Bits and tids
I'm hanging out at work, and it's pretty slow over here today so I'm cruising the latest stuff up on TED.com and worldchanging.com, both of which are quite awesome. So that you can enjoy the fruits of my interweb awesomeness harvest, here's the juiciest tidbits I picked up:
1. There's a demo of Spore on TED.com. I'm going to watch it as soon as I get home. Many of you have probably seen it before, but here it is again. (Maybe it'll include an actual release date? Or am I asking for too much?) The idea of this game thrills me; I've played a lot of SimCity in my day, and I'm always struck by what the game designers tend to focus on as the "important" aspects of city design. Ten years ago in Maxis' games, industry - while causing pollution - was the most important thing you could develop for your city; everything else was there to support it. Later we had things like SimEarth and SimLife, which was a great way to introduce eco-friendly values to computer game users. Now we have the long-awaited Spore, which teaches kids about evolution and gives them some idea of the process of how the world got to be the way it is - which, at least for me, has always lead to a greater understanding, respect, and reverence for the natural world.
2. The Vatican has announced its plan to be the first carbon-neutral state. The details of this plan, however, are hazy; Klimafa, the Europe-based subsidiary of the San Francisco company Planktos, has donated the equivalent of 100k euros to the planting of million trees on a 15-hectare plot of land on a deforested Hungarian island, thus offsetting the Vatican's carbon footprint for the last year. The Vatican has already been making an effort to go green by installing solar panels and the like, but they've also been promoting low-cost flights from Rome to other holy destinations, which dumps even more carbon into the air. Plus, the donation is only for the last year, and is not a sustainable solution. Then again, there's a big difference between going carbon-neutral by offsetting your carbon footprint and actually living sustainably and making your business and community sustainable - so the next question is, how can communities find ways to make their lifestyles low-impact? I'll be curious to watch the Vatican's progress in this regard - the Pope is making a big call-to-arms about how humanity needs to embrace its role as "caretaker of the earth" (although in Western culture, "caretaker" tends to mean "steward" and eventually leads to some sense of control and domination.) However, as many conservationalists - namely E. O. Wilson - have been pointing out as of late that the missing element in the movement towards a green culture is the involvement and contribution of the religious community. The idea is that once saving the planet is incorporated into peoples' religious values, there will be a huge addition to the conservation efforts. So we'll see.
3. After writing all that out, I decided it's about time I finally get that blog underway - Namit and I talked for a long time last night about the fundamental ways our society and economy could shift towards the greener end of things, he's got some notes he's going to write up and make into an entry on the blog, and I have a lot of ideas on how to expand the above piece of writing to make it into a good keystone piece. So hopefully the blog will be up and running soon! I've got the url all set and everything, and I'll unveil it as soon as there's some good stuff on it.
1. There's a demo of Spore on TED.com. I'm going to watch it as soon as I get home. Many of you have probably seen it before, but here it is again. (Maybe it'll include an actual release date? Or am I asking for too much?) The idea of this game thrills me; I've played a lot of SimCity in my day, and I'm always struck by what the game designers tend to focus on as the "important" aspects of city design. Ten years ago in Maxis' games, industry - while causing pollution - was the most important thing you could develop for your city; everything else was there to support it. Later we had things like SimEarth and SimLife, which was a great way to introduce eco-friendly values to computer game users. Now we have the long-awaited Spore, which teaches kids about evolution and gives them some idea of the process of how the world got to be the way it is - which, at least for me, has always lead to a greater understanding, respect, and reverence for the natural world.
2. The Vatican has announced its plan to be the first carbon-neutral state. The details of this plan, however, are hazy; Klimafa, the Europe-based subsidiary of the San Francisco company Planktos, has donated the equivalent of 100k euros to the planting of million trees on a 15-hectare plot of land on a deforested Hungarian island, thus offsetting the Vatican's carbon footprint for the last year. The Vatican has already been making an effort to go green by installing solar panels and the like, but they've also been promoting low-cost flights from Rome to other holy destinations, which dumps even more carbon into the air. Plus, the donation is only for the last year, and is not a sustainable solution. Then again, there's a big difference between going carbon-neutral by offsetting your carbon footprint and actually living sustainably and making your business and community sustainable - so the next question is, how can communities find ways to make their lifestyles low-impact? I'll be curious to watch the Vatican's progress in this regard - the Pope is making a big call-to-arms about how humanity needs to embrace its role as "caretaker of the earth" (although in Western culture, "caretaker" tends to mean "steward" and eventually leads to some sense of control and domination.) However, as many conservationalists - namely E. O. Wilson - have been pointing out as of late that the missing element in the movement towards a green culture is the involvement and contribution of the religious community. The idea is that once saving the planet is incorporated into peoples' religious values, there will be a huge addition to the conservation efforts. So we'll see.
3. After writing all that out, I decided it's about time I finally get that blog underway - Namit and I talked for a long time last night about the fundamental ways our society and economy could shift towards the greener end of things, he's got some notes he's going to write up and make into an entry on the blog, and I have a lot of ideas on how to expand the above piece of writing to make it into a good keystone piece. So hopefully the blog will be up and running soon! I've got the url all set and everything, and I'll unveil it as soon as there's some good stuff on it.