Designers don’t have power to stop extinction says Paola Antonelli
Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, the XXII Triennale di Milano, will bring together 120 architecture and design projects from the last 30 years that explore humankind’s fractured relationship with the planet.
The whole interview is worth reading, because it is truly perspective changing.
Artist/Naturalist Nils Udo
It was toward the end of the dry season. It had not rained for months. The earth was concrete hard. We had to proceed most carefully so as not to damage the more delicate roots. Seven people dug, scraped and shoveled for a week. After the photograph, the hole was, of course, filled in.
– Nils Udo
American Painted Lady – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The American Painted Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) is a butterfly that is found throughout North America.
I have hundreds of these in my yard this month.
Putting nature in Ecuador’s constitution – Los Angeles Times
This month, Ecuador will hold the world’s first constitutional referendum in which voters will decide, among many other reforms, whether to endow nature with certain unalienable rights. Not only would the new constitution give nature the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution,” but if it is approved, communities, elected officials and even individuals would have legal standing to defend the rights of nature.
Inclusivity is the buzzword (((at least I think so))) for the next decade. And we can’t stop at finding ways to include marginalized people, we have to include animals and indeed the whole ecosystem if we are to survive. We cannot let anybody mess with the ecosystem (((and our great grandchildren’s world and well-being))) without notice. I read that last sentence from the linked text above and have to applaud it.
Worlds oldest living root system
Roger Kennedy brought this story to my attention about a spruce that was nearly 10,000 years old on the mountainous border between Sweden and Norway. As it turns out the trees themselves last several centuries, but their root systems live on. It is postulated that the root system of the one pictured above basically started at the end of the last ice age, and has lived on in the harsh and isolated landscape ever since. As the Bristlecone adage goes “adversity breeds longevityâ€.
(Via Long Views)
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Japan denies whaling allegation
Japan has denied paying for delegates from small states to attend international whaling negotiations. The statement follows a claim from the Solomon Islands that Tokyo had usually funded its attendance at meetings of the International Whaling Commission.Anti-whaling campaigners have accused Japan of vote-buying to support its bid to end a ban on commercial whaling. In recent years, a number of small countries have joined the IWC, many with little history of hunting whales.
One of these countries, the Solomon Islands, was conspicuously absent from a meeting called by the commission in London last week. The islands’ Prime Minister, Derek Sikua, said on Saturday that his country had not attended because it no longer wanted to accept Japanese assistance. He said Japan had usually paid for the Solomon Islands to go, although he did not say how much money was involved.
