Foundations 19 – Infrastructure Space

In all our studies and discussions on infrastructure, might we be forgetting that the earth also has its own natural infrastructure? And that it is heavily burdened, even to the point of overload? In the future we will have to bring these two mega-systems into peaceful coexis- tence – a fact about which Simon Upton, Director of the Environment Directorate at the OECD, is certain. In general, our choices are probably more limited than we think: “Rather than ask how we would like to live, maybe we should focus on how we will be forced to live by the physical constraints of the planet we’re living on.” On the planetary scale, our infrastructure is a sort of artificial superstructure that we overlay upon the natural systems. These natural systems, however, are the actual infrastructure of the planet, “an intricately interconnected web of living processes that cycle finite elements within an enclosed space drawing on incoming solar energy.” Regrettably, we realize now that the infrastructure and our super- structure are not particularly well coordinated. Upton: “That su- perstructure – based on human intelligence – is starting to cause some massive perturbations in the earth system.” The extraction of resources continues incessantly while the capacity of the reser- voirs we are filling with our waste products is rapidly coming to an end. Unfortunately, we humans are having difficulty in correctly assessing the potential consequences of these perturbations. And just as we had been persuaded in the financial crisis that certain companies are simply too big to fail, we still believe that the infra- structure of the planet is too big to fail. But even institutions like Lehman Brothers did fail...

The problem will be who carries what burdens in the transition. That is a fundamentally political problem. « »

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