Would the Na’vi people feel at home at Masdar?
The acclaimed Hollywood director James Cameron, creator of the powerful green message movie Avatar, was in Abu Dhabi recently to tour Masdar. Unsurprisingly to me, with his green perspective, he had some very positive things to say. Hollywood’s greenest director was given a comprehensive overview of Masdar’s approach to tackling the complex energy challenges the world faces, and included a tour of Masdar Institute, the Middle East’s first graduate research institution dedicated to clean energy research and education, according to Arabian Business.
After his tour of the new low carbon city under construction, he made a point of praising the UAE leaders for advancing the low carbon vision of sustainable living, despite being an oil-rich nation.
“Through Masdar” he said, “the leadership of the UAE has taken a visionary path towards the future. In the heart of a major oil producing nation, Masdar is a shining ideal of what a long term, sustainable future for energy can be.
Cameron is a man willing to risk big money on a radical movie that has been decried as shrill and polemical by green future opponents in the US. He was far more positive than more local environmental critics like my fellow writers here at Green Prophet.
“This is a test bed, and this is where the technology is going to come from that will allow us to have a renewable energy future,” he said at Masdar.
Like James Cameron, I live in the US, so I understand his perspective. From over here, Masdar, with all its faults, shortcomings and failures, looks like a real attempt at designing change.
Masdar is evidence of a governmental commitment to a clean energy future that contrasts sharply with that of ours – even though the UAE leadership is even more dependent on oil than our government, now that bribery has been legalized in US politics.
In the US we are impeded by a governing body that proudly proclaims the entire science of climate change – and the necessity of transitioning to clean energy – as some kind of a “hoax.”
It would be un(eco)imaginable for the Tea Party (the new branding for the Republican Party) in the US to fund a major carbon-neutral city, as the leaders of the UAE are attempting at Masdar.
Still, I wonder if the Na’vi themselves would feel at home visiting Masdar – perhaps to take in a rare night at the movies. Or I wonder if we would design more like this for them…?
Related stories on Masdar:
Masdar City: Small Hiccups, Or Total System Failure?
Masdar And The Dicey Science Of Carbon Credits
American Elections Are Bad For The Nile Delta
Avatar and Deepening Perspectives on Sustainable Land Development
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/09/haiti-deepening-perspectives-sustainable-land-development/
“Opening to critical acclaim and unprecedented commercial success, James Cameron’s 3-D movie spectacle Avatar has become the fastest film to reach $1 billion in box office receipts. Here’s the plot set up – In 2154, the profit-focused RDA corporation is unsustainably mining Pandora, a lush, Earth-like moon of another planet. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a sapient species who has adapted to integrate their lives in ways that sustain their planet. The Na’vi resist the colonists’ expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na’vi and their ecosystem – sort of like Dances with Wolves meets Star Wars…”
Will Abu Dhabi Help Create a Sustainable Dubai?
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/09/will-abu-dhabi-create-sustainable-dubai/
“Less than 100 miles away from the broken dream of Dubai World, a new city based on a very different dream is rising in Abu Dhabi. Being built from the ground up with sustainable living in mind, Masdar City “…will bring together the best-of-breed clean technologies: building-integrated solar photovoltaics and solar glass, solar hot water systems, smart grid technology, electric transportation, power storage, sustainable agriculture and vertical farming, water recycling and desalination, low-energy HVAC, green building materials, waste-to-energy systems… essentially everything but wind energy.”
Hopefully, under Abu Dhabi’s new guiding influence, Dubai will adopt a more sustainable development model that pursues a better balanced, triple-bottom-line return for the long-term benefit of all stakeholders. Earlier in this year of unprecedented crisis and opportunity, SLDI offered to newly-elected US President Barack Obama, and now respectfully submits to the UAE – the World’s 1st Sustainable Land Development Best Practices System that balances and integrates the needs of people, planet and profit into a holistic model that helps land development projects achieve greater success in each area.”
Your participation and comments are welcome.
Sustainable Land Development Initiative
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/09/sldi-foundational-primer/