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Paulo Borges De Brito

May 21, 2014
11:27

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That's very interesting. I wold say that it's very challenging too. I'm not sure if I understood it completely. Do you plan to make people shift their traditional recreational outdoor activities to more sustainable outdoor activities through online games? Correct me if I misunderstood it. If so, that would be interesting to design an app. Also, I good way to fund games and apps is through crowdfunding. Look at https://www.kickstarter.com to see how you can develop a fundraising campaign for tech products. Paulo

Gary Hudman

May 22, 2014
12:18

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Proposal
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Hi Paulo, A sincere thanks for the comments and the interest. I probably didn't explain myself well, and its probably not a straightforward idea. I wasn't thinking of an online gaming at all, I think climate change and sustainability are real world problems that will be solved "out there". Let me try to explain with some analogies. Think about the nature,of say a regatta, or other sailing venue. Intense preparation, work, strategy for a race, timed trials, with uncertainty in winds, currents, roughness, etc. Now, apply the idea to any given mesocosm that is the best adaptation of a park, a field, or other recreation area. Different teams create landscape ecologies that make the best use of resources for a specific goal. Perhaps its carbon sequestration, maybe its biodiversity, primary production, food production. Any number of goals could be picked for a particular game. There are very specific rules for each game. There is a preparation period, then a race ! Sensitive instruments detecting the important metrics that decides the winner. Physical toil and skill in creating the best soils, morphology, symbiosis for the intended goal. Strategy, technology and mathematical modeling provide the intellectual stimulation. Being out in the world, creating a sense of beauty and improving the world. Grasping the sense of the emergent properties of the ecology, tuning them to the environment. Enhancing the habitat of surrounding areas. The possibilities are endless. Here is another analogy for this idea. Up before sunrise, pouring through environmental data, tuning models, then when PAR light levels hit the optimum level, about 75 m/mol/m^2, kicking on the climate control to give the diverse plants of Biosphere 2 a warm blast wake up call, they respond within seconds, and watch as the atmospheric CO2 concentration drop sometimes as much as 50 ppm within a few minutes. We cheer in triumph, and compete for the best ideas and models for the similar sunset event. Meanwhile, there was pruning, water management, and host of other task to optimize photosynthesis and manage respiration. I was there, and it was a very special time. There are so many possibilities for fun and competition in the wide world that make it a better place. We don't need to surrender fun, we need to find the right framework for the changing world. Sports began as a proxy for war, perhaps it can evolve into a proxy for harmony. I suspect they would become something entirely new and undreamed of. Cheers, Gary

Paulo Borges De Brito

May 27, 2014
03:37

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Gary, thanks for the information. Much clear now! Paulo

Shannon Cosentino-roush

Jun 14, 2014
02:16

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I agree,brainstorming new, fun games has tremendous potential to inspire people to embrace increased sustainability in their lives! A few quick comments: 1. From your proposal, it seemed that you were suggesting a change of the current use of recreational and sports fields into other more environmental uses? I am not sure that people would be very willing to do that, especially initially. As you pointed out, most sports are rooted deeply in tradition and the cultural fabric of an area and by suggesting these changes, you might lose the very people who would help make your concept a possibility. 2. I think your idea has tremendous merit. I grew up partaking in Girl Scout competitions that were very closely related to environmental principles and I found them to be just as fun as soccer! Yet, I do think that your proposal could be broken down a bit more to provide a realistic set of steps which would be taken to start this process. Perhaps suggest an initial test site (community), some sample game ideas, some initial implementation sites (schools, youth groups etc.), then outline the steps needed to 'scale-up' the approach. 3. From the sound of your proposal, I think that this concept has very strong correlation with environmental education initiatives. Perhaps the best place to focus your attention on might be schools and with an environmental education component. Not only do kids love to have fun and play games, but they also are open to new ideas and still have not fixed their values and lifestyle habits. Good luck and let the games begin!

Dan Whittet

Jun 17, 2014
03:02

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probably the term "games" still has a pejorative sense, but if we talk with people who endured WW2 Britain or even more recent environmental disasters we find that the "working together toward a common goal" aspect of co operative positive psychology is, in fact, fun and rewarding. By transferring some of our excess free time to positive environmental reconstruction and developing a new culture of sustainability initiatives that include transforming resources previously used for entertainment to survival we could develop a whole new motivation for community building. Think of the dire predictions of apocalyptic futures, then imagine people banding together to grow food, develop water resources and protect the most vulnerable. Golf, for example, in water starved environments, makes no sense at all.

Manohar Lal Baharani

Jun 18, 2014
06:05

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Besides tradition, cultural fabric and fun; please appreciate that sports does contribute in making sportive mindset as well. Your idea is excellent for exploring alternatives. Think of status of "under utilization" of such infrastructure and then "scheme" to "optimize utilization" through other options that you have in mind. Eliminating does not seem to be fun.

Vishal Bhavsar

Jun 20, 2014
11:08

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The idea has potential to generate tremendous interest amongst people to participate in the actions towards mitigating climate change. I think getting people outdoor and connect with the real issues of climate change like rising temperature, scarcity of water, energy security, increase in sea level. In any urban area one always find investments moving away from particular region and these assets are deserted. These area can be the playing field for the teams and let them compete to bring back this assets to life. You can consider one dummy deserted asset and provide costing and timeline to run a competitive sport and generate local interest to get the deserted asset back to its original life with more sustainable habitat. All the best!

Climate Colab

Aug 5, 2014
08:48

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The core idea seems to be to encourage a new class of competitive sports that are somehow pro-environmental in nature (though the proposal doesn't make clear how) and that possibly re-purposes land from golf courses and other environmentally unfriendly uses. The idea is creative, at least, in that it points out how rabitrary any given game/sport really is. But the proposal also seems to be lacking in detail -- how on Earth will golf courses be made into a field for a "green" game, and what would that game even look like? Without any details re: the game(s) itself, it is difficult to make any specific recommendations regarding this proposal. The proposal is to develop a new set of games that are more environmentally sustainable, in terms of the physical space needed for the game and the resources going into it.The proposal gets at sports and recreation culture, which is an interesting place to think about sustainability. It is unclear whether challenging this culture simply by designing new games could work. The appeal is thinking about culture change through sports and recreation, but the proposal does not persuasively articulate how to do that. There is a negativity in the proposal about current sports and recreation that will turn a lot of people off from the process of shifting recreation.