Facing Habitat Change - Mimic reality
We face a non-returning catastrophic ecological event produced by 10.000 years of constant deforestation and 200 years of intensive pollution. Industries and habitat need to change direction to allow our civilization to survive. 19th century science developed into 20th century technique, producing a self-destroying scenario where architects have been replaced by technocrats, who ignore the nature of things. Habitat is collapsing because of four reasons: Invasive Species (us), Over-population, Over-exploitation and Pollution. Even if the Earth's temperature is mostly regulated by the Sun and its cycles of warm and hybernation (11, 70, 206 and 2.300 years, according to different scientists), the greenhouse effect exists and affects the Ecosystem; the contamination of the upper atmosphere is the cause of a positive feedback catastrophic event, this is, anomalies that boost temperature rising, ice, snow and glacier melting, extreme storms and, probably, changing sea currents. Meanwhile, colleagues behave like fashion designers, building anti-sustainable contraptions mostly made of steel and glass. Presented as a success by consumerism and tourism, they waste materials, energy and resources, becoming a deplorable example of what not to do to save our Habitat. Marshall McLuhan anticipated that the speed of electronic information was catapulting perception, conscience and knowledge, while Jacques-Yves Cousteau alerted us that the Oceans were dying. Virtual reality is affecting children's reading, writing and interpreting capabilities (which are non-biological). The so called "Search Engines", that produced hypercapacity for fast perceptive reaction and image association similar to video-games, have obliterated students' logical and analytical capabilities. Social networks kidnapped their mind. Our conscience understands what we see on screen as real, when we actually process mirrored images. For our subconscious, however, what we see in the Internet (as this) is unreliable, because it is unreal: there is no paper, no materiality, things we will never touch. Somehow we got trapped in between, confined in mimic information. Data collected in the last decades indicates that most vertebrate and invertebrate species approach mass extinction by 2.100. There are 8 million life forms on Earth: 150 species disappear every day. Half a million blue whales lived in the oceans before the Industrial Revolution: there are 2.000 left. Unlike the previous five known extinctions (the last one, 65 million years ago), this time is man-made. (page 1 of 5)

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background photo: planet Mars, dust storm, PIA15959, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), courtesy of NASA