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Rio’s Solar+Hydro-Powered Message of Hope for Our Future

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Rio de Janeiro was the site of the original Earth Summit in 1992 that began the global movement to limit the greenhouse gases that scientists had found to cause climate change that will eventually be  catastrophic, with the potential for ending our human civilization.

Return to site of Earth Summit

And Rio de Janeiro will once again be in the eye of the world, in just six years. People all over the planet will turn to Rio de Janeiro to see the 2016 Olympics.

RAFAA Architecture has created an Olympic proposal that is like a second Earth Summit: a building designed to represent a clean energy future that can sustain our civilization on this planet – our only chance to make it as a species over the next centuries.

How it works

This net-zero energy building would generate its own solar-hydro electric power. Solar panels would provide energy during the day. Excessive energy would be used to pump seawater up a zig zag route to the top of the tower. At night this would drop, supplying hydro-electric energy.

A Message of courage

But primarily, this building  is a message to a civilization facing extinction if we don’t act. Perhaps Rio de Janeiro can once more be the starting point for a new, more urgent global green movement. We need renewed faith that it can be done.

A renewed call to action

If greenhouse gases were not produced by the largest, richest, most entrenched and most sociopathic industry on the planet; the extractive fossil energy industry, we would have long since switched to renewable energy to replace it. The science has been clear for well over time to move on this fast approaching crisis.

Scientists don’t lie

After the discovery of the Ozone hole, for example (a similar, if faster acting potential catastrophe) the world responded by phasing out the cause (chemicals used by the refrigeration industry) within a decade, without raising questions about scientists’ “motives” for alerting us to a danger that they could predict had to be averted, just like this danger must be. We dodged that bullet.

Design as inoculation against fear

We are not stupid. But we can be made that way, with enough propaganda from fossil industries. We need a “reverse propaganda” that creates a truly iconic image of a better future. That is what this design achieves.

Source:  RAFAA Architecture via Ecofriend
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