Dieses Buch möchte ich schon seit Erscheinen vor drei Jahren lesen! Neulich habe ich mir das Paperback besorgt. Acht Seiten drin hat schon richtig mein Zwerchfell gebebt vor Aufgeregtheit und Begreifen! Sehr dicht und dabei sehr zugänglich geschrieben, von einer auf Technische Physik sowie Materialwissenschaft und Werkstoffkunde spezialisierten Ingenieurin und Professorin. Da lernst du was!
Deb Chachra ist übrigens auch auf Mastodon: @debcha
🥰
"I don't even remember the first time I was on a plane, because I was too young. I do remember that, before I learned that the earth was round, I had already deduced from my travels that all the different places in the world were stacked on top of each other, separated by clouds like layers in a cake. This meant that you had to go up or down to get to them, which explained (to five-year-old me, at least) why you had to fly."
Deb Chachra
(page 80)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461276/how-infrastructure-works-by-chachra-deb/9781804995952
Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and freedom that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. These technological systems - the most complex and vast ever created by humans - have allowed us to work collectively for the public good. But these systems are now beginning to fail us. Engineering professor Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, and just how much they shape our lives - but also the price they extract, who pays it and in what ways, as well as the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world. From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to a solar plant in southern India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. We need to learn how to see these systems and to transform them, together, because the cost of not being able to rely on them is unthinkably high.
Ich lieb's ja, wenn sich gute Bücher, die ich lese, positiv auf andere gute Bücher beziehen, die ich gelesen habe. Das ist mir immer ein Fest. 🥰
Heute: #DebChachra verweist auf #JoanDidion's großartigen Essay "Heiliges Wasser" - das beste Stück aus ihrem berühmten WEISSEN ALBUM von 1977. Ich habe diese Handvoll Seiten mehrmals gelesen seit der Erstlektüre vor acht Jahren und heute auch gleich noch mal. Wir machen uns normalerweise ja keine Vorstellungen von Wasserbewirtschaftung!
(page 86)
"Je ausgedehnter die Netzwerke, desto weiter nach draußen lassen sich die Schäden verlagern."
#DebChachra
Eine Grundregel von Infrastruktur und einer der Punkte, wo sich #Solarpunk in die eigene Tasche lügt (oder mangels Nachdenken Kitsch produziert). Irgendwo müssen die großen Solarfelder, Seltene-Erden-Gruben etc. pp. ja sein. Also nicht, dass ich sie schlimm fände - sie sind bloß nie zu sehen auf den bunten, idyllischen Bildchen.
Ganz ähnlich wie beim Öko-WG-Kitsch der 1970er.
(page 139)
"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."
Will Durant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant
(Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 153)
"In 1856, Eunice Foote filled a glass cylinder with carbon dioxide and another with air, put them both in the sun, and measured their temperature. She became the first scientist to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas."
Deb Chachra
1856! Ob nun Eunice Foote oder John Tyndall: Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts jedenfalls. Man kann es nicht oft genug festhalten.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_Newton_Foote
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 180)
"In 2005, fossil fuel company BP hired the large advertising campaign Ogilvy to popularize the idea of a carbon footprint for individuals."
Wikipedia
Dass das Konzept des individuellen (!) CO2-Fußabdrucks ausgerechnet vom Öl-Multi British Petrol mit Hilfe eines massiven Werbeetats in die westlichen Gesellschaften gedrückt wurde, war mir so deutlich auch noch nicht klar.
Deb Chachra widmet dieser Aktion und ihren mutmaßlichen Motiven mehrere Seiten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#History
(p 194ff)
"We're accustomed to thinking about making the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable sources as one that wie are doing under duress, making a sacrifice to stave off disaster. But that's not what we're doing. What we're doing is *leveling up*."
Deb Chachra
Schon mindestens zum dritten Mal wirbelt @debcha meine Wahrnehmung kräftig durcheinander. Das kann sie echt gut. 🤠
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, p 238)
"We live on a planet bathed in sunlight, but it's at the bottom of a gravity well, surrounded by the void of space. For all of human history, we've been living like energy is scarce and matter is infinite, when in fact the opposite is true: we need to learn to live like we have access to unlimited energy, but with the deep understanding that the atoms we have to work with are part of a closed system."
Deb Chachra
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 239)
Infrastructure & Climate Change
"What's changed in the last fifty or so years is that most of the technological challenges have been identified and addressed, and research and development is ongoing, even accelerating. Now most of the remaining questions, and barriers, aren't technological. They are social, political and economic."
Deb Chachra
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 239)
"Every Hurricane Sandy, Maria, or Harvey, every Camp Fire, every blackout in a summer heatwave or a winter storm, and every multiyear drought is a message from the future where we haven't reconsidered our infrastructural systems."
Deb Chachra
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 242)
Seit 40 Jahren sag ich, dass ich keine großen Lösungen will, sondern lauter kleine 5-%-Lösungen. Und nun Deb Chachra:
"That doesn't mean that we have to solve huge, overarching issues with huge, overarching solutions. In fact, we need to *resist* these sorts of solutions, because our landscapes and our technologies are in transition, so we absolutely want to be able to explore, experiment with, and even roll back systems as needed, and to do this in different ways in different places."
(p 267)
"There's a theory that the reason why we haven't yet observed any signs of extraterrestrial life is because civilizations are faced with an existential choice: either learn to live sustainable, in harmony with their environment, or die. Being 'loud' - sending lots of energy or matter wastefully out into space - is a signature of a linear economy. Sustainable societies are quiet."
Deb Chachra
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 273/274)
Ihr bekommt dieses tolle Buch übrigens auch im/über den @Otherland-Bookshop - ich habe mir erlaubt, das Team auf diesen Thread aufmerksam zu machen, und Wolf hat es gleich in den Sachbuch-Bestand aufgenommen. 💪
"We've *never* lived socially independant lives - if there is a defining feature of our species, it might be that we transmit culture even without direct body-to-body interaction, by drawing it on a cave wall or beaming it out over the airwaves or putting it in writing to be recopied and shared down the decades or centuries. Being alone is like eating only uncooked food - you can do it and survive, but cooked food is the human universal."
#DebChachra
(How Infrastructure Works, p 275)
"Infrastructure is how we collectively dream about our future and then bring it into existence."
Deb Chachra
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461276/how-infrastructure-works-by-chachra-deb/9781804995952
(How Infrastructure Works, 2023/2025, page 276)
Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and freedom that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. These technological systems - the most complex and vast ever created by humans - have allowed us to work collectively for the public good. But these systems are now beginning to fail us. Engineering professor Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, and just how much they shape our lives - but also the price they extract, who pays it and in what ways, as well as the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world. From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to a solar plant in southern India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. We need to learn how to see these systems and to transform them, together, because the cost of not being able to rely on them is unthinkably high.
Frank Böhmert
Ulrike Heiß