“Manufacturing, transportation, and buildings use energy to provide goods and services; transforming these sectors will entail finding ways to use less energy for these purposes, ways to use it that suit renewable energy sources, and ways to provide for human needs while using fewer material resources and producing less pollution. Land use planning touches on every aspect of local government concern, involving decisions on air quality, water quality, biodiversity, transportation options, economic vitality, and quality of life. And sound public policy is essential to community resilience efforts—with the recognition that imposing policies from above without adequate understanding of, or support for, those policies from community members will lead to political failure.”
– Richard Heinberg
Resilience in Major Sectors: Manufacturing, Transportation, and Buildings Online Exhibition
- Online Exhibition opened
Artists
Susan Bercu, Alison Lee Cousland, Yvonne C Espinoza, Ries Faison, Diane Farris, Jacqui Jones, Deborah Kennedy, Celia Kettle, Nancy D Lane, Rosalind Lowry, Meredith Nemirov, PNW Collage, Brenna Quinlan, Emma Skeet, Susan Smith, Kim Tanzer, Marcela Villasenor, Gordon Wood.
.Exhibition
EcoTech
In the Think Resilience course by Post Carbon Institute, they suggest, “...in manufacturing, our goals should be to localize production, reduce the scale of production where possible, to design and build products in a way that facilitates repair and reuse, and to use recycled materials where possible.”
The design process should start with environmental concerns in mind. Thoughtful design can stop so many problems before they start.
The artwork is still at the Champion Light Rail Station in San Jose. If you live nearby, take some time to check out its intricate details.
- Deborah Kennedy
Mapping, making meaning. Autopsy of Place
- Susan Smith
Kurofune and the Ghosts of Kalo Past
“In most communities, there are already organizations promoting local food, public transportation, renewable energy, and other issues related to sustainability and resilience. Policy makers should work not only with these organizations but also with the public in general to educate and involve community members in these kinds of projects, to further long-term goals.” -Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience Course, excerpt from the “Resilience in Major Sectors” lesson.
- Dorothy Ries Faison
Walkaholic
Richard Heinberg in the Think Resilience course from the Post Carbon Institute states that in building transport resilience, we need to reduce the need for transporting people by designing our cities better for walking and bicycling.
- Nancy D Lane
Individual Action vs Top-Down Action – What’s Better?
Well, the short answer is that each feeds into the other. When people are switched on, motivated, creative and active, their communities and political representatives will reflect that. The last Australian election saw a political shake-up on an unprecedented scale, where people voted in independents and minor parties based on their commitment to climate action. This kind of change is occurring because individuals all over the country are engaged with the big issues. It’s not really about the small amount of emissions you save each time you turn off the lights in an empty room. It’s about the connection you have with the issues that compels you to turn off that unused light. It’s about the important part you play in this global movement for change, and the ripples that you’re causing in your own pond.
The answer isn’t either/or, it’s yes, and. We need committed and inspired individuals as much as we need progressive communities and leaders who get it. It’s all a big part of the same picture, and it’s snowballing in the right direction.
Have you seen individuals make change in your community, or even at a higher level?
- Brenna Quinlan
Rivers of Type: Power to the Villagers / Reconstruct the Mind
‘In most communities, there are already organizations promoting local food, public transportation, renewable energy, and other issues related to sustainability and resilience. Policy makers should work not only with these organizations but also with the public in general to educate and involve community members in these kinds of projects, to further long-term goals.
Specific policies may, for example, may have to do with food production in suburban and nearby rural areas; with establishment of a local recycling and compost-making service; with strengthening building codes for energy efficiency; with support for local renewable energy; with making city operations …
One relevant aspect of public policy receives too little attention—that’s local laws and ordinances, that can help or hinder resilience building efforts. Sometimes existing laws having to do with building design, energy, and food systems just make no sense. The Sustainable Economies Law Center works to highlight and change those kinds of laws.
A few years ago it collaborated with Project Better Block to organize an event in Dallas that featured newly created on-street parking, sidewalk dining, sidewalk flowers, parking-protected bike lanes, and pop-up shops, intentionally breaking several local ordinances in the process.
The organizers put the text of those ordinances on display, and invited the city council along to see how foolish those ordinances were.’ Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience Course, excerpt from the “Resilience in Major Sectors” lesson.
- Emma Skeet
The Blue Plaque Scheme
This new work is based on the Common Law in Ireland for Trees & Hedges. The law states it’s illegal to cut hedges and trees between March 1 and August 31 each year. The ban is designed to protect wildlife during nesting and breeding season.
I created a series of ceramic blue plaques to leave where hedges and trees have been cut in my local area. Too many!
The Blue Plaque Scheme in Ireland & the UK honours the relationship between buildings and significant people who once lived there.
The work is based on the “laws that can help or hinder resilience building efforts” - Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute.
- Rosalind Lowry
Biomorphic Quintessence
- Gordon Wood
Eco Curios: No 2. Humanity and Trees:
Wands and Pouches incorporating: Sashiko: Traditional Water pattern embellished with French knots and seed stitch with shells and crystals.
Held together in an arrangement of: Feathers and seeds: Drying plant fibres for cordage. Peace lilies and dried Anthuriums.A round metal earring and Hamsa hand.
To represent: This time of the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse and our growing connection to each other and all Life on Planet Earth.
‘Part of the reason why our world and planet are facing such crisis is because we have become disconnected from the Nature of our Human Nature. And in order to find our truest nature for ourselves, there must be a connection to the nature that we’re a part of.’ ~Julia Butterfly Hill.
‘We’ve so altered nature that we no longer recognize it as nature in the form of a building, or as light shining down on us, or as water as it comes out of a faucet. We have to look at where the ‘Disease of Disconnect’ is in such a way that we can find how to heal it.’ ~Julia Butterfly Hill.
‘We can connect more deeply to ourselves, each other and our world, and the intricate ways in which our health as a species and a global ecology are intrinsically connected to our agriculture practices and stewardship of land.’ ~Zach Bush MD.
Imposing policies from above without adequate understanding of those policies from community members will lead to political failure’ ~Richard Heinberg.
- Alison Lee Cousland
Vanished
Contained inside the petri dishes are maps of places at risk of coastal flooding due to rising sea levels, including the Mississippi Delta.
In the Think Resilience course, Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg specifically discusses this area in Louisiana: ‘Perhaps the most obvious application of land use planning in community resilience building is in coastal communities’ response to climate change and rising sea levels. The state of Louisiana offers us at once a very bad, and also a better, example. Changes in the Mississippi Delta that were designed to increase flood protection and enhance oil and gas production have instead destroyed wetlands and put entire communities and ecosystems at risk. Since 1932 the Mississippi River delta in south Louisiana has lost twenty- three hundred square miles of land, and it’s still losing the equivalent of a football field every hour to erosion, subsidence, and sea level rise’.
- Jacqui Jones
All The Trees On My Street
“Manufacturing, transportation, and buildings use energy to provide goods and services; transforming these sectors will entail finding ways to use less energy for these purposes, ways to use it that suit renewable energy sources, and ways to provide for human needs while using fewer material resources and producing less pollution.” Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience Course, excerpt from the “Resilience in Major Sectors” lesson, PostCarbon Institute.
As well as making wonderful subjects for all the paintings and drawings I have done over the last thirty years, trees improve our quality of life. They improve water quality by filtering rain water and help to prevent flooding by reducing runoff. They provide shade cooling city streets and making them more walkable. The shade can also reduce energy usage. And trees remove harmful gases like carbon dioxide making the air we breathe healthier.
- Meredith Nemirov
Embedded Memory
Responding to the MAHB call and Richard Heinberg’s discussion of Resilience in Major Sectors—in this case the building industry—this Reel advocates for the preservation of existing built fabric. Existing buildings and their infrastructure contain vast quantities of embodied energy and an equally vast storehouse of embedded memories.
Embodied energy refers to all the energy it takes to make a building: mining, harvesting, fabricating, transporting, assembling, maintaining, and all the CO2 produced in the process. That C02 is already contributing to climate change.
At the same time, memories are embedded in places as we live our lives.
The “settlers” or colonizers of North America benefitted from virtually unlimited access to natural resources and cheap, even “free” labor. It became the norm to demolish and build afresh, rather than to maintain and conserve. The ethos of this Reel is the opposite.
As the well-know saying goes, “the most sustainable building is one that is already built.”
See gainesvilleneighborhoodsunited.org for further information.
- Kim Tanzer
Sky and leaves
As Richard Heinberg says in the Think Resilience Course by Post Carbon Institute, in lesson 21 on Resilience in Major Sectors (Manufacturing, Transport, and Buildings): “Neighborhoods can be rezoned to increase density and allow stores and other commercial uses to mix with housing along corridor streets—so-called “mixed-use” areas that were common before World War II and that characterize some of America’s most desirable places to live. Such neighborhoods are easy to walk and bicycle in, and when they make up an entire community they are easily serviced by public transit. It’s also necessary to provide targeted investments in walking, bicycling infrastructure, public transit, and public space.”
- Celia Kettle
Harvest Rain – Cosecha de Lluvia
En algunas regiones podríamos encontrar formas de utilizar menos energía en edificios y casas, la recolección de agua de lluvia es una de ellas que tendría beneficios ambientales.
- Marcela Villaseñor
Cactus Garden
The cactus design is a perfect example of form and function. It can thrive for 200 years in the most extreme hot, dry environments, with over 2000 species scattered in deserts all over the globe. Its systems enable it to absorb and conserve water. The characteristic spines, shallow roots, stomata on the stem and waxy skin make the plant a reservoir despite harsh climate. Its sharp thorns ward off animal predators but do not dissuade humans from using this important resource for food, drink, and medicine. Gardeners enjoy the dazzling variety of exotic cacti with their low-maintenance water-saving feature and the spines that keep the critters from munching.
The strange beauty of flowering cacti led me to create my fanciful ceramic interpretations to be “planted” in the 0-5-foot-wide defensible space (against wildfires) built with assorted rocks around my home. My cacti stand on ceramic bases resembling fossilized stones embedded with glazed clay replicas of seashells. I use the facilities at Sonoma Community Center, where ceramics classes are offered, and studios, glazes, and kilns are shared.
We humans have much to learn from the cactus plant.
- Susan Bercu
All-In
They are here—should we decide to stop and notice.
Imbued with human importance, we can look upon our world and invite, coexist with, or even destroy any non-human. We are masters of our domain.
What is this lens through which we are seeing our reality? How have we let our human nature overlay Nature itself?
Incorporating a regard for our natural systems in all our planning for building and construction with the goal of creating a beneficial existence with ALL our neighbors is a heritage we should claim.
The human landscape is vast. It can include soulless hardscape devoid of greenery, or permeable pathways full of flowering trees, birds, and all the beings that follow.
We are together as allies, neighbors, and friends.
“Land use planning touches on every aspect of local government concern, involving decisions on air quality, water quality, biodiversity, transportation options, economic vitality, and quality of life. And sound public policy is essential to community resilience efforts…” -Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience Course, excerpt from the “Resilience in Major Sectors” lesson.
- Yvonne C. Espinoza
Seeing the Elephant; Leaving the Room
I reread Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes, which places a beloved elephant and its keeper inconveniently on some prime real estate. (I have some surprising history with that story, as discussed in the book section of my website. The lone elephant had been adopted as a symbol for its city, as heritage trees have been for a number of our own municipalities
I started sketching a kind of diptych with the elephant alone on the left, then maybe in my bicycle basket on the right and had begun photographing those elements when I remembered the dollhouse and children. They had been delighted as they pretended to be Giants, startling the unsuspecting dollhouse people. From there, Seeing the Elephant; Leaving the Room came together. I got out the dollhouse, placed an elephant in a room - and asked a child to look in. He was terrific and had his own thoughts about the metaphor. And of course, the children and this beautiful, poignant world we see unfurling into spring are foremost among the reasons we keep going. I’m grateful to What’s Next for Earth, MAHB and Richard Heinberg’s Think Resilience course for the opportunity to gather with and be inspired by others on this path.
- Diane Farris
Localmotion
“Localmotion” is a play on words between “local” and “locomotion”. It represents the intersection (or rather, re-intersection) of two core human experiences - that of transportation and human movement.
With the dawn of the 20th century, transportation has increasingly become sedentary. So much so that transportation has largely become equivalent to sitting in a petroleum fueled chair.
“Our current transportation system is almost entirely fueled with depleting, climate changing petroleum. Building resilience in this sector therefore has a great deal to do with reducing oil consumption in moving both people and stuff.” —Richard Heinberg, And hunk Resilience course, Resilience in Major Sectors.
And it begins at the foot.
- PNW Collage
THE THINK RESILIENCE COURSE
This exhibition is based on Think Resilience, the Post Carbon Institute’s free online course. To respond to the art call, we asked the artists to signup and to watch the course, one lesson/video at a time. Each video is approximately 12 minutes long.
[Lesson 1: Introduction to the course]
CHAPTER 1: Our Converging Crises
Lesson 2 – Energy
Lesson 3 – Population and Consumption
Lesson 4 – Depletion
Lesson 5 – Pollution
CHAPTER 2: The Roots and Results of Our Crises
Lesson 6 – Social Structure
Lesson 7 – Belief Systems
Lesson 8 – Biodiversity
Lesson 9 – Collapse
CHAPTER 3: Making Change
Lesson 10 – Thinking in Systems
Lesson 11 – Shifting Cultural Stories
Lesson 12 – Culture Change & Neuroscience
CHAPTER 4: Resilience Thinking
Lesson 13 – What is Resilience?
Lesson 14 – Community Resilience in the 21st Century
Lesson 15 – Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience
CHAPTER 5 – Economy and Society
Lesson 16 – How Globalization Undermines Resilience
Lesson 17 – Economic Relocalization
Lesson 18 – Social Justice
Lesson 19 – Education
CHAPTER 6 – Basic Needs and Functions
Lesson 20 – Meeting Essential Community Needs
Lesson 21 – Resilience in Major Sectors
Lesson 22 – Review, Assessment & Action
Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.
We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do? Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have a good start on two important skills:
1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.
2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.