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Whole Systems Approach to Ecological Design Organic Agriculture and Local Food Appropriate Technology: Energy Green Building & Retrofitting |
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Vision Statement from Dr. David Orr and Dr. John ToddNo generation has ever faced a more daunting agenda than those who will become adults in this decade and the next. They will have to do what we, the present generation, have been unable or unwilling to do: stabilize world population, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that threaten to change the climate-perhaps disastrously, protect biological diversity now declining at an estimated 100-200 species per day, reverse the destruction of rainforests (both tropical and temperate), and conserve soils being eroded at a fast rate. They must learn how to use energy and materials efficiently. They must learn how to use solar energy. They must rebuild the economy in order to eliminate waste and pollution. They must learn how to conserve resources for the long-term. They must begin the great work of repairing, as much as possible the damage done to the earth in the past 200 years of industrialization. And they must do all of this while reducing poverty and egregious social inequities. No generation has ever faced a more daunting challenge. In one way or another those challenges will require that we learn how to work with and within the biogeochemical cycles and life processes of the earth. The industrial mind aims to use technology to reshape the biosphere. A better approach would be to design our economies, cities, agriculture, forestry, transportation systems. technologies, and culture to fit ecological patterns and processes. To do so requires a science of ecological design that runs counter to the discipline-centric worldview and core commitments of the contemporary university and the reductionistic logic of much of contemporary science. With acknowledgement to John Todd and David Orr |
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