Asking nature for advice

Have you heard of biomimicry? It is both age-old and quite new. Biomimicry is the copying of natural processes and elements and using human imagination to put them to work in the form of sustainable technology.

This all becomes a lot clearer if we look at an example of this fascinating science. One of the most famous is found in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Eastgate Centre, a shopping center and office block built in 1996, is ventilated and cooled entirely naturally, using as a model the mounds built by termites. During the day heat is absorbed by the Centre’s materials. The temperature inside increases very little. At night, warm internal air is vented through the many chimneys, while cool air flows in through cavities in the floor. This passive cooling uses only 10% of the energy needed by a similar building with conventional cooling. The environment benefits also, of course, as fuel is not used for air conditioning and CO2 is not produced.

A number of aspects of this science are inspiring. Rather than ignoring nature or bashing it with technology, the two are working together. Nature is taking the lead, showing us how to do something that we then adapt to human needs. We don’t copy nature slavishly; we differ from the plants and animals whose techniques we adapt. Biomimicry is a partnership of the best that nature and technology have to offer. This has been summed up concisely by Janine M. Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, who said in an interview “I’d say that Biomimicry is asking nature for advice.”

What a dynamic paradigm! How applicable to other aspects of nature and technology! Let’s ask nature for advice in a few other areas, farming for example. From the beginning of agriculture up to the industrial revolution, farmers looked to the natural world to figure out how to grow their crops. By the beginning of the 19^th century, mechanization and fertilizer had increased yields and made farming easier. But then farmers began to forget that in nature everything depends on everything else. They began to favor monocultures with desirable traits like higher yields, for example, leading to the Irish potato famine and other disasters. Technology went to their heads, and into the long perfectly straight ploughed rows of crops in the American central plains in the 30s. These unimpeded lanes for wind-blown dust, lack of rain for several years and failure to apply dryland farming techniques combined to create the dust bowl of the 30s.

Another aspect of asking nature for farming advice? We humans want the sweetest fruit, the most tender corn, the most prolific berry bushes. One finds these things in nature sometimes, but it is hit or miss. Ask nature how it does it, however, and we find out some truths about plant genetics. Cross different plants with different desirable traits and at least some of the offspring will exhibit the desirable traits of both parents. We can control this natural process using a technology called selective breeding, which has produced, most notably, sweet corn from corn used for animal feed.

And now we must ask nature what it thinks of GMOs. While some species of bacteria are able to transfer DNA to other bacterial species, and mutation takes place frequently in natural organisms, the invasive manipulation characterized by genetic engineering is unknown in nature. In creating GMOs, technology is taking over. My feeling is that much of the resistance to GMOs among the general populace is a gut reaction (pardon the pun) to just this interference. Consideration of the dangers to health, the expense and other negative aspects comes later. The invasive character of the creation of GMOs goes further than the one-sided attempt at maximum yield that led to the potato famine and the failure to apply farming techniques that work with nature that marked the dust bowl disaster.

It took a while for nature to strike back in these situations, and then the results were devastating. Nature’s advice had been ignored. Are we heading in a similar direction with GMOs? If so, we will be contending with the fact that much of the world’s produce is already contaminated with GMO containing material, and the devastation will be widespread. Perhaps only then will we remember what Barry Commoner said in his book “The Closing Circle”: Nature knows best.

Gettin' old

Okay. I am going to rant. It’s one of those times. A time to rant and a time to be quiet – it’s one of the former. It all has to do with belonging to the group of senior citizens, retired persons - oldies in other words.

Every so often it seems to me that aging is chiefly a matter of three annoying experiences: first are doctor’s appointments and keeping track of one’s medications, the second is having to plan with an eye on one’s energy level and finally, the necessity of making adaptations to mesh with one’s infirmities.
Doctor’s appointments start out in our youth with the yearly checkup at the gyni and gradually add the ophthalmologist for the occasional eye checkup and the primary care physician for the annual flu shot. Reach retirement age and one’s calendar begins to fill up with appointments. One becomes a regular at the ophthalmologist’s because one has slowly-developing cataracts. 

The onset of an atrial fibrillation means that a cardiologist is added

to the list. One finds out that one’s cholesterol is high, so one foregoes the favorite cheese and ice cream and prides oneself on a really healthy diet for 3 months, and what happens? The cholesterol level climbs. Infuriating! One’s recalcitrant liver insists on making too much of the stuff. Return home from yet another visit to a doctor’s office and remember to take one’s pills, arrayed in a plastic box with 7 compartments. Thank heaven for this little box, because I am disorganized and forgetful and would either forget them or take them twice; Alzheimer’s setting in? I who hate taking pills, who consider myself an alternative type, am faced with the necessity of standard medications, three of them. I do not like.


As if this were not enough, there is the osteopath for the bursitis and the vitamins and minerals to down with meals, but not with grapefruit juice, which reduces their effectiveness. Calcium should not be taken with grains, various vitamins should not be taken together. Blimey. One needs a computer to keep track of it all. It gets worse if one is taking homeopathic meds, for they should be swallowed 20 minutes before one eats. Try that if you have come home late for lunch and can hardly wait to tuck into your feed. Which should start with fruit, which should be eaten half an hour before other food. The inner scheduler rebels.

Having to plan one’s life with a constant thought for the fading energy level is a nuisance at best. Can I go to Lugano on Thursday and the glass factory on Friday? Of course not; I would drag through Friday. Can I plan multiple activities on the same day? Not any more, and a day off at some point during the week to recharge the old batteries is a must. The to-do list gets longer and longer with all the leftover tasks that did not get completed when I planned to do them. A number of Sundays become sloth-out days, or shall we be more positive and say tanking-up days?

Finally there are the adaptations to the decline in sharpness of

sight, hearing loss and shaky balance. Arriving somewhere away from home I invariably remember that I have forgotten my hearing aids yet again. 30 years of wearing glasses for reading and only twice in all those years have I forgotten them. Really! But very nearly the opposite proportion is true with the hearing aids. Crowded restaurants are a racket of background noise and small rooms without sound-absorbing materials but with an echo are venues of frustration, while the dentist wearing a mask and asking a question might as well be speaking Chinese; lip-reading is a must. Why do I nearly always forget the little gadgets for my ears? Hmmm? Are we back at suspicion of senility again?

That’s enough ranting, Karen. Now that it is over, I feel better, and I go into the usual appreciation mode. Gratitude that I have not had a heart attack, a stroke or cancer. I ride my e-bike and walk without cane or pain. I haven’t had to have a hip or knee replacement. I do not have high blood pressure or diabetes. I feel pretty good. I enjoy life. I have grandchildren and friends and interests.

Underlying all of the above is gratitude simply for being alive. Not to be taken for granted, as I reflect while I cut an obituary for a friend out of the newspaper. This gratitude has been very conscious for the last two weeks, for I am now two weeks older than my mother was when she died. A very strange feeling and one that makes every day precious.

I will still fulminate, because it is unhealthy not to do so. Who knows, maybe getting all that exasperation out in the open will contribute to longer life, more passionate life, even more deeply felt gratitude. Something to look forward to.