3 Old Technologies For A Sustainable Future
3 Old Technologies For A Sustainable Future
We don't need high-tech innovation to create a sustainable future for humanity. In fact, all the tech we need to regenerate our ecosystem and provide a good life for all already exists.
My first question for anything sustainable technology related is: does it scale?
After all, there are eight billion people on Earth. Presuming no mass depopulation events occur, the route to a sustainable civilization leads through high density, low impact cities exploiting economies of scale.
Dovecotes and ram pumps don't scale to modern city size. After all, what the doves would eat foraging in a modern city would make them unfit for human consumption. And the problem with powering things with falling water is water is an increasingly scarce resource.
This is homestead technology. It's not genuinely sustainable because we can't give everybody a homestead. There's not enough land on Earth for it. We need to move to denser, more efficient habitation models, use land more efficiently so we can rewild more of it, not spread ourselves out further and take more habitat for ourselves.
I'm still trying to figure out how to store the water I pump with my ram pump on a hillside in a sustainable and safe way. I have started to think about reservoirs made from living trees (willow might be a good candidate). I don't want to lug a pile of ugly materials up any beautiful mountain if it can be avoided.
Pond?
Yes, that's what that is called, I'm just trying to figure out better ways to create them on steeper hillsides where you can not just build an earth wall. The traditional way used to be granite, but it's heavy work. I am just dreaming up a solarpunk future where we could plant reservoirs. I'm too lazy to carry stones. And the current method of building cheap, quick water reservoirs involves corrugated sheet metal, and that is ugly and awful to work with, and usually gets imported from elsewhere (as do bricks and concrete). My tree reservoir has the problem that the quick changes in water level of the reservoir could be bad for the trees.