What can design(ers) do to attack global warming?
vimeo http://vimeo.com/6720824
Yesterday I watched the invitation that Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, made to the world, to have an active role and participate in positively affecting climate change and preventing the worst case scenarios. It is an invitation headed not only for designers, but all creative thinkers who are willing to contribute by their own means in preventing the worsening of climate change. I link that invitation with the question made by the main character of The Age of Stupid, Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance? Jointly with the invitation, Brown announced the launching of a new web page from IDEO, called Living Climate Change made to share ideas of how will the world be in 20 or 30 years, and where we can already see some sketches of the future. But the matter is not only making a foresight in order to sketch a future scenario towards which designing; the responsibility is further, for it implies taking a present action in order to prevent that future to convert into the worst case scenario. Not in vane, all this initiatives appear few days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, hosted in Copenhagen by Dec 2009; this is a healthy excuse for everyone to introspectively think what can one do to prevent global warming?
…mustn’t we simply design FOR the future, but we must DESIGN THE FUTURE…
Sure, we have been hearing about climate change since the 70’s, but the problem has been growing and evolving to it’s present day when it has become not only unavoidable, but it has also become inevitable to take action in preventing it; Al Gore started the massification of this issue with it’s research documented on the Book and Documentary An Inconvenient Truth; now we are recieving a spit in the face by the enviroment, but we cannot defend ourselves, but we must humbly accept it and emmend the mistakes. So, in this point is useless to cry over spilled milk, but what part can design(ers) play in this scenario? Sure, design(ers) must be aware of the foresights and develop products and projects for future scenarios, but mustn’t we simply design FOR the future, but we must DESIGN THE FUTURE, by focusing our projects in present situations that highly affect future scenarios. In other words, the responsability of designers is to shape new sustainable ways of living in order to prevent and reverse the climate change; for this task, design must trascend product design and project itself towards activities that head to improving peoples life quality.
