Last week, our visiting professor Natalie Jeremijenko came in for a lecture and some studio chats. She put into words a few concerns with environmental design which I could really connect to. First there's the limitation of 'raising awareness'. We've seen a gazillion of design projects creating awareness on environmental issues but we must still see the first fundamental changes in our behaviour. Maybe it's because we don't always know the motivations of our behaviour? Second point is the negative and pessimistic attitude of the majority of the environmental movement, beautifully phrased as: "If Martin Luther King would have been an environmentalist, he would have opened his speech with 'I have a nightmare'".

I think an important question is "How do we build the social systems necessary for tackling problems on these scale?" And also, who will do this: engineers, scientists, politicians, users, designers? Part of the problem is that people don't always feel qualified enough to operate on this interdisciplinary scale. Natalie's projects do operate on this scale and although the website is still under construction and not always revealing the power of the projects, it's worth to keep an eye on the environmental health clinic.