#my ultimate take on all these criticisms is that when a chars role in the source is so inherently problematic any way they go with the

[adanseydivorce]

“They reduced her to a bitter wife/mom and scorned woman” first of all not really, second of all anyone would be bitter in her situation why you want her to be a polyanna so bad I don’t really get, third of all scorned women are fun interesting characters imo

[tabriscadash]

I was asked this on my old blog right as I set about transitioning to this one, so...

The first character I ever fell in love with: for DA:O, dare I say Daveth? What can I say -- I irrationally got incredibly attached to him. otherwise, DEFINITELY Morrigan, and I have crystal clear memories of my first run through Lothering and looking at Morrigan like 😍 the whole time. For DA:2/E, Carver -- unless you count Anders & Justice since I knew of them from Awakening beforehand, in which case probably Justice. For DA:I, it’s a toss-up between Vivienne or Cole -- I technically liked Cole first but SPECIFICALLY in the supporting material (Asunder), and didn’t vibe with him anywhere near as much in the game, AND I got him as a companion after I got Vivienne, so probably Vivienne.

A character that I used to love/like, but now do not: for DA:O, I guess Oghren? I never loved him, but I liked the idea of him because I really liked the dwarves/Orzammar side of DA’s worldbuilding -- but he’s such an unlikeable character that I just.. don’t vibe with him at all. I debate recruiting him every single time now, and I don’t think I ever do his personal quest (in the base game OR Awakening). for DA:2/E, I don’t really have anyone that fits -- but I REALLY wanted to like Merrill and Aveline more than I did, and especially in Aveline’s case, I can’t stand her and genuinely think she’s the unintended, secret Big Bad of the whole game. for DA:I, probably Cole, bc I was really into the idea of a little walking-corpse serial killer animated by a spirit as per the book, but that’s not really the vibe in DA:I, and combined with the somewhat patronising/ableist language and how significantly he is infantilised (including by the fandom) I just got put off him. I do still like him, but not as much.

A ship that I used to love/like, but now do not: for DA:O, I don’t really have one? I guess see my DA:I answer, lol... for DA:2/E, has to be Anders - I don’t think he’s OOC in 2, but I think his writing does so little with him and he feels v. reductive. Where his relationship could be SO interesting and angsty, it instead is written in a really dull and/or cringey way. It would have been nice to see Anders more like the Anders of Awakening near the beginning of the game (rather than random, infrequent and questionably rare snippets), and then see the progression of his relationship with Justice as the game went on -- I want more interesting abominations, PLEASE. for DA:I, listen I cannot express to you HOW EXCITED I was for my planned Lavellan to romance Sera… also I used to be way more tolerant of Cullen x Amell/Surana ships because, like, hey dark ships are fun, right? But since Cullen’s ~wholesome whitewash~ in DA:I, and his fandom clamouring to absolve him of any wrongdoing ever.. it’s boring to me.

My ultimate favourite character™: for DA:O, probably Sten? or Morrigan. They’re both fantastic, and also are significant comfort chars for me. for DA:2/3, honestly, probably my own Hawke -- I feel so hugely proud of her, and can’t imagine I’d enjoy the game anywhere near as much had I not played it as my Hawke. If not her, maybe Sebastian or Carver? for DA:I, I really love Vivienne, as well as Blackwall, and Solas is a great character even if I probably would not say I liked him.

Prettiest character: for DA:O, we all know it’s Zevran. for DA:2/E, I think Aveline -- although her aggressively bland colour-scheme lets her down in a major way (although I respect her dedication to all orange all day every day). There’s just something about her arms -- very Abby from TLOU:2. for DA:I, maybe Josephine? Ser Barris is very pretty, too...

My most hated character: for DA:O, I really didn’t like Alistair, Wynne and Oghren, and of my companions - Oghren is probably my least favourite. He’s vulgar and also profoundly uninteresting. for DA:2/E, it has to be Aveline. There’s just something about ineptitude and a complete, wilful refusal to take accountability for your actions that I can’t stand. It would be okay if it was an intentional character flaw, but the game/narrative treats her like she’s lawful good and it really annoys me. for DA:I, maybe Iron Bull? He was a huge disappointment for me. I also really dislike Sera, Cassandra, and Varric. I’m so sick of Varric - I never want to see him again.

My OTP: for DA:O, I really loved Zevran’s romance -- but I am also very amused by the fact that Leliana got to ‘love’ status with Kallian accidentally, AND I got the ‘love’ glitch for Justice (👀) and Velanna. I do sometimes wonder about an AU where Kallian is forced to make a politically expedient marriage with Nathaniel Howe for diplomatic reasons in order to consolidate her position as Arlessa, and it being an entirely platonic arrangement (it’s not like anyone expects an heir from an infertile Grey Warden) -- and maybe Zev and Nate kiss sometimes, who knows? I also LOVE my Darkspawn Chronicles AU where Kallian and Nelaros are a happy, married couple each hiding their skills with weapons from each other like dumb, cute sweethearts. They shelter Zevran when he fails to kill Alistair and a poly couple evolves. for DA:2/E, I love the IDEA of a Seb romance that isn’t so strictly conditional around the structures that abused him -- he should be allowed to love, chastely or otherwise, but free from the Chantry OR his position as prince/heir. I’d LOVE to actually have a romance with him where you can actually challenge the abuse he’s experienced. for DA:I, Malika doesn’t have a canon romance (although I think when I replay, I’m going to romance Josephine!) but I think Blackwall has an amazing romance. Solas’ is also iconic, it must be said. 

My NOTP: for DA:O, I really dislike Alistair in a shipping capacity; he’s immature and says a lot of misogynistic shit and I don’t think he’s the worst for it, but I don’t really vibe with shipping him, having played the game as a female city elf. for DA:2/E, I wouldn’t say I have one, particularly? although I really dislike Aveline’s relationship with her husband simply because it seems incredibly inappropriate, given that they work together and she has power over him -- and because I dislike her, generally, I don’t feel inclined to do something nice for her. for DA:I, I suppose Sera/Lavellan -- although I’m not AGAINST it, it just really isn’t for me, having attempted it. I also don’t really vibe with Dorian x Iron Bull. Something abt the way the game handled BDSM and their relationship banter specifically I don’t really like.

Favourite episode quest: for DA:O, probs Orzammar/the Deep Roads. I really love the dwarven lore! and, of course, Fort Drakon is really funny, even though it’s not canon in my game iirc. for DA:2/E, maybe the murder mystery with the serial killer, where ultimately Leandra dies? I also really enjoyed all the companion quests. for DA:I, The Descent (just, all of it, lmao) and everything to do with the Avvar. Crestwood also BANGED.

Saddest death: for DA:O, it’s frankly a fucking INJUSTICE that Shianni gets murdered if you make her Bann of the Alienage -- the idea of that happening whilst Kallian is in Amaranthine and unable to protect her :( genuinely very upsetting. I go back and forth on who is made Bann, tbf, so idk how canonical it is: I think maybe Cyrion would get it, but I’m also endeared to Soris holding the position, with Shianni as Hahren. for DA:2/E, Bethany. I wish both twins had had the chance to reach Kirkwall :(. Let Leandra die instead. for DA:I, maybe not the saddest death, but the most memorable for me was that one sleeping dragon in the Hissing Wastes.. leave her alone. Stay out of a womans’ business.

Favourite season game: DA:O!

Least favourite season game: DA:I.

Character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but I hate: for DA:O, Alistair. I cannot deal with his complacency and hypocrisy. for DA:2, I really disliked Merrill but I honestly cannot remember why. DEFINITELY Varric -- I hated how the game forces you to be his best friend, and if you’re low approval, you have to endure these pointless pissy little comments with this little anti-dwarf centrist pissant. After the expedition, I literally have no reason to put up with him, and I NEVER take him out. I hate that he plays the same role in DA:I, too. for DA:I, the Iron Bull was hugely disappointing, and I also really don’t vibe with Cassandra. She just seems very wishy-washy and complacent and hypocritical, and many of her comments about other cultures seem snide for literally no reason other than bigotry. 

My ‘you’re a piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: for DA:O, lbr probably Sten. Mans is gonna launch a HORRIFYING invasion in the next game iirc and frankly, I’m ok with it. Just wanna see that big bastard again ❤🥵. for DA:2/E, I LOVE Gamlen, ok? for DA:I, I am not sure if I have one.

My ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: for DA:O, if any of you so much as LOOK at Velanna wrong, it’s hands. That includes Bioware. I also feel incredibly protective of and sad for Morrigan. for DA:2/E, probably Sebastian -- I feel so sad for him, and so frustrated by the limitations with the game. for DA:I, I’m honestly not sure.. maybe Josephine? I don’t really feel this way about Sera, but I do think she deserves better from the game and its writing, and also from fandom: there are valid criticisms of her, but the hate she gets is not proportional to any valid issues with her -- and gee, I wonder why that is.

My ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: for DA:O, I did use to find Cullen x Surana/Amell intriguing as a dark ship -- I actually hc that Neria Surana is actually Nelaros’ sister, and have dabbled with it as a dark ship. I also am interested in Loghain/Alistair - which each pretends the other is someone else. Alistair is wooby, hate ships are, in general, fun -- so long as we acknowledge that they are, indeed, unhealthy ships. for DA:2/E, I kind of feel like Sebastian romances are, invariably, kind of dark... and, similarly, Anders romances -- especially with certain red Hawkes, The way it ends is, invariably, bordering on fucked up. ALSO Hawkecest is weird and wonderful: GET WITH IT. 

My ‘they’re kind of cute, and I lowkey ship them, but I’m not too invested’ ship: for DA:O, I joked about Velanna x Leliana once and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it ever since… Velanna x Sigrun is also something that can be so personal. Ariane x Finn is adorable and are paid DUST by Bioware AND fandom. I actually am really into Anora x Nathaniel & NO I will NOT explain myself; it’s a crackship but it’s MY crackship. for DA:2/E, Isabela x Fenris is super cute, but I don’t pay enough attention to them to really have super committed thoughts & feelings on them. for DA:I, Blackwall x Josephine is cute as a background ship; I also think Maryden x Cole is sweet.

[bladekindeyewear]

Reading Homestuck^2 as of Page 5.  > ==>

What’s with the question mark look on Rosebot?  Are we not going with a traditional Homestuck robot here, or adding some sort of twist?  If we are, is Davebot going to share it?

DIRK: Ok but like what are you actually calling me about. ROSEBOT: I just thought you might like to know that we're getting pretty close to your chosen crash site. ROSEBOT: We can head down to the planet below as soon as Terezi's finished... working out how we do that. DIRK: How to land? DIRK: ... DIRK: Wait, crash site??

Well, you did put TEREZI in charge of landing... (rimshot)

And, yeah, jokes aside, this is no surprise.  This wouldn’t be Homestuck without everything fucking up constantly.

ROSEBOT: Don't be such a chud, Dirk.

Chud???

> ==>

Oh God, more serif Dirktext narration.  We’re going to be getting a whole damn lot of that, aren’t we?

I walk— oh no, right, I don't have to do that explicitly. It's easy to get into the habit of just narrating everything, even when it's a bit creatively redundant. This is where the advantage of visuals comes in, to make my life as an omniscient overseer a little bit less tedious. I can just do whatever, and we can all see it happen, and nobody has to fight with a testy cherub lady for control of their own legs or anything. No need to pull a whole thesaurus out of my ass just so I can go to the bathroom. Seriously, it's a big relief.

Heheh.  Interesting.

That doesn't mean this (*gestures to the narrative*) isn't still going to be a thing, though. Sometimes retreating back into the warm, welcoming folds of traditional prose is just going to be the best way forward, and as someone whose mind is uniquely capable of understanding this conceit, I'll be the determining factor as to when and where it happens.

Mhmm.

It's time to get this story back on the rails, back to what it was always supposed to be. I know it, and you've somehow always known it too. There was something else, some other route that Homestuck was meant to take but then didn't, a way that wouldn't've spent so much time dicking around with stuff nobody cares about. Like seriously, why did we all have to sit through talking about everyone's most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words. That would never have happened in Act 1. Where did it all go wrong?

Um?

Yeah; as flawed as Andrew’s approach always was, this sort of statement is clearly coming from someone who didn’t learn shit when it comes to the Ultimate Riddle.

So yeah, this is much like it was in the Epilogues.  Andrew conceived of an ultimate victory as an escape from the bounds of Canon itself, an escape from destiny and purpose because the well-being of the characters is actually more important than having every question answered.  And then, with the Epilogues... explored what would result if not just the readers, but a character like Dirk willing to coerce everyone along, forced things to resume the path of plot importance.

Expect his comeuppance.  Like, really, really hard.  Though I couldn’t say how many pages that could possibly take.

I've been studying canon—or rather, what's left of it—and I think I've found it. The critical moment, in the wake of which everything started to take a nosedive into the protracted, endless slog of sheer insufferability we got saddled with near the end. This was the single most crucial error in the process that led to the present situation. 

Mhmm, mhmm.... let me keep reading...

Hmm!  So that’s what they meant by fan input.  The actual return of the command box, now that there are whole goddamn teams corralling it instead of a single person.

How much will Dirk’s belief in reader input persist over time, though?

> Dirk: Commune.

"NEEERD” heard echoing into the distance.

Seriously though, the visuals team has been top-notch so far.

Channelling my full potential as an ascended player of Heart, I expand my consciousness to commune with the boundless force of collective willpower that is the internet.

There’s a connection between Heart and willpower, there, but nothing much we haven’t already worked with before.

Will Dirk be able to find a command besides “Kill yourself” in the box?

> ==>

That... looks an awful lot like someone looking at a suggestion box chock full of “kill yourself”.

Is his suggestion box going to have lasted a total of a single page??  That seems quite likely all of a sudden.

> ==>

Mhmm.

> ==>

Um.

> Dirk: Stop making Homestuck.

Yeah, kowtowing to everyone’s will isn’t so easy, is it motherfucker?

But this was going to be a little fun we had together. A callback to simpler times. I just wanted to play a game, and you were going to be part of it. That submission box was my olive branch, dipped tentatively and at arms length into the trash furnace of creative potential known as 'Online'. But I should have known better. People think you can run a story like this? This must be just about the stupidest idea anyone has ever come up with. I'll just have to make up the commands myself from here on out. Seemed to work ok for the other guy.

Dirk may be a hypocrite, but he is a practical hypocrite.

> Dirk: Examine room.

How the hell did you get their entry items? Did you realchemize them?

Wha...? “Succulent flora”? Some sorta weed reference, John’s apple or... what?

Why the Cal outfit.  Seriously.

Why the “SCR3W YOU -TZ” on the jetwings?  Is Terezi mad you stole them but letting you keep them?  (And I would expect a little acrimony between her and the rest of the crew.  She more hopped on out of, like... the need of a career soldier to get back in the field than a need to fuck anything up for anyone else in particular.)

The ship itself is being BORROWED IN PERPETUITY and has served as our home for the past three years.

Just... screw three year journeys in general.  You know?

Seriously, that means Jade has been in a black-eyed fugue state for THREE FUCKING MORE YEARS.

Fuck all of that.  I know she’s immortal, but Fuck. All. Of. That.

Oh, and of COURSE the next command:

> Dirk: Contemplate equine iconography.

Pff.  A precious gift from splinter-Dirk’s ex-flame Obama.  I can live with that.

> Paint. Paper. Get to work.

This set of paints and the charred remains of my HORNED HEADBAND are the only surviving relics of the first and last WORLDWIDE INTERSPECIES ROLEPLAYING SESSION we ever attempted on Earth C.

That’s pretty awesome.

I’m really liking Homestuck again, guys.

> ==>

Of course there’s Dave with his dick-horns and you were a unicorn?????

It was the perfect trollsona. I was a highblood called... No, on second thoughts, let's not get into it. Some things are too painful to remember.

Yes, let’s please not.

> Inspect delicious houseplants.

Plants are basically the ideal friends. They don't constantly question your decisions, or try and undermine your authority, or suggest that perhaps you should try talking about your feelings every once in a while. Plants lie down in the dirt and take it, metaphorically speaking.

FUCK. YOU. DIRK.

What’s this, now? Did Terezi inject something into the narrative, or at least the command line? Is that something Dirk has a crack in his control over?

> ==>

Yep, Terezi has access to a Dirk command terminal.  This can only be a good thing.

TEREZI: YOU SHOULD H4V3 S33N YOUR F4C3! TEREZI: 1T W4S 4S PL41N 4ND F34TUR3L3SS 4S 3V3R, JUST L1K3 TH3 CLOY1NG T4NG OF YOUR OV3RB34R1NG OR4NG34D3 PROS3

I have missed trolling, non-depressed Terezi SO badly.

SO badly.

She was the first character I learned to roleplay properly, I think I’ve mentioned on occasion? 1 C4N 3V3N ST1LL TOUCH TYP3 L1K3 TH1S.

TEREZI: 3XC3PT DONT 4CTU4LLY DO TH4T B3C4US3 1 DONT W4NT YOU TO SULLY TH3S3 D3L1C1OUS R3D SL1PP3RS W1TH YOUR SUDOR1F3ROUS N1NJ4 F33T

Of course she still has Jade’s sparkleshoes.  (A Witch’s shoes, more or less!  Possibly as a symbol of the proper balance she’s come to recognize between her role and its opposite.)

TEREZI: TH3R3S ONLY SO M4NY T1M3S 4 G1RL C4N SN1FF H3R W4Y THROUGH TH3 1N-FL1GHT S3L3CT1ON OF 34ST 34RTH 4N1M4T1ON B3FOR3 SH3 G3TS S1CK OF TH3 SM3LL DIRK: I'm sorry to hear that.

Pfhehehe.

DIRK: Although, in fairness, you came along of your own volition DIRK: It's not my fault the journey didn't live up to your expectations. TEREZI: TH4TS 4 L13 SO F1LTHY TH4T JUST SM3LL1NG 1T M4K3S M3 W4NT TO GO THROW UP 1NTO TH3 N34R3ST TO1L3T! TEREZI: 1 H4D V3RY L1TTL3 S4Y 1N TH3 M4TT3R TEREZI: W3 BOTH KNOW TH4T YOU M4N1PUL4T3D M3 1NTO 1T W1TH YOUR PR1NC3LY W1L3S DIRK: Princely wiles??

Hmm...!

This is going to be quite an ongoing theme, isn’t it?  Characters not explicitly knowing whether or not Dirk “wrote” them doing or thinking something, or not.  Debating it in retrospect, arguing WITH him about it, et cetera.

Rose has doubtlessly figured out the bit of manipulation Dirk used to separate her from Kanaya and vice-versa to go on this trip, but has acquiesced anyway out of a desire to do something important and fulfill her role.

...I hope.  Seriously, she’d better not have been kept under a hundred percent Dirk control THIS WHOLE TIME.

TEREZI: 1M T4LK1NG 4BOUT YOUR G3N3S1S FROG S1Z3D 1N4B1L1TY TO SHUT UP, WH1CH S33MS TO H4V3 SOM3HOW R34CH3D 4 M4SS SO CR1T1C4L 1TS OP3N3D UP 4 WORMHOL3 1N TH3 F4BR1C OF R34L1TY 1TS3LF TEREZI: YOUV3 ST4RT3D DO1NG TH4T *TH1NG* 4G41N 4ND 1TS COMPL3T3LY 1NSUFF3R4BL3 DIRK: Oh, sorry. DIRK: I forget how easy it is for you to pick up on it.

Yep. A Seer of Mind able to see with startling clarity when and how a Narrator is trying to fuck with her or tell her what to think.

TEREZI: 1M4G1N3 TH4T 1M ST4ND1NG R1GHT N3XT TO YOU TEREZI: W1TH 4 M3G4PHON3 PR3SS3D SNUGLY UP 4G41NST YOUR 1NFUND1BUL4R 4UR4L PROTRUS1ON TEREZI: NOW 1M4G1N3 TH4T 1 PROC33D TO DRUB YOU S3NS3L3SS W1TH S41D M3G4PHON3, 4ND TH3N D1R3CT 4N 4POLOGY 4T YOUR SLUMP3D, TW1TCH1NG BODY THROUGH 1T TEREZI: TH4T 1S WH4T WH4T3V3R YOUR3 DO1NG F33LS L1K3 TEREZI: 1TS L3SS TH4T 1 C4N "P1CK UP ON 1T", 4ND MOR3 TH4T 1T 4SS4ULTS MY V3RY CONSC1OUSN3SS TEREZI: YOU H4V3 4LL TH3 SUBTL3TY OF 4 CULL1NG FORK TO TH3 THOR4C1C 3XOSK3L3T4L PL4T34U TEREZI: 4ND 1TS H4RDLY SURPR1S1NG TH4T 1 C4N H34R YOU SO CL34RLY

Mhmm.  Quite a relief we have someone who can cut through it so easily, in such close proximity to him.

TEREZI: 1F 1T W4S B3C4US3 1M 4 S33R, TH3N HOW COM3 ROS3 DO3SNT KNOW 4BOUT 1T TOO? TEREZI: 1 M34N... M4YB3 SH3 DO3S??? BUT 1F SO SH3S SOM3HOW PUTT1NG ON TH3 B3ST 4CT 1V3 3V3R S33N

Fuck.  I mean.

I knew Rose probably wouldn’t know moment-to-moment when Dirk is writing for her.  But this means she COULD plausibly still be under more-or-less total control, coddled in delusions written specifically to keep her on his side.  Which is fucking throw-up horrible.

TEREZI: NO, 1M PR3TTY SUR3 1TS B3C4US3 OF OUR 4SP3CTS DIRK: What, Heart and Mind? TEREZI: M1ND 4ND H34RT, Y3S TEREZI: TH3 TWO OF US 4R3 OPPOS1T3S, R1GHT? TEREZI: 4ND WH3N 1T COM3S TO TH3 4SP3CTS, OPPOS1NG P41RS 3FF3CT1V3LY D3F1N3 34CH OTH3R ON 4 FUND4M3NT4L L3V3L TEREZI: M1ND 4ND H34RT, T1M3 4ND SP4C3... TEREZI: TH3YR3 4LL TWO S1D3S OF TH3 S4M3 CO1N TEREZI: OR 1 GU3SS TEREZI: TW3LV3 S1D3S OF TH3 S4M3 S1X CO1NS?

This is what people were saying I was proven right about right? Aspect Duality?

I mean... it’s not like this is a big step out of the Homestuck team’s way.  This wasn’t one of those still-under-debate theories, this was one that’d been made as explicitly true as it could possibly could have been by the story without outright saying it, is all.  This was just... inching the story’s feet a millimeter more to go over that line.

I guess it’ll shut up all those people who tried to argue with me way back when that Mind and Heart were somehow not the right opposites.  I mean, jegus.

TEREZI: SOOOOOOOOO... TEREZI: YOU JUST W4NT M3 TO, L1K3 TEREZI: DOM YOU W1TH TH1S COMM4ND ST4T1ON FOR 4 WH1L3?? DIRK: If you wanted to phrase it in a way most calculated to awaken the hair-trigger psychoanalytical instincts of my slime daughter, then yes, I suppose you could say that.

Glad to see we’re carrying on with the Epilogues’ adult mindset as expected.  (I mean, Homestuck was always adult, but... you know what I mean.)

DIRK: You're a strange and funny girl, Terezi,

Please stop quoting your part-of-Doc-Scratch splinter.

DIRK: Consider this little sum of executive power over my actions a planet-warming gift. Spend it wisely.

Please stop quoting your part-of-Doc-Scratch splinter.

Oh my gosh, yes.  Please keep trolling the fuck out of Dirk, Terezi.

> ==>

Where are we going with this? Maybe a nibbled leaf?

> ==>

Yup.  (And Terezi’s taking a lil’ Papyrus-y spin on her usual laugh.)

> WH4TS TH4T L1TTL3 T4BL3 N3XT TO YOU?

Pff.  Dirk’s talking in ALL CAPS FOR KEY WORDS narrative-speak in regular conversation now.

And yeah, your respect for others’ property rights kind of goes out the window once you decide to start trampling over the will of all of the multiverse, doesn’t it.

> L1B3R4T3 L4LOND14N L1BR4RY

TEREZI: NO, 1 M34NT TH3 M3M3S TEREZI: "R3M3MB3R LONGC4T J4N3?" TEREZI: COMPL3T3LY 1NCOMPR3H3NS1BL3

We feel your pain, Terezi.

> ==>

DIRK: (I captchalogue the book into my MSPA MODUS. Forget HASH MAPS, PICTIONARY, or any of that shit. This thing is where it's at.)

Huh.  I’m not sure I’d trust a modus with that name to do exactly what one expects it to do, sir.

Pff... sprite jokes.

> SCR34M L1K3 4 W1GGL3R 4ND T1DY YOUR D3SK

Terezi’s not used to “writing” Homestuck either.  Or, is maybe too used to the way it’s normally written.

TEREZI: FOR SOM3ON3 WHO CL41MS TO KNOW 4 LOT 4BOUT JOK3S YOU SUR3 H4V3 CONT1NU3D TO S4Y B4S1C4LLY NOTH1NG FUNNY 3V3R

Yes. More insults to the Dirk plz.

> ==>

Christ, he already has a picture on his desk of the thing he’s about to-- guh.

He’s not gonna stop showing off like this, is he?  Not a narrator prone to avoid flaunting his power, this one.

> ==>

Nice throwback, but is this your proof you have a sense of humor, Dirk?

Or just missing lost love?

> ==>

Made good progress? Towards what?

> ==>

Pfff.

DIRK: Smell this Terezi? DIRK: This is a panel. TEREZI: OK4Y

So a bit less showing-off, and a bit more acknowledging the hard art work that needs to be put in to make all this Hapen.

Alright, more meta-discussion about the mixed medium and finding the best way to tell this story, sure.

> ==>

Hoo boy, this page seems dense.  I’ll split the post here and keep going in a fresh one.

[livable4all]

What is rich-washing?

INTRODUCTION

What is rich-washing? It is when cultural products and advertising make it seem like everyone is rich.

It's similar to whitewashing, where a problem is covered up and made to seem fine, when it is not; or Hollywood whitewashing, where white actors take roles over people of colour; or activist whitewashing, where white activists are spotlighted over people of colour; or greenwashing, where things are made to seem environmentally good, when they are not.

Much has been written about the media biases regarding sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, harmful depictions of mental illness, and other biases that stereotype or denigrate specific groups of people. However, not as much has been written about classism in North American media and entertainment.

Rich-washing is a type of classism, but it is much more than that. 

Rich-washing completely flips the facts: in the real world, there’s a huge majority of financially precarious people at the bottom and a tiny minority at the top. 

And for those at the very top in the U.S., their wealth is growing. 

Rich-washing takes the bulk of people on the planet and makes them disappear –– they are over-looked, glossed over, cropped out of the picture, written out of the story.

Rich-washing is gas-lighting on a grand scale. It is so wide-spread that it is almost invisible. Like the dish soap ad used to say, we’re soaking in it.

Because it is such a blatant misrepresentation of the world, rich-washing has many harmful effects on people and the planet. It is important to expose this type of propaganda to reduce its harm.

However, the answer is not to change entertainment to only reflect social reality. No, this is not a call for censorship, but to point out how pop-culture is currently censored by those who hold the purse strings. Ultimately, the answer is to change our social reality to make it less harsh and more livable for everyone. More on this at the end.

Pop-culture is being censored by those who hold the purse strings

Most people are not rich but you’d never know that in today’s 21st century North American TV shows, movies, print media, social media and especially advertisements. (For whatever reason, entertainment in the UK has more social realism and much less rich-washing.) 

Images of the rich and super-rich have come to dominate everything in a massive cultural mono-crop of shining hair shining teeth shining cars and shining homes filled with shining gadgets.

Yes, there are exceptions (see end). However, these exceptions are mostly “drowned in a sea of irrelevance” (as Aldous Huxley said).

Ursula Franklin called this general effect “censorship by stuffing”. Specifically with rich-washing, the ‘rich’ images are so numerous that they obliterate every other view of society. 

“It is all too easy to confuse the sheer quantity of media with diversity of viewpoint. We do not notice that essentially the same messages are being repeated.” –– Mediaspeak, 1983

Get out the corporate pressure-washer, aim it at the public, turn it on max.

Or as Bertolt Brecht said: “The powerful of the earth create the poor but they cannot bear to look at them.”

Advertisers also don’t like it when the poor look at each other.

“In the 1960s... CBS dropped a number of popular prime-time shows such as ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Andy Griffith’ because they attracted the wrong audience –– elderly, low income, and rural viewers. Advertisers had become keen on young, affluent urbanites…” ––Social Communication in Advertising, 1986

One of the worst things rich-washing does is make people think they are in a minority when in fact they are a huge majority.

Most Americans, for example, live paycheck-to-paycheck according to Forbes.

Rich-washing takes an enormous psychological toll because it creates the idea that lack of income is some kind of personal failing, rather than a systemic economic failing that affects many, many people. That’s one reason why unemployment is a huge factor in suicides. 

“When the money isn’t there... feelings of deprivation, personal failure, and deep psychic pain result. In a culture where consuming means so much, not having money is a profound social disability.” ––Juliet Schor, The Overspent American,1999

Rich-washing also creates social solidarity and affinity with the rich, since proximity creates affinity. 

People get used to seeing things from the point of view of the rich and may also take on the idea that their own riches are just around the corner. This has political implications (more on that below). 

In addition, it’s common for negative characteristics to be attached to people who are poor. 

Laziness, criminality, stupidity, and lack of morals, are often characteristics attributed to fictional poor people. This has real world consequences.

Film critic Roger Ebert famously said that movies create empathy.

“...the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."

While many movies have indeed had a positive effect on society because of this empathy effect, entertainment products can also empower negative stereotypes. And when it comes to the war on the poor, Hollywood most definitely is not on the side of the poor.

“In a lot of films, especially coming out of Hollywood, less fortunate families are portrayed as imbeciles.” ––Chris Stuckmann, movie review of Parasite, Nov. 6, 2019

“It’s a central assumption of our pop-culture that people who have nice shit are good, and people in poverty are bad.” ––Cracked Podcast, “Why pop-culture hates poor people” 2015-03-02

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ––Warren Buffet, quoted in Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland, 2012

With all the vilification and humiliation of poor people in pop-culture, who would want to identify with the poor and not the rich? Who would want to identify with the economic losers and not the economic winners?

“…it is the general policy of advertisers to glamorize their products, the people who buy them, and the whole American and economic scene.” ––Elmer Rice, quoted in Mediaspeak, 1983

Advertisements are highly polished rich-washing because companies need their products associated with winners not losers.

But rich-washing sells more than just consumer products.

Rich-washing sells political ideas. 

Rich-washing reinforces policies and laws that benefit those at the top of the income pyramid. So it is not surprising when we learn that income inequality and wealth concentration have been getting worse.

Income inequality and wealth concentration in the U.S. increasing since 1980s.

“Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, says income inequality in the U.S. has become so dire that if he were in the White House, he would declare it a national emergency.” Barron’s, 2019 

Instead of looking at the big picture and wondering why is it that so many people are poor, people assume or are told that it is their own fault if they are poor. People point fingers at themselves, at other poor people (lateral violence), but almost never up at the top.

“If there was ever a system which enchanted its subjects with dreams (of freedom, of how your success depends on yourself, of the run of luck which is just around the corner, of unconstrained pleasures…), then it is capitalism.” ––Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, 2009

This type of deflection ––away from the rich and scapegoating the poor–– was also behind the witch-burning craze of centuries ago. 

Anthropologist Marvin Harris in his book on “the Riddles of Culture” noted: 

 “the principal result of the witch-hunt system (aside from charred bodies) was that the poor came to believe that they were being victimized by witches and devils instead of princes and popes.” ––Mavin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, 1975

It turns out that if you get people fearful of imaginary things and suspicious of their neighbours, they are less likely to join together in a peasant revolt and storm the castle, pitchforks in hand.

“It is from us and our labour that everything comes, with which They maintain Their pomp [!]” John Ball of the violent Peasant Revolt of 1381

When it comes to numbers, it should be obvious that the one percenters at the top have a precarious hold on power. 

“Why has the response to rising inequality been a drive to reduce taxes on the rich? ... It’s not a simple matter of rich people voting themselves a better deal: there just aren’t enough of them.” ––Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling, 2003

Rich-washing protects the status-quo by reinforcing the idea that most people are rich, and if you are not, it is your own fault. Rich-washing thus deepens poverty and enlarges the holdings of the super-wealthy.

Rich-washing can also push people into unhealthy behaviours –– everything from compulsive shopping and debt, to self-medicating, and even crime.

As it turns out, when people started watching TV in America in the 1950s, a particular type of crime suddenly rose: larceny (theft of private property). Researchers attributed the increase in larceny to feelings of “relative deprivation and frustration” and that upper- and middle class lifestyles were “overwhelmingly portrayed” on TV. (Impact of the introduction of television on crime in the United States, 1982, noted in Mediaspeak, 1983)

Another troubling by-product of rich-washing is how people become very vulnerable to scams and schemes. 

“We are no longer ‘family’ we are ‘warm prospects.’ ––anonymous reviewer of False Profits, 2015

People want to believe the promises of all kinds of scammers offering them the American Dream. (Check out Season 1 of The Dream podcast). Because of the shame and pain of being poor, because of being an outcast from the perceived norm of upper-middle class consumption, people are desperate to get some dignity and hope back. Many women get into recruitment marketing for “the sense of community, friendship, and purpose that comes with being a vendor.” 

However, less than one percent of Multi-Level Marketing participants make a profit. 

“Failure and loss rates for MLMs are not comparable with legitimate small businesses, which have been found to be profitable for 39% over the lifetime of the business; whereas less than 1% of MLM participants profit. MLM makes even gambling look like a safe bet in comparison.” (PDF) John M. Taylor, 2011 Consumer Awareness Institute paper at FTC.gov.

Ironically, the stories of big-time con artists and scammers have become popular entertainment themselves and are the subject of many documentaries, movies and podcasts. 

Finally, the biggest harm from rich-washing is to the environment ––our biosphere upon which all life depends.

“Modern economies expand, but the ecosystems that provide for them do not.” ––Steven Stoll, The Great Delusion, 2008

Mass consumption is a requirement of the current economic growth model and rich-washing helps keep it all going. So we end up with things like ‘fast fashion’, disposable everything, and planned obsolescence. 

“Left unconstrained by other forces, the free-market system is one of the most restless, destructive arrangements ever contrived ––tearing down and building up, obsoleting last year’s fashions and praising this year’s, ... and scheming always to reduce the arts and sciences to sycophancy. None of which is a secret...” ––Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew, 2008

Rich-washing irony ––who is ruining the environment: rich or poor?

“World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, says Oxfam” ––Guardian, 2015

Rich-washing has another sadistic effect on low income people’s mental health. The world, it seems, is waking up to the potentially catastrophic harm being inflicted on the environment. And yet poor people are still made to feel like pieces of shit, even though they consume the least and do the least harm to the planet. So really... f*ck off with your spectacle of sparkling gold-plated glorification of the wealthy, please.

Three reasons for rich-washing

As previously mentioned, one reason for rich-washing is that corporations want their advertisements to reach higher income viewers. Another reason for rich-washing is for political propaganda: it protects the status quo by pushing the idea that everyone is mostly rich, and if you are poor, it is your own fault. 

A third reason for rich-washing is that media creators, like everyone else, need to survive financially. Creators need to attract viewers. In most cases, this has led to an overwhelming focus on the rich and famous.

“Sponsors prefer beautiful people in mouth-watering decor, to convey what it means to climb the socio-economic ladder...” ––Mediaspeak, 1983

Today, due to an increasingly crowded arena and variety of cultural products, this is a bigger challenge than ever before. What’s going to get people’s attention? What’s going to be popular escapism? Very often this will be flashy settings, fancy costumes, a focus on the wealthy or the royal. Just how many shows about royalty do we need? Never too many apparently. 

And when a story goes for gritty settings and characters, this usually means crime, jolting action and high conflict.

As Jerry Mander wrote in his now ancient 1977 book about television, things like violence, death, jealously, lust, materialism, conflict, the loud, the bizarre, the shocking and the superficial are easier to depict on television than their quiet, cooperative, and nuanced opposites. He laments that this is the type of world that TV “inevitably transmits”. No wonder he argued for the elimination of television.

(However, it should be noted that people used to worry about bad effects from “penny dreadfuls” and pocket-books, although Mander points out that watching TV puts people in a passive state, but reading does not.)

David Simon, creator of The Wire, one of the most critically acclaimed TV series ever made, had this to say about the impact of advertising on media: 

“And how exactly do we put Visa-wielding consumers in a buying mood when they are being reminded of how many of their countrymen - black, white and brown - have been shrugged aside by the march of unrestrained bottom-line capitalism?” ––David Simon, The Wire, Truth Be Told (book), 2009, HBO

(Read more about The Wire below, under “Exceptions”)

Another irony about media rich-washing…

Low income people often consume a lot of escapist media because it is a cheap and easy way to get a break from the health-ruining, cortisol-producing daily grind of life on poverty incomes. Fictional and fantastical worlds are often the only affordable escape for those of meagre means. Thus, it is not surprising when people get an intense attachment to their favourite entertainment if it provides them with stress release, comfort and meaning.

“… a 21-year-old in Michigan, finds it easier to get excited about playing games than his part-time job making sandwiches…” ––Andrew Yang, The War on Normal People, 2018

The opening scene of the movie Ready Player One envisions an extreme dystopian version of this. Rickety trailers in squalid surroundings are stacked sky high. Those living inside wear virtual reality goggles to escape from their over-crowded lives into limitless virtual worlds. 

It’s important to note that escapism as a form of coping with stress and trauma has its place. The answer is not to take away people’s beloved forms of escapism. (E.g. the excellent book by Raziel Reid “When Everything Feels Like the Movies”.) The answer is for humanity to strive to create a healthier and less stressful world where people don’t feel such a tremendous need to escape from reality.

But you don’t need to watch dystopian movies to see that public spaces are shrinking and becoming more unlivable. Even city benches are designed to be a miserable experience. (You know. To solve homelessness of course.) It is no wonder people stare into their screens like never before. We are ruining the public sphere and forcing people into private spaces where the goodness or badness of those places is determined by how much money you have. 

The bright glare of rich-washing might be dimming

“Am I alone in being disgusted by excessive wealth? It seems like a moral failing rather than something to celebrate or aspire to.” ––Nigel Warburton Philosophybites (twitter), January 19, 2020

In 2019 there were three movies that ripped the shiny bandaid of rich-washing propaganda off the reality of mass income inequality: Jordan Peele’s US, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, and the controversial Joker... a character study only remotely related to the comic book story. 

There’s been much written and spoken about these movies already. Suffice to say that poverty and the underclasses jump out of the screen in unexpected ways and the wealthy are not shown with shining virtuous haloes.

Even the super-rich (in real life) are starting to notice the current economic system is a disaster:

“At least a dozen billionaires have made public statements that call for the super-rich to pay more in taxes.” Forbes, Oct. 15, 2019

Meanwhile, support for a universal income benefit is spreading rapidly. (Thanks in no small part to Andrew Yang.) People are calling bullshit on the idea that there can ever be a living wage job for everyone who needs one. People are also calling bullshit on the idea that only paid work is real work. There’s a huge constituency of people who provide unpaid care for their loved ones. These unpaid carers have been diminished and ignored for far too long by both the political right (who are full of cheap platitudes about ‘the family’) and the political left (who are full of out-dated platitudes about ‘the workers’). 

People are also calling bullshit on poverty itself since it’s obvious that there is more than enough for everyone on the planet to live with dignity and health. There is no reason for poverty to exist at all ––other than out-of-control greed and massive economic lies. Both of which are propped up by rich-washing.   

Because of the increasingly obvious and growing gap between the haves and have-nots, cultural products might finally be moving away from rich-washing to something similar to what Brecht brought to the theatre 100 years ago:

“...the higher world of upper class sentiments is presented from the ruthless viewpoint of the common people.” ––Martin Esslin on Brecht, 1959

Rich-washing erases the vast swath of humanity from seeing any dignified reflection of themselves. It’s time to identify this assault on regular people.

To quote the Vancouver poet Bud Osborn*:

“north america tellin lies in our head make you feel like shit better off dead so most days now I say shout shout for joy shout for love shout for you shout for us shout down this system puts our souls in prison say shout for life shout with our last breath shout fuck this north american culture of death shout here we are amazingly alive against long odds left for dead shoutin this death culture dancin this death culture out of our heads”

*Bud Osborne 1947-2014, from Amazingly Alive and Other Poems, Vancouver, BC, 1997, Independent release, Lonesome Monsters

TO SUMMARIZE... 

Here’s the thing. Public spaces are becoming increasingly harsh. Jobs and incomes are ever more unsteady, unpredictable and unlivable. People’s anxiety is on the rise. Healthy ways to relieve stress are few if you are broke. So people turn to entertainment as a form of escape. But this subjects them to rich-washing which is harmful to individuals, to society, and the environment.  

Entertainment and advertising media have been teaching people that it is ok to hate, denigrate, or laugh at people in poverty. In addition, it has been teaching people who experience poverty to blame themselves, or even hate themselves.

“Propaganda offers him an object of hatred, for all propaganda is aimed at an enemy. And the hatred it offers him is not shameful, even hatred that he must hide, but a legitimate hatred, which he can justly feel.” ––Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, 1962

It is important to expose this type of propaganda to reduce its harm.

However, the answer is not to change entertainment to only reflect social reality. The answer is to change our reality so it is not so harsh for so many people.  

Art can’t be censored. But it can be bent by those who hold the purse strings for their own purposes.

There is no reason for poverty to exist. Letting poverty exist is the costliest, stupidest and most tragic thing society can do. As described in  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people first need to eat, we need shelter, we need health care, we need a material foundation before we can hope to have healthy, happy life. When people struggle to meet physical needs, they can’t pursue happiness needs. Or to put it another way:

  “Even honest folk may act like sinners, unless they've had their customary dinners”  (“How to Survive” from Threepenny Opera)

Ending poverty with a universal income benefit (aka Freedom Dividend,  Guaranteed Livable income, Universal Basic Income ) is the most affordable and doable solution for people and the planet. It is our best bet to create a livable economy, a livable natural environment, and a livable social and cultural environment for humans.  

In a world with income security for all, we might find our entertainment would drastically change for the better. Advertisers would no longer dominate entertainment. Creators would have more freedom to create. People  would no longer seek so much escapism.

Of course, we will not have utopia ––nor should we try to create a utopia.  But at least we would not be flinging ourselves into a  certain  dystopian future because we think there’s no other choice.  

A livable income for everyone gives us a choice.  #Livable4all - now- for people and the planet.

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But wait! There’s more....

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EXTRA SECTION 1: FAKE POVERTY TROPES

Fake poverty tropes in popular culture are different than exceptions to rich-washing (see examples next section). They are not. They are just story-telling short-cuts. They can be fun escapist entertainment, but they are ultimately rich-washing wolves in sheep’s (cheap) clothing.  

i) Rags-to-riches: When someone starts poor and ends up rich. In the past, these tales were called Horatio Alger stories, where hard work and honesty bring success to the hero. A sub-genre of this trope is the criminal rags-to-riches story. Riches are won through criminality, violence, hustles, or scams. This usually ends badly for the anti-heroe(s). However, usually not before a display of luxurious settings and wardrobes. Or in some shows, just piles and piles of cash, gold, jewels, etc.

ii) How can they afford that?:  This is when people with very marginal jobs and incomes somehow have homes and/or lifestyles that would be impossible with a similar income in real life. These are the kind of TV shows that leaves the audience wondering: “What? how can they afford that?”  

iii) Rich Relations: This is when financially poor characters live on the periphery of rich people. These characters might be broke and in debt, but they have close family or friends who are very well-off. Again, even though the main character might be ‘skins’, the audience is shown some fancy settings and aspirational fashion. 

iv) Magic Money Wand: This is when the poverty problems of the hero are magically solved when the hero gets a sudden windfall of money from a wealthy family member, friend, mysterious benefactor, or by winning something.

EXTRA SECTON 2: RECENT EXCEPTIONS TO RICH-WASHING

There are a few notable exceptions to rich-washing described here. Note: UK productions (except for one) are not included because, for whatever reason, the UK has an abundance of TV shows and films from a working class perspective. (See also the films of Ken Loach and Tony Garnett.)

The Wire began in 2002, was only 5 seasons, and is now considered a masterpiece of television. One reviewer describes it as being about “post-industrial collapse” and “institutional dysfunction” in an American city (Baltimore). Sounds bleak, but it was rare social realism with unconventional heroes and story-telling. It had low ratings at first. Apparently, showing that the “American Dream was dead” did not catch on right away. However, HBO, which relies on subscriptions, not advertising, was willing to “simply let it be” said creator, David Simon. He also describes just how much the mass media has failed America’s disenfranchised

The Wire (TV series)

“The Wire avoided victories, preferring to show corruption, failure and decay. ... The Wire was as much journalism as entertainment – a form of protest television.” ––Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 2018

The Wire began in 2002, was only 5 seasons, and is now considered a masterpiece of television. One reviewer describes it as being about “post-industrial collapse” and “institutional dysfunction” in an American city (Baltimore). Sounds bleak, but it was rare social realism with unconventional heroes and story-telling. It had low ratings at first. Apparently, revealing the “American Dream was dead” did not catch on right away. However, HBO, funded by subscriptions, not advertising, was willing to “simply let it be”. according to its creator, David Simon. 

“…how can a television network serve the needs of advertisers while ruminating on the empty spaces in American society and informing viewers that they are a disenfranchised people, that the processes of redress have been rusted shut, and that no one - certainly not our mass media - is going to sound any alarm?” ––David Simon, The Wire, Truth Be Told (book) 2005

Atlanta (TV series)

“...the show’s brilliance [is] at combining absurdist comedy with heartbreaking reality to create something entirely unique.” ––Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair, 2017

Atlanta is a mix of sharp social realism, sudden comic moments, gut-wrenching scenes and hard-hitting parody that includes a searing fake commercial for children’s cereal. It is like the Eduardo Galeano of TV, but with some Salvador Dali, Brecht, and comedy thrown in. Series creator Donald Glover needed to disguise his vision in order to get it made.

“I was Trojan-horsing FX. If I told them what I really wanted to do, it wouldn't have gotten made." ... My struggle is to use my humanity to create a classic work—but I don’t know if humanity is worth it, or if we’re going to make it. I don’t know if there’s much time left.”––Donald Glover interview, New Yorker, 2018

Black Mirror - Fifteen Million Merits (series)

“What archetype dystopian future does Black Mirror’s “Fifteen Million Merits” choose to model itself after? Orwell’s or Huxley’s? The answer ends up being: a little bit of both.” ––Den of Geek, 2018

Fifteen Million Merits stars Daniel Kaluuya (also the star of Get Out). The episode begins with a dystopian-lite near-future story. However, it quickly compresses the characters ––and viewers–– into a painful claustrophobic nightmare vision of a capitalist hostage-taking entertainment monopoly. 

Breaking Bad (TV series)

This was massively popular show that ran from 2008 to 2013. The main character is a chemistry teacher named Walt who was first motivated to be Bad due to a cancer diagnosis and fear for the financial future of his family. However, once he started down the bad path, he quickly accelerated to the far reaches of very bad badness. Partly this was because of his ‘almost-got-rich’ backstory. In one episode he goes to the house party of his former business partner who is now very wealthy. Walt’s feelings of poverty, failure, and humiliation are stark. In real life this pain is usually turned inward, but in the show it becomes grist for the monster that the character becomes.  Millions of people related to this character who lived under the fear of poverty in the land of plenty.

However, Breaking Bad is mostly a rags-to-riches fake poverty trope even though it was a lower-middle class character’s fear of rags that sparked his need and greed for riches. With its very individualistic focus, the story continues the myth of independence carried over from the fictional old wild west of heroes and outlaws. But in this case the outlaw is the hero.  

But perhaps its lasting legacy will be an oft seen meme showing how Breaking Bad would have had no story at all had it been set in a country with universal healthcare.  It’s accurate to say the real monster in Breaking Bad is a modern wealthy country without healthcare.

Shameless (TV series)

“Few shows have attempted to situate themselves in the living nightmare of poverty—the country’s quiet shame, the marginalized that the middle and upper classes don’t want to see next to the numbing comfort of Modern Family. Television ignores the poor just as Americans do.” ––Flood Magazine, 2016  

In a lot of ways Shameless is a big brash bold exception to rich-washing. The creator of the semi-autobiographical British version said “It’s not blue collar; it’s no collar.”  However, after 9 seasons, the US version succumbs to several fake poverty tropes. Nonetheless, it is unique, and its many fans find the characters in the chaotic, desperate, scrounging, scamming, and poverty-stricken Gallager family relatable. 

“I love how it addresses sex, drugs, poverty, absent parents, and other topics like those.” ––commenter, TV Criticism blog, 2014

Critics have questioned the series for its condescending stereotypes, for turning poverty into entertainment, for relying on too many nude scenes, and for their treatment of black characters.  

But the overarching message and source of comedy for this show is in the title, which tells us that if you are poor, you should feel shame. This family doesn’t feel shame about their poverty. They are ‘shameless’, some more than others, and comedy ensues from their rude, crude, shocking behaviour and occasional truth-telling observations about society.

EXTRA SECTION 3: WAY BACK EXCEPTIONS

In the 1970s there were many more TV shows featuring regular people: Sanford & Sons (set in a salvage yard); Laverne & Shirley (factory workers); and, in Canada, The Beachcombers (salvage).

There were even some down-market detectives including the very popular Columbo who wore rumpled clothes and drove an old jalopy. Fans loved how rich villains would be caught because of their arrogance and snobbery: they assumed Columbo was a bumbling idiot because of his humble presentation.

The Rockford Files detective (1974-1980) also had a shabby vibe. The main character (Rockford) had done time, lived with his father in an old trailer, and had no office or secretary ––just an answering machine on his cluttered desk.  He did, however, have a fast car and was played by James Garner, former star of the popular TV western Maverick. 

Rural set TV series were also fairly common. 

“Over one-third of shows in 1950 were set in small towns or rural areas, mostly Westerns and comedies.” ––Brookings Institute

The Beverly Hillbillies was popular comedy in the 1960s. It was a rags-to-riches and fish-out-of-water story. However, the show regularly made rich people look ridiculous even though the suddenly oil-rich hillbillies were also comic characters. But they were the heroes of their story. This show got cancelled despite its popularity as advertisers wanted younger urban viewers and not the rural and older viewers that show attracted. (Social Communication in Advertising, 1986)

Other rural set shows were Green Acres (inept rich people try to homestead with comic results), Petticoat Junction (another comedy), The Waltons, and Little House on the Prairie (dramas). There was also 17 seasons (1954-1973) of Lassie (a dog) with farming and wilderness settings.Going waaay back...   growing up Canadian in the 1960s and 70s meant watching The Forest Rangers and Adventures in Rainbow Country, both shows featuring child characters who showed off skills such as fishing, wood craft, horseback riding, and wilderness survival.  

EXTRA SECTION 4: THE WORLD’S LONGEST RUNNING SOAP 

“So I'm a British guy who had an overnight stay in Toronto to connect a flight, and I noticed Corrie is shown in primetime on CBC... I’m just astonished anyone outside of Northern England would give a toss about it.” Reddit comment, 2018

You can’t talk about exceptions to rich-washing without talking about Coronation Street, the world’s longest running soap. Set ‘on the cobbles’ of a small fictional corner of working class Greater Manchester in Northwest England, it began in the 1960s and is still going strong. (Update May 2020- the pandemic has in fact interrupted Corrie.) 

Coronation Street has grit, unlike US soaps, which would never have characters working in an underwear factory and organizing actions against management, or working in a fast food shops, barber shops, driving taxi, or grease pits fixing cars. With a few exceptions, most homes on the street look over-stuffed and very lived-in. The real living room of the street is the local pub, a cosy nostalgic setting, and nostalgia is a big part of the show’s popularity. 

The street has changed and expanded over the years, but it has changed slowly. Characters who come and go with frequency except for the core characters. This includes several very popular and very elder actors who get substantial storylines. In addition, “Corrie”, as the fans refer to it, is also known for having snarky battle-axe women characters. One of the oldest was Ena Sharples, and one of the newest, Evelyn Plummer. And unlike U.S. entertainment, younger characters don’t all look and sound like glossy over-polished models-slash-actors. 

In recent years Corrie has tackled numerous serious social issues such as suicide, homelessness, mental health, addiction, male rape, human trafficking, teen pregnancy, life after jail, and spousal abuse (to name just a few). These storylines are done carefully with advice from experts and advocate groups. They also frequently address classism. However, the show is not all doom and gloom. Coronation Street blends silly comedy, murderous villains, crimes big and small, and many ridiculous eye-rolling storylines. Fans heap an equal amount of complaints as praise. But big picture, Corrie is notable for the fact that it almost never got onto the airwaves at all. 

 Contrast between a working class UK soap and a US soap

Other Resources:

Books:

Deer-hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant, who writes about populism in southern rural poor communities in the U.S. (and his hometown) and why they might vote against their own self-interest.

Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert W. Fuller who writes about abuse of power by those who have higher status or rank against those of lower status.

From Movie Lot to Beachhead by Look Magazine (1945) Written at the end of WWII, the publishers wanted to show how Hollywood was not shallow but could rally for a cause and be on the right side of history. A big contrast to today, when it comes to the war on the poor, entertainment is very much on the wrong side of history.

Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano “a crushing satirical expose of the glaring inequalities and injustices of a world turned upside down that many has come to be desensitized as ‘normal.’” (Goodreads review)

The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang (free audiobook on youtube).

The Rebel Sell - Why the culture can’t be jammed by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. “But these gains [civil rights, social safety net] have not been achieved by ‘unplugging’ people from the web of illusions that governs their lives. They have been achieved through the laborious process of democratic political action.” (All forms of counterculture end up being just another marketing opportunity).

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman “As Huxley marked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” 

Websites Classism in Children’s Movies (a study) - Classism.org  A Guide to Basic Income FAQs - scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq

Podcasts

 Why Pop-Culture Hates Poor People  - Cracked.com 2015-03-02  “Movies don’t seem to understand what it’s like to make less than 200K a year…. If you look and live like a poor person, you might be a serial killer.”  

5 ways Hollywood tricked you into hating poor people  - Cracked.com 2015-02-23 

***

The author was raised on books & nature and almost no TV and movies but became a telly addict & movie fan late in life.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Was Caroline Calloway the First Instagram Influencer?

http://fashion-trendin.com/was-caroline-calloway-the-first-instagram-influencer/

Was Caroline Calloway the First Instagram Influencer?

Caroline Calloway is a 26-year-old from Falls Church, Virginia, with over 850,000 followers on Instagram. She is famous for something that didn’t really exist until a few years ago: a personal brand. However, she doesn’t like to think of herself as one — a confession she shared as we sat on the floor of her one-bedroom apartment in the West Village, surrounded by color-coordinated books, fresh flowers tucked into empty Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider bottles and charred palo santo sticks.

An aspiring writer determined to score a book deal, Caroline saw something in an up-and-coming app called Instagram that many people at the time did not: opportunity. She started posting the first chapters of a would-be memoir in lengthy captions across a series of Instagram posts and quickly amassed a legion of readers who hung onto her every word. Posting intimate personal details on social media is now commonplace, but when Caroline first started sharing stories about her life, her friends and her romantic relationships, it was different. Unique. A bit scandalous, even.

I spoke with her about all of this, including her coveted book deal — which she scored to the tune of half a million dollars, only to subsequently back out of the contract. Below, her as-told-to story.

On When She Started Taking Social Media Seriously

I joined Instagram in 2012, when it was just starting to become more mainstream, but the climate was totally different from what it is today. People forget how different it was. A typical photo and caption would be an aerial shot of your breakfast with the caption “#valencia” and that would be considered edgy. It was unheard of to share that you were having a bad day or were in a bad mood on Instagram, much less any extensive personal details about your life.

I was starting to learn about photography at the time, and I found it fascinating that the criticisms for why photography couldn’t be taken seriously in the late 1800s were identical to what we saw then with social media: the idea that it’s technology, that it’s science as opposed to art, that it’s too democratic to have artistic merit (i.e., anyone can buy a camera, anyone can make a Twitter account, etc.).

Now, two centuries later, every major museum has a photography collection. It goes to show that just because something is new and unfamiliar doesn’t mean it can’t be a medium for art. Once I drew this connection in my head, I started taking social media’s potential more seriously.

On Why She Decided to Write a Book on Instagram

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was constantly underlining things in books, trying to improve my craft, trying to get coffee with people who had interned with literary agents so I could get a literary agent. I had no idea Instagram would play a role in helping me achieve that. I just had the overwhelming determination to do whatever I could to make it happen. I’ve always been convinced that I have stories to tell and that I would be successful at telling them.

I started playing with the idea of writing a book on Instagram, and people thought I was nuts. Just imagine nowadays if someone told you they were going to build their writing career with a small, up-and-coming app that major news sources and brands don’t have a presence on. Everyone was like, “No, that will never work.”

I began by writing an autobiographical story that carried across multiple Instagram posts and introduced different people in my life as “characters.” I know that sounds strange, but think about what it’s like when you follow people on Instagram. You become invested in their lives and the people in them — their friends, their romantic partners, their coworkers. They’re like characters in one of your favorite books, except even better because they actually exist.

Once I thought about that, I realized one of the main assets of Instagram as a medium is that it’s a lot like reading a novel, but it’s also interactive. You can click on the handle of someone who is tagged in a photo, you can comment on a photo, etc. I thought about that great quote Holden Caulfield says in Catcher in the Rye — “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” With social media, it finally can. You can talk to the author. You can talk to the characters. You can see who they’re interacting with and what their worlds look like because they’re inviting you into them.

Another thing I did that was unthinkable back then was post about things that weren’t happening in real time. When I started sharing the story of my relationship with my ex-boyfriend Oscar, I told it slowly because I knew I wanted to sell a book about my life, and I understood that I couldn’t give away the whole plot. It took me two years to cover a period of ten days. With each installment, I let my readers get to know the characters. I would stretch out the narrative by saying things like, “Two years later, when things were so hard, we would look back on this moment with fondness.” A formula that worked really well for me was pairing beautiful photos with sort of sad or lonely captions.

My ultimate goal was to get a book deal. I didn’t know much about being a writer except that it involved book deals, and that they were important to get, and that everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to get one. Growing up as a creative kid, I received a lot of that kind of feedback. There were so many small moments with relatives or friends or teachers when I was like, “I’m going to do this,” and they were like, “you won’t make money” or “good luck with that” or “that will be hard.” I was determined to prove them wrong.

On Finally Getting a Book Deal

Flatiron Books offered me a book deal for half a million dollars in 2015. I promised a memoir where the only thing that happened to me were boyfriends and where the climax of my entire life experience to date was boy-related. The whole narrative arc was about my relationships with three different boys. For the record, no one forced me to write the proposal the way I did. I was simply caught up in my own ambition, and I lived in a world where I saw (correctly, in my opinion) that if I wanted to get the most money possible, this was the book I had to sell, so I sold it. I received around 30% of the money from the deal upfront.

It wasn’t long before I realized the boy-obsessed version of myself I planned to depict as my memoir’s protagonist was not one I could stand behind. I think there are a lot of people who would have written the book anyways and taken the money, but I couldn’t do it. So my choices were: write a book that wasn’t really about me — that was just about boys — and get lots of money, or back out of the contract and owe lots of money. I chose the latter, and I’m working on changing my business model so I have the income I need to repay them.

I had already spent my entire book advance at that point. I mainly spent it on rent for the apartment I shared with my boyfriend at the time in London, and on meals. At one point I just started giving it away to friends. The money meant nothing to me. I didn’t feel like I’d earned it and I loathed myself for how I’d gotten it. I had drifted so far from all the reasons that made me love writing and love art and made me want to be a writer in the first place, and it paralyzed me — artistically, emotionally and personally.

When it became clear to my publishers that I didn’t want to write this book, they withdrew from the contract. I more or less stopped posting on Instagram at that point. It was a really painful time for me. It was so hard to have come so close to something that I had dreamed of my entire life and trip over the finish line, but the idea of spending the rest of my life signing copies of a memoir that wasn’t about the real me broke my heart.

Backing out of the deal felt like losing a part of my identity. I started questioning everything. If I don’t have a book deal, am I still a writer? Am I still an artist? How do I define myself? Ultimately, one of the greatest gifts of getting out of it was having to find the personal strength to realize that getting paid a lot of money doesn’t make me a writer. Having a book deal doesn’t make me a writer. I am a writer simply because I have the desire to say, “This is what I am.”

On Having a Personal Brand and Being a Public Figure

I don’t like thinking of “Caroline Calloway” or “Caroline Calloway the Instagram Presence” as “brands.” However, as an artist and as a creative person, it’s both my responsibility and my right to support myself so that I can make the things I want to make. I acknowledge that in order to do that, it behooves me to understand and respond to the ways other people might see Caroline Calloway as a brand, and to act accordingly. Even though I don’t see it in my heart this way, I understand why I must in order to be the best businesswoman that I can be. I need to support myself.

Making a living this way isn’t always easy. People begin to feel like they are owed details of your life. They judge you when you share them, and they judge you when you don’t, and that is very difficult. Instagram is a medium that pairs seductively well with perfection, both in terms of what we like to consume on it and the standards we hold ourselves and others to on it. Maybe 200 or 300 years from now in the Shakespearean way that English evolves, there will be a word for the mixture of disingenuousness and sadness and loneliness you experience when you are portraying your life in a way that is not true to how you feel in the moment.

This past summer, my ex Oscar’s new girlfriend made a troll account about me. I wish I could say that when I saw the account, I had so much kindness and peace in my heart that it affected me not at all, that I anointed her on the forehead with oil and said, “Go in peace my child, I care not of this.” But that wasn’t the case. I was so angry and scared. She followed my dad’s private Instagram account, which I don’t even follow (he’s a really private guy; he shrivels like a slug under salt with public attention). He had 11 followers. One of them was her. She also followed all my other ex-boyfriends, all my family members, all of my friends.

I burst into tears. I was so upset. I called Oscar to ask him why she did this. If I’m being totally honest, I was calling him from a mean-spirited place. I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t feeling vindictive, especially because she denied even creating the account, and Oscar believed her. She said it was a glitch in the system. That whole dramatic phone call — just having him believe her over me — was incredibly hurtful. So I posted on my Instagram Stories on what had happened. My followers were immediately up in arms. Their reaction was validating because I was so, so angry.

The next day, though, I woke up with a lot of regret. I wanted to take everything back. I started wondering how Oscar’s girlfriend must feel, and I felt so badly that hundreds of thousands of people knew what she had done — because of me. It really started to snowball into this thing where people were saying she was crazy and evil and bad. I decided it was important for them to know that I have flaws, too, so I decided to tell them that at the very end of my relationship with Oscar, I kissed someone else. I also told them I had been addicted to Adderall for about three years, and that I had only recently gotten off of it. I wanted to illustrate to them that people are human, and that there is more than one side to every story.

On Doing Sponsored Posts

I used to think I would never do sponsored posts because I wanted so badly to be taken seriously as a writer and as an artist and worried about what people might think if I monetized my Instagram. There is so much shame surrounding the idea of being an influencer and the idea of accepting money for being an influencer. People make a lot of judgments, but I’ve come to accept that. Like I said, I need to support myself.

I knew I wanted to be really transparent from the beginning about how I was approaching paid partnerships. When I decided to start doing sponsored posts, I posted about it publicly on my Instagram, and I shared my rates with my followers, which isn’t something I’ve seen anyone else do.

I immediately learned that I should be charging more, because I had a huge influx of asks for things I wasn’t interested in, even though they could technically pay my rates. Honestly, even when I raised them, I still got asked to do things I didn’t want to do. I don’t want to do, like, Fit Tea or hair gummies or those sort of things. It would be hypocritical of me to sit here and talk about how firmly I believed in getting out of a book deal with a sexist plot and then post an ad for appetite suppressant lollipops. It’s really hard being a girl in the world. I don’t want to contribute to that in any way.

On Meeting Fans

I get recognized in public about once a week. Maybe less, maybe more. It’s different with every person. Everyone reacts differently. One person burst into tears and that was the hardest for me to react to. I think I started crying, too. The thing is, all the fans I’ve actually met in person have been really normal people I genuinely want to hang out with. I’m probably happier to meet them than they are to meet me. A few weeks ago, I invited a fan to my apartment for dinner and cooked her dinner. I was like, “Come over.” And she did, and it was so great.

Her Advice For Young Girls Navigating Social Media

Try to shut out the noise of what other people think. Take serious stock of what parts of social media really excite you, whether it’s writing captions, or the experiences you end up having when you’re trying to take some photos, or being behind the camera, or drawing and taking a picture of that. Listen to yourself. Figure out exactly what aspects of the creative process lights you up inside and arrange what you make around those truths. After all, you never know what’s going to be hanging in a museum two centuries from now.

7 PHOTOS click for more

Photographed by Edith Young. 

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough appeared first on Dezeen.

[architectnews]

Climate change is "a design project needing lots of attention" says William McDonough

Removing excess carbon from the atmosphere is a daunting but "very exciting" design challenge, according to sustainable-design guru William McDonough.

Describing climate change as a "design failure," the American architect and designer said that solving it will involve "hundreds of technologies and systems."

"It's a design project needing lots of attention," McDonough told Dezeen via a video call from his home in Virginia. "It's very exciting to look at how many ways we can do this, but it's daunting".

The root of the problem is what McDonough describes as "fugitive carbon". This is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere that "meets the description of a toxin: it's the wrong material, wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration."

William McDonough (top) wrote seminal 2020 book Cradle to Cradle (above) with chemist Michael Braungart

The educator and writer, whose seminal 2002 book Cradle to Cradle is regarded as the precursor to the circular design movement, turned his attention to carbon in 2016 when he wrote a ground-breaking article for the science journal Nature.

"Climate change is the result of breakdowns in the carbon cycle caused by us," he wrote in the article, which was echoed in a speech given around the same time at the COP22 climate-change conference in Marrakech. "It is a design failure."

Carbon is "an innocent element in all this"

He further set out his thinking in a blog post that called for "a new language for carbon". This categorised carbon into three categories.

"Living carbon" moves through all living things in an endless cycle that makes life possible.

"Durable carbon" describes the earth's carbon stores, including fossil reserves, limestone and long-lasting materials such as timber and recyclable polymers.

"Fugitive carbon" is carbon that mankind has taken from the first two categories and put into the atmosphere. The twin design challenges are to stop creating more of it while bringing the rest of it back to earth.

"The point I wanted to make there was that we had started referring to carbon as the enemy," he explained. "It's an innocent element in all this. I thought we needed a new language."

"We are probably going to have to electrify everything"

Creating this new taxonomy allowed McDonough to start seeing atmospheric carbon as a design problem that could be solved.

"I see encouraging living carbon as positive behaviour; doing carbon-neutral things as neutral behaviour; and releasing carbon where it doesn't as negative behaviour," he explained. "I tried to get the language straight enough so I can design with it."

One part of the solution is to simply "stop burning... let's not use the word fossil fuels," he said. "Because it means we intend to burn it."

Switching from fossil energy will involve "massive efficiency and massive adoption of renewables. We are probably going to have to electrify everything."

Hydrogen could be used for heavier uses such as long-distance trucking and heavy industry, he said. Carbon-free ammonia, which has a higher energy density than hydrogen and is less volatile, could power shipping.

McDonough warns about "the fallacy of the offset"

The other challenge is to remove fugitive carbon from the atmosphere. But this problem is hard to understand and solutions are hard to grasp, McDonough said, comparing it to an overflowing bathtub.

"You've got to go upstairs, turn off the faucet and pull the drain because even with these zero-carbon goals, even if we're emitting zero, we've still overloaded the atmosphere. We have to start removing."

This will involve "probably 20 or 30 different techniques" including yet-to-be-developed chemical solutions, mechanical solutions such as the direct air capture technology being developed by companies such as Climeworks, and natural solutions including soil sequestration, afforestation and rewilding.

"So let's plant mangroves, let's restore ecosystems everywhere we can, all over the planet, all the time." However, he warned about a paradigm he describes as "the fallacy of the offset".

Offsetting is a way of compensating for carbon emissions by paying for carbon mitigation elsewhere. To work, the offsetting investment has to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, but it is often used as an accounting trick to justify emitting more carbon.

"I call it the fallacy of the offset," he explained. "You gotta watch out for it. If somebody says, oh, I've got this much renewable power and I'm gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful."

"That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero. That doesn't make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon."

"So we got to be very careful about false equivalence. Renewables don't equal to [removing] carbon."

McDonough has been called "the father of the circular economy"

Born in Japan in 1951, McDonough is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he runs his architectural practice William McDonough + Partners and McDonough Innovation, a consultancy advising corporations and governments on their sustainability strategies.

He has advised bodies including the World Economic Forum and the G20 on sustainability. With actor Brad Pitt he co-founded the Make It Right Foundation, which was founded to rebuild the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

In design circles, he is best known as the co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he wrote with chemist Michael Braungart. The landmark publication called for a new design approach that learns from natural systems and eliminates waste.

"I've been called the father of the circular economy," he remarked. "Cradle to Cradle actually leads into the circular economy, if you think about it."

Humanity will need to adopt principles of circularity

To stop climate change, humanity will have to adapt the principles of circularity in order to capture fugitive carbon. McDonough describes the goal as the "circular carbon economy".

This will involve "moving toward recyclates," McDonough said, referring to materials that are capable of being recycled many times. "There's going to be a big move to do chemical recycling of plastics to get them back to oil basically and start over. Plastics are an immensely useful thing, but not if they go fugitive."

Biomaterials such as agricultural byproducts, bacteria and mycelium have huge potential too since they store large amounts of carbon.

"We've been working with mycelium for many years," McDonough said. "They have amazing properties. They can be insulation, packaging, various kinds of acoustic material. They can be grown in a factory on agricultural secondaries such as wheat straw or barley straw."

"Then with bacteria, we can actually make bricks. You're building coral reef, basically. It's room-temperature manufacturing. It's quite astonishing. Those things are coming."

However, using large amounts of land to grow crops for biomaterials runs the risk of creating monocultures that damage biodiversity.

"When you're looking at it just through a utilitarian lens, we can see certain materials are quite astonishing in performance," he said. "But a balance of utility and ecological restoration has always got to be considered in these issues."

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard. Image courtesy of William McDonough + Partners

The ultimate biomaterial is, of course, wood.

"I think it's fundamental and it's hugely important," he said. "It's critical because we need living wood in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We need nature-based solutions to carbon in the atmosphere. And trees play a huge role in that."

Mass-timber buildings are "coming very fast"

The use of timber as a construction material is "coming very fast," he said, with cross-laminated timber, in particular, allowing architects to build high-performance mass-timber buildings, including tall structures.

William McDonough + Partners' Apex Plaza headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, under construction in Charlottesville, will be the tallest timber building on America's eastern seaboard when it completes later this year.

The eight-storey CLT structure will have "a total potential carbon benefit of approximately 3,000 metric tonnes compared to traditional approaches," according to William McDonough + Partners' website.

Wood "holds up very well in fire too," he explains. "Some people are surprised by that but wood will char before steel fails. High temperatures can take steel down long before a wood structure."

Just ten per cent of waste wood is estimated to be recycled

However, cutting down trees to make products including furniture and paper is a potentially wasteful use of wood, McDonough argues. "Just think about carving wood. It's a negative process, right? We're cutting away stuff all the time."

An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year for their timber but a substantial percentage of this is wasted. Timber accounted for over eight per cent of all landfilled municipal waste in the USA in 2018, and over eight per cent of all incinerated waste.

It is estimated that just ten per cent of waste wood is recycled, with the rest burned or sent to landfill, meaning all the carbon contained in the timber is returned to the atmosphere.

Paper production is another poor use of wood, McDonough believes. "I think we can look for other sources of fibre. Using something as beautiful as a tree to make a newspaper is a bit silly. The New York Times Sunday edition took five square miles of clear cuts. Just the Sunday version!"

Secondary agricultural materials including straw, which is usually burned, are better potential sources of paper fibre, he argued.

McDonough is particularly excited about new techniques for 3D printing with wood waste. "They've discovered how to 3D print with wood," he explained, referring to a technique developed by Californian company Forust.

This takes waste sawdust and lignin, a natural polymer found in wood that is a byproduct of the paper industry, and "rematerialises" it as a printable material. "It could save a lot of trees," McDonough said. "It's kind of fun and it's quite beautiful."

McDonough's grandfather was a lumberjack who worked in the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. As a result, he has "a lot of big tree karma". He talks poetically about forests, remarking that "every tree is precious, every tree is a treasure, every tree is a carbon-capturing engine."

However, the belief that simply planting more trees can solve the climate crisis is simplistic, he agrees. There is growing concern that forests are not secure enough to serve as long-term carbon stores since once they have been planted, the trees could die and rot or burn, or their timber could be put to short-term use.

In either case, the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. "What happens next? That is the question. You're betting on a future you hope you can control. It is tricky business."

Forests are  "essential to culture"

But there are plenty of other reasons why forests are essential, he points out, including protecting biodiversity, conserving water and preventing erosion.

"I think taking care of forests is something that is essential to culture," he argued. "There are so many reasons to do it beyond carbon sequestration. It's still worth doing even if the carbon equations are skewed a bit because it's about a 25-year cycle. The tree grows, dies, becomes carbon, goes up, comes back."

"So how do we love the tree?" he concludes. "We don't love it by cutting it down. It's not just a resource. We love it by nurturing it."

But surely trees do need to be cut down if the products made from them are going to serve as long-term carbon stores and help replace materials that generate fugitive carbon?

"It's the same as eating food," he responds. "You bless it. it blesses you. So you do have a relationship."

The portrait used at the top of this story is by Duhon Photography.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

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