“design science revolution” – Page 4

The Courage to Speak Up.

I brought up the subject of climate change at a dinner party over the weekend, giving my quick pitch about how we must immediately end fossil fuel subsidies and invest in clean energy. Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 2.31.17 PM I got nods all around, especially from the women, but my husband didn’t talk to me the rest of the night. Later he asked “Why do you always have to be such a downer? Why do you insist on hijacking every conversation?”

Thinking it over, I realized he was right. I can be an awkward nerdy jerk sometimes. I get frustrated at something someone says and just blurt it all out like some crazy lady on a street corner. My frustration has grown over the decades from seeing just how little has been accomplished toward what Bucky called “the most critical task our species will ever face.”

I did not choose this issue. It chose me the same day I spent my four hours with Buckminster Fuller on the sky deck of the John Hancock Building in Chicago (which I learned this weekend doesn’t even let you go out there anymore!) It has been some thirty years since that talk on the sky deck, and a couple of days since that dinner party, and what comes to me now is one of the last things Bucky said to me.

“It is most important that you spend time really working to get at the truth of things. Once you do, and you know a certain amount about it, you must dare yourself to speak out, and you must work hard to find ways to influence the thinking of others. Whether or not humanity survives will be an individual decision. We must each speak up.”

So what is the truth of things, as far as I can see? Well, here’s where it starts:

To achieve the necessary slow down of carbon emissions, we must immediately END FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES. At present, according to Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, world governments provide over $1.7 TRILLION in subsidies to help energy companies frack us, excavate vast polluting tar sands, cross our small towns and most pristine lands with pipes that burst, and with rail cars and derricks that explode and spill. While we are paying for this “progress” we could be developing more solar, wind, geothermal and other perfectly clean energies that would also be free, which is of course why it is not happening. We simply must stop subsidizing our own demise.

We must invest that same amount of money to DEVELOP CLEAN ENERGY.

Carbon emissions are still growing fast. It is long past time to slow them down. We must remain below a 2 degree C increase in temperature change, and the window on this is closing. Brilliant scientists are begging us to panic. Yet we allow ourselves to be distracted by wars for more oil and football and baseball. Go Giants. But let’s do panic. Let’s do speak up on social media, to our representatives, and at dinner parties.

We can explain that we do have the technology and the economic ability to accomplish 100% clean energy. That we are just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: The power was always ours. All we have to do is decide to use it. See TheSolutionsProject.org for more on this.

A clean energy revolution will also create millions of jobs. There is no longer any excuse for allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue to subvert the clean energy revolution that will save us and change everything. We cannot allow our government to continue to subsidize our demise. As Bucky put it:

“The only reason we are not allowed to tap vast and readily available energies is that business hasn’t found a way to put a meter on the sun.”

It is not going to be easy to change the direction of this massive train on the tracks, because it requires that we change some fundamental thinking about how things work, but unless we find the courage to speak up we do not even have a fighting chance. Wield your mighty keyboard

We can and should all work on finding kinder, gentler ways to smack people upside the head with the truth, since, as the Dali Lama said, unless you can do it with kindness, you shouldn’t do it at all.

But we will all sleep better at night knowing that at least we tried; that we had the courage to speak up, even if our spouses got a little miffed.

It is a war of words and we are not yet winning.

Please share Buckyworld.

The time has come…

All of nature — including humanity — can thrive.

From Bucky’s Desk: A Livingry Services Industry

Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 4.25.32 PM On Buckminster Fuller’s last day on Spaceship Earth, July 1, 1983, he tidied his always cluttered desk and left the office to visit his dying wife at Pacific Palisades Hospital. There, while holding her hand, he had a massive heart attack and died. On his desk, next to a neatly stacked manuscript for a book called called Cosmography, and a fourteen page typewritten document entitled “World Livingry Service Industry”.

This was Bucky’s plan, which he had written about in several of his books, to transform “weaponry into livingry.” It calls for each of us to demand that we convert our energies spent warring into those which would support life, instead of death. Bucky’s Livingry Services Industry would convert our military bases into life and health support facilities, all over the world, providing clean water, food, whatever is needed to help sustain life.

Here’s an overview and summary of this document, mostly in Bucky’s words:

“I was convinced in 1927 that humanity’s most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. That was the year when a human first flew alone across an ocean in one day. It was obviously the beginning of the swift integration of all humanity . . . It was obvious that this integration would require enormous amounts of energy and that fossil fuels were exhaustible. It was also obvious that a minority of selfish humans would organize themselves to exploit the many transitional dilemmas.”

To overcome this multi-pronged problem, Bucky called for the development of “human-circumstance-advantaging-technology” and for this technology to be distributed to the world. This would lead to a higher standard of living for all humanity. “It can be a standard of living more advanced, pleasing and inspiring than any ever experienced or dreamed by anyone is all history.”

Bucky called for “a complete family of inter-complementary life-supporting and enhancing artifacts to be designed and built using our best technologies – the same resources currently used in the development of weapons and war technologies.”

This, he said, “Would make it eminently feasible and practicable to provide a sustainably high standard of living for all humanity.”

How do we make this happen? It won’t be easy, because we cannot rely on capitalism to do what’s right. “Great private enterprises are capital gambles whose “ships must come in” within a reasonable short time of their backers will go bankrupt,” Bucky wrote, in sentences often crossed out and rewritten. “Enterprise is too narrowly focused and shortsighted – too narrowly focused on moneymaking to be concerned with its side effects…

“As a U.S. Navy officer in World War I, I saw there was nothing to stop me from thinking comprehensively about our total planet Earth… Nor was there anything to stop me from thinking realistically about how to operate this magnificent Spaceship Earth on a sustained basis for all passengers on board.”

“Through foresight and design, it is possible to phase out all further use of fossil fuels and atomic energy, which comprise nature’s cosmic energy savings account.

“An advanced standard of living could be entirely sustained by our daily income of Sun energy. In 1982 the total energy consumed daily by all humanity amounts to less that 1/500,000ths of 1 percent of our planet’s daily Sun energy income.”

The document lists several of Bucky’s inventions, or artifacts, as examples of ideas worthy of further exploration as livingry.

1. The Dymaxion House

2. Tensegrity

3. The Dymaxion Bathroom

4. Synergetics

5. Dymaxion World Map

6. World Game

7. Trends and Transformations Charts

8. The Dymaxion Omnitransport (travels on land, air and water)

9. Geodesic Dome

10. Octet Truss

11. The Fog Gun

12. Compact, odorless toilet equipment

13. Floating breakwater (also harvests wave energy)

14. Water wavepower machine

15. Integrated world-around energy grid

16. Windmill systems

17. Floating Cities

“Having committed ourselves to solving humanity’s problems with artifacts designed to work within nature’s design science principals … we can get Spaceship Earth operating omnicooperatively on behalf of us all,” Bucky wrote.

To Bucky, it was conclusively possible, and not even that difficult to accomplish, if only we would actually try.

“All the evolutionary events requisite to the Livingry Industry have now taken place or are about to take place in the very near future,” Bucky said. “If the political systems do not eliminate humanity with their weapons, the half-century-gestating, World-around Livingry Service Industry will be born.”

Bucky wrote these ideas over thirty five years ago. He would no doubt be disappointed at where we are today, but Bucky had great faith in humanity. He believed we were capable of miraculous accomplishments; that we would achieve an “emergence through emergency”.

So don’t give up. Lean into a world that works for everyone. Share Buckyworld.

100% Clean Energy Cracked!

The man with the 100% clean energy plan.

Professor Mark Jacobson and his team from Stanford have engineered a way to transition to 100% Clean Energy – for each of the fifty United States of America. Working with some forty top engineering and science students, most of them from Stanford, Jacobson has created a state by state strategy and plan to fully transition to clean energy. Jacobson says the science is both accurate and conclusive. The only huge remaining question is whether or not the rest of us have the integrity and the will to make a clean energy world happen.

Do we? Do you? How are we going to make this happen?

For many states, the best source of energy is wind power, which has benefits galore, such as: 1) You can still farm the land around wind turbines. 2) Fewer precious resources are needed for their construction than solar. 3) Offshore wind turbines are highly productive and there are amazing side benefits, such as the fact that wind turbines actually break up hurricane energy – just as the storm approaches the shore!

100% Clean Energy would change everything. As Bucky said in 1982, a clean energy world will be much more livable for all life on Earth, because clean energy is also free energy, which means we can work less for our daily energy supply. In addition, we will be able to leave some of “nature’s energy savings account” in the ground, for emergencies.

All that’s left is to decide whether or not we not have the individual integrity to demand that the “fossil fools” get out of the way so this can happen. Bucky had great faith that we would rise up and make an “emergence through emergency” but said that this would require the will of each and every one of us.

If you’re still not sure whether clean energy is that important, please consider one last Bucky thought for today. When I asked him, “How could it be possible that our use of fossil fuels could really affect the whole ecosystem of Earth?” here is the gist of his reply:

If Earth passes enough gas, it could be as if the sun is the match. Poof. But if we align ourselves with nature and green up the world through a design science revolution, humanity can thrive in ways we haven’t even dreamed. We can give up the specious notion that human beings have to “earn a living”. Fish do not pay for water, nor grass for rain; so how did it come to pass that nature’s most sophisticated species has to toil, day after day after day, for its energy? The world can work for 100% of humanity, without harm to the environment, if only we decide to do it.

A 100% Clean Energy Earth. Why not?

Here’s the link to THESOLUTIONSPROJECT. Go check out your state, sign up there to help make it happen, then come back here and share Buckyworld with as many people as you can! Also, please like Buckyworld on Facebook.

Human Success: What will it take?

Buckminster Fuller’s Eight Rules for Securing Humanity’s Success

In this time of global struggle and awakening, Buckminster Fuller‘s ideas and inventions are more profoundly relevant than ever before.
Most notable are his “integrities for living” which he shared with me in May, 1982, during an interview which turned into one of the famous Bucky’s trademark one-on-one “all I know” multi-hour lectures. I promised I would share his ideas with you, and that I would watch to see when people would be ready to hear them. So here they are, Bucky’s eight general guidelines for securing a happy future for humanity:

1. REALIGN WITH NATURE. Despite what we have been taught, it is not our role to dominate nature, but to live by her rules. Nature is never wrong. She wants us to succeed, but she does not depend on us. We are not her only experiment. If we fail to conform to her design integrities, she will sweep us aside like a bad case of fleas and start over. Nature’s design principles must guide all our decisions about how to live.

2. EVOLVE CONSCIOUSLY. This is about stretching ourselves to arrive more quickly at the place Nature is leading us. As the first species on Earth that’s aware of its capacity to destroy itself, we also sense that we have a choice in the matte. If we can evolve consciously, together, by embracing values of compassion, cooperation, and community, we can affect our own future as a species. Only then we can “begin to make all the right choices for all the right reasons.”

3. DEMAND AND SPEAK THE TRUTH. Seek the truth. Know the truth. And then, speak the truth. Bucky went over this again and again. If this was our true ‘religion’ everything else would fall into place. Take time to become informed about what’s going on, so that you will know what you are talking about. Women especially must not allow their voices to be shut down by those who feel threatened by it. Beware of masterfully crafted messages, designed to deceive.

4. BE A COMPREHENSIVIST. Humans are becoming too specialized. We must resist being pigeonholed as specialists and keep our eyes forever on the big picture. Bucky was not just an architect, a scientist, a mathematician, a poet, an author, a mapmaker, an inventor and a philosopher; but in consciously devoting his life to serve all humanity, he was also greater than the sum his parts. He even introduced the world to the word “synergy” and coined the phrase “Think global. Act local.“ He called on us all to do the same. Overspecialization (reliance on only fossil fuels, for example) will lead to our extinction.

5. EMBRACE ABUNDANCE. Current economic theory is based on the outdated notions such as the assumption of scarcity. Technological capabilities exist to move beyond an ‘us versus them’ scenario to one of ‘enough for all’. It is a great fallacy of today that there is not enough for all. If we work toward providing enough for 100% of humanity, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological harm, that is exactly what we will achieve.

6. DEMAND LIVINGRY. After serving in the Navy during World War I, Bucky was dismayed that technological innovations used to kill people weren’t later turned around and applied to creating better lives during peacetime. He called for a turning away from weaponry and killingry technologies, and toward ‘livingry’, or life supporting enterprises and inventions. This calls for a new feminine paradigm of leadership, He said, focused on creating abundance. Once we set out with the objective to take care of 100% of humanity without ecological harm, we have an excellent chance of making it happen.

7. EPHEMERILIZE YOUR LIFE. As technology evolves, we continue to increase our ability to do more and more with less and less. This is the concept of ephemerizaliton. A great example is how something as small as a phone now connects us to the entire world. Writing a letter to the president once took paper, ink, envelopes, and several days. Now you click a link and dash off your thoughts (although a handwritten letter is now more powerful!)

We must use ephemerilization to help us reduce our massive carbon footprint. Leading the way toward clean energy development will make America a leader again. Humanity has amazing potential to do more with less. All we have to do is take advantage of that potential.

8. KNOW YOUR POWER. The ordinary individual human being can accomplish things that no government or corporation can. Not subjected to the will of stockholders or bureaucracies, an individual can do as he or she sees fit with great untapped power. This is Bucky’s famous “trim tab” idea, a metaphor of how a small tab on a small rudder is what turns a huge ocean liner around.

Bucky said if we follow these rules and therefore pass our final examination as a species, everything will get easier and better. So surely that is at least worth a try. Right?

We are all crew on United Spaceship Planet Earth

Never forget what Bucky said: “There are no mere passengers aboard United Spaceship Planet Earth. We are all crew.”

Screen Shot 2014-05-16 at 2.52.12 PM Our beloved planetary spaceship is in trouble. Our atmosphere is being destroyed and our precious resources are being senselessly squandered by rogue and rampant capitalists motivated by unnecessary greed. It is time for each of us to get to work to change the course of this crippled spaceship. Specifically:

1) We must get the money out of politics by overturning Supreme Court “Citizens United” ruling.

2) We must end fossil fuel subsidies and redirect those same funds
for development of clean, renewable energies – wind, solar, electromagnetic, geothermal, wave, hydroelectric, biomass.

3) We must help awaken others, Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.16.42 PM in time to realize that #1 and #2 must happen very soon. We must have the courage to speak up to help every person find the bravery and political will to help make this happen.

Once we do these things, life on United Spaceship Planet Earth will change for the better. Mankind will start making the right choices for the right reasons. A clean energy world will be a healthier and more prosperous one, since we will no longer have to labor for our daily energy supply.

Think about it. Fish don’t pay for water. Screen Shot 2014-05-16 at 2.37.34 PM Human beings can also live off the abundant natural energies of Earth. All we have to do is wake up and convince the fossil fool industry to let life live on our United Spaceship Planet Earth. And, in the meantime, we can to reduce our own carbon footprints, by buying less, eating less meat, planting more trees and solar power panels, and doing other intentional things to regenerate the environment we are well on our way to destroying.

We are all crew. What will you do?

What’s Next Depends on Us

What’s the use of brilliant scientific climate modeling, if we just sit back and watch it happen? That’s the question asked and answered in an excellent TedTalk by climate scientist Gavin Schmidt.

Schmidt explains, in simple terms, how the climate works as a whole system together, the impact of high carbon levels on that system, and then shows various models of what is next to come, depending on how much we control, or don’t control, carbon emissions.

Screen Shot 2014-05-01 at 11.39.01 AM

The talk, with strong visuals, paints a picture of what kind of world the choices we make today will create. See this (twelve minute) Ted Talk for the whole story.

One way you can do your part — to do something — is to read about the efforts of the Pachmama Alliance. Their specific aim is to get the money out of politics, and to place a price on carbon) at http://www.uptous.org . Their Awaking Symposium is a excellent way to get your head in the game – the biggest game the human race could ever face. It’s time to get involved, people. Scientists are calling upon us to revolt. What’s next depends on us.

Thank you for sharing Buckyworld. Screen Shot 2014-05-01 at 11.40.48 AM

Bucky on Earth Day

Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.19.06 PM

Bucky’s quotes strung together especially for today:

“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top.”

Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.10.09 PM “I think that we cling to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s contrivings as the only means for solving a given problem.”

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

“We have learned that from here on, it is success for all or none.” Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.14.18 PM

“We need a design revolution by scientists and architects versus world revolution by political leadership.”

“We must each opt for integrity or we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.”

“Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.”

Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.23.20 PM “I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity.”

“The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.”

“Each one of us could make the difference.”

Thank you for sharing Buckyworld.

SHOWTIME FOR EARTH: “Years of Living Dangerously”

At long last the razzle dazzle of Hollywood comes to the planet’s rescue in a new Showtime documentaries series starting Sunday, April 13th. Celebrity correspondents Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwartznegger and others do the digging into climate destruction. Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 1.44.30 PM

“It is not a political issue, but a moral one,” says Jessica Alba.

The series calls on those who believe climate change is “the next generation’s problem” to step aside, or end up knowing they were on the side that had a chance, but didn’t do anything.

“People need to help make it right. We can move forward together. If we think there is something that can be done, let’s do it. This is about survival. This is the biggest story of our time.”

Awesome production values. Huge name talent. Humanity’s most important issue ever. Let’s hope the whole world watches.

Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 1.42.03 PM Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 1.43.09 PM Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 1.44.01 PM Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 1.41.16 PM Here’s a link to the trailer. Here’s a link to the entire first episode.