goal 7: ensure environmental sustainability
I chose goal 7 of the Millenium Development Goals, which is to ensure environmental sustainability. This one immediately popped out to me because it's something that is impacted by a lot of the things that I think about a lot and something which everyone can have a part in achieving by making simple changes in their way of life. It's also something I feel is very related to architecture, especially now with the growing popularity of green and sustainable architecture and with the whole LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification being implemented more and more.
ex. of a leed certified house
There are a number of good quotes in the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn that explain the problems that have accumulated regarding our handing of the environment. This is just one that I found kind of sums up a lot of the themes from the book:
"The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit--and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imaging how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children."
The band Pearl Jam also did an album titled "Yield" based on this book and although I don't consider my self a huge fan of the band, some of the lyrics and songs do contain implications of what's wrong and what needs to be done. The soundtrack for the film "Lost in the Wild" again by Eddie Vedder has some good tunes as well.