An ‘Invisible University’ Lecture Series!

Although I am always getting my students to watch this stuff, I have realised that I have never posted this essential educational collection here. This is pretty much what you need to know today, in order to start thinking about the environmental question:

Money as Debt: Although this is not a full blown Marxian analysis, this excellent cartoon documentary by Paul Grignon communicates very clearly describes the particular form of money that modern capitalism is based upon, and makes clear why the environmental and fiscal crises are intricately interconnected. Since making this film, and following the credit crunch, Grignon has produced ‘Money as Debt Pt2′, which can be found easily enough if you search on youtube.

Cradle2Cradle: most people seem to imagine that this just means recycling. It is actually a much more sophisticated metabolic critique of contemporary commodity production, and is the only model that can support a modern industrial human society without damaging the web of life within which we exist. This lecture by William McDonough captures many of the key ideas of c2c:

David Harvey: This lecture, ‘The Urban Roots of the Fiscal Crisis’ by City University New York Professor David Harvey, is a great introduction to the interconnection of urban design, capitalist crisis and the environmental question. You should watch more from Harvey on www.davidharvey.org

Here are a few shorter comments by Harvey on the environmental question:

Refuting the climate skeptics: Given the extraordinarily ill informed editorial in last weeks Building Design by editor Amanda Baillieu, ‘Is global warming hot air?‘, it is worth watching Michael Pawlyn excellent reply to climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg. His reply starts about 3mins into this part of his lecture (in the beginning of the lecture Pawlyn describes some work by his practice ‘Exploration‘: