process examines products at many levels to ensure they meet key standards for ecologically-effective design. Basic certification levels include Biological Nutrient or Technical Nutrient -- both of which are evaluated in terms of human and ecological health, intended for simple products -- and Platinum, Gold or Silver which are evaluated to meet additional standards including energy, water and social criteria. The strict MBDC certification processes provide corporations proof and validation of their products' quality, performance, and ecological intelligence, all of which are designed to enhance a product's market value. MBDC's ecologically intelligent certification process is modeled on the promise of the "next industrial revolution" championed by McDonough and Braungart and articulated in their book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. It advocates a paradigm change in corporate thinking and widespread application of the ecologically intelligent design concepts found in nature. In recognizing McDonough as a “Hero for the Planet” in 1999, Time magazine stated “his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that - in demonstrable and practical ways - is changing the design of the world.”
http://www.mbdc.com/certified.html
On November 29th Mr. McDonough spoke of our Next Industrial Revolution to Environment and Energy TV.
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=112905&page=1 (video 12:59)
“China is the key to solar (zero carbon) energy on a planetary basis”…“We explain these projects in terms of money. And once they (corporate America) see it is a fiduciary responsibility and they can make a lot of money doing it. Then they do it”…“The real value of government and the regulatory framework is to set high benchmarks and then give encouragement to people to meet those high benchmarks [towards clean, circular, solar, regenerative production and architecture]”
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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it's a scam |
by it's a scam
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Dec 2005
|
Record Low Temperatures in Parts of U.S.
By CATHERINE TSAI
Associated Press Writer
Dec 07 12:17 PM US/Eastern
DENVER - Bitterly cold air poured southward across the nation's midsection Wednesday, dropping temperatures to record lows from Montana to Illinois. The mercury dived to a record 45 below at West Yellowstone, Mont., the frequently cold spot at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park, the National Weather Service said. The old record for Dec. 7 was 39 below, set in 1927.
The cold even extended south to the Texas Panhandle, where Lubbock shivered at a record low 6 above zero, the weather service said.
The body of a homeless man was found huddled next to a fence in Denver, where the temperature hit 11 below Wednesday, and authorities were trying to determine if he froze to death. He apparently had shed his jacket in a phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing," where victims of hypothermia become disoriented and hallucinate, deputy coroner Amy Martin said.
The Denver Rescue Mission opened all available space for the homeless.
The coldest spot in Colorado early Wednesday was Hohnholz Ranch, 50 miles northwest of Fort Collins, which bottomed out at 37 below zero, the weather service said.
In Gunnison, Alec Solimeo tended bar at the Timbers Sports Bar & Grill wearing a couple layers of clothing Tuesday as a faulty heater let the inside temperature drop to 42 degrees. The outside temperature fell to 12 below early Wednesday, the weather service said.
"I'm keeping these travelers happy," Solimeo said, adding that his regular customers apparently stayed home. "They're playing pool, drinking some Irish coffee and doing some singing."
Temperatures read like baseball scores in northeastern New Mexico _ zero at Las Vegas and 1 at Raton. "I'm sitting here in my office and it's freezing and we've got the heat on full blast," said Bill Cox, owner of the Hillcrest Restaurant in Las Vegas.
The cold follows a blizzard that blasted much of the Plains on Nov. 27-28, shutting down hundreds of miles of major highways across a half-dozen states and piling up snowdrifts 8 feet high in South Dakota.
Just two of the 157 South Dakota towns that had power problems after that storm snapped power lines were still without electricity Wednesday, but more than 3,600 rural customers were still blacked out, said Tom Dravland, state public safety secretary. Lows across the eastern part of the state dipped to as much as 20 below.
A winter storm warning was issued Wednesday in and around the Dallas- Fort Worth area, where the temperature fell from the low 40s before sunrise to the upper 20s by the end of the morning rush hour. Freezing rain and sleet fell Wednesday and up to 2 inches of snow was predicted by Thursday morning.
Elsewhere Wednesday, the weather service said record lows for the date included 28 below zero at Drummond, Mont., where the date's previous record was 21 below in 1971; 26 below at Seeley Lake, Mont.; 25 below at Laramie, Wyo., tying a 1978 reading; 17 below at Alliance, Neb.; 19 below at Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and 3 below at Lincoln, Ill.
___
Associated Press writers Roger Petterson in New York and Joe Kafka in Pierre, S.D., contributed to this report. |
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A Strategy of Change: A Strategy of Hope |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Mar 2006
|
These are three online lectures and audios of our Next Industrial Revolution based on Cradle to Cradle Design where our civilization becomes a regenerative force for ecology, culture and economy.
The Principles of Nature are the Tenets of Cradle to Cradle Design
Eliminate the Concept of Waste: Waste Equals Food
Use Current Solar Income
Celebrate Diversity
Harvard Medical School, Human Health and Global Environmental Change, December 6, 2001:
http://www.med.harvard.edu/chge/textbook/solutions/techno/transcript_2.htm#
Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, February 11, 2003, 64:57 minutes:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/Multimedia/lectures/mcdonough.ram
Instituto de Empresa Business School, Centre for Eco-Intelligent Management, February 8, 2005, 33:53 minutes:
http://www.ceim.ie.edu/index.php?item=325&lang=eng
Monticello Dialogues with 8 audio samples, 2003:
http://www.newdimensions.org/mcdonough/
Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, clean water, clean soil and clean power, economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Resources: The Revolution Begins |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Mar 2006
|
March 2006 Fast Company Magazine
Businesses large and small are finally seeing the green light. It isn't just conscience--or all those nice young people in Guatemalan sweaters--that's doing the trick. It's the sight of all that money.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/103/essay-resources.html
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Peak Oil is Imminent |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Mar 2006
|
Peak Oil is the great roll over when globally our oil production reaches a plateau and then declines. This is when demand exceeds supply and the 10 cents a cup of gasoline or $65 a barrel of oil will be far gone.
Peak Oil is the motivator for rapid, large scale change and Cradle to Cradle Design is our strategy and roadmap of that change. A global mobilization on the scale of the Second World War is urgently required to build the decentralized, regenerative, solar hydrogen economy.
Schedule Peak Oil deputations with your city halls, buy Cradle to Cradle Certified products, plant victory gardens and orchards with your neighbors and chart your transition to 100% renewable energy for every local economy and business.
Peak Oil Poster:
http://www.oilposter.org
Peak Oil Summary Video:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/broadband/catalyst/asx/oilcrisis_hi.asx
Massive and excellent compilation of Peak Oil videos and audios:
http://sydneypeakoil.com/index5.html
Roscoe Bartlett: Republican Congressman of Maryland
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=100305&page=8
http://kimaura.com/peakoil/peakoil-128k.ram
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=994
Michael Ruppert: Founder of From the Wilderness
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1344460573920722313&q=%22peak+oil%22
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
James Hamilton: Economist
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=111005&page=5
Kenneth Deffeyes: Princeton Geologist
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=072705&page=10
Richard Heinberg: Professor at New College, California
http://www.big-picture.tv/index.php?id=72&cat=&a=173
http://www.netcastdaily.com/1experts/2004/exp080704.ram
Lester Brown: President of Earth Policy Institute
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=021506&page=2
Matthew Simmons: Chair of Simmons and Company International
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=061505&page=12
http://interface.audiovideoweb.com/lnk/nj45win9664/SPE/simmonhi.wmv/play.asx
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RAM/2005/11/DenverInterviews/Simmons.ram
“There is nothing that will make sleep so refreshing other than just knowing you really contributed something that day” Roscoe Bartlett, Maryland US Congressman
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Re: Reversing Global Warming. |
by pat n
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Mar 2006
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I see now that Hartlod will most likely never be serious in any of his remarks. Thus, I will stop posting replies to Hartod at this forum.
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The Critical Importance of Risk Management |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2006
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Sci-Tech Today
April 26, 2006 10:14AM
While some companies develop sustainability strategies based on ethical motives, most firms do so for business reasons. Sustainability strategies can decrease sustainability risk costs, augment competitive positions, protect reputations and improve bottom lines.
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=122000034F34
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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Design: e2 |
by SDCC
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 May 2006
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Design: e2 is a television series that explores the global economies of being environmentally conscious. Water, energy, food, textiles, transportation, botanicals and health are all designed to optimize equity, ecology and economy.
William McDonough shares his innovative plans to make China an entirely sustainable country and the ways architecture can be both profitable and environmentally intelligent.
Brad Pitt states “By employing the intelligence of natural systems we can create industry, buildings, even regional plans that see nature and commerce not as mutually exclusive but mutually coexisting.”
When commerce is informed with ecological and social intelligence commerce becomes a healing act.
http://www.design-e2.com/
Sustaining Development Community Centre |
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