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. — MEDIUM
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
19 Comments
Hurry up and build it all out before the end.
Climate change is bad, but I’m convinced society’s alienation from the building process — against and not with nature — is the root problem. AC is mostly to blame, people used to orient their structures with sun shade and natural ventilation. That and building communities in dangerous climates and flooding zones, Now glass skyscrapers and McMansions suck more and more energy. All stemming from the common man’s ignorance to materials and structures
Fuckin' modernism.
Traditional (read indigenous, vernacular, regional) building was adapted to the local climate. No idiot would ever build a flat roof in a wet/cold climate.
Now everything is new and improved and of course much, much better.
Correct. Add the fact that there should be growth boundaries around every municipality (w/ exceptions of course) to allow the ecosystem to recover as much as possible. You could fit a whole Medieval Florence in a typical highway clover leaf intersection. Problem is, we want it all, NOW!
The photo is of the aftermath of the Fires in Mati, Greece, on the Aegean coast due east of Athens. I had relatives vacationing in the islands and Athens at the time. Brush fires are fairly common in Greece. These were particularly bad because the state did not clear out the dead brush for years (no money?) and it built up dramatically. There was also a lack of planning on the fire/rescue services who assumed the fire would not jump a major road. Many people tried to get to the sea but were disoriented by the thick smoke and perished a few feet from the water.
http://english.cyprustimes.com...
Drone footage of Mati. Disturbing and yet compelling with the Greek music. Scroll down a page to begin.
The conversion of useful agricultural land to ticky-tacky development is going to bite us in the ass at some point.
That said, the idea that we all have to pile into megacities and live in tiny apartments, co-living, or whatever else is bullshit (at least in the USA). There is a huge amount of vacant buildings and property in second and third tier urban areas and older suburbs.
Absolutely. My point about growth boundaries in no way contemplated a Hong Kong type of existence. Not sustainable in the least. There are vast swaths of land to be re-developed before we keep pealing away the lungs of mother earth.
As with most things, the narrative is simplified into two extreme opposite binaries which are both equally awful, while the solution lies in some moderation between the two.
As a rule, nearly all of reality is made not of silos, but gradients.
There is a massive surplus of housing. Very little of it is affordable by any definition.
You can't have a policy of refusing to clear out the brush, dead and dying trees from the national forests, state forests, and national parks on the claim that is the 'natural' course to take and, at the same time, refuse to allow fires, which have historically done the same job, to complete the task. The brush and deadwood has to be controlled, by physically clearing it out, controlled burning, or out-of-control forest fires. Take your pick.
so now you want the government to work?
Just who do you think is paying for the 747s and other airplanes and helicopters to drop fire retardant and is paying for the thousands of firefighters now? The eco-extremists went to court to prevent the brush from being cleared on state and federal lands. Now, before the matter could be heard by the Supreme Court, all hell has broken loose, people have been burned to death, and they want to distance themselves from their actions.
im just trying to understand your logic, from your past comments you're not very fond of paying taxes at all. BTW, our backyard 12000 acre fire was caused by an idiot shooting tracing rounds, on a very dry hillside, that had been brush cleared religiously for the past decade, not a single eco-terrorist in sight.
I don't recall ever making a comment about paying taxes. The property taxes I pay are the best investment I make every year. The schools here are quite good. I do have a problem with force-feeding the military billions of federal tax dollars and putting the taxpayers on the hook underwriting many of the doctrinaire liberal collegiate majors that will never be repaid.
Sub title of the article:
Welcome to a 1C planet: the precursor of an 8C catastrophe in 82 years if we keep burning up fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow
...But we are not burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow, we've already experienced a peak in our consumption and production of coal 5 years ago if I'm not mistaken.
Driving over a cliff at 50mph rather than 60mph doesn't warrant congratulations, in my opinion.
I'm not congratulating anyone, we're still heading for disaster, no doubt about that, it's just the way it's written down that bugs me https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-region
https://ourworldindata.org/gra...
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