Praxis in Landscape Architecture

This week, Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times featured the new book by Paul Gilding, Australian environmentalist, called The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.  The opening lines of the column state what seems to be more obvious every day:

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

Gilding’s response was that we’re in denial.

“When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

I have spent the past few months exploring climate adaptation planning as a new personal line of research. In the process, I have come to understand that we are doing virtually nothing to address the real changes that are already underway. The politics of climate change (is it caused by humans or not?) have totally overshadowed any efforts at response to climate change already underway. And fear of being “political” seems to have stalled professionals too, including engineers, planners, and academics. Sadly, climate is being called the “third rail” in Washington, D.C. these days.

This year, at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture conference, I was the only person giving a presentation on climate (there was also one poster on climate). In conversations I heard, there was little talk of the dramatic changes taking place in the U.S. and across the globe – economic, political, and environmental changes – and what it all means for our profession. I want to say, WAKE UP! We have to start asking and answering some serious questions. Among them, for landscape architects, what role does landscape architecture play in helping communities navigate the difficulties ahead? Can we use our abilities to shape our immediate surroundings in a way that helps us to better withstand heat waves, droughts, and other implications of a changing climate? Do we have to wait until our choices are “crisis-driven” as described by Gilding? Let’s hope not, because crisis-driven choices too often lead to tragedies.