Nature provides a blueprint for smart, efficient systems that has been largely overlooked or ignored by those who organize our population centers. There is plenty to be considered in the way certain coastal oaks gird themselves against hurricane winds or in the way desert plants make the most efficient use of scarce rainfall, but those are piecemeal solutions to individual problems. McGee is more interested in the wholesale re-imagining of the modern burg via “generous cities” that don’t just feed off their environments, but instead give back to their surroundings.
“Imagine a city where the water leaving the city is cleaner than that coming in, or a city that literally breathers carbon dioxide in to make products,” McGee says. “Or imagine if a city actually increases the biodiversity of a region or facilitates that happening in some way. All of that is possible, and people are working on it.”
Look no further than Calera, a California company that is successfully sequestering carbon dioxide in concrete by emulating sea coral. Rather than heating limestone to create concrete (and lots of carbon dioxide), Calera is mixing mineral rich seawater with power plant emissions in a process that causes the calcium in the water to bond with the carbon in the emissions to form cement. The emissions from the power plant are thus sequestered in the concrete that growing cities are built from (Calera's Moss Landing, Calif., pilot plant is pictured).
Was the stab at capitalism/laissez faire truly necessary? It's particularly ironic because capitalism is much closer to how a coral reef allocates its resources as opposed to socialism/capitalism.
Geez... hypersensitive much?
I see no "stab" at capitalism--just the simple fact that there are other, apparently more efficient, ways to allocate resources found in nature...
Or... wait, have coral reefs started to use fiat currencies to exchange energy?
*rolls eyes*
THIS is how science should be used! i think all of the major corporations out there need to start finding these kinds of solutions to the world's products. After all, we can't live without Mother Nature, so we'll just have to learn to live WITH her. besides, she's been doing things her way for trillions of years. who are we to say we know how to do something better than she can?
@ BV, Noghori
i agree with B.V. There are indeed better ways of doing things. the reason socialism doesn't work today is because people are entitled to the fruits of their labors. some form of that system would work quite well as far as power grids and information networks are concerned, as long as resources were allocated to satisfy demand. socialism is based on people being generous enough to see that even though you don't reap all that you sow, other people get to have some of it, and the knowledge that you were able to help someone less fortunate than yourself should be reward enough. but people aren't ideal, far from it, which is why capitalism and free trade works so well. in nature, individual ants and bees all work for the benefit of the whole. if we could learn to tolerate each other, and give to those who are less fortunate than ourselves, these systems could work. now, they would certainly need some work, to more closely resemble the system our great country, the U.S. of A., but they most certainly could work.
CosmicJoker42, over and out.