Good thinking. An article 2016 on earth's day for reference. KR IRS 2523 Stop Trying to Control Nature
APRIL 22, 2016 10:02 AM EDT *Bsumek is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, co-editor of Nation-States and the Global Environment <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199755353/?tag=timecom-20> and a public voices fellow with the OpEd Project. Frederick-Rothwell is doctoral student in historic preservation at the University of Texas at Austin.* Earth Day was designed <http://www.earthday.org/about/the-history-of-earth-day/> to make us pause and consider how our actions impact the natural environment. Before the summer weather arrives, and we unconsciously flip on our air-conditioning systems, it’s worth considering that energy usage <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/cold-economy-cop21-global-warming-carbon-emissions> for cooling our homes and buildings will soon outpace that used for heating. We need to recognize that in our success in controlling nature, we’ve become alienated from it—which has potentially disastrous consequences <http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/> as the climate changes. For this reason alone, it is worth examining the longer history of “climate control” systems, not just their technical history, but also how they shape our very notions of nature, comfort and climate more broadly. Air conditioning, the quintessential form of climate control, was originally developed in the early 20th century to regulate humidity levels in factories, making the production of moisture-sensitive materials <http://www.hagley.org/librarynews/published-collections-modern-air-conditioning-every-day-good-day> such as textiles and food products more efficient and predictable. But such predictability could only be achieved by shutting out daily and seasonal variation in weather; a controlled “indoor” environment had to be isolated from the “outdoor” environment. The idea of controlling nature was not limited to indoor environments but was part of a larger national impulse. Out-of-doors, large hydroelectric dams, like the Hoover Dam <http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/>, were built to control unruly rivers and produce electricity. Likewise, engineers such as Willis Carrier <http://www.williscarrier.com/1876-1902.php> endeavored to convince people that their individual environments should be controlled and that comfort could be quantified <http://nyti.ms/1OKY6uE>. The impulse to build a technologically controlled environment came to dominate not just office space but residential living as well. By 1960, passive-cooling features <https://www3.epa.gov/region5/sustainable/energyadvice.html> were removed from homes in developing suburbs across the country from Levittown <http://statemuseumpa.org/levittown/one/b.html>, Penn., to Lakewood, Calif <http://www.colapublib.org/history/lakewood/>. Some of this was driven by the specifics of the post-war housing boom. Air-conditioning manufacturers convinced large-scale developers to remove formerly common features such as operable windows, sleeping porches, attic fans, insect screens, ventilation louvers and venting windows in order to afford the costs of expensive air conditioning equipment. Electrical utility companies actively supported these efforts, as historians Andrew Needham <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10369.html> and Adam Rome <http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/bulldozer-countryside-suburban-sprawl-and-rise-american-environmentalism> explain, in order to sell more electricity to homeowners in summer, which had traditionally been a low energy-use season. But the utilities got too much of a good thing. Consumption of energy spiked, leaving us dependent on it. Now we have brownouts <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-08-10/business/0108100232_1_brownouts-programmable-thermostat-air-conditioners> in the summer months when AC use peaks. An extended drought in California also means hydroelectric dams, such as Hoover, will produce less <http://www.energy.ca.gov/drought/drought_FAQs.html> energy. With these technology-dependent changes to the built environment, even if we wanted to turn off our climate-control systems in summer (or even spring or fall), it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do so in the U.S. because we can no longer rely on passive-cooling features such as operable windows in our homes and offices. Such actions have shut nature out, and us away from it, including the birds and crickets we can no longer hear through window screens. This increased alienation from outdoors now inherent in our built environment helps obscure the reality that the climate is changing around us. Americans now spend almost 90% of our time indoors <http://rdcu.be/hhIF> and the ubiquity of living in a controlled indoor climate lets us ignore not only the effects of a changing climate, but also the people excluded from such controlled climates, whether by economics or historical patterns <http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/post_war_economic_boom.html> of prejudice (or a combination of both). Rachel Carson’s *Silent Spring* <http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx> along with well-publicized man-made environmental disasters of the 1960s <http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~dhardy/1969_Santa_Barbara_Oil_Spill/Home.html> and 1970s <https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy> made many Americans realize that science and technology created problems as well as a solved them. Today many commentators optimistically but paradoxically propose to solve the problems of science and technology with yet more science and technology <http://www.citylab.com/weather/2013/09/how-prepare-climate-change-put-air-conditioners-schools/6863/>, not less. We don’t need to return to some technology-free version of the past, but low-tech solutions, practices and patterns that have been abandoned could offer alternatives and help us reduce our alienation from nature. Older houses and buildings that retained passive-cooling features should be rewarded for reactivating those features, not just for adding new technologies like solar panels and more energy efficient air conditioning equipment. Rewards should also go to new building projects that reintroduce <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209526351400003X> the passive features as part of green building design. Subsidies may be needed to create the critical mass that made air conditioning the default pattern. But we also need to re-learn how to live with nature rather than trying to control it. Doing so will bring us one step closer to bringing climate change under control. On Mon, 1 May 2023 at 20:07, Markendeya Yeddanapudi < [email protected]> wrote: > > > -- > *Mar*The Emergence of Procrastination > > > > Once when nature was free, lush, thick and healthy, no individual, no > organism could postpone any work. It was determinism administered by > nature. The action of one organism, led to symbiotic actions by the other > organisms. The Biosphere existed as one single organism. Just like a cell > in your body having no free will, the Biosphere as one whole governed every > organism. The inhalation and exhalation of breathing led to symbiotic > emotional actions. The Biosphere was the most wonderful and abstract womb, > as comforting as the womb of the mother when one was forming into a baby. > May be from our present womb of nature we are going into another womb after > death. > > God existed in the troposphere and that God was not hiding like the God, > of today whose need for the non-Cartesian logic, is scoffed at. Gods need > emotions, not the mechanical logic of Rene Descartes. The funniest > spectacle is the effort of some Theists who want to prove the existence of > God, by employing the Cartesian logic. And their Gods are very spiteful. > > Even today, when you go into healthy and free nature, nature totally free > from human infection, nature will take complete care of you and you can > feel the abstract helping hand of God. Free, lush, thick and healthy nature > automatically helps you in every need and takes you into the symbiotic > living. God is real, but that God is not the human mutation susceptible to > every weakness. > > If you can see everything, atoms, particles and energies, then you cannot > see yourself as you see you now. You find yourself participating in the > ocean of symbiosis or God, as abstract as God. Even at this very moment, > you are in reality an abstract being, and your identity as a body is due to > being restricted to 00.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum by your eyes > and as you are conditioned by the visible spectrum to ignore the gigantic > universe impacting on you continuously. > > Procrastination or postponing things is due to your freezing from > participation in nature. When you have total faith and definiteness, > procrastination is impossible. Nature’s symbiosis automatically makes you a > limb of nature, and you simply cannot be the limb that disobeys the > body-nature. > > Today, no one can escape from procrastination. There is a big bureaucracy > and red tape embedded into you. Like the Bureaucrat who simply tells about > the various facets of work and administration, you too turn into a scholar > who lists rules and of course cannot do the work continuously. > > We lost the symbiotic nature and we make nature sick continuously and we > call it economic activity.Disastrously, ecology is not the subject matter > of economics. The subject matter is a phantom, the economic man, the > machine, who can be made to work like machine, and who can be managed by > econometrics and mechanics. > > The real man, the non economic man, the emotional being is refusing to be > a machine. The result is procrastination or indecision. > > The cure for procrastination lies in free and healthy nature. Go into free > nature, if you can find such nature, free from economics, simply inhale and > exhale, you find yourself totally decisive and active. Procrastination will > leave you. Your decisiveness and the propulsion towards action, is due to > your becoming part of nature, via deep breathing and feeling nature, which > automatically triggers inspiration. > > In the urbanized and industrialized places where the air is toxic, where > there is poisoning of the land, water and air, lethargy and procrastination > takes over and we find committees after committees. The solution simply is > in free and healthy nature. > > YM > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZoqBB24_9taxDgkF1-5W8zN%2BaO3zwutb8gsnGUg3pL0i4w%40mail.gmail.com.
