In ‘renewable energy’ class today ‘The 11th hour.’ It was a spectacular 92 minute infomercial. Pretty one dimensional in terms of the production side of things, but still the content was amazing. I mainly enjoyed it from a humanitarian point of view, and relating to my future/career choice as opposed ‘let’s become hippies, work out photo voltaic calculations, live in the wild and vote green’ all of a sudden. As I have applied to study urbanism, I now know more that I need to change cities for the sake of nature as opposed to changing them for aesthetics, geared to wealth, capitalism and glamour.They need to live at one with nature, giving nature equal rights, as opposed to dominating it, like an infection, which is effectively a microcosmic description of the state of the earth. Human life, growth and settlement is in fact an infection on the planet, depleting it’s potentials.
The key things I got from it:
-The economy is the human driver and not nature
-Politics and money rule over science and nature
-Consumerism as an ideology of current civilisation is our current collective culture and needs to be altered away from capitalistic production to sustainable production.
-The root of the problem is our attitude and culture. Evolved to realise our brains are an asset to which we feed off of the idea of future. Adapted to notice opportunity and avoid danger. The capacity of human mind’s are our strength and vice, so only a cultural ideology switch can save our planet now.
-We need to respect earth and give it back its rights, not see it as a possession but an equal. We are at disharmony with it as opposed to treating it like our family/home. Our planet is rebelling as we have ignored warning signs.We are in debt to nature. E.g one study calculated that nature does what it does and costs $35 billion per year and the sum of all the world’s economies (what humans do) reached $18 billion, therefore nature can do nearly twice as much as we do. We are the inferior force.
-Industrial revolution was the critical point that made nature a resource as opposed to a home. Before that we lived purely on sunlight. Ancient sunlight, stored in fossil fuels we saw as ‘limitless’ because we became greedy and wanted too much too soon.
-Exploited technological advances to create human biomass via fossil fuels + carbon via supermarket and transport.
-Super system=biosphere. Sub system=economy. The economy is ever growing (geared for growth). The biosphere remains the same size. the sub system is encroaching on the super system, at opportunity cost. (What we give up, which in this case is nature and the state of the planet)
-Human expectation, desire and dreams is infinite. The earth’s resources to meet them are finite. Thus we need to compromise and we are increasing our chances of a quicker extinction. Extinction is part of natural life, because it is a response to environmental condition changes. As we increase the rate of change, we are killing ourselves.
-Human’s design for aesthetics (aka consumerism) nature does not. Earth designs by using the natural inputs and forming an output. We design the opposite way. Take the idea of a spider, who uses natural materials to create a web and thus survive. We overproduce a design so that it exceeds more than it needs to to meet a function. Web is natural beauty. A building is a product of cultural symbols and ‘showing off.’ Sustainable design doesn’t value aesthetics. Design a building like a tree. Design cities like a forest, whereby we respond to nature and how nature designs things to meet a function.
-Need to change economy: emphasise on re-use not on ‘waste’ production, which it is currently.
MINDSET: ‘Mastery of one’s kindness to oneself + understanding of passion for place and where we live=key to saving planet’
-Planet is outward mirror of internal conditions. We as humans are an outward mirror of our inner beliefs. AKA human mind>collective culture>ideology>use of resources (production methods)>State of planet
ABOUT MYSELF: I realised more now my humanitarian nature and self analysed after the film. I don’t hardly ever buy material things, e.g. shopping or online. I tend to enjoy experiences more. i.e. food and going out= social activity. In contrast my sister is very materialistic and shops a lot. This kind of makes me sad after watching this film.
I like to save money more and I am driven by success and achieving things to help people, hence my choice of masters to 'better city life.' I always have a habit of turning switches (plugs and light) around the house and only ever charge things when they get to the lowest battery point. Cute/weird.
:)
-NB: Keep this video in the forefront of my mind. Use less energy, recycle when I can and maintain hardly ever buying ‘stuff.’ Maybe support organic goods, and products which use processes that are planet friendly?
