(posted by Fred on behalf of Mick)
There is an excellent interview of the author Richard Florida on NPR about his new book, The New Urban Crisis. You can find it at:
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/10/523237746/author-richard-florida-on-the-new-urban-crisis
Comments, anyone?
The following are the views of three scientists coming from three different fields, sociology, earth systems science (GAIA) and animal physiology. They seem to me to be saying something different from conventional wisdom that the catastrophe of climate change is our fault and we are therefore bound to save the planet.
This painting by Paul Klee could represent the angel aghast at what we have done; she is frozen, unable to act with her back to the future which she cannot face.
…“emphasis on solutions blinds us to the fact that climate change has already altered our “being” in the world—the way we think about the +world and engage in politics.” Ulrich Beck. http://www.harvardedesignmagazine.org/issues/39/how-climate-change-might-save-the-world-metamorphosis
METAMORPHOSIS (change of form)
By Re-Visioning what we call climate change as a metamorphosis of the world Beck releases us from this blindness. His work discusses the movement of people due to the changing temperatures resulting from Global Climate change. Land that was once habitable is now becoming arid and lacking the nutrients to grow crops. The lack of food forces migration to places with better conditions. National boundaries are being broken by movement of people beyond political lines drawn in the sand. The city as an entity is collecting power with these movements and becoming truly influential in decisions regarding human’s future; some good and some bad. This is happening whatever National governments do. It is the cities who bear the risk, living in anticipation of catastrophe. Beck calls it the “risk society” which is becoming more cosmopolitan with cities grouping across state and even national boundaries. The United Cities of the world may replace the UN!
ANTHROPHOCENE (human epoch)
In his book “A Rough ride to the future” James Lovelock describes the start of the Anthropocene epoch in 1712 with the invention of the steam engine. Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith of Dartmouth Devon England “…….. devised and built a steam engine sufficiently powerful, at 4 kilowatts, and reliable to be able to pump flood water continuously from a coal mine at Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.“ From this time onwards humans were able to add to the energy delivered each day from the sun, (1 KW per m2) a flow rate which was 10 times more than could be harvested from burning wood. ” He states …….
“I see us (the Human species) as crucially important because we are the first species since life began over 3 billion years ago to harvest information….. if our form of life, ……was destroyed from the earth, life could never restart on the barren planet that would occupy our present position in the solar system. ” He suggests that the Anthropocene (the age of humans) epoch is one in which human involvement has become essentially embedded in the earth systems. If GAIA has consciousness it could be beginning to happen through us.
“If you think as I do that we are an organic part of the Earth, then perhaps our intelligence is a property of the Earth. This is why it is so important that we survive” Lovelock
1969 image sent to us from the moon landing team
“planet Earth saw itself for the first time” Lovelock
PHYSIOLOGY
To take this further Scott Turner the physiologist and scientist who has studied the physiology of termites and many other insects and has written two books “the extended organism” and “the Tinkerer’s Accomplice”: the dynamic interaction between living organisms and their environment. Only when we add environmental physiology to natural selection can we begin to understand the beautiful fit between the form life takes and how life works.
THE CITY.
By reading these three scientists views on our relationship with nature; Ulrich Beck, James Lovelock and Scott Turner (sociologist, inventor and earth scientist, and physiologist, respectively) I begin to get a picture of humans as an organic part of nature in which our artefacts and even our cities with the added energy and water flows are extensions to the organism as are termite cities. These termite cities are air-conditioned in extremely hostile environments. Our cities can move a long way down this road once we begin to focus as the termites have done on the utilization of social intelligence.
There are many strategies to take
