Krigh Logic - express_johntodd.shtml

For thousands of years, most of humanity has march on with their civilized quest to conquer the world. Empires, religion, and governments have pushed not only on their neighbours, but also on the world around them. It seemed endless. None stop production, consumption, and expansion. They did not see an end to it. Even when they reached to ends of the earth, they continue to look to new frontiers in outer space. However today, even as we continue our conquest, there are those who are ready to listen to the Earth, the warnings it has for us, and to use what it suggests instead. These listening minds are the ecological minds. Dr. John Todd, a Canadian born biochemist and designer is one of the few who is without a doubt an ecological thinker.

So what does this mean to be ecological? It requires a change of view of the world and our place in it. Most of the world is raised to believe that we are not part of nature anymore. That what we should always put first is in the order of things are humans. The Ecological view begins applying ethics to the rest of the biosphere as well. This includes the land as Aldo Leopold shows in his writing, The Land Ethic. "The extension of these ethics to this third element in human environment is...an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity."⁽¹⁾ In his text, Aldo is saying explains that without applying some ethics to the land around us we cannot be ecologically sound. We continue to use it just like another throw away product, never taking into account that it is a limited resource. Some have even go so far as to view nature as living organism, one that deserves respect and caring like any other human.

However, it requires more than just the acknowledged ecological limits of nature. Ecological thinking also has to incorporate nature into humanity and humanity into nature. John Todd spoke at a symposium in Toronto and describe ecological systems. "It can be argued that ecology is the story of relationships which are able to persist in a world in which change is constant. Ecological design is, in my view, the application of these relationships to human needs and to the integration of humanity with the large natural world that surrounds us."⁽²⁾ This integration is necessary as humans are not separate from nature. Everyone is part of it and should work with it, instead of trying to conquer it.

Dr. John Todd is someone that agrees with the Ecological point of view. "The system we've created is the potential to undo everything we want to see happen."⁽³⁾ The system he is referring to here is the one of the mass culture. Including the technological optimist, most of society still believes that we will rule the world by conquering nature, which could lead to the collapse of the support system we need to live. As a true ecological designer he sees that our survival is based on the web of nature. Rather than fight it, his designs work with it.

One of John's greatest work is his bioshelters that contain what he calls Living Machines. He describes, "In its essence a living machine is a machine that's self-designed, that self-repairs and in theory has the possibility of being almost immortal. [They incorporate] all forms of all levels of life, from microscopic bacteria up through to the algae, the higher forms of life, the snails, the clams, the fish and so on up through the vertebrates."⁽⁴⁾ By including these elements of nature, the machine within the bioshelter regulated its own temperature, recycled its waste and produced oxygen. These are processes that have been occurring in nature since the dawn of time, but humans have created environments that they exclude nature from and there for require artificial machines to regulate these cycles of matter and energy. In living machines, what was considered waste becomes food for living organisms.

John's design was taken further with the New Alchemy's projects, one of which is a sewage treatment plant. His living machines were now being feed human waste. Sewage that has led to outbreaks of disease in small communities, can be fed through a series of tanks filled with different plant and animals. Each stage breaks the toxic material down further until it is five times cleaner than by conventional means.

John has even demonstrated that it can be applied to industrial waste sites as well. When they approach an abandoned pool 35 to 100 times more contaminated than a sewage site, most people told him it was too costly to clean up (even though it sat right above the towns water table). By simply pumping the water through one of his living machines, "heavy metals were sequestered in ways which were meeting drinking water standards, and nutrients were removed to a large degree and human pathogens were down to well below swimming water standards."⁽⁵⁾

John Todd's Living Machines can grow food, generate energy, clean the air, heat and cool buildings, but their primary application so far has been in wastewater treatment. This is mostly due to the fact that the easiest and most compact ecosystem to replicate is marsh, meadows, and wetlands; these are nature's compact sewage plants. They were used as model when the first living machines were designed. Living machines use gravity and solar energy to minimize the need for fossil fuels. These means that these systems are more economical to run than conventional and chemical processes.

What John is not doing is trying to create a new technology or a new great power source. In fact the systems that he is using have been on this planet for millions of years. "The thing about these systems is we can't know a fraction of what they know. That's why I call it a true partnership. They know more than we do."⁽⁶⁾ It is just a matter of trail and error until he combines them in a way that truly works and can coexistence. "It can be deadly as hell. They'll figure it out. But you must honour the system by making sure the cast of characters is there."⁽⁷⁾ Of course this includes humans in that process too. It is this incorporation of nature into human technology and valuing the organisms involved that shows John's ecological leadership.

Humans are discovering that these systems can be cheaper to maintain, better for the environment and better for the humans around them. Major companies have started using living machines on their properties. The Body Shop Company^TM Headquarters in England is an example of this. The company took responsibility of its waste and treats 25-50m³ of waste per day. More locally, the Kortright Centre for Conservation north of Toronto, treats its sewage on-site as well. However, the system does not just have to be a large processing centre. In his book From Eco-Cities to Living Machines, John shows how distributed living machines could be built into the cities human-made environment. Bus-shelters could be made with walls containing miniature living machines, parks process waste, and canals could grow food.

These "bioshelters," along with farmers markets, rooftop gardening, and community gardens, could take waste and convert it into usable oxygen and food. Erik Wells of Ocean Arks International points out that "Environmental degradation such as groundwater contamination, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions are other examples of "hidden" costs not accounted for in the food commodity market."⁽⁸⁾ Living Machines incorporated into buildings and communities could help to reduce the ecological footprint of the industrialized world. In fact, John Todd believes that we could reduce North America's ecological footprint by up to 90% by incorporating natural systems like living machines into our culture.

If the human race is to survive into the next millennium, it will take a lot of change in the way they live. But as show here, there are ecological people like John Todd that are helping to spear head that change. Showing people this ecological and sustainable paradigm is possible may convince people that we can live with nature instead of fighting it. Living machines are a perfect example of how that can happen. However, we still have a long way to go. Whether that change will come in time, is still yet to be seen, but as long as there are people that will help weave the web a nature as oppose to destroying it, there is hope that humanity will not fall.

Do you agree or disagree?

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Ecological Design: Inventing the Future. Dir. Chris Zelov. Videocassette. Knossus Project, 1994.

Todd, Nancy Jack & Todd, John. From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1994

Leopold, Aldo. "The Land Ethic." Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001.

Van der Ryn, Sim & Calthorpe, Peter. Sustainable Communities. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986.

Wells, Erik "A Renewed Vision for the South Burlington Living Machine: The Development of an Agricultural Eco-Park" Ocean Arks International