Many animals build to sustain life. Bees build cubicals, ants build tunnels, beavers build dams, and humans build all of these. The difference is that humans grow in our consumption and building. Beavers have been building the same dams for hundreds of years while humans would think it ridiculous to build the same building as was built even 10 years ago. 100 years ago, the population was 1,650,000,000 people. “The world human population currently increases by 203,800 every day” and now there are an estimated 6,453,628,000 people in the world.
That’s 4,803,628,000 people in 100 years.1
When Mao finished his reign, there was 90% agrarian and 10% urban, the current idea coming from Beijing is to see it 30% agrarian and 70% urban which, when you look 1.3 billion, the urbanization of China is unprecedented in the world.
— Manufactured Landscapes, 2006
Is this natural? Is the human population and our creations just as much a part of nature as a beaver’s dam? The documentary Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal tackles these questions in a unique and beautiful way by following “photographer Edward Burtynsky [as he] travels the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing.” The film is nothing less than astounding.
Edward Burtynsky has also given a talk for TED.
1 Population statistics from Wikipedia.
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