In the future, everyone will be herbivores and living in dams

I read this very enlightening article on newscientist about the 4degrees rise in global temperature and its catastrophic effect. the writer is Gaia Vince and after reading the article on NS i went on to his blog to see what else he has to say. he wrote a blog entry (on my birthday!) about it and called for suggestions, no matter how wild and crazy to deal with our future housing and food crisis as a result of climate change. this is what i wrote as a response:

hi

i read your article in newscientist and it has been truly enlightening. thank you very much.

i agree with the notion of a future massive- scale vegetarianism. we all need to change our mindsets, status quo and policies in order to survive the drastic climate changes of the future so why not start with the simplest thing: changing the way we eat. our lands, oceans and resources cannot sustain the rearing of livestock and marine ecosystem is bearing the heavy burden of our fishing industry with unfortunate corollaries to sea inhabitants that are not captured for food. it makes sense that if we were to stop the consumption of animals: it will stop the demand for fishing and the clearing of land to feed cattle etc hence will make way for regeneration of forests and aquatic life. there has been countless scientific evidence of the health benefits of a vegetarian/ vegan diet as well so to me it really is a win- win situation in todays' context if we were to become voluntary herbivores. this may no longer be an option in the future if we dont start now and continue eating, as you put it, anything that moves to extinction...including, perish the thought, lonesome george!

the idea of growing crops on marshlands and floating platforms captivates me. perhaps rice could be genetically modified to grow on salinated water so they could be planted on artificial paddy platforms in the sea. or these platforms could be equipped with a desalination system for the paddy plants.

living in high rise apartments seem to be inevitable. recently, architects have been thinking about the idea of preventing urban sprawl and building homes on traditionally non- domestic existing structures as alternatives to skyscraper homes and to increase densities in cities to avoid encroaching on green areas. here are some ideas that could be feasible in the future:

Quarries: Atkin's architecture group proposed a resort built on the slopes of a water filled quarry in china. Building materials are sourced from the quarry itself and the artificial lake is used for recreation. given the sheer surface area and water retention possibilities of quarries this could provide a potential solution for our impending housing crisis. there are of course several issues to solve such as landslides, safety, toxic surfaces, structure and drainage.

Dams: they are another option that can be considered. given the size and strength of dams, its not difficult to imagine attaching capsule apartments like kisho kurokawa's capsule tower in tokyo to them for housing. or, hollow dams could be lived in with windows and ventilation on the downstream face. The top of the dams can be utilised for viewing decks, recreation and community gardens and diversion dams can be used to irrigate a large scale hydrophonic farms. Dams are also built to withstand natural disasters and extremely high structural integrity so they could provide the foundations of a sustainable housing project. Potential problems could be sound abatement, safety, and evacuation logistics in the event of structural failure or enemy attack.

bridges: Habitable bridges are not a new concept. The Ponte Vecchio and the old London Bridge did sustain domestic life and the Walter Taylor bridge in Brisbane has a few habitable units in its towers. Lightweight, slim and detachable housing units can be attached to the platform, piers , trusses and towers and traffic has to be regulated for increased padestrian activity. Granted, the design of the structures of existing bridges has to be evaluated to add more mass onto the structure...

Artificial islands: Given that a massive amount of land will be sumberged, living on artificial islands could provide housing for displaced cities. We currently have the palm jumeirah in dubai, exclusive real estates built on reclaimed land. but this is a small scale venture. it doesnt seem feasible at the time being to reclaim land currently used for human habitation to build another mumbai floating in the middle of the sea. furthermore, we cannot demolish tiny surrounding island for building materials like what was done to build kansai international airports' artificial island.

what if, the floating islands were to be build from garbage? there are billions of tonnes of discarded metal, rubber and plastic in our landfills and the can be detoxified and put on floating platforms, also built from reused garbage and covered with habitable waterproof surface material. given the size these islands need to be, we would be living in something akin to an iceberg. a garbage iceberg with only a portion of its mass visible on the surface, held in place by giant anchors imbedded deep in the sea bed. we wont be able to build skyscrapers and underground tunnels on them and everyone will have to travel on high speed trevelators, bicycles, roller skates and skateboards.
some marine parks use sunken ships for fish breeding ground and new york city has sunk their retired subway cars to attract fish to revitalise its barren waters so washing machines, construction left overs, car and train skeletons could be sumberged to attract fish and promote the breeding of corals and revitalise marine life of our oceans.

well thats all ive got...

I hope you liked it