Animal agriculture and climate refugees

Isle de Jean Charles (south of New Orleans) in Louisiana has lost 98% of its land since 1955 due to poor water management strategies and rising sea levels. To move its population of 99 residents (mostly Native Americans) will cost the government over $48 million. The Native American community ended up on the island as part of the Indian Removal Act. Rather than scattering the community, the hope is to build an entirely new city. It is predicted that there will be 13 million climate refugees by 2100 in the US alone with 414 communities affected- and this is a conservative estimate. The impact on urban planning, architecture and land management has yet to be seen.

What disappoints me in Mostafavi's article is that he addresses many aspects of climate change and its causes without mentioning animal agriculture. If he stuck to a superficial approach to sustainable architecture, I would understand, but his approach advocates a total transformation of the way humanity interacts with its environment- and applying this thinking to architecture. In all of his examples, he ignores one of the greatest threats to our planet: animal agriculture.

I am not surprised by this omission as it is much easier for us to think about how we can change the exterior environment (buildings and cities) than how we can change ourselves. The two major causes of greenhouse gas emissions are fossil fuels (including energy for buildings and transportation) and animal agriculture. Animal architecture results in methane emissions that are far worse for the atmosphere than carbon as the detrimental effects are last longer. Land clearing in poorer countries to grow crops to

feed the animals we eat reduces the capacity of natural carbon sinks like the Amazon so that the planet cannot self-regulate the GHG emissions we are producing. To speak of sustainability and ignore this problem is like a chain smoker discussing the benefits of exercise.

But what does any of this have to do with architecture? At the most basic level, a site is needed for architecture to be built. A site that is polluted or inhospitable to life would encourage an architecture that does not relate to its environment but acts as a defense between a hostile environment and its inhabitants. Our consumption continues to turn usable land into hostile environments forcing entire communities like that of Isle de Jean Charles to leave. Mostafavi is encouraging architects to look at the whole problem and to find holistic solutions to sustainability rather than hi-tech additive approaches. Rather than focusing on sustainability as an opportunity for a new approach to design, we are more comfortable playing whack-a-mole and solve one problem at a time. Just add an overhang and some solar panels and suddenly you have sustainability. It's the same outside of architecture, too. We drive a Hybrid car, fill our recycling cans with single-use plastics and feel good about it. A holistic transformation needs to happen in the way we thinking about everything with which we interact and everything we use. The planet has given us everything, we owe it.

The only road from mainland to Isle de Jean Charles



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