Sustainability and Resilience

The IPCC's "Final Warning" on Climate Change...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c

...is possibly going to increase the frequency with which Sustainability and Resilience get used in meetings, something I am bracing myself for.

My friend Raffa often says, the road to hell is paved with best intentions. Like the movie "Don’t look Up" there is an impending catastrophe that we can see but the only opportunity of expression that our professions (so finely tuned to existing economic structure) affords is that of paper pushing bureaucrats. Every point of urgency captured into yet another aspect of the built environment to be quantified from embodied carbon to number of plastic bags a farmer in rural Vietnam uses...or Advocacy of small tweaks to planning policy, small enough to not threaten status quo but big enough for all round chest bumps on small change - big wins pretenses.

Meanwhile:

World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions
Historical climate emissions reveal responsibility of big polluting nations
Super-rich’s carbon investment emissions ‘equivalent to whole of France
more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless 
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption

Private jet sales likely to reach highest ever level this year

Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find

This illustrates Climate and Sustainability aren't Technocratic issues they are political and tied to access and redistribution of resources. If we have to be constructive and start somewhere, it is within Politics + Economy.

Update // received "watching my paper straw dissolve in my coffee while..." meme today that captures my post rather well.

Liberty & Free Time

Years ago, when someone 6-8 years senior to me had returned from his Masters and started working, I had naively asked him what his plans were. Almost hoping to hear some grand plan that would guide me and my understanding of my own future prospects. Instead he said “currently I am just busy trying to manage everyday logistics of existing”. It was a short response but honest. The memory of that question and its response does surface frequently as I too like many before and after get busy within my preoccupations of everyday existence.

On a completely disconnected note I found this:

https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/apr/10/we-got-a-kick-out-of-it-art-forgers-reveal-secrets-of-paintings-that-fooled-experts

The last paragraph reads “Asked what most surprised her about the couple, Fischer said: “That they bought liberty and free time with the money they organised for themselves through the scam. No Ferrari, no Prada dresses, but free space to go to museums, to look after the children, to pursue their passion for research.”

Restaurant Reviews and Architecture

Brilliant review on NOMA’s closure by Jay Rayner, 

who seems to do something that most Architects and Planners are unable to, point to the fallacy of sustainability as being a purely technocratic process of quantification and mitigation rather than an honest political discourse.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/15/twenty-six-courses-400-bills-artichoke-creme-brulee-i-wont-miss-fine-dining

“We dream of a future in which the chef is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a just, sustainable society,” it began, somehow failing to acknowledge that their job was making dinner for rich people. In truth, however hard you attend to your restaurant’s sustainability, it’s pointless if most of your customers are flying business class to get there or travelling in chauffeured limos from Manhattan because those are the only ones who can afford it. The carbon footprint of the people you attract becomes part of the carbon footprint of your business.

+

Reiner de Graaf writing in Dezeen marking the launch of his third book

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/02/28/reinier-de-graaf-architecture-buzzwords-archispeak-opinion/

Both disconnected individuals, one is restaurant reviewer and food critic, other an architect / partner in a global commercial practise...embedded within the current state of affairs, so definitely not outliers...yet they capture a common strand.

Advocacy, the convoluted bureaucracy of quantification and absolute mind numbing cacophony of positive intentions...serving only one purpose, obfuscation and social condensation...a pressure release valve.

The hypocrisy of it all.