TUESDAY, JAN 10, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Gaia Education 3
A short 8-week course in ecological design, lession 3
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABILITY, FROM THE WIRES, LANGUAGE GAMES
Abstract: As I have sustainability concerns and concerns for posterity's and the biosphere's future, I will start a course in Ecological Design tomorrow, which is one of four 'dimensions' of the offering. Subnotes to file will likely follow.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The 3rd lesson. [My comments are in brackets.]
The Regenerative Design Revolution
To realise the “great turning”, the awareness, skills and ecological knowledge to co-create diverse regenerative cultures everywhere, will require a fundamental rethinking of the ways in which societies sustain themselves. In the words of R. Buckminster Fuller "it will require a design revolution." We now have clear evidence that it is technologically and socially possible to reduce the negative human footprint on the Earth. [The closest source for quote: 'Fuller argued that political revolution would never "deliver the goods" for that portion of humanity which lives in poverty. In the 1960s, in books like Utopia Or Oblivion, Fuller gave an (unaccounted for) figure of 44% of humanity as living with relatively adequate means. Ignoring political dimensions, Fuller proposed that as we are at the moment operating at an overall mechanical efficiency of only 4%, if we increased this to only 12% we could take care of everybody. This would require a design revolution which, Fuller says, necessarily entails a world revolution, because industrialization "consists inherently in world-around integration of all resources" (Utopia Or Oblivion, 1963, p.291)'. Fuller apparently never heard of Jevon's paradox, but that a world revolution or collapse was a necessary outcome is clearer now that in 1963, except to the likes of Fuller who also wrote an Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. And while 12% might have taken care of everybody in 1963 when the population was 3.2 billion, tripling the efficiency of the system would just kick the can down the road a bit further.]
We know how to do this, or at least where to start. To accomplish this task will require a new way of thinking and designing, one that implies a different attitude to the planetary resources, coupled with a commitment to recycling, conservation, regeneration and the use of renewable sources of energy and raw materials. Listen to this talk by ecological design pioneer, John Todd about partnering with nature to create small-scale, local and circular industrial ecologies, new (ecological) economics, biophilic architecture and agriculture that can reduce our impact on the biosphere by 90%.
Source: John Todd - The Ecological Design Revolution: Bioneers
The contents of the Ecological Dimension aims to provide participants with the awareness, ecological knowledge and understanding necessary to begin the lifelong journey of regeneration through ecological design. It is organised into interconnected topics as follows:
▪ Module 1 – Whole Systems Approach to Ecological Design
▪ Module 2 – Appropriate Technology: Water
▪ Module 3 – Local Food
▪ Module 4 – Appropriate Technology: Energy
▪ Module 5 – Green Building and Retrofitting
“Ecological concerns are fundamental to the design and development of ecovillages and sustainable communities. The prefix ‘eco’ originally meant ‘home’ – not in the limited sense of ‘house,’ but rather referring to the surrounding and supporting local environment. An ecological village, then, is integrated into the landscape in a way that benefits both humans and their encompassing environs. Designers will take great care to ensure that life-supporting natural functions are not only preserved but enhanced whenever possible. The strategy here is one of working with Nature rather than against Nature. The ultimate goal of sustainable settlement design is the creation of self-reliant, self-maintaining, self-regenerating ‘living systems’ that can assume a life of their own.”
Chris Mare, 2005 (Gaia Education’s EDE Curriculum)
[I shared the transcrips, information about Todd and Orr, and the Fuller quote on the forum which has sections for Modules 1 to 5 and other secetions for Personal Introduction, General Discussion, and Announcements. The first three lessons introduce the modules, but there is no category in the form for posting or discussing the content of the three introductory lessons. I confessed that I had mistakenly posted under the Module 1 category of the forum and assumed the design of the forum included an omission of a category to post to, but did not suggest adding one. While adding such a category seems obvious, the intro matterial is clearly viewed as given, beyond questioning, hence no descussion is thinkable. The verities of Doughnut Economics are assumed. That MTI society can be re-designed to work and thrive unto the 23rd century and beyond is a given.]
Module 1, lesson 1
