Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash
One of my first assignments as a freelance writer was an interview with product designer Itai Azerad. As we looked at photos of his Nemo lounge chair, he talked to me about the importance of finding a name for a product. ?A name focuses you on the limits of where you?re going to take a design, and limits are what save you. Limits and deadlines.?
The long, nebulous spectre of climate change now has a more forceful name?the climate crisis?and a deadline.
The Canadian government, along with dozens of cities including Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax, have declared a climate emergency. Over 150 Canadian architecture firms and organizations (including this magazine) have signed a declaration of a climate emergency and commitment to action. Launched in the lead-up to September?s global climate strike, the declaration urges architects and designers to raise awareness of the impact of the built environment on climate change, and to take immediate action through their projects and roles as advisors, advocates, educators and enablers. Now for the deadline: and it?s a tight one. We?ve already locked in 1ºC of warming, and to have a 50 percent chance of limiting future warming to 1.5ºC, we must peak our carbon emissions in 2020, cut emissions in half by 2030, and reach carbon-neutrality by 2050.
?To have a 67 percent chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise?the best odds given by the IPCC?the world had 420 gigaton...