“Meet the world’s top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane, or even George Bush: it is the cow. ”
Read it on the Independent website http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html

So are you all up for slimming a bit, maybe cut down on excess meat eating, not eat too much beans (gassy ones at least), ditch wood furniture and housing, don’t use plastic ones either. Otherwise be prepared to allow Africa and Asia to join in the race for supreme consuming (meat, wood furniture, consumer goods etc).

So let’s all stop pretending that this planet stands any chance to remain the same (it has ever). No one ever mentions that a fat person is non-ecological. And don’t get me wrong it’s completely understandable to be one; I am no slim specimen either. We care for the obvious and the politically correct and we find a solution that feels right but tackles the tip of the melting iceberg, literally. Don’t talk of air travel if you don’t talk of the greenhouse gases of the overeater!

Nobody talks about human rights in birth control in China (maybe the whole human race should do that). That is more environmental for sure. But you could be named a Nazi if you try to entertain a thought like that. China is one of the steeper increasing consumers of red meat. So will they put rations on meat eating? Is it more or less environmental to oppress your belly… or your reproduction?

Oh by the way for those that don’t yet know it, methane is 20 quicker to achieve what 1 molecule of CO2 can do.

Sooooo….. continue speaking about trees and carbon offsetting (that are actually cut down for grazing land to expand). Its really a good solution and definitely very entertaining.

One final point: All solutions might need to be quicker than you think if the methane locked on the ocean floor frozen, liquefies and escapes. Methane Hydrates account for several orders magnitude of all the known conventional sources of natural gas. Combine that and 20 times quicker… u get the picture!

In the meantime I will be buying land on a mountain peak near the Arctic somewhere. It will soon be a nice patch to graze on (hopefully).

Best

What exactly do you mean?

The idea IS to seek solution (and hopefully eventually provide it) through raising questions and making people understand, not only by pumping in all the generally confusing numbers but in a purely practical way. It is like saying: if numbers tell you nothing, look at the facts about your (and my own) lifestyle, so destructive to nature in whatever we actually do. Sooo, apparently, it might not be such a bad idea to place it here and there…

Some of you here people sound like you really believe it will soon be hanging on every tree and we will all end up in the world where awareness is taken to absurd lengths due to the imminent disaster. And well, not yet and not in our livetimes, but if we continue like this sooner or very very very much later breathing will be rationed . I have met grown-up people who aren’t sure what ozone hole really is and who believe that forests are big enough never to end. But human life is short while trees grow slow and aren’t infinite. People still largely depend on wood in their households and keep torturing the remaining forests with their expanding economies. Well, I see nothing wrong about letting some people know, even if only within the realm of a certain eccentricity.

But on the other hand, how much carbon did you emit into the atmosphere by producing the machine itself?

Surely it will be very interesting to see an economic system (highly intangible already) to give rise by its failure (or success) to the overtaking of another species. Or preserve the human race in varying degrees of artificiality.

We owe our existence to random catastrophes. There is no real control of anything.

Maybe the most interesting part of this object would be its fossilized (if possible) presence in a distant future of a distant human post human (or not human) design)/art museum (if they find satisfaction in that stuff).

Regards,

Ferroplasma acidiphilum (check me out… really cool)

P.S. For the person that commented on the gadget as useless one (gadget?!). Are you or your granny usefull? Do you have to be, to exist?

Technology of the previous generation, such as the mechanical computer, could have been used for this, dramatically reducing the environmental impact of the object itself. Unfortunately, the technology that is currently causing our pollution problems, such as the need to have an LCD screen on every object, is all the current generation knows how to work with.

In other words, the only technology available to the designer of this object, is the same technology that’s causing a lot of our problems. Irony, paradox, or complete failure? All are embodied in this work to a certain extent.

Is design really so narrow that it cannot tolerate for one minute something that challenges us and makes us think. That cannot be bought in a shop and make a profit for someone. I spoke to this person in the show. He studied architecture and worked for years as an architect. He is a designer. His project is a design proposal. What he is not, is a servant to the market and consumerism. The RCA is an art college, one of the reasons designers go there to study is to exchange ideas with artists, I think that’s good, and each influences the other. In other colleges designers study beside engineers, that’s good too. There’s room for all kinds. But the products of each environment are bound to be different. Even within the RCA there are several design departments, some are more industry oriented, some are more interested in style, and others are more speculative. Out of the tens of thousands of designers that graduate each year, surely there’s room for handful of conceptual thinkers who chose to channel their thoughts through products rather than chairs, tables, lights and vases, or design pointless variations on mass-produced products that will end up in a land fill in 3 years time.

This project absolutely gets to the heart of sustainable design and its inherent contradictions in relation to market-driven capitalism, the type we have in the UK and US (different from Asia and the rest of Europe). The only solution is to stop producing and consuming products that need to be replaced every 2-3 years, but if we did that, no one could afford anything and our economies would collapse even further. We need to address this reality and stop day dreaming that things can carry on the way they’ve been.

Oops, just realised this has turned into a rant. Sorry. But fundamentalism and intolerance in design, like anywhere else, is dangerous and destructive. Let’s embrace pluralism… marketeers, dreamers, intellectuals, poets, stylists …

And not only that! Raising paranoia along the way…
Since all we see coming from RCA is questions, questions and more questions, what on earth will mere mortals like me and my old grandma do if not feed that cute, yet useless, little gadget?

But hey, I guess being blasé and overly sinical is the way to be cool nowadays, again…