Searching for links and caught this out of the corner of my eye waiting for the page to load. Even Wikipedia has an opinion on the matter I guess.

It’s funny to look back on the last couple of years at Emily Carr. For a number of reasons, in fact.
Most pertinently though, to look back on my opinions about sustainability, climate change, and the school administration’s desperate desire to ram it down our throats.

Foundation Half-hearted, unthinking acceptance of whatever subject matter they wanted me to address with my work. Level of sustainability brainwashing was minimal. More background noise from my upper-year friends than anything else.

2nd Year Wry, sometimes bordering on bitter, responses to assignments on sustainability and issues of climate change. Had already seen Inconvenient Truth over the summer, but only because of a friend receiving a couple free tickets to the opening screening in Halifax. After the third or fourth assignment on the subject, was getting pretty sick of the school trying to give me a Bachelor’s of Sustainability, as opposed to that pure, conceptual, “loving every moment of kerning” design degree.
Multiple projects assuming the position of devil’s advocate on the topic of climate change ensued, but by the end of the summer, had read Cradle to Cradle twice.

3rd Year School’s still rocking the sustainability vibe. A little different now though. They kept talking about it, but I was hardly listening anymore since I was getting better info elsewhere. It’s become fairly clear that ECU has it as it’s mandate more for the good pr buzz than anything else. Hell, the ridiculous amount of waste our school generates is proof enough of that. I know you have to break a few eggs for the sundried tomato and feta omelette, but an assignment requiring you to modify text using endless rounds of photocopying? May as well just torch a couple trees in the park, video tape it and call it done.
Anyway, about midway through the year, it was pretty clear that I was interested in the subject, maybe just subconsciously though.
Unfortunately, then I ran into a Frenchman. One of the first things Clement brought out in our core class was that he wanted us to due some readings he assigned on sustainability, then have a quiz on it. Not terribly pleased about that, but hey, he probably knows what he’s doing, right?
Well, when the quizzes came back, he was none too pleased with the results (I scored about 87%, thank you very much), so after also spending a couple classes talking about the issues these articles raised, he tells uss we have to read this Plan B book, and that reading it and then discussing the material in class is required, and we’re gonna keep spending classes on these discussions until he thinks we’ve got the material down and understand it.
Enough is enough. I email him saying, politely but firmly, that I will gladly read this book upon his recommendation, but I’m taking a design degree, want to study design, and that he should be doing that instead of pushing this book on us. He replied with a very considerate response, and then dropped the issue in class, but reminded the class that he highly recommended reading it. We did an exhibition design on the subject though, which went fairly well.
End result was that, as far as I know, by the end of the class, only two other people had read it. To this day I wonder if maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. Reading that book galvanized me and my feelings on the matter in a way that nothing else previously had managed, and I sort of wish more of the people in the class had shared that experience.

The Point of All This
After a couple years of complaining, some mocking, and more than my fair share of bitching about all this sustainability crap, I just spent the last three months working in partnership with another design on furthering the development of bamboo as a sustainable resource in the Philippines. Not to mention spending a good part of the last week preparing and giving a presentation to university and community groups on the subject.
*sigh* Damn you Lester Brown, and you too Frenchman!

If you’d like to take a browse through the presentation, you can download it here. It loses something without the speaking part, but hey, the pictures are nice and it’ll give you an idea of where there development is heading. More links to bamboo information resources sometime soon.

Was trying to find the ecological impact of windex today on a whim. No luck so far. Why is there not an easy to find website that allows you to enter the name of common household products (whose msds information is well-documented) and get a rough rating of their ecological impact?
Or maybe there is and I just haven’t found it yet.
Hmmm…

Incidentally, if you know of one, please forward it on.

…is on September 20th, when Lester Russel Brown is giving a lecture at Mount Allison University.
Dammit.

Well, since the plan to design an eco-cultural village in the Philippines is on hiatus for the moment, it’s time for plan b (no pun intended)

Excerpt from my conversation with my heterosexual life-mate, formerly known as Lars,in which I propose the revised concept of my project:

2:50:01 PM gingerngo@hotmail.com: we’ll be projectblogfriendssss

3:05:05 PM me: here’s the rough scoop.
3:05:44 PM me: i want one of my projects tobe fairly serious, and one to be a bit more fun, just so that i don’t completely burn out by the time i’m done school
3:06:13 PM me: with that in mind, i may be doing the whole eco-cultural village thing, but i think that would need to wait until the second semester
Changed status to Available (3:06:28 PM)
3:06:39 PM me: i’ve really taken this whole sustainability and climate change thing to heart
3:06:46 PM gingerngo@hotmail.com: awesome
3:07:18 PM me: the world is pretty fucked up, and i think that if noone does anything proactive about it, civilization really is headed straight down the shitter.
3:07:39 PM me: therefore, i do want one of my projects to reflect that mode of thinking.
3:09:16 PM me: cvo’s belief in lester brown’s ideaas has rubbed off on me, and despite the fact that i don’t see eye to eye with brown’s thinking on some issues, i really believe in his notion that what we need to implement change is a shift to a war-time mentality
3:09:29 PM me: on tackling these issues at least
3:10:15 PM me: in some ways i feel that the commons has let down society as a whole, and it’s time to start forcing people to adopt a new way of living, whether they like it or not
3:10:23 PM me: but that’s a bit beside the point
3:10:33 PM me: (not to mention kind of fascist)
3:11:20 PM me: anyway. the need for a wartime mentality struck a particular chord with me, and got me thinking about something i’ve always visually enjoyeed
3:11:26 PM me: that being propaganda art
Changed status to Idle (3:11:59 PM)
Changed status to Available (3:12:01 PM)
3:12:12 PM me: i love all sorts of retro graphics, old school ads, prre-political correctness documents, all that sort of thing
3:12:45 PM me: but i think the pinnacle of that is propaganda work, specifically the stuff down arund the time of the second world war
3:14:08 PM me: so, since the ideas behind a lot of the propaganda of that time involved anb inducement for people to make sacrifices for the greater good, it seems, as a visual metaphor to really resonate with what i think the world could use as a kick in the ass now
3:16:27 PM me: thatbeing said, i’m considering the creation of a propaganda campaign that focuses on environmental issues, maybe not actually as a persuasive tool, since that would require a better understanding of psychology thatn i have, but more as an engaging and visually/conceptually approachable way of illustrating the need for action in defense of the world’s common inheritance
3:16:31 PM me: *whew*
3:16:42 PM me: guess i have my first entry for the project blog

and the response is…

3:18:54 PM Lars: it might be good to break out of the pre-war aesthetic (i may be getting ahead of you here)
3:19:42 PM Lars: pastiches as in using the same visual language as the america bearded mr sam (whatever his name is) or the “we can do it!” lady
3:20:03 PM Moi: ah, gotcha
3:20:17 PM Lars: if anything i’d really like to see something updated, more in tune with contemporary visual approaches
3:22:46 PM Moi: well, the general track along which i’d been thinking was to persue some sort of integrated campaign technique. posters placed in the public domain would be an intial point of contact, potentially with magazine ads or something, movie psa’s (ala “Manny makes Movies” and posssibly supported by a website that would utilize the same visual approach, but with more concrete supporting information
3:23:59 PM Lars: ah
3:24:39 PM Lars: yea that sounds pretty in line with how i’d think of it too
3:25:03 PM Lars: but another dangerzone is the whole granola thing
3:25:08 PM Moi: as far as the actual visuals go, the first thing my m ind jumped to was the traditional look, but i haven’t wanted to go to far along that line of thinking until i have a better idea of the concepts’s solidity
3:25:16 PM Lars: you dont want to come off as too hippy
3:25:31 PM Lars: yea
3:25:51 PM Lars: i think strong consideration of audiences is key
3:26:09 PM Moi: well, i know that the “sustainability thing evokes a lot of skepticism in people, since they’ve heard so much about it, but i think that there is no way to avoid some of that in broasching the topic
3:26:21 PM Lars: like, we can’t assume because that only makes asses out of u and me.. and our hypothetical japanese friend ume
3:26:30 PM Moi: the key is to minimize the cheese
3:26:38 PM Lars: yes
3:26:40 PM Lars: there it is
3:26:59 PM Lars: well in terms of green movements, al gore isnt really stooping to the cheese level
3:27:14 PM Moi: se, one thing that made me think about it is some of the work being done by team manila, the design company with the shop in powerplant
3:27:25 PM Lars: he seems a bit more clean-cut and uh, political? which i think really enforces the gravity of his causes

Looks like it’s stay the course.