Archinect - News

Global heatwave is symptom of early stage cycle of civilisational collapse

2018-08-13T18:59:00-04:00

This summer’s extreme weather has hit home some stark realities. Climate disaster is not slated to happen in some far-flung theoretical future. It’s here, and now.

Penned by Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist, recovering academic, tracking the Crisis of Civilization, the article points to a more urgent than urgent times in terms of civilisation and not merely the climate change.

Also an urgent quote from a friend internalizing the article for architecture, "I am surprised that with contemporary conditions that require a radical re-orientation and re-conceptualization of discipline and profession, architecture professors continue to talk about elements, tectonic, "Fundamentals", context, composition, scale, poche, sustainability... Bla,bla... Let's build a new ontology..."

-Alex Santander, Architect. Tijuana, Mexico

Global warming has caused meltwater to penetrate the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic

2017-05-22T12:39:00-04:00

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

Containing almost one million packets of seeds, the Global Seed Vault is intended to serve as something of a biological back-up in the era of mass, man-made environmental destruction. It's buried under permafrost, which was thought to ensure that the structure would remain impregnable for thousands of years. But already global warming has threatened this archive of living matter.

“This is supposed to last for eternity,” stated Åsmund Asdal at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which operates the seed vault. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case.

It's only August but humans have already consumed a year's worth of resources

2015-08-14T15:40:00-04:00

Humans have exhausted a year’s supply of natural resources in less than eight months, according to an analysis of the demands the world’s population are placing on the planet.

According to the Guardian article, the world's population currently consumes the equivalent of 1.6 planets a year – and, at the rate we're going, that will jump to two planets a year by 2030. But what does that mean, exactly?

Earth Overshoot Day, or Ecological Debt Day, refers to the "date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year." It's determined by the Global Footprint Network, a think tank that provides ecological footprint accounting services.

This year Earth Overshoot Day was August 13 – six days earlier than last year. That means that despite efforts to reduce resource depletion, global consumption continues to rise due to both population growth and increased consumptive behavior.

While industrialized countries have traditionally been responsible for the largest share of global consumption, this balance is shifting as the rest of the world develops.

Experts believe that humans first began to exceed the...