This opinion piece from the NYT has been getting passed around in some of my social circles and I found it to be a provocative read. Curious to hear what you archinectors think of it.
"Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability, a term that skews away from the idea of a perfect, ordered nature and unchanging industrial-technological conditions, and favors a vision of nature in a state of constant change, even chaos; a vision that values difference and diversity, both biological and cultural. Perhaps this revised language will allow us to see the planet not as a video-game landscape, programmed by God, that we’ve been dropped into and can either preserve or destroy, but as a bustling world of colleagues, both human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, over whom we have influence, but who also influence us."
Nature is fine with or without us. I agree that "sustainable" is a weak term and a weak concept, but "adaptive" is not much better. "Resilient" and "regenerative" are the concepts and terms I am aiming for these days.
A contractor I work with regularly is the brother of Liz Kolbert, the author of the book referenced in the article. We all share the idea that life and nature as we know it will not look the same as it does now in a few decades. We are trying to design and build houses that don't contribute to the problems, that will be resilient and durable through the changes to come.
curtkram
Aug 16, 16 1:21 pm
i agree. people won't be the first species to go extinct due to people's influence on the environment.
part of the 'rationalist' movement was the establishment of the scientific method, where really smart climatologists and meteorologists and others have developed a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.
so 'adaptability' just means more air conditioners? we know the consequence of that decisions right? for example, more significant weather events. not necessarily more rain or less rain, but it's likely to fall at one time in one area, such as floods in LA while CA burns. part of having more significant rainfall totals means additional flooding, which means less habitable land near flood-prone areas. some places it will be harder to grow food. just kind of a pain in the ass all around, but i suppose if you have a nice high rise in a good city, you'll be well-enough insulated from those problems.
JonathanLivingston
Aug 16, 16 1:41 pm
I like the article and often feel this is a more realistic perspective to take regarding climate change. I agree with these problems around the term sustainability. We are trying to sustain human life as we currently know it not the environment. However, I also have some serious misgivings about the human ability to collectively change for the better and feel that this perspective helps contribute to an inequality that causes a lot of suffering. You have to except a generally increasing gap between those that can afford to innovate and those that can’t. It would be next to impossible to imbue an environmental moral responsibility without some idealization of nature. I’m a big fan of the American transcendentalist BTW. I don’t think I could let that go. Nature or some notion of an equilibrium or balanced idealized state is in my mind the root of altruistic action.
x-jla
Aug 16, 16 3:58 pm
We are nature. Slightly more clever and less Hairy apes. Our homes are as natural as a gorillas nest... just far more processed and ecologically destructive...Once we get past the delusion that we have transcended nature, or that we have dominion over it, we will probably start understanding the importance of ecological symbiosis. Sustainability is a catch 22...much is based on sustaining our modern lifestyles. Problem is, you can't sustain the unsustainable. We need to completely redefine our "needs"...which no one will be willing to do without a fight...resource war, famine, death...that's our fate unfortunately.
tduds
Aug 16, 16 4:11 pm
so 'adaptability' just means more air conditioners?
No.
chigurh
Aug 16, 16 4:46 pm
right wing anti climate change diversionary bullshit
Everyday Intern
Aug 17, 16 12:14 pm
Wow chigurh. I can honestly say that is something no one else I've discussed the article with has come up with. I tend to think it is because they've actually read the article, rather than just blurted out what their gut reaction to the title is, but maybe you're onto something here. Please do provide evidence for why this is "right wing anti climate change diversionary bullshit" because for the life of me I cannot seem to find it in the article.
Instead, I find passages like this one that seem to point to the fact that the author is acknowledging climate change and attributing it to our (human) actions, "Events like the disappearance of lions from Europe, as well as the extinction of the mastodon and the woolly mammoth (and climate change), all likely resulted from human activity," (emphasis mine).
chigurh
Aug 17, 16 1:02 pm
.
3tk
Aug 17, 16 2:01 pm
Oddly, there is little reference to the term's popular origin in the Brundtland commission report. I think we've moved on from the word 'sustainability' and into a discourse that addresses the pieces (economics, environment, culture, workforce, health) in a more systemic manner. It's a rather vague article from an academic that sounds good, but lacks a sense of connection to overall discourse, both academic and public.
The push for adaptability and resiliency is well over a couple of decades old both in environmental philosophy (which I believe is the author's field) and design. While it's nice NYT picked this on up, there are better conversations going on.
Nam Henderson
Aug 23, 16 12:19 am
To 3tk's point, isn't this similar to the shift to/focus on resiliency? Ie: Who cares if climate change is happening how do we adapt to it? Simply from a less philosophical and more utilitarian frame?
Seems like the focus has moved past just green buildings and now the focus is for buildings to give back, ex. Living Building Challenge.
Do the big cities have such bureaucracy that it falls on the architect's shoulders to provide these solutions?
will galloway
Sep 1, 16 6:28 pm
LB Challenge is cool, but not mainstream enough yet to call it an actual change for our profession.
The words we use are not so important, sustainable, Resilient, Adaptation, etc. Its all the same in the end. Or it will be if we are really dealing with reality.
The article is interesting. Basically I would agree with it. It is still over-romantic and meaningless for the people who are actually doing the adapting though, in which case feels a bit masturbatory. A bit self-indulgent for someone who doesnt really need to deal with the problem yet except as an abstract thought experiment. That takes the edge off the idea a bit.
Adaptation is part of our world already. Change has been a part of our lives since the beginning, and we can only push back with air conditioners and other tech for so long. At some point we need to change the way we live, and population pressures are making it more obvious. Sure we can say that we are advocating for 2 degrees avg warming for the planet instead of talking about nature as a separate place etc. But on the ground in a community in Indonesia we see people with a bit of money building their homes higher to deal with sea level rise, while those without simply build boxes to put their fridges and TVs on, and put up with a foot of water in their house a few times a year. People cope. This is a real thing. There is no negotiation and the words we use to manage the change are not important. The real thing is to act. I would be more interested in developing better coping mechanisms or even ways to make things better so that change brings about improvement, not just a gradation of muddling through...
How we feel about the need to act might be modified by the points raised in the article, but until we sort out why and how to deal with massive change events, like climate change or population change, it is not going to matter so much what we think our philosophical position is with our environment.
Still, its a nice article and I enjoyed reading it. I just dont think its very useful in practice. Not yet at least.
This opinion piece from the NYT has been getting passed around in some of my social circles and I found it to be a provocative read. Curious to hear what you archinectors think of it.
"Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability, a term that skews away from the idea of a perfect, ordered nature and unchanging industrial-technological conditions, and favors a vision of nature in a state of constant change, even chaos; a vision that values difference and diversity, both biological and cultural. Perhaps this revised language will allow us to see the planet not as a video-game landscape, programmed by God, that we’ve been dropped into and can either preserve or destroy, but as a bustling world of colleagues, both human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, over whom we have influence, but who also influence us."
Against 'Sustainability'
Nature is fine with or without us. I agree that "sustainable" is a weak term and a weak concept, but "adaptive" is not much better. "Resilient" and "regenerative" are the concepts and terms I am aiming for these days.
A contractor I work with regularly is the brother of Liz Kolbert, the author of the book referenced in the article. We all share the idea that life and nature as we know it will not look the same as it does now in a few decades. We are trying to design and build houses that don't contribute to the problems, that will be resilient and durable through the changes to come.
i agree. people won't be the first species to go extinct due to people's influence on the environment.
part of the 'rationalist' movement was the establishment of the scientific method, where really smart climatologists and meteorologists and others have developed a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.
so 'adaptability' just means more air conditioners? we know the consequence of that decisions right? for example, more significant weather events. not necessarily more rain or less rain, but it's likely to fall at one time in one area, such as floods in LA while CA burns. part of having more significant rainfall totals means additional flooding, which means less habitable land near flood-prone areas. some places it will be harder to grow food. just kind of a pain in the ass all around, but i suppose if you have a nice high rise in a good city, you'll be well-enough insulated from those problems.
I like the article and often feel this is a more realistic perspective to take regarding climate change. I agree with these problems around the term sustainability. We are trying to sustain human life as we currently know it not the environment. However, I also have some serious misgivings about the human ability to collectively change for the better and feel that this perspective helps contribute to an inequality that causes a lot of suffering. You have to except a generally increasing gap between those that can afford to innovate and those that can’t. It would be next to impossible to imbue an environmental moral responsibility without some idealization of nature. I’m a big fan of the American transcendentalist BTW. I don’t think I could let that go. Nature or some notion of an equilibrium or balanced idealized state is in my mind the root of altruistic action.
We are nature. Slightly more clever and less Hairy apes. Our homes are as natural as a gorillas nest... just far more processed and ecologically destructive...Once we get past the delusion that we have transcended nature, or that we have dominion over it, we will probably start understanding the importance of ecological symbiosis. Sustainability is a catch 22...much is based on sustaining our modern lifestyles. Problem is, you can't sustain the unsustainable. We need to completely redefine our "needs"...which no one will be willing to do without a fight...resource war, famine, death...that's our fate unfortunately.
so 'adaptability' just means more air conditioners?
No.
right wing anti climate change diversionary bullshit
Wow chigurh. I can honestly say that is something no one else I've discussed the article with has come up with. I tend to think it is because they've actually read the article, rather than just blurted out what their gut reaction to the title is, but maybe you're onto something here. Please do provide evidence for why this is "right wing anti climate change diversionary bullshit" because for the life of me I cannot seem to find it in the article.
Instead, I find passages like this one that seem to point to the fact that the author is acknowledging climate change and attributing it to our (human) actions, "Events like the disappearance of lions from Europe, as well as the extinction of the mastodon and the woolly mammoth (and climate change), all likely resulted from human activity," (emphasis mine).
.
Oddly, there is little reference to the term's popular origin in the Brundtland commission report. I think we've moved on from the word 'sustainability' and into a discourse that addresses the pieces (economics, environment, culture, workforce, health) in a more systemic manner. It's a rather vague article from an academic that sounds good, but lacks a sense of connection to overall discourse, both academic and public.
The push for adaptability and resiliency is well over a couple of decades old both in environmental philosophy (which I believe is the author's field) and design. While it's nice NYT picked this on up, there are better conversations going on.
To 3tk's point, isn't this similar to the shift to/focus on resiliency? Ie: Who cares if climate change is happening how do we adapt to it? Simply from a less philosophical and more utilitarian frame?
For instance see this from 2012 in NYT or here
Seems like the focus has moved past just green buildings and now the focus is for buildings to give back, ex. Living Building Challenge.
Do the big cities have such bureaucracy that it falls on the architect's shoulders to provide these solutions?
LB Challenge is cool, but not mainstream enough yet to call it an actual change for our profession.
The words we use are not so important, sustainable, Resilient, Adaptation, etc. Its all the same in the end. Or it will be if we are really dealing with reality.
The article is interesting. Basically I would agree with it. It is still over-romantic and meaningless for the people who are actually doing the adapting though, in which case feels a bit masturbatory. A bit self-indulgent for someone who doesnt really need to deal with the problem yet except as an abstract thought experiment. That takes the edge off the idea a bit.
Adaptation is part of our world already. Change has been a part of our lives since the beginning, and we can only push back with air conditioners and other tech for so long. At some point we need to change the way we live, and population pressures are making it more obvious. Sure we can say that we are advocating for 2 degrees avg warming for the planet instead of talking about nature as a separate place etc. But on the ground in a community in Indonesia we see people with a bit of money building their homes higher to deal with sea level rise, while those without simply build boxes to put their fridges and TVs on, and put up with a foot of water in their house a few times a year. People cope. This is a real thing. There is no negotiation and the words we use to manage the change are not important. The real thing is to act. I would be more interested in developing better coping mechanisms or even ways to make things better so that change brings about improvement, not just a gradation of muddling through...
How we feel about the need to act might be modified by the points raised in the article, but until we sort out why and how to deal with massive change events, like climate change or population change, it is not going to matter so much what we think our philosophical position is with our environment.
Still, its a nice article and I enjoyed reading it. I just dont think its very useful in practice. Not yet at least.