The “11th hour” is a great reminder for us of what has happened to the world for the past few centuries and how bad nature has become because of what human do. The video provides a lot of scientific facts, opinions, and thoughts from experts of diverse areas; which all agree at one point: that there’s a huge link between nature and human being.
Despite the fact that human is relatively a young species, as human we tend to think that we are superior, we think we own the nature so we can take whatever we want from the nature. We forget that we are actually part of the nature. Simply look at our body; there are millions of other living creatures and organisms that live in our body, supporting our body mechanism. We can’t live without them, we live because they live in us. So in other words, we are indeed part of our nature. Human and nature cannot be separated and one does not simply superior to the other.
However in this consumerism, money-oriented world, everything is business. Everything is measured from how much money it could gain and everything is seen through economist’s point of view. We see nature as properties that can be exploited, most of the time they destroy nature in order to gain profits without being responsible to the nature.
Deforestation and over-exploitation of living resources is not a new phenomenon. In fact almost all existed forests in America, Europe and Asia are now gone due to deforestation. 99.99% of all species has become extinct and over fifty thousand species become extinct each year, which I believe over-exploitation plays a big role in this phenomenon. What’s ironic is that people over exploit nature in amount that is bigger than what human need, only to throw away the exceeded resources back to nature, but of course in a condition that’s already broken and destructed.
It is sad that we unconsciously live in the black circle, we forget that what we do to nature will eventually coming back to us. For instance, deforestation will lead to droughts and droughts will destroy food sources and consequently it will cause hunger and finally deaths to animals and human themselves.
This video also gives a good insight for designers. As designers, we have obligations to consider what consequences of each design we produce and be responsible to nature. After all, design is a search of ways to create a better world, not to destroy it. So it is important to consider “cradle to cradle” concept instead of stop at “cradle to grave” concept.
As designers we also have to explore what can we learn from nature because if we pay attention, the nature is really a great teacher. Human spend a lot of money in searching and developing strong material or structure while if we look at nature, spider’s silk is up to 5 times stronger than steel of the same diameter, not to mention minus the pollution and the hazardous waste resulted from the making process of steel.
Well of course it’s not easy to solve this global problem, but rather than do nothing and keep doing what we do, as a consumer we can contribute to make this world a better place by voting. Vote for sustainable products and pay more attention of the products we buy, think before we purchase something; is it sustainable, how they are produced and in what material that product is made.
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