Visit to the Lyle Center

The Lyle Center at Cal Poly Pomona is a great place to see how regenerative practices can be brought to life. I was amazing at how many different things are going up on that hill that no one on campus tends to visit. The solar panels alone are massive, and are one of the few things the rest of the campus can see.

The buildings themselves are wrapped in different plants and integrate well with the landscape. Those same buildings use their surroundings to cool and heat themselves, all without any power or use of outside energy. These are the exact things that regenerative practices are trying to make possible.

The Nature of Nature

In Jane Jacob’s The Nature of Economics, there were many different perspectives of the systems that encompass us daily. I liked how she wrote this in a sort of fictional way, to further capture the audience with what the different characters were saying. I think it engages the reader better and keeps their attention. The part where Hiram begins to explain how the different systems are actually not linear but in fact webs, the other characters begin to disagree, just how people in real life would have differing opinions. I appreciate that Jacobs did this style of writing because it shows the reality of how different people have different thoughts on things, and how these disagreements might become arguments in real life. The web system that was explained in the discussion was perfect and a great way to illustrate the way different systems in real life are not closed or isolated from everything else, but in fact actually connected with everything. All systems, weather that be a weather, traffic, government, food or other systems, they are all somehow connected and when one thing happened to one, it will have an effect on all others. And this isn’t just limited to one country. When things happen in one country, those systems can effect other systems in other countries. If pollution in China is severe, those pollution particles can be tracked in California’s air, as has been done already. No system is isolated or alone, and actions in that system will affect all others.

With this system’s concept in mind, I also watched the TED video by Janine Benyus 12 Sustainable Design Ideas From Nature. I thought this video was excellent and the ideas presented by Beynus were great. They show just how nature deals with problems while contributing to its habitats and not harming its surroundings. Humankind can learn a great deal from these ideas to solve our own problems. We have many solutions but at such a heavy cost to the environment we live in, and the one our children and future generations will be living in. One of the most interesting concepts thats already coming into fruition is the one with the insects that fly and never crash into one another because of their communication system. This is now being implemented in automobiles by different car companies. These systems are smarter and institute crash avoidance in a whole new way. These systems have sensors that the car has in place to sense where a car is, how close another car is from itself, where cars are slowing down, real time speed, and so forth. These cars are communicating with each other to avoid crashes and even prevent traffic jams. Many of the ideas presented by Beynus are very well illustrated by nature and we need to pay attention to these to make sure we can harm the environment less and can have a clean, safe home for our children and all other future generations.

Cycling Towards Change

After learning of the Velib bicycle sharing program in Paris, France from the “Velib” video on Street Films, I was surprised at the speed of the implementation of the program throughout the city. There are a lot of regulatory hurdles that have to be passed through to implement a transit program, but when it comes to bicycles, it might take a bit more. Bike lanes have to be implemented into an already existing city. They are usually not grade separated and are sometimes even placed onto the regular car lanes themselves. Because of these unique factors, it surprised me how fast Paris had their program up and running. Another thing that was very important is the saturation of bike stations throughout the city. The moment a mass transit system ceases to be reliable, people will not use it, and accessibility to bike stations in close proximity to homes and destinations of users is very important for a program to take off and become successful. If Los Angeles was to begin a similar program, the city and region would also need to saturate the area with thousands of bike stations. In Paris, there are 1,400 bike stations, and most importantly, never more than 1000 ft apart. Los Angeles needs to implement a similar program, where they fit bike stations everywhere they can, in areas that are not being used for anything, small nooks and extra space, and make the program very reliable. This is the way people will adopt the program and begin to tell other people about it, and a snowball effect can take place with more people leaving their cars for bikes.

I also watched the short documentary, 2012: Time for Change. This documentary presents the various aspects of the 2012 theories about a change coming to the world. It documents different native tribes and their explanations and other people who give insight to the matter. I have to say that I already thought and agreed with most of this video and what was presented. The 2012 end of the world theories I didn’t take as truth, but what some natives and other people did state is that after that date, a subtle but very important change, even dangerous to us, had occurred. Environmentalists have been warning about a limit or tipping point from which we cannot return from, and I think that is what the documentary was actually aiming for. It was not so much as to declare the apocalypse, but to warn that maybe this particular date was that crucial tipping point for climate change for our planet.

With new modes of transportation like bicycling, we can reduce the carbon footprint we leave on this planet for future generations. Less people driving cars means less pollution and less fossil fuels being used. If cities around the world would begin to adopt systems of transportation that pollute less and even relieve congestion, our societies would be more productive and healthy.