Shapes and Smells of Sustainability

Sustainability with all its systems thinking, entropy, Hubbert curves, ecological footprints, bloom energy and the phenomenal advancement in all types of alternative energy- farming, since 1990, have reached a third gear. Furthermore, constellation of international bodies with their subsidiaries and policies like carbon credits, emission taxes, sustainability compliances and the eventual whole new financial markets on green stocks, carbon stocks and other weather derivatives took the movement to much a serious level. Needless to say, internet, digitalization and smart technologies certainly have leap-frogged this imperative. Now, for good, it has become a meme and it is inherent in every contemporary culture and governance. But the sad news is inability to efficiently and effectively permeate this to every nook and corner of human activity before the planet’s web of life has reached threshold. While searching for old e-mails on this concern, i found two examples (relatively less popular), which i thought of sharing, not just for their importance but for their brilliance too.

Sustainable Architecture

Chuck Hoberman, marvellous architect, designer, and artist explains how he defies existing degrees of freedom, and how creatively he distorts conventional symmetries, patterns, relationships between structures and trajectories only to leap beyond smart tech for transformative construction. Each one of us wants to have a micro-environment or microcosm (home) that reflects and conforms one’s identity and -isms to have control in one’s hands against the macrocosm (world). So buildings keep coming up as long as man exists. So Chuck's ideas have lot to contribute to this ubiquitous necessity of man. It has a strong say on sustainability. Click this for fantastic video.

Sustainable Luxury (Perfumes)

If you have strong inclination towards perfumes and fragrances, I can assume that you'd be very familiar with all those basic concepts like scent-layers, receptors and "shape" theory. But this guy, Luca Turin, has come up with "Frequency Theory" for how we sense smell. In simple words, contrary to "smell of a molecule is determined by its shape”, his theory tells that our sense of smell is determined by the frequency of a molecule. The strong underlying message is that we don’t have to exploit anymore for molecules (extracts of herbs, trees, flowers, animal glands, animal fats etc) that have exact shape. Instead, simply manufacture molecules (synthesize) that have same frequency as say Musk or Sandalwood. This invention smells beautiful, isn’t it? Here is the video.

IPOs: Man-Nature Partnership (Un)Limited

Best ideas are patented by nature!! So why cannot we reap the man-nature partnership to redress the planet’s sustainability issues. Four years back, my serious thought and deep passion for Earth’s future had led me to the root cause of all these global crises, the “Big-Bang”moment of rampant global woes: PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
All the activities are derivatives of subsets of process that are directly/indirectly dependent on photosynthetic activity. You may ask me “so what’s big deal? Isn’t for this that we say plant more trees? Yes that true,”But tell me how many of us are actually protecting trees let alone growing them. Tell me how many of us are imbibing green practices as part of our lifestyle; let alone Creating and spreading awareness? The question is not how much we have done but how much more to do and go. More over whatever we have done is not even dx (delta x). This is not to discard efforts of us who are actively doing something about it but to integrate our active awareness with a definite and lucrative model that adds to existing collective sustainability consciousness.
My answer is why stop there and why not question the answers and think bit further. My answer is, as Man always done, is to invent “that” or integrate technology with nature. Yes, solution is ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS. Just imagine if we can achieve this artificial photosynthesis, we can solve 90% of the world’s problems. Imagine the future where we have photo-synthetic machines or systems or gadgets, which we can switch on at our will. That would be a terrific of inventions, isn’t it??!! So, how to do it?

1. Use genetics, molecular biology, nanotechnology, memetics and non-linear thinking:Corporations like IBM, GE, SAP, Microsoft, and Shell (ilk) should invest in this research. It not only boosts demand of sciences, technology, and college business but also gives returns million fold if invented. No need to tell the magnanimity of social responsibility you would have imparted. Creating employment, wealth and bettering society can never happen in a better time than this.
2. Design or invent an artificial p-syn in labs and in parallel, increase plants photosynthesis efficiency at least to 12% (that is doubling the existing maximum efficiency): Improve the structure of leaves, design of chlorophyll and make the process carbon-intensive and oxygen spewing.
3. After we invent functional artificial p-syn system and have evolutionized plants and algae as planned, imagine the emergence of markets for such products. Imagine the regulations and polices around it. Visualize a place in new version CARBON MARKETS (if it happens after 2012), it is equivalent of money-minter. How about selling such products to governments? Nations might trade OXYGEN where in we may be barons.

I believe, only if an idea or an activity has real monetary benefits, people (who are powerful and unlike) will take it seriously. All we have to do is sensationalize the sustainability and make it sexy b(u)y educating the people about its commercial proposition!!!!

Reason for writing this: I presented this idea, from my past, to participate in my company’s Genius: Innovative Idea Competition was chosen as the penultimate entry, i.e. top 1 innovation idea, followed by my other idea for 2nd place. Unfortunately, for the lack of functional model, my entries were removed two days before the event, who cares. Ideas rule the world and entrepreneurs integrate people, resources, technology, market and imaginations. I don’t have to be scientist, but I have vision and purpose. I am happy happy.