‘Aha!’ Reads
10 Lessons from Nature to Inspire Our Everyday Lives by David Miller,
Tinyurl.com/10InspiringLessons FromNature
9 Amazing Lessons from Nature to Inspire Your Everyday Life by Annie Hauser,
Tinyurl.com/9InspiringLessons FromNature
Intelligence in Nature by Jeremy Narby
Life Lessons from Nature by Elvis Newman
Cathedrals of the Spirit by T. C. McLuhan
Your Brain on Nature by Eva Selhub
True-Life
fighting to preserve their land and way of life in the Amazon, profess to be at one with the innate riches of sustainable rain- forests (
SurvivalInternational.org/parks).
Innovative Nature Scientists, inventors and other innovators are increasingly inspired by nature. Bio- mimicry, part social movement and part burgeoning industry, looks to how Earth’s natural systems work and solve problems. University of Utah researchers, inspired by the durable homes built by sandcas- tle worms, are creating a synthetic glue that one day could help repair fractured bones. Architectural components manu- facturer Panelite makes energy-efficient insulated glass by mimicking the hex- agonal structure that bees use in honey- combs. (Find other precedents at Tinyurl. com/BiomimicryCaseExamples). The inspiration for biomimicry comes from many places, says Day- na Baumeister, Ph.D. co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8, a Missoula, Montana, company working with other compa- nies and universities to propel biomim- icry into the mainstream. “People are recognizing that they’ve
been disconnected to the natural world,” she says. “We also realize that [as a species] we are in trouble. We don’t have all the answers, but we can look to other species for inspiration” for clearing pollut- ants from our bodies and environments. Plants and fungi are now common- ly used to clean up old industrial sites that resemble nature’s way of removing pollutants from water and soil. A Univer- sity of California, Berkeley, meta-study confirms that farmers currently using organic farming methods and solar pow- er achieve roughly the same crop yields as conventional techniques with far less dependence on fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases and petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer pollution.
Cyclical Nature These breakthrough technologies emulate the way nature uses the building blocks of life in an endless cycle of birth, repro- duction, decay and rebirth. It’s part of a broad rethinking of the principles behind sustainability—building, manufacturing and living in greater harmony with natu- ral systems, perhaps eventually eliminat- ing landfills, air and water pollution, and toxic site cleanups. “A toxin is a material in the wrong
place,” says architect William Mc- Donough, of Charlottesville, Virginia. The only individual recipient of the Presiden- tial Award for Sustainable Development, he is co-author of Cradle-to-Cradle, a groundbreaking book that calls for re-en- visioning even the nastiest waste, and The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Design- ing for Abundance. McDonough imagines a world where waste becomes raw mate- rial for new buildings, furniture and other goods—akin to how a forest reuses every deceased tree and animal to nourish the ecosystem and spawn new life. With 80 percent of U.S. residents
currently living in urban areas, architects, builders and municipal planners are like- wise pivoting toward nature, prompted by the scientific evidence of the many ways that human health and general well-being rely upon it. While this contact is prefera- bly the kind of “stopping by woods” that inspired New England poet Robert Frost, even a walk in a city park will work. “Urban nature, when provided as
parks and walkways and incorporated into building design, provides calming
18 Twin Cities Edition
NaturalTwinCities.com
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