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<H2><B><FONT face=Arial size=5><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt">The Man Who Mistook
a Concrete Pillar for a Global Threat</SPAN></FONT></B></H2>
<P class=byline><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><A
href="http://www.worldchanging.com/">WorldChanging
Team</A><BR></SPAN></FONT>January 9, 2007 10:53 AM</P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><I><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-STYLE: italic">John Thackara is the Director of <A
href="http://www.dott07.com/" target=new>Designs of the Time</A> and <A
href="http://www.doorsofperception.com/" target=new>Doors of Perception</A>, the
author of <A href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005059.html"
target=new>In the Bubble</A>, and a valued <A
href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005662.html"
target=new>Worldchanging ally</A>.</SPAN></FONT></I></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Some of you may know
Oliver Sacks' book <I><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Man Who Mistook His
Wife for a Hat</SPAN></I>. It's about people afflicted with fantastic perceptual
and intellectual aberrations - and in particular a man who looks at something
familiar (his wife) but perceives something completely
different.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Well, I’ve become one
of those people!</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">It happened to me most
recently at </SPAN></FONT>Madrid’s new airport. One minute I was admiring
Richard Rogers’ gorgeous roof, and the play of light upon curves.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">But I suddenly stopped
perceiving these effects as aesthetic. In place of elegant forms and vistas, I
started to contemplate the vast amount of energy embodied in the artefacts,
structures and processes that surrounded me.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A big new airbus,
taxiing in to park, made me wonder how many thousands - millions - of pounds of
matter and energy must have been used to build it.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Beside me was an
elegant concrete pillar. It looked benignly tree-like with a gently curving
trunk and branches, higher up, that supported a soaring roof.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">But how many carbon
dioxide emissions were generated during its fabrication? A ton of CO2 is emitted
for every ton of concrete that ends up in a pillar - or the miles of concrete
apron that stretched, in </SPAN></FONT>Madrid, in every direction.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Millions of tons of
concrete visible to the eye. Millions of tons of emissions out of
sight.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Then there was the
noise. I don’t usually notice the background hiss and hum of these great modern
spaces. But this time my cognitive filters seemd to fail. I became aware of an
ambient, angst-inducing roar.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">All that
air-conditioning, cooling huge volumes of empty space, blowing gales of out hot
air to goodness knows where in the sky.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Eight per cent of the
world's total electricity supply is used to cool buildings in the
</SPAN></FONT>United States.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Then there was the
light! There was a bank of large plasma screens. On the screens, ads were
playing - but all I could think about was their greed for
electricity.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Did you know that flat
screens use five times more power than the bulbous ones they
replace?</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">And that’s just the
power they use. Cathode ray televisons contained mostly air. These new plasma
screens are packed densely with complex materials whose manufacture is highly
energy intensive.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">So I’m the man who
mistook a concrete pillar for a threat to the world! But do you know what? I
reckon my cognitive confusion in </SPAN></FONT>Madrid had just cause.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I read a text by Rafael
Buitrago about our aesthetic and visceral responses to landscape. The ways we
respond aesthetically to our environment, Buitrago (and Anne Spirn) argue, may
be derived from psychology that evolved to help hunter-gatherers make better
decisions: when to move, where to settle – to chase or not to chase - in varying
situations.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Environmental stimuli
as diverse as flowers, sunsets, clouds, thunder, snakes, and predators, activate
response systems of ancient origin.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I’m a frequent flyer,
not a hunter gatherer. But I’m sure now that feeling the creeps in
</SPAN></FONT>Madrid was some residual survival instinct being triggered. Not by
an inherited fear of snakes - but by a learned fear of degredation to the
biosphere and the threat it poses to us all.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Many climate change
activists complain that "climate pornography” - the promotion of apocalyptic
climate change scenarios - is counter-productive. Climate porn, for one British
think tank, “offers a thrilling spectacle, but ultimately distances people from
the problem."</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">These critics are
right. To do things differently, we have to perceive things differently - but
not be immobilised by fear, or guilt. We need to be startled out of our
complaency, but in such a way that we feel motivated to take meaningful
action.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A lot of people seem to
have started. Paul Hawken reckons that over one million organizations, populated
by 100 million people, are engaged in grass roots activity designed to address
climate and other environmental issues. This worldwide movement of movements
flies under the radar, he believes, but "collectively, this constitutes the
single biggest movement on earth”</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">These one million grass
roots organisations are just one part of the story. Many big organisations, too,
are re-thinking fundamental principles of their business. For many
multinationals, the consequences of climate change for the very existence of
their business has moved from the realm of “future scenario” to be a real and
present danger.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Let me give you some
examples I’ve heard about just during the last month:</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I heard about a top
five logistics and parcel delivery company for whose CEO sustainability is the
key driver of the company’s future.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I was told that one of
the world’s largest shipping ports has decided it must render its operations
carbon neutral within a decade. How, I have no idea – but it sounds as if they
are completely serious.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A major European
airport, I learned, is studying how it might feasibly prosper if air travel
ceased to be an important part of its business.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Whole countries are
getting serious about massive transformational change.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Sweden</SPAN></FONT>,
for example, has made it national objective to be independent of oil within a
decade.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Switzerland</SPAN></FONT> has set a target of becoming a
"2000-Watt society." That’s one third of the 6000 Watts of energy consumed by
each of its its citizens today on food, goods, heating and cooling buildings,
mobility and so on.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The most dramatic
shift, for me, is emerging in </SPAN></FONT>Britain – until now, a byword for of
wasteful consumerism.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The recent publication
of the <A href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005210.html"
target=new>Stern Review Of Climate Change Economics</A> - by a former World Bank
chief economist - marks a step change in government responses.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">It’s not just that
Stern's conclusions correspond broadly to what environmentalists have been
saying for fifteen years. The fact that the report was commissioned by The
Treasury, which control’s the nation’s taxation and money - is also key. Money
is at stake: Something must be done!</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Stern paves the way for
so-called “external” costs to be counted properly for the first
time.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">(Notoriously,
economists describe as”external” costs things like energy, water, minerals, the
biosphere as a whole - that, until now, have not been properly counted as part
of the game. We used energy to exploit resources – but did not pay the full
price of the energy or the resources).</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A government can use
fiscal measures to make these so-called “external” costs internal costs, payable
by the producer. Matter and energy flowing through the economic system will have
to be paid for at full price - rather than taken for granted as a freebie. The
Stern review provides an economic justification for dramatic changes to the ways
we live.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><B><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">RESOURCE EFFICIENCY AS DESIGN
</SPAN></FONT></B><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">OPPORTUNITY</SPAN></B></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">There’s a truly
gigantic design opportunity here. We have to re-design the structures,
institutions and processes that drive the economy along. We have to transform
material, energy and resource flows that, unchecked, will finish
us.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">In this new design
space, the boundaries between infrastructure, content, equipment, software,
products, services, space, and place, are blurred. Compared to physical
products, or buildings, sustainable services and infrastructures are immaterial.
They are adaptive in time and space.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">So it’s a huge
opportunity, but a new kind of design practice is needed to exploit
it.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">First: This new design
practice is more about discovery, than blue sky invention. Many of the answers
we need already exist. We need to become global hunter-gatherers of models,
processes, and ways of living that have been learned by other societies, over
time. We have to find those examples. Adapt them. Recombine
them.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Just as biomimicry
learns from millions of years of natural evolution, we can adapt the social
innovation of other times and places to our present, ultra-modern
needs.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">For example, a lot of
people already know how to live more lightly than we do. Hundreds of millions of
poor people practise advanced resource efficiency every day of their lives.
That’s because they are too poor to waste resources like we rich folk
do.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Design schools should
relocate en masse to favelas and slums. These informal economies are sites of
intense social and business innovation.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A second key feature of
the new design practise: it is less about control, more about the devolution of
power. A good test is whether a design proposal will enable people to retain
control over their own territory and resources.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A third feature of the
new design practice: it does not have to think Big,or act Big, to be effective.
On the contrary: we have learned about the behaviour of complex systems that
small is not small. Small design actions can have big consequences, and these
can be positive.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">If someone builds a bus
stop, in an urban slum, a vibrant community can sprout and grow around it. Such
is the power of small interventions into complex urban situations. Read Small
Change by Nabeel Hamdi for more inspiring examples of the power of designing
small.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Item four: The new
design practise looks for ways to replace physical resources with information.
The information part is knowing where something you need to use, is. If you can
locate a thing, and access it easily, you don't have to own
it.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Think of cars. Most of
them are used less than 5% of the time. It’s nonsense. 600 cities now have
carsharing schemes? The same goes for buildings. In a light and sustainable
economy we will share resources - such as time, skill, software, spaces or food
- using networked communications.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">We don’t have to design
sharing systems from scratch. Many already exist. Local systems of barter and
non-monetary exchange, such as Jogjami, have existed in </SPAN></FONT>India for
at least 500 years. A cooperative distribution system called Angadia, or "many
little fingers", enables people to send goods over sometimes vast distances
without paying.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">They just need to be
internet enabled.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The fifth and hardest
aspect to master of the new design practice is whole systems
thinking.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The best example I
heard recently is from an entrepreneur called Paul Polak, who helps people in
developing countries develop more effective water distribution systems. Paul
reckons the design and technology of a device, such as a pump, or sprinkler
system, is not much more than ten percent of the complete solution. The other
ninety percent involves distribution, training, maintenance and service
arrangements, partnership and business models. These, too, have to be
co-designed.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I began this morning by
describing the curious perceptual delusions that I experienced, whilst staring
at a concrete pillar in </SPAN></FONT>Madrid Airport.</P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I may be nuts, I said,
but could there be method in my madness? The ability to perceiving disorders in
the environment has helped a lot of creatures survive.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Besides, millions of
people seem to share my unease. I suspect there are quite a lot of you in this
room.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Big companies, and
governments, are also readying themselves for transformational change. I promise
you that strange bedfellows will be teaming up in the near
future.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Eugenio Barba calls
this “the dance of the big and the small”.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I don’t mind if you
choose to dance. I’l be satisfied if, just once this week, you slap a concrete
pillar and start to wonder...</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>