this is maybe the greatest source of hope i've seen so far:<br><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof</a><br>(more modest and widespread use than those on the wikipedia article though)<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/5/14 Manannan Mac Lir <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:macdara@email.com">macdara@email.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>At the end of a day long symposium on "energy and sustainability" yesterday a round table discussion was held with all 6 speakers, 1 architect, 2 engineers, 2 scientists and a writer. The final question to the panel was what their hopes were for humanity given all the current blah, the first guy said as long as we kept "crunching the numbers" we could successfully avoid total collapse, I can't help think that writers like philip k. dick were trying to prepare us for something, the second guy started off normal but turned sharply, he's been writing books and designing ecologically sensitive buildings for 40 years and he said he's lost more hope the older he's gotten, "I've lived through 3 energy crises and two economic meltdowns and nothing has changed" were close to his exact words, at this point he started to get visibly emotional and talked about the fact that now people are just making it worse by "eco-bling" as he calls it. Why the fuck aren't we getting the point? To see the pain sadness and fear in a man in his late 60's (i think) was the first time I've seen anyone publicly express the genuine vortex we are in as a whole (at least in ireland and britain although i think everything, similarly to the berlin wall, will , melt into air like our financial markets have without the banging we're used to the media ensuring us of), there's a thing george benjamin (possibly) said, it would come to the point where humanity would become so detached that it would witness it's own destruction without even wanting or being capable of reacting, like through a pane of glass. The air outside my door is dirty because of the pollutants machines spew into the atmosphere, an exhaust pipe is given pride of place over my lungs, legally too, what happens if i smash a cars lungs up? im not a great believer in primitivism but government has not governed. where do we go? little bit's, paper bags instead of plastic, cleaner washing up liquid... this is what we're being given, culturally i think there's been a huge response, in subtle but fundamental ways obviously not in mainstream. our society is in a state of collective denial before it's mass monetary hallucinations finally begin to contaminate its blood, perverting the inside before total disintegration, we don't have guns over here but you can be damn sure someone's gonna get them. trying to get a sense of joy about the future is impossible, the only thing i can do is try and accelerate the immanent disintegration, politically, socially whatever.. sorry for a pessimistic rant but its only through talkin about it that people understand, haved to say itd be nice to SEE some microdudes some time, optimism is the smile il get on my face when the corporate capitalist detritus has been purged from the immune system of the planet, probably taking a larger chunk of us with it anyway, free market cannibalism, who knows, could be the next economic model for all of us...still smiling tho, maybe we can eat our friends</div>
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<div>Mananann Mac Lir</div>
<div>macdara o maolbhuaidh</div><br><font color="#888888">
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