Livestream
Up Next: ‘Conscious Computing:
From Energy Consumption to the Ethics of Data Viz’
(11am MDT, Fri. May 4th)
Thanks to everyone that came to our 'Soil Health Circular Economy' event, part of of AgriTech Week. A perfect finale to #ATW2018! Until next year...
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Agri-Tech Week - our blog looks back on a week of data management and robot launching and soils health and precision spraying.....well, you can read it for yourself - https://t.co/J3ziXNInqB. Thanks to @Laura_AgriTech for #ATW2018 inspiration and insights too.
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Question for Paul Palmer: For non-governmental groups interested in supporting the implementation of a zero waste/ circular economy plan in their region, how do you suggest they get started? What are some of the low-hanging fruits?
Jean Polfus, Liber Ero Post-doctoral Fellow based in Tulit’a, NWT
Presenting on:
“Ɂełexé Eghálets’eda (Learning Together): Advancing sustainable conservation strategies through cross-cultural collaboration”
How do we balance the planet’s need for sustainability and the human need for learning experientially? i.e. travelling, “seeing with your own eyes”, being influenced by all of our senses, discovering through experience?
Isabelle: One project that I urge people to consider involved collecting all of the laboratory chemicals in a large area, putting them out for sale in a warehouse at half price and making lots of money while saving people lots of money and preventing underground pits from filling up with drums of perfectly usable lab chems. It was one of our most successful projects at ZWS. You will need to have a few chemists on your team. That’s normal, and to be expected for any technical item. Good intentions are not sufficient, though necessary.
For a second idea, go to Principles on my website and click on Personal Efforts, then scroll down to the pictures of a blender. But read the whole article. That method is just so superior to composting, for individuals. What is needed is for someone to obtain or design a grinder that does the job better than the blender. It should be able to grind up hard pits and bones. They exist. They are industrial grinders. Maybe they can be transformed into kitchen appliances with the same capabilities. Make, or order, and sell those machines. True, you should be making those machines according to ZW principles, and when you become independent and have a market, you can redesign them yourself, but until then, sell the machine, the method and the ZW Principles.
I see you work with plastic. That was the subject of Earth Day this year. Everything you read about solving the “plastic problem” is wrong. It is all based on two wrongnesses. One, that you focus on the waste problem instead of the design of goods. Two, that you use recycling to solve the problem. Both lead you down an endless road with no good destination. You can educate people on the only method that really has the potential to solve the problem. If you want more guidance, click on Contact on my website and phone me up. We can talk further.
I hope this helps.
Paul Palmer
The advantages of a broad, cross-disciplinary and sustained research community in the digital space are many. However, given the physical energy required to maintain “virtual life”, how can we extend the notion of community further yet by adopting a community solar business model? Community solar business models increase deployment of solar technology in communities, making it possible for people to invest in solar together. Shared solar falls under the community solar umbrella, allowing multiple participants to benefit directly from the energy produced by one solar array. Shared solar participants typically benefit by owning or leasing a portion of a system, or by purchasing kilowatt-hour blocks of renewable energy generation.
Here is a link to the Research-Creation + Social Justice CoLABoratory (CoLAB) at the University of Alberta
http://www.researchcreation.ca/
LINK: Karin Bolender is a principal investigator of the Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.). You can learn more about R.A.W. at https://ruralalchemy.com/
LINK: Andrew Yang takes a special interest in the Anthropocene proposal. Learn about and see more of Yang’s work at https://www.andrewyang.net/statement
More information about Scott Smallwood’s research can be found at: http://www.scott-smallwood.com
LINK: Check out http://overthought.ca/?p=549 to view Leanne Olson’s “Where a Lake Once Was.”
LINK: The Road By Cormac McCarthy is an amazing book by an amazing author. Check out the link for more information on the post-apocalyptic novel’s significance and reception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road
LINK: See Christa Donner’s work with the human/animal body through a variety of media at https://www.christadonner.com/
Here’s a link to the Berkeley Lab study that Andrew Yang just mentioned: It Takes 70 Billion Kilowatt Hours A Year To Run The Internet via https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2016/06/28/how-much-electricity-does-it-take-to-run-the-internet/#3a7aaf11fff2 #ATW2018
Here’s a link to Donna Haraway’s talk hosted here at UAlberta:
Donna Haraway – SF: String Figures, Multispecies Muddles, Staying with the Trouble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uTVnhIHS8
Andrew Yang quotes from Donna Haraway, author of “A Cyborg Manifesto,” where for any interested readers, can be accessed here http://www.sfu.ca/~decaste/OISE/page2/files/HarawayCyborg.pdf
LINK: See more of Mia Feuer’s work with natural and synthetic material sculpting at http://www.miafeuer.com/
Question / Comment re. some of the discussion around Karen Bolender’s presentation: various participants seemed to suggest that an important objective of ecological advocacy should be the acceptance of a future without economic growth. I worry that there may involve a conflation between (i) economic growth that involves a great deal of environmental destruction (which we currently have), and (ii) economic growth per se, which can in principle occur with drastically less environmental destruction. Economic growth is simply the expansion of the market value of the goods and services produced within an economy. There are many goods and services that are not ecologically destructive – indeed, some are positively environmentally beneficial (such those for which one pays in installing a large solar array that will make one a net donor to the grid and reduce the fossil fuels demanded by one’s neighbours). I think that a much more politically feasible objective of environmental advocacy is to make economic growth as environmentally friendly as possible – i.e. to minimize the environmental destruction and maximize the environmental benefits from the goods and services produced and consumed in an economy, even as their total market value expands. Many working class and poor individuals do not feel very economically comfortable (and the global poor could really use a continued expansion in their material conditions), and it is not politically feasible to meet their needs through lump-sum redistribution. Under these conditions they (at least very strongly and understandably feel that they) need economic growth, and will not take kindly to a bunch of very economically comfortable upper-middle-class academics hectoring them about the need to simply not care expanding economic opportunities. As helpful as the fine art being discussed here may be, I really don’t see it having the power in the short to medium run to change the minds of the working class and poor about whether it is important for them to be able to afford their medications, child-care, and mortgages in the name of the alleged general wrong-headedness of caring about expanding economic opportunities. Moreover in the case of climate change it is the short to medium run that matters a great deal, as things get much worse the more we don’t address them now.