Ecoprojects in Freiburg

Freiburg; one of the greenest city in the world. So many "ecoprojects" are held here so the government have a special fund for running the Freiburg green city concept. The concept is being maintained by the Freiburg Wirtschaft Touristik und Messe GmbH & Co. KG (FWTM) which can be seen at their homepage Freiburg green city. FWTM holds guided tours thought the city which last year was around 25.000 visitors from 40 different nationalities.

On picture the Solar- Fabrik AG. Freiburg city in south-west Germany have more than 1,800 sunhours a year and are one of the sunniest city in the country. Solar panels are found on several buildings in the city, for example the Badenova Stadium with solar power plant on the roof which heat the shower water and are used to run the powerful lights over the arena in the night.

Heliotrop is a rotating sun-house which moves after the sunlight. The buildning can be used as a public house as restaurang, hotel, offices, doctor's practice or company headquarter. The Heliotrop near the Vauban neigbourhood have a 77 squaremeter basement, 180 m2 in the "tree house" and 60 m2 in the roof terrace which is covered with vegetation. The buildning is a "surplus" energy house, which generate four to six times the amount of electrical energy consumed in it. The buildning also have a evacuated tube collector that provides active solar heating and hot water. See more at Rolf Disch homepage.


The Vauban district is an urban development area with ecological awareness. As much as possible, the trees and old buildnings have been left. From the beginning barracks of the French military forces, now a beautiful area to live in for families. They have their own tram line, situated in the middle of the neighbourhood, covered with grass to reduce the sound. Most of the people living here, doesn't own a car.
The Black Forest are close and the hills around Freiburg are to steep to build at.

Playground, garden and forest are found between the houses. Not so green at this time a year, but a lot of details everywhere. New and old in a combination.

Next to Hauptbahnhof, main train station, you can find the bicycle station "Mobile". Café, bicycle shop where you can leave your bike to be fixed in the afternoon, and safe bike parking. 9,000 parking sites for bikes can be found in the city.

Ökostation, right in the seepark, have been an educational center for both children and adults since 1986. The station have contract with the school to educate the children in different subject, classes are held specially for kids in ecology, gardening, cooking and environmental consciousnesses. The nearest school can go here in the breaks and play with different tools.

The station is runned by funds from the City of Freiburg, the state and the Environment & Nature Conversation League (BUND). See more about the ecostation at their homepage, found here.

Close to the Eco-Station there was a schoolyard where we found the "butterfly effect"; water runs the weel which move the wings of the butterflies, or was it sunpanels on the wings that runs the water, that runs the..? We argued but were not sure.

Rieselfeld is the state's largest neighbourhood project and are famous for it's solar energy system that the residents can invest in and make money from. In the picture, one of the houses with solar panels and special architecture, but also a nest for birds- the whole house were singing!

In Freiburg they have restrictions for new buildings how much energy they are permitted to use. On picture another center for sustainable projects, a house with vegetation on the roof.

Ecobuildings in Paris

Les Halles, Paris.

3 dimentional, mixed of nature, social activites and have since year 1183 been a marketplace. This place look as something directly from my mind when I try to explain what an ecocity is and how to create sustainability. It's about the whole thing. Not only about "the nature",- it is about the surroundings.

I like the feeling here, too much.

High advanced recycling

Hammarby Sjöstad got the concept first; the recycling society with "vaccumsucker waste system". The trash is stored under the ground and connected with tubes which means that bins can be closer to the house and the garbage truck can get the trash from different places in the same time, far away from the house- getting the trash without disturbing the people. The picture is from a neighbourhood close to mine in Göteborg and shows two different signs; one for "trash" and one for "waste food". They burn the "trash" and use it as heating to the houses in the region. The "waste food" in Hammarby Sjöstad goes to the production of biogas, used in their stoves.

In Hammarby they also use the system for newspapers, but have seperate bins for other things in small houses. Common to Sweden is the little "recycle bincenter" shown in next picture; packages are ordered by colored and colorless glass, metal, cardboard and plastic, and also newspapers and other papers.

The collected trash can then be recycled into new packaging. In Sweden today, three out of four packages is collected to recycling! Metals is melted down in steel and aluminum, and becomes a raw material in new products. Some plastics are melted down and used to manufacture new products. Other plastics are ground down and can be, for example noise barriers along highways. Newspapers and other paper are delivered to the paper recycling business, from there they go on to different paper mill producing for example towels, toilet paper and new newspapers.

In San Francisco it was a much easier system; you had one bin for "trash" and one for "all things that can be recycled". That means you just need two bin in your own home and you don't need to walk 400 meters to closest recycling, you can just throw it in the normal trash place were you live.

Several projects investigate to see how to make the recycling much easier for "normal people" (i.e not crazy environmentalists). The biggest failure I think is just that we don't want to have that much trash in our homes. A single household can handle it easy to have small boxes and you have your own system, but so much more complicated in a family or why not in common areas. What is what? "Should I throw this as a "trash" or as a paper/plastic whatever".

Low advanced waste reduction. "Give it to China, or India".

Picture from Treehugger.com (e-waste)

It is complicated. We have so much packages, just to carry around things. Things are also coming to our store so far away, so it has to have all the packages to not be totally damage when it finely reach your own refrigerator.

Should we use the high consumption and high use with materials as an argument for our energy supply, i.e "it can heat hour houses without use (that much) fossil fuels"?!

Everything is connected in the simple term that everything have its limits in ecological (or physical terms); second law of thermodynamics tells us that energy quality (i.e its capacity to work) decreases every time an energy conversion takes place. This applies to all energy uses, physical, metabolic, interactions, etc

The connection part also means that to reach a good society, the best thing would be to produce things closer, so we don't need all the packages (that would also mean, doesen't need that industry- oh my. sorry), or could use the bottles again (oh no, it's too old fashion!). But, hey- we have a beautiful earth to live on. We should use technology that use natural processes as narrowed as it can be. A lot of processes are almost "self sustaining" and don't use a lot of energy.

Here is an example of what I mean, it can be seen in last part "C1", found at time 4.10;

Ecofriendly kitchen

EKOKOOK
by faltazi

A short introduction to sustainable work

'Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development'

(first principle, UNCED 1992).

Global reports for sustainable developement

• Report of United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972
• World Conservation Strategy, 1980, UNEP
• Process of preparation of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond, 1983 UNEP, from this the report;
• Our common future, Brundtland Report, UNEP 1987
• Agenda 21 at Earth Summit; United Nations Conference on Environmental and Development (UNCED), 1992
• Millenium Goals, Millennium Declaration, Millennium Summit, 2000
• Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg summit. Rio +10, 2002

It started in Stockholm Sweden with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 1972. In the report, we can read; "The need for more effective and less wasteful utilization of natural resources was underlined by several speakers" Stockholm Conference 1972. In 1980 UNEP, IUCN and WWF gave out the report World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development 1980. The report is full with pictures and facts about ecology, can be read here; World Conservation Strategy. Just three years later he Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) was held, "to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development to the year 2000 and beyond". Link here; Process of preparation of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond.

The well-known "Our common future" or just "Brundland report" came out 1987 as a result from the conference. In this report was one of the first and must common used definition of the term sustainable development:

development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

(get the Brundtland Report here at Center for a World in Balance)

From same site; The Brundtland report declaried that population growth was no longer seen as the major threat to the harmony of the planet. Almost all of it was among poorer people. And it was not they who were consuming the Earth's supply of fossil fuels, warming the globe with their carbon emissions, depleting its ozone layer with their CFCs, poisoning soil and water with their chemicals, or wreaking ecological havoc with their oil spills. In fact, their consumption of the world's resources was minute compared to that of the industrialized world (Center for a World in Balance).

From this we can see a global consern were raised. Doyle and McEachern means that much of what happened in Stockholm 1972, in the production of the World Conservation Strategy in 1980 and Brundtland Report of 1987, focused on sharing an appreciation of common problems and the array of policy instrument that can be used to respond- a sharing of awareness and experience. [..] Genuinely global problems require genuinely global solutions (Environment and Politics, 2008).

The biggest and well known conference for sustainable future was in 1992, Earth Summit held from UNCED, also known as the Rio Summit, Rio Conference, Earth Summit and Eco '92. From this conference we got Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Agenda 21, Convention on Biological Diversity, Forest Principles and Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Program of Agenda 21 emphasizes that it is important to involve all citizens locally, for example in Sweden, each municipality shall have an Agenda 21 office.

The Millennium Declaration was adopted during the Millennium Summit 2000, in this document the Millennium Goals where published and signed. 8 Millenium Goals with 21 targets, that we have to meet until 2015.

10 years after Rio Summit, 2002 Johannesburg summit was held in South Africa, the conference was a follow up from Stockholm and Rio. Read report here.

Sustainable work is now in different levels, a large part of them from individuals and organisations, but what do we see from those global reports?

Why sustainable development is complex, can be well understood from an example of Lee et al (Global Sustainable development in the 21st century). He mean that if me mix development debate with environmental debate we get sustainable development, an even more complex debate.

Development debate

• north/south
• right/left
• market/state
• hard/ soft

Environmental debate

• nature/people
• global/local
• market/non-market
• hard/soft
  

Sustainable development debate

• north/south
• nature/people
• global/local market
• civil/society/state
• hard/soft

So, well. What should we do with reports and facts. Information and conferences.

Something seems to be missing. Were is the doing part?

The world conservation union (IUCN) made a report 2006 The Future of Sustainability. Re-thinking Environment and Development in the Twenty-first Century. Can be read here. Haven't read it my self yet. But I might know, they have a point.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other interesting definitions of the term sustainable development are listed below:
(Copied from Sustainable Works org)

• Meeting current needs - environmental, economic and social - without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.
  Sustainable City Plan, Santa Monica
• Improving the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems.
  Sharing Nature's Interest, Mathis Wackernagel
• Long-term cultural, economic, and environmental health and vitality.
  Sustainable Seattle
• The integration of economic prosperity, environmental health and social equity into viable systems, which will function effectively in our common future.
  UCLA GSA
• Sustainability is characterized by an emphasis on preserving the environment, developing strong peaceful relationships between people and nations, and an emphasis on equitable distribution of wealth.
  Coop America
• a) A method of harvesting or using a resource so that resource is not depleted or permanently damaged . b) Of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods.
  Webster's Dictionary
• Sustainability is related to the quality of life in a community -- whether the economic, social and environmental systems that make up the community are providing a healthy, productive, meaningful life for all community residents, present and future.
  Sustainable Measures
• Sustainable business: a business that provides goods and services, and/or has incorporated into its daily operations practices that result in cleaner air and water, less waste and pollution, conservation of energy and natural resources, less traffic, improved quality of life for residents and workers, and contribute to a strong and viable local economy.
  Sustainable City Plan, Santa Monica

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A city perpective

Prentend a city, an imaginary one or a real. How is it built up? And what would happen if everything was changed?

Pretend the buildings, the streets and the parks. Now, take away all people, all social structures, everything we do there. Prented it to be totally empty.

Pretent that you can build it up, rebuild, make new structures. Prentend that you build the city for your own needs.
How would it look like?

I might know that you would not put the things you need everyday in a long distance. I pretend that you would like to have it so you can walk there.

So for your own needs you need some other people. Put them their too and make their connections about their needs around them.

How does the city look like now? Is it a similar city as the real one? What is added? What was taken away?

I want to see the city in different layers. On top of each other. Not spread out, next to each other. Can you imagine? I would like to give a picture of it.

Your home is your castle, right? You need a place to feel private. But you want to let other people into your home sometime. Other times you want to go to a friend. Or met in another place, open for more people. As social creatures, we normally want to learn new things once in a while and get to know new perspectives. Besides of company, we need food- farmers. Besides company and food we need someone that can build houses, fill it with things we need when we cook. I can say I would be more than happy in this small society. But next step should be contact with other societies, to do that we need some kind of communication. Internet is great. People also want to go to other places of course. So we need structures between cities.

Places for
Individual
Groups
Farmers
Craftmen
Handymen
Communication between

Now it looks like a old stoneage society. That is not what we want to have. This is why the communication between is so important. We need to share. Share examples of good structures and knowledge.

In my pretended society there is no unnessesary shopping, no ugly food systems, no messed up systems of water or forest logging.

That is because we don't need it.

In this city music, meetings, sharing of knowledge and experiences, expressions, food and drinks are the most important. You know who it was that made the things you use.

Anyway, did you think of an imaginary or a real city from the beginning? What is what in this world we have today?

The story about a veterinary

The clever rabbit Pipis became almost 11 years old, human best friend, followed me all over the country. That night, last summer, I came home and instead of, as he always did, say hej to me, he seemed to be tired, looked into the wall. I walked to him and put him out were he sat and he was twisting around in a circle.



-It is a stroke, the woman told me in the veterinary jour line. You have to come with him tomorrow. There is nothing to do. Keep him calm untill then.

I sat with Pipis for hours. He ate and drank, and sometimes he left his box and was lost totally in the room. Span around, lap after lap. He seemed perverse of his own behavior, and a bit in a panic to try to bring order to the world.

o

A not happy Pipis and a young Anna

We called the closest veterinary several times that morning, but the line was busy. I decided to walk there anyway. To kill a rabbit.. they should have time for that.

- He might have an ear infection. It can also be a the teeth. Has he met other rabbits? No? You should have this medicin anyway. And for ears and.. teeth. And painkiller.

So I walked out from the veterinary. 100 euro less. And three recipes. And a twisting rabbit in a box. The woman in the reception asked me pretty irreverent if I didn't thought it would cost that much. "no I went here to take his life" I was thinking.

Neither helped, have the medicin right here; Axilur® vet. 10%,50 ml, Baytril® vet. 25 mg/ml or Metacam® 1.5 mg/ml 10 ml. A lot of medicin left.

In nature you were rasied, in nature you will always run.

Straight.

-----

So questions about this silly world;

How can companies work with healthcare? They have to make profit, right? Profit they can just have if their patients is a little bit sick all the time, with a hope to make it better with medicin. And the medicin have to work just a little bit, to sell more, with the hope from the sick person to be healthier. And they can make up what ever. With hope, we stay alive.

And in veterinary business. Why should it be different? "Bad reputation will fell bad services businesses" and "let the best one win", is that really true? A health marked based on competition. "In this hospital you will be so healthy!" How can healthcare be business? That is just my question, no other values in how to build a society. Expect of that health should be a human right. And then use easy solutions that works. Don't start with the medicin. We are humans. We are dependent on our suroundings. Start there and a lot of medicin is just crap.

--

Of course we want our small friends to stay with us for a little bit longer. But a 11 year old rabbit? Poor Pipis. But he's back to the wild now. We never walked back to the veterinary, no need for that. Just to kill a rabbit with a stroke.

Berkely residents- see the new Center Street

Tonight;
Walter Hood Presents Strawberry Creek Plaza at Center Street Proposal Presented by Ecocity Builders Thursday, January 28 / 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm FREE
David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way
Berkeley
www.browercenter.org

Informed by stakeholders and the community, and guided by the Downtown Area Plan recommendations, landscape architect and urbanist Walter Hood, commissioned by nonprofit Ecocity Builders, has developed a proposal for a new public space on Center Street.

A pedestrian plaza for downtown Berkeley is currently called for by the new Berkeley Downtown Area Plan. The Hood proposal received a good initial reception at the Berkeley City Council and Planning Commission, and has been vetted with extensive stakeholder and public process over two years.

Read more about the project at Ecocity Builders homepage

Beetles and other small creatures

Mailase trap, yellow traps, water traps, ground traps, sticky traps, light traps, or something new to me; beer & cheese trap. We humans, or some of us called entomologists, want to know more about small creatures.

--I will give you a story.

One day I found a beetle in my bean cultivation. It had transformed from the quite big larva I bought to the spiders and been to a beautiful quite big beetle (Genus Pachnoda) from the soil I used from a terrarium. In the same time, at my friends house (also working with animals in the home space), an unusual speciment of a skin beetle (Family Dermestidae. the second picture) showed up. While he arranged traps with small bottles filled with beer and cheese, my little friend named Arne was climbing ontop of the curtains and pooped everywhere.












Beetles (Order Coleoptera) is the largest insect order with 350.000 described species. The number of species of the class Insecta is estimated at between six and ten million, and potentially represent over 90% of the differing life forms on Earth.

How would the world look without them? Bee Disappearance article in the UK Independent: “The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees but also other small creatures, like the beetles. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

Why do some people hate them so much, the small creatures? Have man become something disconnected from nature when we started to have civilisation? Is it wild and naughty to like them, or even to care about them, notis them?

Small creatures work hard. All around us. Helps us with all. We can not replace them. They are needed.

--An example of what you can do with them if you don't want to meet them is to listen to Amon Tobin- Esther's, with influences from Beetles flying--

Do we need to have them in our homes? I guess we should, in an organized way. If we understand and connect to even the smallest creatures, we find ourselves.

A common picture used in the ecology studies is this one with the big fly. An overview of relative speciess richness of various groups and other organisms, showed in proportional to size to picture.

If you wonder where humans are look at the raindeer, which indicates all mammals, under the mushroom.

And Arne? He scared me once, when he was out here in the room, he flow over, with that special hard and noisy sound and landed on my stomach. Now he have to share space with the crickets, but he seems to like it.

[And still alive in December 2010, like as a domestic birds, he is curtailed, which was cricket's fault]

SymbioCity

Swedish Trade Council launches SymbioCity Scenarios, a scenario-based simulation developed by BTS Group

Link to play with the city here; SymbioCity Scenarios


From the Swedish press release, 26 of January 2010;

A critical success factor of SymbioCity concept is that it is more scalable so it can be adapted and implemented at various levels in municipalities and cities, and to deliver apronounced high-value, or more content for less effort.

- All over the world in which we present SymbioCity and Swedish environmental technology companies, we see that focusing on individual problems, rather than to take a holistic approach on urban development.

-One important message we want to communicate with the game is that it are significant synergy gains to make in the coordination and planning.

The brutality in killing animals

"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis.

The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right"

My beloved enemy
from Isaac Bashevis Singer

---

Tunas and dolphines, we know about, but ignored from most of us. But man killing mating dolphines.. have you seen the documentary/ecothriller 'The Cove'? Here a review by Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic



Interested for more; see the movie Earthlings here or why not see the broader picture with trade with both animals, crops and water in the move "We feed the world".

Green rooftops and vertical garden

It's not only the cosiness we would like to have when we want more green in the cities; green spots connects people to each other, makes us relaxed, can be seen as monuments, rooms, hidespots and to create collaboration.

In an Ecocity, green spots is not only for the ground space, it would be at the flat houseroof, in terraces, in tunnels, on the walls of buildings, walls just for plants, onto human bridges and special "garden brigdes", green will not only create new spaces but will also interlace them to each other.

You might heard about green rooftops to be used as technology, to cool a house and to collect rainwater, but in the same time it could be used as social forums with gardening, cafees and activites. Green spots should be used more, to create a good environment for humans.

See this film, Patrick Blanc's vertical gardens on youtube, link to VidoEmo under.


Patrick Blanc Vertical Garden Interview In Paris - VidoEmo - Emotional Video Unity

Read also the article in National Geographic about Green Roofs (May 2009)

Some definitions

Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo meditaciones del quijote

[I am I and my circumstances, and if I do not save the latter I do not save my self]

-Meditaciones del quijote [Mediations of Don Quijote], 1914, p 77, José Ortega y Gasset

Human ecology deals with everything that surrounds us. From the broad meanings of both those words, human and ecology, human ecology can be defined; All activities from humans are connected. One of the first definitons of human ecology can be seen in this blog's title;

The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community

(article from, R. D. McKenzie, 1925, The City, by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess)

where the Ecological Approach comes from the word Ecology [Greek: οἶκος, household; -λογία, study of], which is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment.

Ecology is also the study of ecosystems which describe the web or network of relations among organisms at different scales of organization, refers to any form of biological diversity. Ecologists research connections from small to large; everything from the bacteria's role in nutrient recycling to the effects of forests evaporation on the earth's atmosphere. Ecology as a field emerged from the natural science, Biology in the late 19th century.

Biology as a field, emerged in the the beginning of the 1800, studying life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology and ecology are naturally very close, where ecologists needs biological terms for their work, for example, scientific names, presence and life cycles to describe flows, growth and relations.

Human ecology is therefore a rather complex, interdisciplinary area, which use the holistic approach to deal with solutions. Examples to practise ecology in the human society can be in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agriculture, forestry , fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic & applied science. Human ecology also provides a conceptual framework for understanding and researching human social interaction.

Such a human social interaction can be the cities, a central part in this blogsite. Ecocities, a term from 1979, defind as;

a human settlement that enables its residents to live a good quality of life while using minimal natural resources

The word eco refers here to ecology, BUT in the ecological approach this might also be the economy. The closeness between ecology, economy and sociology is central to the field of human ecology and therefore also for ecocities that deals with both humans and (their) ecology.

Awarness of the ecology of humans have given the light to the environmental problems. Which are normally recognized as complex and hard to solve, and from this fact the field of Environmental communication and management emerged as a new but essential academic field to the future.

Environmental communication emerged from interdisciplinary work involving communication, environmental science, risk analysis and management, sociology, social psychology and political ecology. EC refers to the study and practice of how individuals, institutions and societies, distribute, receive, understand, and use messages about the environment and human interactions with the environment or our suroundings i.e human ecology.

According to Robert Cox, 2006, the field of Environmental Communication is composed of seven major areas of study and practice:

• Environmental rhetoric and discourse
• Media and environmental journalism
• Public participation in environmental decision making
• Social marketing and Advocacy campaigns
• Environmental collaboration and conflict resolution
• Risk communication
• Representations of nature in popular culture and green marketing
  

All of them central to sustainable development.

This blog deals with the broad perspective of human ecology as a educational part, but as much as to educate people to be aware of their surroundings, we need to work with them, as the field of environmental communcation advocate.

My hope is, that we don't need to have definitions in the future, we will just live in the middle of it. Aware and full of life.

Biodiversity

".. it is interesting to consider what we, the few generations of Homo sapiens to traverse this point in time, might be remebered for. I wager it will not be the Cold War between East and West, rise and fall of communism, not for various wars in the Middle East or terrorist acts; not for rises in living standards or widespread famine. All of these will be continuations of normal historical events. We will probably be celebrated for putting the first person on the Moon, and the computer/information revolution, but we will certainly be condemned for presiding over large-scale habitat destruction and the mass extinction of species on earth. The latter is a crime of our generation for which future generations will never forgive us. It is happening now, concentrated over just a few decades, destroying what four billion years of evolution has created.."

Pullin, 2002

Thoughts about a sustainable center

Plans for a center is becoming more relevant and realistic. It is time to maybe start a website for it, where we will have a central forum. What do you think?

The road song

have you heard the song "hur ska jag göra för att komma över vägen?" haven't heard the whole song sice I was a little kid, and haven't remembered the song. just singing part of it with my amercian Friend.

he sings that if moose decide in the world, the world would look different, the trees would be in the middle of the road and everyting would looked as before.




What should I do to get over the road.
What should I do to get over there
Here I have now been waiting several weeks
and all the cars they just driving past.

This applies to the de, the de, to the deer.
Just as there can be a moose
This applies to foxes and rabbits and small animals
As well as it can apply to yourself.

What should I do ......

Wrooooo- ooom

If it was moose who decided in this world
Then the world would look different
Then the trees would grow in the middle of the road
and everything would be as before.

What should I do ......

Daniel Gilbert on climate change-with some pungent formulations

Daniel Gilbert Los Angeles Times, July 02, 2006.

If only gay sex caused global warming (click to read the article)

"..Yes, global warming is bad, but it doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.

[...]

Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed..."

-Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of "Stumbling on Happiness"-

(Tip from social anthropology professor Brian Palmer, thanks.)

A melody for the millennium

Dead Can Dance - The Host Of Seraphim
Uploaded by shreckkk. - Explore more music videos.

Forgot about the Millennium Development Goals, signed Sep 2000? 8 goals, 21 targets, 2015 is the time limit.

"Eradicating extreme poverty continues to be one of the main challenges of our time, and is a major concern of the international community. Ending this scourge will require the combined efforts of all, governments, civil society organizations and the private sector, in the context of a stronger and more effective global partnership for development. The Millennium Development Goals set timebound targets, by which progress in reducing income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter and exclusion — while promoting gender equality, health, education and environmental sustainability — can be measured. They also embody basic human rights — the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter and security. The Goals are ambitious but feasible and, together with the comprehensive United Nations development agenda, set the course for the world’s efforts to alleviate extreme poverty by 2015. "

United Nations Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon


The Millenium Development Goals Report 2009 and what to do 2010 can be seen in here

Thought

"'If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past."

-Asian saying

In large human ecology deply goes under this. It sees to the history, the present time and the future. To work interdisciplinary is what we have to do and not missing that the history tells alot where we are today and what we should do tomorrow. Most projects just see what to do in the future. That perspective is not sustainable in the long term.

In small – emphasizing that, for Mead, people live in the present, and their interpretations of the past and the future are shaped by the present. We can consider the implications of his perspective for the understanding of the self, interaction, and society.

Light pollution

Light pollution as a phenomena and as a global fact isn't new knowing. Cities that never sleeps, turned to a day without ending. Birds goes in wrong directions, turtles are run over by cars.

And what about ourselves?

When we have as much snow as we have in Göteborg this year, my mind goes to Northen Sweden in Piteå were I lived for three years, here the northern light glow over the sky almost every evening in the wintertime and all over the black sky you should see the stars.

In Göteborg its just too light, we can see some stars, but not thousands and that makes me just wonder how people nowadays can say that they know that they are living in the universe, but they can't see the sky. Good that we have information so we can sit inside and watch the stars on the computer! Or why not have your own star sky in the ceiling above the bed? as an ex just told me (yes he is adult)!

I was reading the article in National Geographic and here with very nice picures, article from 2008. Same number with a huge repotage of Borneo and some about the Elephant seal mating. Nature in informatic form is fascinating but just pee in the ocean to the real thing.

Carrotmob

Carrotmob, a movement started 1½ year ago in San Francisco, now on its way around the globe. Next Göteborg 23 Januari, kl 14.00 at Universeum, the large science exibitionhouse with tropical rainforest and more, the thing is that this place just have organic coffee and not much more (I think they have organic meatsause, but not sure). The mob should push them more at the right way and its a good place to start. It's the science house and a lot of kids are coming here!



See also another film here and their hompage here.

(Tip from Omställning Göteborg, more about the event read in Swedish here)

Tomorrow's cities designed in Gothenburg

Tomorrow's cities designed in Gothenburg

MISTRA, the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, has granted a substantial sum to Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg together with their partners in the larger Gothenburg urban region and internationally to build a world-leading centre for holistic development of sustainable communities.

The project is called Mistra Urban Futures: The Göteborg Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Futures and will start in januari 2010 in the same house as Ekocentrum.


Conference in Uppsala 9-10th of February 2010; program in Swedish

"Poem" -don't be an asshole

When working with sustainable issues you will quite often work with people with a lot of arguments, sometimes it feels as if you work against people's will. This "poem" or what to call it, with bad words as everyone we don't agree with as assholes is worth to listen to. From this; "Assholes are like bad ideas, You let even a single one enter your life; it can begin to ruin things [...] Perhaps Goethe said this best "That which disturbs your soul you must not suffer" ".

I am a little bit more tolerant than this but I like this. Lissen.

(Tip from Mr. not so tolerant Mattias Stahre, thanks)

H & M throws away clothes

New York; the Swedish clothing company throws unsold clothes, and before they go to the trash bin, store destroys them completely, so they can not be given away to charity or used by, for example, homeless

Read the article in New York Times here.

The world without us

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/

System thinking

Easy questions have already been addressed.

Human stands now with complex question like climate change, GMO, global human health and other serious environmental problems. To fix them, linear problem solving is no longer the solution. There is a need for a broader picture and to do that we need other tools.

”What we do in this world is a function of how we see it. Therefore, if we want to improve our doing we should work with our seeing”.

”If the only tool you had was a hammer, everything would look like a nail”.



(found in a notbook, preparations to hold a workshop, class for master students)

Ecocity "see-it"

Take a look at this!

http://ecocity.visiblestrategies.com/

Ecocity Builders have made an overview of their work in the special tool "see-it" from Visible Strategies

New ways

We know that the rainforest are cut down for woods and to be transformed for crop plantation. In some countries this is "under the law", and then they have some illegal cutting. Often they have a connection. No-one can enter a rainforest if they haven't been there before. so to fix the problem they invent the FSC for example. A labeling that could both be good for the buyer and into the forest with more investigators/ control people. This wasn't working. they have a lot of problems with it. So what to do? Some anthropological scientists mean that if we want a good or a sustainable forest protection we need to give the power to the people. They should by themselves have their councils, rules, legislations.

If this was implemented in other areas too, we should have a society not based on capitalism, nor communism or any other ideology than common sense


(copied from a chat with friend Sascha, Germany)

Community gardening

Can it be like, the good effects about globalisation have been that people start to talk to each other, all over the world? News, facts, uncertainly and distrust are shared on blogs, forums, between friends, strangers on the street. If this can be linked to something far away as the basics for humans; the food production, we could save the world.

Here are some good links to community gardening

Todmorden's Good life: Introducing Britain's greenest town

Community Gardens Relieve Family Budgets

joegardener blogsite

In Sweden, Malmö "Barn i stad"

The new project in Uppsala "Matparken"

Find a community garden in US

Green movement in West Oakland- radio report

Village Bottoms neighborhood in West Oakland -how to build an urban farm and a local commutity

From the Village Bottom Urban Farm, West Oakland. US

22 wolves were shot today

Picture; Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management

Wolf hunting in Sweden. 45 year ago since last time. 12 000 hunters signed up for the 27 indivuduals of wolves that they was allocated to shoot.

Between 2th of Januari to 15th of Februari was the time set. 22 were shot today in five different areas, one of these shot one too much (the info this day was after midnight; 25 total and 4 too much).

Around 210 individuals will be left in the wild. The Swedish Socitey of Nature Conservation have decided to report Swedish government to the European Commission. This is because wolf is listed as Critically Endangered in Sweden.

Sign up here (more than 10 000 signed on so far) to show that this is madness.

--

This year, year 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. 2009 was the 100th anniversary of The Swedish Socitey for Nature Conservation, something that Sweden can be very proud of, as one of the worlds leader for nature conservation.

The new Swedish government decided to take SEK 45 million from the Biodiversity to the increased cost for wildlife game. Sounds a bit strange to me..
I guess the only thing we can do is to laugh at the silly Swedish government.

Happy Future!

A new year, a new decennium-again! Twenty-ten sounds like future. Life goes fast,

and it all started under the trees..
 Me as a newborn to a little girl grew up in a neighborhood literally under the oaks. Grandma lived in the same house, took us out in the oak forest to the talking old trees. It was a suburb area under the treelayer but it was close to the city center in an, in global terms, "average sized city" and my father didn't need a drivers licence. Both the sea and nature was around the corner. The summer place on the island in the sea, was only one hour from our home.

When I become older, I got 5 brothers and 2 sisters to take care of and play with. We always had something to do besides of ordinary hutt building and playing school, as climbing in the mountains at the seashore, running with the cows, teach the sisters to ride tiny horses, we might investigate the garbage from the ocean in the bays and in the wintertime we could build the biggest snow castles when everyone helpt.

Me, a person who loves nature as pure nature and urban nature, seaching to find the green spots in every city I go to, was probably rooted in the sustainable thinking there somewhere in my early years. With two separarate families I might got the feeling of helping other, so much as I can say that I want the best for people and the human species. My ethical beliefs for a healthy Earth with an amazing fauna and flora and happy kids playing around, is sometimes stronger than my primary needs, as food, which sometimes puts me in unwanted situations, but what to do?

Myself, in writing movement, 26 years old, stands now as a newly-graduated ecologist and an environmentalist into my heart, with a lot of work! And it must be done now, on planet earth.

My journey of deliberate action for a more healthy Earth, started at an age of 14 when I started to help the organization Animal Rights Sweden (then the Nordic Society Against PainFul Experiments On Animals) to distribute information downtown and in neigbourhoods. Starting with the laboratory animals and ended when I realized that we couldn't just boycot or buy different brands, we need to think completely different, this thought when I understood the connection of my eating habits with what is going on on planet earth and how much animals who have to live during violated conditions. So just as that, I stopped eating meat, fish and later dairy products.

When it was time for gymnasium, I chose to study to an animal career, and became interested in endangered animals in the Tropical forests and causes to. Proven by the close link to huge deforestration of Tropical forests from the enormous amount of wasted food when produce meat. Both big and small interactions from the species in the rainforest and my interest in small tropical animals lead me to ecology in the university, and with my broad view and interest lead me to human ecology and other interdisciplinary issues like consumtion issues, sustainable development and ecocities.

I was there, in the Tropical rainforest and saw thousand of miles of oil palms monocrops and even orangutans. And somewhere here in life I realized that it doesen't matter how much I know about plants, mammals or what I like; insects. If we want to do something about the planet's health, we must think about how people think and more over how and why they act as they do. We need to talk more than before with each other. Environmental problems are more about psychology than knowledge about ecology, it might happen that they also have some kind of relation to each other in a word "communication"- but in the end- it doesen't matter how much we know about the "true solution"- if we don't use the knowledge.

Now, almost 13 years from beginning of my journey, the World looks even worse. But awareness spread fast in the northern part of the world at this time. Can the 10's be the decennium when we solve this?

COP15, the climate meeting in Copenhagen dec-09 showed that we can not trust politicians to fix it. And if they do; what can they do? Prohibit people from driving their cars? Prohibit them to eat meat? Prohibit them to interact? I guess they don't act, cause they don't know what to do. And isn't it also as "the role of politicans to fix it" is a little bit as "business as usual"? We are at the point where we see that this is not working anymore, to fix the problem we can't use the same tools as we did to create the problems.

Therefore, people as ourselves should act by ourselves. But with no means completely alone, we can help each other if more people would know how to disseminate ideas and how to go from idea to action. It's all about communication, and time is limited.

---

I would like to give every human the opportunity to live under the oaks, to have sustainability into their backbones, to go the same journey as me, but a little bit more simple! And with that; it should be easier.

To educate everyone would take too long time so we need therefore speed up a little. To build an environment for people where it's easy "to do right" is the challange for the future.



By the way, Happy TwoThousandandTen!

Ecology of New York

Sustainable Island- Treasure Island, San Francisco

Treasure Island as a sustainable place? Housing, farming and energy.

Read the article in San Francisco Chronicle online here

Hot cities

Gothenburg- super sustainable city

Cappadocia, Turkey

Cappadocia region in the heart of Turkey. Capadocia; Katpatukya, Turkish Kapadokya, from Greek: Καππαδοκία / Kappadokía

Cappadocia region was created three million years ago through several eruptions of the volcanoes Mt. Erciyes and Mt. Hasan. By water and wind, the tuff mountains eroded to a spectacial shape. As the rock below the top layer of basalt is extremely soft, it can be easily carved, communities took advantage of this to make their home in the rock pillars and under the ground. Today, these examples of homes, churches and whole cities abound in Cappadocia can bee seen, where humans settle down as long ago as 2500-2000 BC. 

Now, it is forbidden to live in the mountains because of the risk of collapse, but some of the mountains has new houses, as the two restaurants we went to, and a carpet weaving and a pot making place.

Houses keeps a temperature of 16 degrees C even if its below freezing point or above 30 degrees C outside.Very environmentally sound!

Picture to the left. My brother Jakob took a tour in the Göreme open air museum. We traveled in Cappadocia for two days, which was too few days, we could been here for months I guess.

Most visited in the region: The Göreme Open - an air museum with carved painted churches; the underground cities of Kaymaklý or Derinkuyu where around 40 000 people lived in the past with their animals and children. A huge underground city, with 8 stores, kitchen, wine production, stables, churches, places for sleep, all inside the mountain. The smoke was led in long digged pipes so enimies couldn't see where they were. And another very special thing is the fairy chimneys seen in last picture. These things often appears in three; something known as the trinity. Cappadocia is listed as a heritage site.
 

Summary of Ecocity World Summit 2009

With a goal to collect thoughts around the world, the 8th Ecocity World Summit was held in Istanbul 13th to 15th of December. The conference cost between 150 euro (for one day) to a regular ticket 500 euro, plus flight ticket and hotel cost it would be around 1000 euro up to double for non-Istanbul people. Who can come? Give it a thought.

homepage http://www.ecocity2009.com/
and program

I have to say that the answer would be; People who see the conference as an investment; companies that want to sell something. So next question would be; is an ecocity something that companies can invest in or is it more of an utopia?

We saw big projects from the company Varyap, Kucukcekmece Project and NewVista. Big scale projects with renewable energy and a lot of green room. The densed living and open up other green areas was in focus. Hiroaki Suzuki from World Bank told us about the concept Eco2 Cities, cities with both ecological and economic in focus. Suzuki also told us, that we have to build new houses for people, that is as many as the already existing buildings! New cities, big scale and repaplicated? Or rebuiding existing areas in a smarter way as examples from Montreal, Vancouver and Freiburg showed.

Richard Register's ground though about connect urban and rural areas in a more densed way so we can call it a ”city” can be what we call a small town, a village or a neighborhood today; it dosn't have t be A CITY. The ”city” part of the word ecocity means that ”like in a city, you have everything close to you”, it is unfortunately not what we can say about our cities today or the surroundings of the cities- sprawl and suburbs. Richard Register was very sensitive about talking too much about his concept, something that enjoyed me a lot- it is his concept- he should tell people what the main ideas are. Not hide them inside the book.

Can we build a society based on humans and not stuff, where we have everything we need close to us? Do we need Ecocities or Ecological modernization?
Good health and joy is all we need (?), and in the cities today we don't create it directly; it's a long way.. fist we let the people go sick from smog, bad quality of water, sedentary work, and stressful surroundings, and then we might help them back in the heath care. There is more food programs and non-fat products than ever, but people are also fatter and eat more unheathy than ever. Gyms and lifecoaching programs shows up in every corner; "do this" and "do this"- things that tells us to make us less stressed, makes us more stressed- because we have to have time to do the things. Hospitals, psychologists, life coaching, and even materialist consumption can go under what I would like to call; high speed, unhealthy societies. People have forgot what makes them happy.

Closeness and collaboration should be worlds for what an ecocity really is.

A sustainable society can only work in the long term (which is in the term sustainable..); if people have the right to own their property together with other people which will make them care about it, also important is to gain good group synergy and there we have it; a society that takes what it have and share thoughts, knowledge and pleasure.

Ostroms principles about sharing property can be read here, about sustainability here and about my perspective what an ecocity is here (links in this blog)

A very nice reading about the conference can be read at Daily Cos The Power of Nearness - DK Greenroots (or maybe its more about the real concept of the ecocity).

Visible Strategies

So much to tell, but I start with this; one of todays speaker at Ecocity world summit 2009

-Colin Grant from the company Visible Strategies, Vancouver.

Visible Strategies work with the tool "see-it", that can be used for better overviews for projects. City government can for example show their citizens and other intrested people how their plans will be to cut CO2 emissions. This, to create a better understanding of environmental problems and really "see it". Here you can view the tool "see-it" in "Inconvenient truth and convenient solutions" for environmental problems, and here is not only bad news, they show also some good examples!

End of mankind

This week, two articles, one seminare, one movie and two books have to be connected under the titel; the end of mankind.

Darwin himself wrote in 1871, Descent of man, that it's likely that human will become extinct. In the daily newspaper I read in a small novise that newfound evidence from last week says that things that was too extreme he hide in an urn found last week. This secret documents says that, as due to a small brain and ugly appearance, man will die. (This is a bit funny if we just think a bit that Darwin didn't know about Cosmetic Surgery, and then doe to this; people that might not attrac each other if they looked natural "mix with each other" (my argumentation have to stop here, you can imagine the rest), at his time, I guess he was more into the mixed culture and rases, that everyone would look the same in the end).

Next reading was the autor about the self-regulating Earth; The Gaia Theory, who says that now is the end of humanity; climate change caused by humans is nothing that Gaia can fix by herself. Lovelock (click to read the essay) prepare himself to go with the first open space ship and see the view of the earth. "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

In the same time we have the premiere of the movie "2012", which can be connected to the "year 2012" which the Inca people predicted. And this is very interesting, because it can also be interpreted as a "tipping year" or the year when the world will change not end. When people all over the globe will gathering and do something together, as a deeper understanding with our inner selves and a broader consciousness in the Inca spirital way. But might, of course, also be as that humans will be more aware of the nature as in a deeper part of our consciousness.

I also read two books from Malcolm Gladwell. In the second of these books, he meant that mostly it is chance that determines whether we will succeed or not. In the book Outliers- the story of success we can see this clearly when hockey players mostley are born in the months of January, February and March, just because it's in January as they pick out new players for the intake. They simply select the boys even then they are in their teens, those who are at biggest size in January. The advantage gives them the confidence to stay in hockey. And for others to quit.

Similar non-real ranks of success is to play the stock market which I heard about four days ago in a seminare day about Economy and Financial Markets at my old school; School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Tommy Gärling, Professor in Psychology told us about the human touch in the Stock Market; most of the people in the Stock Exchange echo each other. It's more about psychology than superclever people; They follow if they are not sure, they sell late when it is in decline and premature when it is on the rise, which touches to a small-offset S-curve with some kind of equilibrium. If not even the economy is driven with a purpose, which everything in our world are depending at in these days- what is then?

Is it just a lot of coincidences that is in power in the world?

Now with just some days before the COP 15, a meeting which should prepare us all for the future- but a meeting that noone really believe in-, we can ask us these questions; can we fix it with hard work? (in an combination with coincidences, also Gladwell), have we already reached the tipping point? as Lovelock says, or would we just go bad and ugly as Darwin tells us? or again, is this the tipping point when we at last understand and do something about it?, as Gladwell tells us in his first book "Tipping point, how little things can makes big differences".

Can we fix it? Perhaps, but it depends who you ask (click to read another intresting article at the homepage of the newspaper Independent).