Despite the fact that everyone knows where it is on a map, Greenland has spent much of modern history as an unimposing world destination dotted with sparse habitation amidst hundreds of thousands of square miles of ice. Mining, fishing and hunting have comprised most of the large island’s small economy for centuries. Only recently has the image of Greenland’s future started to change as hopes of increased natural resource extraction made possible by a warming climate lend the possibility of a new importance in the global marketplace. Will a rush of business ultimately create a flourishing ice kingdom to the Northern Hemisphere or merely another example of corporate tenacity shoehorning industry into an environment that is among the planet’s least hospitable for human civilization? Continue Reading…
Archives For August 2012
As unfortunate and costly as the rash of American droughts is proving to be, the small silver lining is that more Americans are pairing these adverse effects with the possibility of a warming climate. While greater acceptance of climate change is a progressive step, it is not necessarily indicative of the following, and arguably more important, step of decisive and constructive actions that amount to meaningful change in stemming actions that contribute to a hotter planet. As we pace through an increasingly warm decade, the question remains of how much do we have to turn up the heat before we try and take ourselves out of the oven. Continue Reading…
Plant Chicago, NFP/Rachel Swenie
Here in the U.S. we have no shortage of unused industrial space. In cities across the country there are blocks of old warehouses laying dormant and forgotten. While some find second lives being renovated into hip residential lofts, many of these buildings have a hard time being fashioned with new uses. The manufacturing industry has not exactly rebounded in America and conversion into retail space can be complicated for buildings too far away from active streetscapes. For most of these icons of a former era, the easiest option is vacancy which levels double the weight on a commodity filled with latent energy that was once so useful. Not only are empty buildings a waste, but foregoing maintenance for long enough eventually degrades the components of the building to the point where it truly is unusable.
In Chicago’s West side, a group of entrepreneurs saw one such building as an opportunity and fashioned a multi-faceted program mix to utilize old warehouse space and create a complex that will be energy-neutral, waste negative and resource positive. Dubbed “The Plant” the facility that is currently in the construction/renovation stage includes multiple parts revolving around food production that create an interconnected system of reflexive benefit (what some could call an Industrial Ecology). According to the owners, when the facility is complete it should be producing food, fish, beer and tea all as part of an on-site ecological system. Continue Reading…