Climate Change

Some people argue that Climate Change does not exist, they are called Climate Deniers and there are some interesting webs that list the most famous or important of them. Here and here for instance.

The problem is that these deniers are generally supported by big companies and industry lobbies that are directly related to great CO2 emissions. So it is in their convenience to misinform the general public.

Even if this influential and powerful group of people is trying to present studies and data to prove their beliefs, the reality is that all the new studies presented by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Program, for instance, found that the Earth is warmer than before and that this will produce consequences in the global climate.

Global Change has released their findings in a report last month and some of their graphs just talk by themselves:

Global Temperatures and CO2 Concentration

Natural & Human influences on Climate Change

Past & Projected change in Global Sea Level Rise (1ft=33cm/4ft=1.20m approx)

Past & Projected Sea Ice Decline (RCP=Representative Concentration Pathways)

Acidification of Oceans

Its projected changes with a rapid emissions reduction:

Global Temperatures

Annual Precipitation

Its projected changes if the emissions increase in the actual trend:

Global Temperature

Annual Precipitation

I think that the findings are scary because I do not trust in a big change in a short-term and the consequences will transform our world, our life. We are going to live in a changing world full of challenges.

*All graphs and images from nca2014.globalchange.gov/report

Traditions

Traditional Festival of San Isidro, Madrid, Spain

I have been very interested in Social Sustainability recently. I have a really interest on how people and cities can evolve in a sustainable way and what makes a city socially sustainable.

I suppose that the fist idea would be: it depends. Depends on the kind of city, the kind of people living there (mono cultural, multicultural, cosmopolitan,…), the kind of environment that we found around the city, and so on.

I think a key issue would be to maintain and give to traditions the importance that they have and deserve. Traditions use to gather people and are linked to culture. They improve the sense of belonging among and keep a continuity along time that stays the same but  evolves at the same time.

As traditions I mean music, festivals, food, holidays and every activity that is repeated every year by locals.

In some cases these traditions sometimes become a tourist attraction and loose all its original meaning. As the Tomatina in Buñol or San Fermín in Pamplona, both in Spain. Old traditions become a product and they stop to be sustainable. Not only socially sustainable but environmentally as well.

Tomato Fight, Tomatina in Buñol, Spain. artsonearth.org

The affluence of people is so great in just a week that this small towns are not able to provide all the food or drinks (not only water but mainly alcohol) that they need, or to manage the waste that so much people produce.

In summary, these ‘in other times’ traditions are some how economically sustainable but the other two legs (society and environment) finish so damaged that it becomes a problem because people still want these festivals.

Obsolescence

The story is: one of my co-workers’ phone has died this morning. After a day of calls, she has founded that she should introduce her phone in water and say that it had felt down into the sink, so they can give her a new phone, instead of trying to fix it. Apparently fixing it would cost them more so they tell you how to trick the insurance. How crazy is that!

On one hand we have the programmed obsolescence on many devices; and on the other, the companies themselves suggesting how to avoid fixing them.

How much waste and useful (and expensive) materials we need to throw away? When is the system going to collapse?

I really think that the system, all of it, the economic, political or social side,…is not working at all. It’s philosophy is wrong.

You cannot design things thinking how long they are going to last and make them to break in a determined point. Or just produce waste and not be responsible of it. Or exploit other countries resources, destroying their environment and coming back to your country without responsibility.

 

Inter-generational and Intra-generational Equity

What is equity? It comes from Latin aequitās, from aequus, that means equal, that means (Collins, 2014):

1. identical in size, quantity, degree, intensity, etc; the same (as)
2. having identical privileges, rights, status, etc
3. having uniform effect or application
4. evenly balanced or proportioned

So, what are inter-generational and intra-generational equity?

These are one of the main moral issues when addressing sustainability. The moral duty that we should be equally with others. In this case other humans, but also with the flora and fauna of our planet.

Inter-generational equity makes reference to the most traditional definition of sustainability. Next generations should have access to the same quantity of resources and wealth than us. I would add that we, in the developed world, are using more that we should and need. So I believe that next generations will not use more or less that they need, so the majority will have more and the minority less. Hopefully we leave something left for everybody.

Intra-generational equity means that people around the world, developed or developing, should have the same resources and the same access to them. That means food and clean water as well. We know that this is not true right now and that the developed world is able to maintain its life style due to the developing one living or surviving with much less than us. That is highly unfair but we like our lives and no one wants to give up in its lifestyle.

I really think that this is affecting the social environment in the sense that it is not any more the developing world who is suffering the lack of access to resources but also the, until now, developed one, as the south of Europe, is. Countries as Greece, Spain, Portugal or Ireland start to have problems of equity and access to social services of basic resources.

Start with Big Companies

Maybe this is not my field, but I believe that you never know how you can influence on people.

Jason Clay speaks here about how they (WWF) are working with big companies in order to make their business model more sustainable. And not sustainable in the economic sense but in all senses, social and environmentally as well. They believe that if they can change the behavior of the 100 biggest companies in the world, then they can change the rules of the game.

I think it is true, true in the sense that if the more powerful ones change, the small ones are going to do the same. Also I sometimes doubt what individuals can do, even if you try to live in the most sustainable way the society that surrounds us is in many ways highly unsustainable. So maybe multinational companies and politics are the key.

Where are we going?

Some time ago I read some books of Marvin Harris. I do not remember in which one he was talking about how humans have evolved or progressed from gathers and hunters to our actual society.

At that time it was very shocked to realize that each big change in the human societies has repeated the same patterns. Boom (abundance of resources and food, growing of the population), Decadency (some elites consume too much, the rest start to live in very bad conditions, social crisis), Collapse (lot of people die because the lack of resources and food), New model (a new social and economical model emerges).

Now I really think that we have to concentrate our efforts in research and ´design´ how we want our next model to be. I really think that we are in Decadency times and that we will not be able to avoid Collapse, but we can really try to minimize its effects. We are wiser and more capable than ever before so why do not dream and work to create a better future, a better society, a better world?

The Earth is full

We are too many millions of people consuming, as Paul Gilding states, ‘The earth is full’.

The population growth is greater in the developing countries.

The ecological footprint is greater in the developed ones.

A domestic cat in Europe has a bigger footprint that a person in Africa.

It is so unfair to pretend that people on the developing world should apply sustainable models when the developed one is doing nothing.

Countries in Europe are moving backwards in terms of equity, welfare state, rights,…

This is a nonsense.

I think that the problem is so holistic that the approach should be holistic as well. Alex Steffen claims for a sustainable design that it is socially engaged. I think that we have already got past the environmental approach, we have to take the social part of sustainability into consideration.

At the end of the day everything is linked. A sustainable society lives in sustainable places in a sustainable way.

 

 

Are we collapsing?

My mother loves post-apocalyptic movies. She always says that humans are asking for a change, that we do not like how we are living and that is the reason of there are so many movies of that kind.

I do not agree 100% with that, but after reading the the text of Motesharrei, I started thinking that maybe it is in our collective memory. We maybe know, some how, that this has happened before and what is coming.

This week, an article about the collapsing of humanity has been around the media (here, here and here). Apparently, Safa Motesharrei, a Research Assistant at SESYNC and a PhD candidate has published a draft of his research that has shaken up some virtual places.

He says that the collapse of a civilization due to environmental depletion has happened before and that data suggests that we are repeating the previous patterns, so he has ran the HANDY model for different types of society that I am going to sum up in two: and equal one and an unequal one.

Apparently the unstoppable high rate of consumption of resources by the wealthy classes is the main course of the collapse of different civilizations when they totally use their resources.

The most astonishing thing in this paper for me is that the model has shown how an egalitarian society where the wealth is divided among all is the most sustainable one. A dreamed society where all of us where equal and no one would be over any one.

That´s a dream that many would not like to become true.

Poo2Loo

Behind this bizarre video there is a great UNICEF campaign in India supporting poo-free streets. Here their web and Facebook. In addition, UNICEF has an international campaign to provide toilets not only in India. Here.

2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to a safe and clean toilet. In India, half of the population has to do it in streets and surroundings. This is not only a huge health issue,  but a security issue as well. Every year, thousands of girls (women and children) are raped, and sometimes murdered after, when they were going to the ´toilet´. Here one of the latest cases.

In developed countries the sustainability is now focused on how to consume or need less energy, and sometimes materials, but in other countries there are bigger issues, issues that involve health and security. Big developing countries, such as India or Brazil, where big cities are growing rapidly but where simple actions can have a life-changing result should be the main objective of international programs.

If we want a sustainable and democratic world we should start being democratic with the people living in it.

 

Image from facebook.com/poo2loo

Climate Change

Some people argue that Climate Change does not exist, they are called Climate Deniers and there are some interesting webs that list the most famous or important of them. Here and here for instance.

The problem is that these deniers are generally supported by big companies and industry lobbies that are directly related to great CO2 emissions. So it is in their convenience to misinform the general public.

Even if this influential and powerful group of people is trying to present studies and data to prove their beliefs, the reality is that all the new studies presented by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Program, for instance, found that the Earth is warmer than before and that this will produce consequences in the global climate.

Global Change has released their findings in a report last month and some of their graphs just talk by themselves:

Global Temperatures and CO2 Concentration

Natural & Human influences on Climate Change

Past & Projected change in Global Sea Level Rise (1ft=33cm/4ft=1.20m approx)

Past & Projected Sea Ice Decline (RCP=Representative Concentration Pathways)

Acidification of Oceans

Its projected changes with a rapid emissions reduction:

Global Temperatures

Annual Precipitation

Its projected changes if the emissions increase in the actual trend:

Global Temperature

Annual Precipitation

I think that the findings are scary because I do not trust in a big change in a short-term and the consequences will transform our world, our life. We are going to live in a changing world full of challenges.

*All graphs and images from nca2014.globalchange.gov/report