So wind is a funny thing, I won’t tackle it here. But I drafted this blog post shortly after watching this presentation of the TESLA PowerWall, PowerPack and GigaFactory. Really hopeful stuff. But what I fear is the imagery that you see in the promo video 6:55 into this presentation. It is a suburban design representing typical sprawling development. Now I’m really glad folks like Elon Musk are dreaming up ways to solve our energy needs. But who is solving our living needs? The places we live work and play actually define our lives, not the electricity that makes them modern.
I love the idea of leapfrogging technologies but at what point are we ready to usurp the livability of a place in exchange for the modernity of it. Apparently, that point was the height of the industrial revolution and we have never looked back. I fear that our gizmo green solutions are using the same pigheadedness that got us here. Our existing technologies in housing and transportation have created an alienating, individualistic, consumptive, sedentary lifestyle. Our little boxes and compartmentalized cars remove us from the reality of the other.
I am reminded of a book I read shortly after graduating university. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution outlined the insanely inefficient electrical system we operate within and the proportionately irresponsible energy consumption patterns in all of our processes from food production and distribution, consumer goods manufacturing and packaging, urban, and suburban design and land use patterns. In other words, waste is designed into the very fabric of our lives. The solution may look like a distributed, renewable energy grid, but in fact, we should be examining the outdated ways that we design the world around us. As a simple example, the people who originally colonized Florida built their (pre-electricity/grid) houses with attic vents and lifted a few feet off the ground for circulation, with wrap-around porches to shade the interiors from the hot summer sun. This way they could bear living in the intolerable heat. Once the advent of central cooling and heating was invented, we started designing with irreverence for those one all-important natural climatic conditions. In fact, we should return to designing like we give a damn… and not just our houses, but our communities, our supply chains, and our foodsheds. Unfortunately, even our political systems now reflect this lack of basic understanding of the world around us. Design thinkers incorporate an inventory and analysis phase of project planning. We could learn a lot by assessing what is going on around us before designing based on our ability to pipe in hot water and electricity while relying on harmful production and supply chains to supply everything else while we travel to and fro in our single occupancy vehicles.
Yes, we should definitely address our energy needs! I’m kind of excited about these DIY PowerWalls and they reminded me to finish drafting this post. So I hate to be the naysayer, but we should not forget to also rethink our transportation, housing, food (more about this one in particular soon), healthcare and other systems. We must learn to break out of this industrial machine mindset that got us into this global ecological crisis including climate change and biodiversity collapse. We are also degrading our human psyche.
Verdant Cities 