The second session of the second day and the fourth session for TED Global is titled Natures Challenge.
The first speaker of this session is Cary Fowler who runs the global crop diversity trust. Crop diversity is the biological foundation of agriculture and it is crumbling - a mass extinction was taking place.
There are around 400 breads of dogs in the world and there are 40,000 different 'breeds' of seeds in the world today. There are around 200,000 varieties of wheat and 400,000 varieties of Rice. In the past growers were growing 7100 different varieties of apples - today there are less than 200 many have become extinct.
Why do we need to save these apples? They may have a trait that we need in the future and it will give us options when we are faced with global climate change. In the future the coldest growing seasons of the future are going to be hotter than the hottest of the past - can agriculture support this change - crops have never experienced this temperate change before. There is coming a food crisis - we need to get climate ready crops in the field now to get ready for this climate change.
In the Diversity Trust they have stored seeds from around the world in the, however many of the seed banks from around the world have been lost through a number of accidents and problems with funding etc. The Global Crop Diversity Trust have created a seed bank on an island off the Norwegian coast called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - built into a mountain and there is natural freezing temperatures with no artificial chilling. There are 425,000 samples stored in the facility and this is growing to over a million by the end of this year. Each sample is 500 seeds of every variety - there are national seed collections from many nations.
Some people see this as a doomsday project however Cary sees it as a protection against doomsday. In summary he doesn't have a solution for global climate crisis - non of the major problems can be solved, however without crop diversity.
The next speaker is Janine Benyus who is an expert on Biomimicry. This is a new discipline which tries to take design advice from nature. Remember that every year nature keeps happening - spring, winter, fall etc. all happen without intervention every year. Imagine trying to organise this!
She spoke of a wasps nest that had grown in her yard and a neighbours child asked her how she had made it as it was so beautiful and well made. She of course said that the wasps had made it. the child assumed that as it was so good that it must be man or woman made.
Biomimics are natures apprentices - asking how would nature solve a problem? One example was to look at how kingfishers enter the water without a splash and used this to design a high speed train so it doesn't cause a noise when it enters a tunnel. How does a nature repel bacteria? A shark in the Galapagos has a particular skin pattern which does not allow bacteria to settle on it - this idea is now being used on hospital to repel bacteria.
How does Nature use CO2 as a building block? A company in the US is using the recipe from corals to make concrete which sequestrates 1/2 ton of carbon dioxide. How does nature strengthen with minimum material - companies are using the idea to create things with minimum materials mimicking nature. What about energy use? Companies are using swarming - ants and bees etc. - as a way of minimising peak power use.
The question is what is worth solving (Dr Adam Nieman). How can we create conditions conducive to life on this planet. There is a new website asknature.org which looks to catalogue biological information and provide biomimicary examples to help people solve their problems.
There was a short talk on TEDx which are independently organised TED like events. !50 million people have now watched TED talks online in the last 4 years - around 300,000 people a day watch TED talks. There are now over 160 TEDx events in 2009 around the world.
The third speaker of the session is Mathieu Lehanneur a young French designer who uses nature in many
of his designs. He showed an image of Homunculus which is a representation of how much of the brain is devoted to certain parts of the body.
He is using white noise - a perfect noise for our ears and our brain - as a foil for the noise pollution we face today. He has developed a rolling ball that is attracted to offensive noise and roll towards it and mask the noise. A second idea is a light which monitors the light you receive during the day and give back the light you really need.
He has redesigned pills which make them more effective and palatable through design. He showed an antibiotic in layers like an onion which the patient has to peel off - the outside is darker and larger than the inner layers. He has also designed an indoor air filter which uses plants to filter the air around us - indoor pollution can often we more toxic than outdoor pollution but we doesn't think about it which will be launched in September 2010.
Another idea is an indoor river - a domestic farm for fishes and plants - providing local food in your living room. The dirty water from the fish is used to water the aquatic plants which filter the water and put it back into the water for the fish.
The last speaker of the morning is Lewis Pugh an arctic swimmer. His father used to tell stories of the first atomic bomb as he was there when it went off - he had to shield his eyes from the light. He told stories about great explorers and had holidays at the national parks. His dream was to go to the arctic and took him a long time to get there - in the last 7 years he has visited it every year and has seen massive changes in this short time.
He did a symbolic swim across the north pole to bring climate change into focus at a temperature of -1.7 degrees - it is f'ing freezing! He had to assemble a team of 29 people to support the swim. The most important training he did was to train his mind to prepare for the swim. After a year of training he hitched a ride on an ice breaker to get to the pole. He tried a test swim for 5 minutes and he was so cold that the water in his hands had frozen and swollen like sausages. In the morning he still couldn't feel his hands.
At the North Pole the water was completely black and a little bit frightening with an ocean depth of 4200m. He completed the swim, covering 1km across the North pole in open water something he couldn't have done 7 years ago as it would have been frozen. The first long distance swim at the North Pole it took him four months for him to feel his hands again.
Three things to do for climate change
- break the problem of climate change into manageable chunks
- We need to recognise what climate change is and we need to believe in ourselves.
- We must all walk to the end of our lives with the thought what type of world do we want to live and what decision are we going to make today to ensure that world exists for our children.
