Diversity of Species in the Rainforest
Nice one. I wonder if that wicked spider crane really exists.
What is Next Nature?
With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Posts Tagged ‘Green Blues’
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Next Nature @ Volume Magazine
The latest issue of Volume magazine aims to re-investigate sustainability after zero. Originally a wacko, hippy-esque ideology, ‘sustainability’ – aka ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ – has now become globally accepted. But as what – an environmental urgency, a political issue, a technical problem, a historic destiny, a new world order? And what are the consequences of this acceptance?
The magazine features a visual essay by Koert van Mensvoort, a Pig Story by Christien Meindertsma, an Oil Story by Harriet Russell, written contributions by Arjen Oosterman, Slavoj Zizek, Amir Djalali, Thomas Daniell and the familiar corporate animal field by Karl Grandin on the cover. Thus recommended. Order here.
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Bacteria that eat waste & shit petrol
Energy problem? Why not genetically alter bacteria to have them provide ‘renewable petroleum’. Crude oil is only a few molecular stages removed from the acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result. Will we soon be driving on bacteria shit?
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
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Slavoj Zizek – Ecology without Nature
This lecture by Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek – never mind the crappy sound & image quality: this is philosophy folks! – should provide all next nature explorers with a feeling of recognition.
Zizek convincingly explains Darwinism learns us that nature is not a harmonious pattern of seasons, change, balance, reproduction. Rather, nature is one big catastrophy which is from time to time contained in a fragile balance, but then explodes again. Nature itself is not natural: rather it is naturalised.
Another thing he mentions is how human waste has become so integrated into the functioning of the ecosystem that (as some ecologists suggest?) an imaginary, sudden removal of all human pollution could ITSELF be an ecological catastrophe.
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Oil Price Threatens Biofuel Firms
Economy is ecology? Technology Review writes the price of oil has dipped to levels that could be far too low for many advanced-biofuel startups to succeed, especially those that attracted investment this summer, while oil was well above $100 a barrel. Tight credit markets will also make it difficult for advanced biofuel companies to move ahead with plans for scaling up technologies and building commercial-scale production plants.
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Boxing the Desert
With his Waterboxx, Pieter Hoff (The Netherlands) won the Bèta Dragons Award 2008. It is an instrument that supports plants and trees in order to survive in difficult circumstances without using any groundwater or electricity. The box collects water by catching rainwater and producing and catching water from condensation. It subsequently distributes over a long(er) period the collected water to the tree placed in the centre.
In October Pieter Hoff returned from a succesful journey to the Moroccan Sahara. 90% of the planted trees were alive after having endured months of extreme heat in rocky soil.
“If we (re)forest 2 billion acres of desert, these trees will absorb more CO2 than we can produce so that problem would be solved”.via eburon.nl (Dutch)
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If the implications of global warming were fair
Contrary to popular belief, global warming is not simply a bad thing: there are winners and losers. While low-lying countries, like Bangladesh, are expected to suffer extensively from rising temperatures and sea-levels, countries situated at the top of the Northern Hemisphere, like Canada and Russia, might gain enormous regions of pristine exploitable farming ground, as temperatures rise.
Contrary to popular belief, global warming is not a natural disaster: it is a political disaster. The countries that cause the global warming effect, aren’t necessary the countries who suffer the consequences. National political agenda’s hardly align with their globally felt consequences.
Imagine the effects of global warming were fair. The visualization above shows a distorted world map, in which the landmass of countries is scaled according the amount with which they’ve reduced carbon emissions between 1980-2000. Life would be so simple, if polluting countries would simply disappear into the ocean.
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A Garden raised by Television
This installation is called Feed and raises ferns that can survive under conditions of extreme lighting.
The television screens provide light to the plants, which grow towards them in a constricted space, eventually colliding.
If I could make a title suggestion for this piece; the German word for “watching TV” is Fernsehen.
By Shane Cooper | Thanks Robbert! -
Italians Do It Better
TERRACINA, Italy: Before Michele Assunto hauls in his fishing net from the banks of a reed-lined canal here, he uses a pole to push the garbage out of the way. “They really need to clean this up,” he growls. (Photograph: Claudio Palmisano).
Today, The International Herald Tribune published this article about Alan Berger, a landscape architecture professor at MIT who offers us an interesting view on dealing with heavily polluted areas in Latina, Italy.
‘The solution has to be as artificial as the place.’ Read more »
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Let the Dutch bury the Carbon
Too much carbon emissions warming up the planet? No problem: just bring the stuff back to where you got it from in the first place. Experts have been advising to bury carbon dioxide (CO2) for some time now and the technologies are maturing rapidly. Within Europe, the Dutch are seeking to take the lead and become the carbon collector for north West Europe.
Rotterdam – the Netherlands second largest city, home to Europe’s biggest port and a major hub for oil, coal and biofuels – is counting on plans to capture and store CO2 in old gas fields so it can pursue industrial development and also meet ambitious targets to cut emissions by 2025.
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Power Ivy
Cochran’s sustainable design group, SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology) came up with a project called GROW. It’s an Ivy-like covering of a building that generates power out of sun and wind.
Read an interview with Teresita here.
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Driving on Algue
Green bubbles? Yes, they seem to be everywhere nowadays. But for a change we aren’t talking about those greenish marketing bubbles of the flourishing sustainability cult. According to the Chlorophile Collective we soon we will all be driving on algue.
“Algae use photosynthesis to transform this otherwise destructive waste CO2 into oxygen, compostable biomass to build soil, and a variety of other useful byproducts, including bioplastics and sustainable biofuels such as ethanol, butanol and even biodiesel.”
A seemingly much better ‘green’ technology than creating biofuel from crops, of which the growing arguably causes more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels. Now lets hope the possible-future mass production of gigantic algue-fields will not take away too much light from all those other lovely and worthwhile creatures inhabiting the oceans.
See also: Green Blues, Real nature is not Green, Who wants to drive a Fish.
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Brandscape: Welcome Home
Wednesday May 21st the boeing I was in, flew over some crop–fields near Schiphol (Amsterdam airport) where I took this picture. It reads: “Welcome home!”. Unox is a famous Dutch ‘family’ brand by Unilever, known for its typically Dutch kale and sausage meals. It occurred to me that this was not the first contact with my homeland I had hoped for… nor do I think this sign is welcoming Dutch travelers. Let me translate: “You consumer! Next fall, when our factories have processed it, we serve you nicely kerosine–flavored beans and cabbage. We produce / you buy and that is how we shape the world.
Or is it me and could this landscape alteration be seen as merely ‘funny’?Related: Crop Circles, Greenvertising.
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In space, nobody can see you litter
Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.
Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both close and far from the eart (Low-Earth Orbit and GEO). Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).
So… I guess millionaires are paying Richard Branson tons of money to go see trash?
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Global warming sales
The current value of the US-dollar is warming up our globe.. An inventive shop owner in Chelsea (NYC) stuck this advertisement on the window of his shop. What you cannot see is a small sign in the right corner of his shopping window which said: ** ‘We do accept Euro’s!” **
Note the text on the t-shirt above: Death to digital!
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Deadline to save the World: 30th August
Picnic Green Challenge calls upon people like you to invent a product or service that can help to save the world. Restore the planet’s harmony and lets you win 500.000 Euro on the fly. 3 days left.
I find the green rhetorics (do we have a new keyword here?) on the website kind of fascinating. Of course, seeking a balanced relation with our surroundings is of importance. Also diversity is something to cherish. So, thumbs up for that. Still, I tend to get itchy when I hear people say we should ‘Save the World’. It demonstrates a certain arrogance, or at least a nativity, regarding our presumed ‘superior’ position towards Nature. I sense some fresh conservatism here; old modernist control thinking in a brand new green coat.
Take for example a sentence like ‘Restoring the planet’s harmony’. It sounds fantastic, but what does that mean? Is a planet like Mars harmonic? Would the planet be harmonic, if only it weren’t for the humans? Lets not forget that in 10.000 years from now, long after the global warming crisis, another ice-age is expected. I mean, Nature doesn’t care about global warming, humans do. Nature doesn’t need to be saved, humans do. Thus, 3 days left to save ourselves!
