On October 20th, Under Tomorrows Sky project
first opened for Dutch Design Week.
It is a fictional future city think tank project created by a group of
scientist technologists, futurists, illustrators, science fiction authors and
special effects artist leaded by speculative architect Liam Young of the London
based Tomorrows Thoughts Today. The
major contributors are Bruce Sterling, Warren Ellis, Rachel Armstrong, Paul
Duffield, BLDBlog, Edible Geography, Next Nature, the Centre for Science and
Imagination and New Scientists. Most
of the images and city models are buzzard. The sky is gray.
There is hardly any beauty of nature. The city is full of coldness and
destruction. Many people may think
those art works are too extreme and fictional, but the reality could be not far
from those.
The human consumption rate for earth resource has been
overshot earth resources’ reproduction rate since 1970s. In 2012, we are consuming 156% of earthbio-capacity, according to Global Footprint Network. It is not only talking about energy industry. It also includes food consumption,
garbage production and, most of all, manufacture industry. Almond all of countries, the United
States is, unfortunately, one of the worst in the world. There is only 5% of global population
living in the United States. But
Americans use 20% of the world energy, eat 15% of the world’s meat, and produce
40% of the world’s garbage. GlobalFootprint Network created a study on calculating the number of planets needed,if everyone lived like a residents of certain countries, assume all land isused for human activity except Antarctica. It would take 4.16 earth to support roughly 7 billion
people, if everyone lived like American.
Perhaps, it is good that not everyone in the world lives like
Americans.
Overall, this is not a problem that any government can solve
by policies. It needs efforts from
everyone to be awarded of how much of earth resources that they are using. Moreover, to use less earth resources
and save the planet does not only means to stop driving cars, it also means to
turn off lights when you are not using them, to reuse water, to stop wasting
food and not to use disposable plates and cups. I would not doubt for a second that there may be another
earth out there in the universe, but they are really far away from us, like
billions of light years away.
Therefore, in my life time, this earth is the only one we got, and the
save the earth should be the most important mission for everyone who lives on it.
Interesting footprint calculator from Global Footprint Network:
Footprint Calculator: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/
Interesting footprint calculator from Global Footprint Network:
Footprint Calculator: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/
In a recent "Business and Sustainability" course that I took while studying abroad, this issue and exact study was examined closely numerous times. It was extremely interesting to get the perspectives of European and Asian students on the consumption rate of Americans. Overall- its not good. Our teacher, a European, along with the non-American students were very biased towards Americans in regards to our "wastefulness." Americans are viewed as the cause to all the recent environmental issues. Ranging from outsourcing factory labor, planned obsolesce of products and unnecessary recycling of materials, America has a lot to improve. After taking this class, I have stepped up my sustainability efforts, but it seems that not many other Americans are following suit.
ReplyDeleteI won't say Americans are the cause to all the recent environmental issues. That is just too unreasonable and bias. Moreover, America has the top economy, forth largest territory but only 5% of world population. It is understandable to a certain degree that Americans have a hard time to realize how much resources that we are using and how bad the recourse shortage in the world. At lest, one country can't cause all those issues alone. I think everyone on earth is responsible for the shortage of earth resources. Overall, I think it is, to certain point, the technology's fault. If you do the footprint calculator quiz I put at the end of my post, you will be surprised by how much the resources you can save by eating less meat and packaged food or buying less electronic products. It is not to say we should all be vegetarians or stop using high tech products. It just means that both people and the government need to start to think about saving earth resources on a big picture. We can’t only think of saving coal and oil, we also have to think of how to save on the use of metal and carbon materials. As an ordinary person, the lest we can do is to save on small things like stop buying a new iphone just because we want one, or stop eating microwave food or fast food just because it is quick.
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