The Visionary Thinking of John Todd

(((Okay, to win a Bucky Fuller prize, that's like the very definition of incredibly cool yet practically ineffectual. Who the heck would do this in real life, and how the heck would they ever make it pay to revitalize the Appalachians? The Appalachians are the coal-ravaged running sore of American life. They are the very byword for intractable, brutally exploited, lowbrow misery.
No attempt to enlighten the darkness there ever works.)))

(((But – you know – imagine *you* did that. Why?
Because you lost your house. And your savings, and your job, and maybe a couple of loved ones, to the ever gathering storm of financial, ecological, military and political collapse. Because your life had ceased to work.
So, rather than gathering with your peers under a bridge with a jug of bathtub gin, wouldn't it make more sense to put on your one-gallus overalls, pick up a Leatherman multitool and go *join John Todd?*
I mean, just thumb a ride over to the core of the misery and tackle that evil American Mordor with your own two hands. They wouldn't have to pay you – what difference would that make? If there was food you could do it. If there was a roof. To hell with it: they'd give you your own acre of wasteland and you'd grow the food and build the roof.)))

(((It would be kinda like joining the Foreign Legion, but without the annoying necessity of having to shoot a bunch of Arabs.)))

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3452

Link: The Visionary Thinking of John Todd.

On Monday, June 23rd, John Todd, a renowned biologist and pioneer in the field of sustainable design, was awarded the first annual $100,000 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Prize for a bold proposal to transform strip-mined lands in Appalachia into a self-sustaining community. The decision to award Todd, who is currently a research professor at the University of Vermont in Burlington, was unanimous by the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s jury.

His proposal outlines a way to restore the one million plus acres of lands in Appalachia that have been devastated by surface coal mining through a process that remediates the soil, reclaims the forests, and develops a new economy based in renewable energies. The plan advances an innovative environmental theory of design that Todd developed, one that is completely in sync with Fuller’s ideology. Metropolis’ editorial director, Paul Makovsky, spoke with Todd recently about the award, his research into eco-machines, and what it really takes for design to become carbon-neutral.

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It will be interesting to see what comes out of your research.

Yes. This paper [A New Shared Economy for Appalachia] is inspiration for a regional conference in 2009 in Appalachia, which will lead to an outgrowth from which they want to create a political business plan for the whole region. They’re hoping it coincides with an administration that is progressive and interested in this kind of stuff.

All they need to do is to start enforcing the Clean Water Act.

One of the teams working on the Appalachians has found some really significant wind sites, which previously were not known. On the renewable side of things, it could be a big factor, especially if there’s carbon accounting.

Bucky talked about doing a lot with very little. If design as a benchmark is to be carbon-neutral, you have to design in a new way, and you’re forced to come up with some very elegant alternatives. For example, there’s no way it could be a carbon-neutral region if we didn’t sequester carbon into our emerging soils and forests. So, in a way, our equivalent of “more with less” is carbon-neutral design. It’s what’s going to focus our thinking, and I think that’s important....