Bodies and Building History of the Environmental Movement

1. BODIES &
BUILDINGS
NYU ITP LECTURE COURSE FALL 2014
OCTOBER 20, 2014
JEN VAN DER MEER @JENVANDERMEER WWW.JENVANDERMEER.COM

2. ASSIGNMENT:
Prepare a written and spoken argument (2 pages, 5 minutes) clearly outlining your
position on the topic of mobile health innovation. Prepare for the midterm: a written and
spoken argument (2 pages, 5 minutes) clearly outlining your position on one of two
viewpoints:
Topic Options:
a) Propose a way to contain the spread of Ebola virus
b) Propose a way to improve the quality of life for people with chronic conditions
c) Your choice
This is taken from the Op-Ed structure. (From the Op-Ed Project)
Format:
1. Introduce from the context of the current discussion (LEDE)
2. State your thesis argument – what do you believe
3. Provide three relevant examples proving your point (evidence point one, evidence
point two, then conclusion)
4. “To be sure” Provide the counterpoint, then argue against the counterpoint.
5. Conclude with a recommended action.
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3. PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM:
12. Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards)
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (transport networks, population age structures)
9. Length of delays, relative to the rate of system change
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to what kinds of
information)
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints)
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure
3. The goals of the system
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system – its goals, power structure, rules, its culture-arises
1. The power to transcend paradigms
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4. 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or
self organize a system structure
The most stunning thing living systems and
social systems can do is to change themselves
utterly by creating whole new structures and
behaviors.
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5. Ebola – 2
weeks later
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6. Ebola – 2
weeks later
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7. Can we create new structures and
behaviors?
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8. Ebola – 2
weeks later
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https://www.hackerleague.org/hac
kathons/hack-ebola-at-nyu

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10. 3. The goals of the system
The goal of the system is a leverage point
superior to the self-organizing ability of a
system.
That’s why I can’t get into arguments about
whether genetic engineering is a “good” or
“bad” thing. Like all technologies, it depends
upon who is wielding it, with what goal.
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11. 3. The goals of the system
Whole system goals are not what we think of
as goals in the human-motivational sense.
They are not so much deducible from what
everyone says as from what the system does.
Survival, resilience, differentiation, evolution
are system-level goals.
Even people within systems don’t often
recognize what whole-system goal they are
serving.
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12. What is the goal of this system?
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13. What is the goal of this system?
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14. What is the goal of this system?
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15. BUILDINGS:
THE
ENVIRONMENTAL
MOVEMENT + THE
SUPPLY SIDE
BODIES & BUILDINGS
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16. ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT:
SUPPLY SIDE
Most of the technological interventions in the global
environment have focused on the supply side:
The availability of land (conservation)
The availability of fuel (gas crises, investment in clean tech)
The availability of greener products with greener materials
(green product development/greenwashing)
In this class we focus on the demand side – making buildings
so that they demand less from the earth. But to understand
the context, we need to know our recent history.
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18. HISTORY
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1845: Thoreau Walden; or Life in the
Woods
1864: Yosemite
1886: Audobon Society
1892: Sierra Club: John Muir
1910: Lakeview Gusher San Joaquin
CA
1916: Nat’l Park Service
1848: Donora PA, Zinc
1962: Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
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19. SILENT SPRING
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These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost
universally to farms, forests, and homes- nonselective
chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the “good”
and the “bad,” to still the song of the birds and the leaping of
fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and
to linger on in the soil – all this though the intended target
may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is
possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the
surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They
should not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides.”
Rachel Carson
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20. SILENT SPRING
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There is still a very limited awareness of the nature of the
threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his
own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger
frame into which it fits….
It is a public that is being asked to assume the risks that the
insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether
it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do
so when in full possession of the facts. In the words of Jean
Rostand, “The obligation to endure gives us the right to
know.”
Rachel Carson
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21. CARSON’S LEGACY
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Environmental Defense Fund (1967)
EPA (1970)
Clean Air Act (1970)
DDT Ban (1972)
Deep Ecology (1972) Arne Naess
Carson “quite self-consciously decided to write a book calling
into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined
postwar American culture.” – Mark Hamilton Lytle, biographer
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964)
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22. DEEP ECOLOGY
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Naess saw two different forms of environmentalism:
Long-range deep ecology movement: deep questioning, down to
fundamental root causes. Involves redesigning our whole
systems based on values and methods that truly preserve the
ecological and cultural diversity of natural systems. Without
changes in basic values and practices, we will destroy the
diversity and beauty of the world, and its ability to support
diverse human cultures.
Shallow ecology movement: stops before the ultimate level of
fundamental change, often promoting technological fixes (e.g.
recycling, increased automotive efficiency, export-driven
monocultural organic agriculture) based on the same
consumption-oriented values and methods of industrial
economy.
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23. LATER HISTORY
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1969: Cuyahoga River on fire
1970: Earth Day, NRDC Founded
1971: Greenpeace Founded Canada
1972: OPEC Oil embargo
1978: Love Canal
1979: Three Mile Island
1981: PETA Founded
1984: Bhopal Union Carbide
1985: Vienna Convention on Ozone
1986: Chernobyl
1987: Brundtland Commission
1989: Exxon Valdez
1992: Earth Summit Rio
2005: Katrina
2006: An Inconvenient Truth
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24. BUILDINGS HISTORY
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1973: AIA committee on energy
1980: Sustainable Buildings Industry Council
1984: Sick Building Syndrome
1987: UN World Commision defines “sustainable development”
1988: PassiveHaus
1989: The AIA Committee on the Environment
1992: AIA Environmental Resource Guide
1992: Earth Summit
1993: USGBC
1998: LEED 1
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25. THE DEATH OF
ENVIRONMENTALISM
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Today’s environmental leaders are addressing tomorrow’s
problems with yesterday’s tools: regulatory and policy fixes.
And because serious global problems like climate change
and the looming water crisis have been narrowly defined as
“environmental,” their equally narrow solutions are easy to
marginalize and dismiss by conservatives, cynics, and other
non believers.
Environmental leaders need to “take a collective step back to
rethink everything.” specifically, how to reframe issues and
build coalitions around big ideas and values, not specific
programs, much as the conservative movement has done
over the past 40 years. – 2004. Michael Shellenberger and
Ted Nordhaus.
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26. THE GREEN MOVEMENT,
LATE NAUGHTS
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27. GREEN PRODUCT
PROLIFERATION
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28. CRYING AT TED
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Curbing climate change : “the largest economic
opportunity of the 21st century, and a moral imperative”

29. CLEAN TECH BOOM
In 2005, VC investment in clean tech measured in the
hundreds of millions of dollars. The following year, it
ballooned to $1.75 billion, according to the National Venture
Capital Association. By 2008, the year after Doerr’s speech, it
had leaped to $4.1 billion. And the federal government
followed. Through a mix of loans, subsidies, and tax breaks,
it directed roughly $44.5 billion into the sector between late
2009 and late 2011.
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30. CRUDE OIL PRICES
.
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31. APPLIED R&D
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32. “WHY THE CLEAN TECH BOOM
WENT BUST”
There was an additional factor at work: impatience. Venture capitalists tend
to work on three- to five-year horizons. As they were quickly finding out,
energy companies don’t operate on those timelines. ...Of all the energy
startups that received their first VC funds between 1995 and 2007, only 1.8
percent achieved what he calls “unambiguous success,” meaning an initial
public offering on a major exchange. The average time from founding to IPO
was 8.3 years. “If you’re signing up to build a clean-tech winner,” Nordan
wrote in a blog post, “reserve a decade of your life.”
The truth is that starting a company on the supply side of the energy
business requires an investment in heavy industry that the VC firms didn’t
fully reckon with. The only way to find out if a new idea in this sector will
work at scale is to build a factory and see what happens. Ethan Zindler, head
of policy analysis for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, says the VC
community simply assumed that the formula for success in the Internet
world would translate to the clean-tech arena. “What a lot of them didn’t
bargain for, and, frankly, didn’t really understand,” he says, “is that it’s
almost never going to be five guys in a garage. You need a heck of a lot of
money to prove that you can do your technology at scale.”
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33. VERY RECENT HISTORY
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34. CLEAN TECH: CHINA + GERMANY > US
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35. SOLAR PV
.
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36. NATURAL GAS
.
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37. CLEAN TECH INVESTING
.
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38. SUPPLY SIDE TO DEMAND SIDE
For the rest of this course – we move from a supply side to a
demand side view of energy, choosing the BUILDING as the
place to intervene in the system.
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43. GLOBAL SUPPLY
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44. GLOBAL SUPPLY
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45. FIELD TRIP!
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46. October 21, 2014
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47. MEET AT ITP
MONDAY AT
9:15
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48. October 21, 2014
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49. ASSIGNMENT
FOR NOVEMBER 3
Assignment: In the same way we reviewed health apps for
our first assignment, find an app, website, or some other
technology service that gives an end user the ability to
interact with her environmental data.
Write a review of this experience – would you use this
system for your personal understanding? What kinds of
feedback loops are built into the design of the system?
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