Can Good Design Soften Climate Change?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00][music] >> George has a question here. With global warming becoming a practical concern for the survival of trees and plants, should we as designers select the plant and plant certain species in anticipation of the changes global warming will bring?

[00:00:24]That is, should we make a conscious choice to select plants that will tolerate warmer and or drier climates?

[00:00:33]If so, is such a manipulation ethical?

[00:00:37]Won't that cause trouble in the long run for the existing ecosystems and the species that are in them?

[00:00:44]Do you think good design can still help us soften the blow from climate change or is this already a losing battle?

[00:00:53]No, I think climate change can be quite natural. It's happened over millions of years before and species move with the climate and it can get colder and it can get drier and it can get hotter and it can get wetter and it can get windier and it's doing that all at the same time everywhere at once.

[00:01:11]The approach is to just go for diversity and stretch a climate away a little bit.

[00:01:17]Plant plants that are a little bit cooler.

[00:01:21]Definitely plant perennials. We have perennials with annuals in our kitchen garden here.

[00:01:27]But we also plant very different combinations so that if we have a drier year, some plants flourish and if we have a wetter year, our black sugarcane might flourish.

[00:01:41]Uh hotter years, there's more bananas.

[00:01:44]There's always arrowroot. There's combinations of diversity that cover the variations of climate. So, there are situations which are slightly drier because we're on a bank and we've got lavender and we've got rosemary.

[00:02:01]Further up we've got curry leaf tree, but at the same time we've got turmeric dying off for the winter because it's cooler.

[00:02:07]We've got climbers up on the hills here. Someone's just starting a pump.

[00:02:13]Um so there's passion fruit and here's a cactus.

[00:02:19]So we have a cactus that fruits here.

[00:02:21]Like all cactus fruit, this is a Indian fig prickly >> So there's great diversity in a small area and here we've we're just chopping dropping a food forest um as a bit of example.

[00:02:35]And again, there's great big mixtures of combinations of trees and understories here.

[00:02:42]So you know, if we have a wetter year the custard apples do well, if we have a drier year the mangoes do well.

[00:02:47]Um we've still got chestnut which is actually a cool climate tree and at the bottom of the property chestnut will grow with pecan that's more subtropical or of of very warm Mediterranean. We mix the combinations together and it's roundabouts and swings in relation to the conditions and we always get a yield. It's just quite often it's a different combination, that's all. And that definitely softens the blow of climate change and really makes it in in many ways quite insignificant to what we do and it doesn't damage local ecosystems at all.

[00:03:28]It actually is beneficial to local ecosystems because local ecosystems are not prejudiced to interesting uh international party guests that just make it a more interesting party and uh more diverse and novel ecosystems are favored by the wildlife.

[00:03:49]>> [music] >> Mhm.