Dear Colleagues,
This is to recommend the most recent issue of She Ji on climate change and in particular Ken Friedman’s editorial, “The Earth Will Be Here. Will We?,” and the conversation between Jørgen Randers and Birger Sevaldson: “People Would Rather Go Shopping.”
I’ve been following the projections of The Club of Rome since its first report,“The Limits to Growth” in 1972. 46 years later, I am sorry to say, this world wide problem edges ever closer to the outcomes predicted. Read Randers’ critique. It raises some very serious questions about the incapacities of our present institutions to deal with the looming crisis.
Shortly after the 1972, report came out, I gave a graduate seminar on the Randers, Meadows’ book and bought the accompanying Mac software so that we could run, map and compare the various scenarios ourselves. Twenty years later I did the same with “Beyond the Limits,” this time in a freshman seminar with much better computers and advanced software that allowed the class to vary the system dynamic parameters.
The updated information on population, resources, pollution, capital etc. didn’t change the overall projections of systems beginning to collapse around 2040 or so, although by adjusting the emphasis on some of the variables we were able to buy considerable extra time. Those were the ones that embraced what Lewis Mumford called plenitude, that dealt with inequalities and especially the problem of distributive justice. It was, so to speak, “Beyond the Data and Equations,” the soft concepts of adequate fullness, the good life and justice for all that were the drivers that really made the difference. The biologist, Garrett Hardin, called them NTS, non-technical solutions.
Now that I am 80 years old and 2040 is only 22 years away, I can only hope that the most recent UN report and mounting evidence will somehow set off enough alarms to alter our present path. I also retain some hope for the public trust based climate lawsuit, Juliana vs US, brought about by a dedicated group of young people, a number of whom are from here in Eugene, Oregon. A special thanks to Ken and She Ji for their excellent effort to seed the clouds of attention on climate change.
Warm regards,
Jerry
Jerry Diethelm
Architect Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service • University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
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• web: http://pages.uoregon.edu/diethelm/
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• 541-346-1441 UO
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