Readings...

A History of Greenwashing: How Dirty Towels Impacted the Green Movement
Motavalli, J., 2011. "A History of Greenwashing: How Dirty Towels Impacted the Green Movement". Accessed August 8, 2012. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/12/the-history-of-greenwashing-how-dirty-towels-impacted-the-green.

I had heard about the 'save the towel movement', as the article called it and began discussing, and I had never been that against it. I figured, saving water and energy wherever possible is better for the greater good, whether or not it's the corporation just trying to make themselves money easily while promoting their image.

This article made me realise how desensitised I've even become to all this green washing, I'm so desperate for the rest of the world to catch on and understand we need a dramatic change to our lives that I'll accept any small change.

There is a need for a legitimate change in our society, in our mindsets and in our actions towards actually becoming sustainable and green. I guess miss-education allows people to be swayed by all those big corporations and their fancy ad campaigns to convince us they're doing their part. But there also needs to be drivers for such change, whether they'll have to be market driven or not, we're yet to find out.

Tsunami Warnings, Written in Stone

Fackler, M. 2011. "Tsunami Warnings, Written in Stone". Accessed August 8, 2012.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html.

I love the idea of thinking about the past and learning from it as we move towards the future. Understanding what has happened is a great way to work towards understanding what might come. After all, that's what we generally do, we gather data about what has happened and project that into the future to plan for what might happen.

As someone who can be resistant to technology and the guarantees it brings, this article picks up on some of my scepticism's, that people put their faith in new technology, trusting it will save them, but nature will take over. That is an important lesson to remember when future planning, the fact that nature will have her way.

As well as this, it seems that storms and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and destructive, a path that I'm curious to go down when thinking about how a future city survives a natural disaster. People forget what happened in the past and build below tsunami lines and even in Brisbane, we expanded below the flood lines and in 2011 it had devastating consequences. Resorting back to the basic, simple survival techniques can sometimes be the most effective.