Flying might be safer if we each had a big locust

By Heather Shayne Blakeslee, Interim Executive Director Delaware Valley Green Building Council

Flying cars have been science-fiction fodder for generations, but considering there are millions of auto accidents a year, we might not be ready for them.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a better way to avoid collisions as we ferry ourselves around in clunky cars that spew CO2, choking both our highways and airways?  There may be, and when we finally deploy that elusive flying car, one can only hope it comes with the same collision avoidance technology of a locust.

These maligned creatures travel in swarms of billions without accident.  Their advanced internal air traffic control systems have been honed over 3.8 billion years of evolution, and make our own solutions, like anti-lock brakes, look positively primitive.  Those billion-plus years of organic R and D are a goldmine for MIT researchers studying ways to adapt the locusts’ advanced navigation methods, and now many other private companies and universities are tapping designs found in nature as a method to solve modern problems.

That big idea is the basis of biomimicry, a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.  Biologists and design professionals from around the world are now looking to nature more than ever for help and inspiration, as we try to solve our design problems without creating more trouble for our species and planet.

Examples are everywhere.  One of the world’s most vibrant and showy displays of color - a peacock’s tail feathers - has no pigment at all.  Instead, it relies on an ingenious design that uses structure and light to create a flashy display.  Bye bye, toxic paint.

The fin of humpback whales is inspiring new designs for propellers / Image by WhalePower Corporation

Tubercles (the bumps on a humpback whale’s fins) may seem inefficient when contrasted with the smooth, aerodynamic lines of an airplane or car, but they actually contribute to a 30 percent efficiency improvement in a whale’s movement.

Wind turbine blades now in development mimic the whale's bumpy fins / Image by WhalePower Corporation

Plants everywhere take in CO2 and use it as a feedstock to create more richly-fed trees whose falling leaves decompose and fertilize the ground with nutrients.

It’s this last observation - that good design can contribute to environmental health - that biomimicry experts find particularly appealing.  More biologists need to sit at the table when our design professionals are creating new materials, engineering our infrastructure, and designing our built environment.  For exactly that reason, the Delaware Valley Green Building Council has selected a leading biomimicry expert, Dr. Dayna Baumeister, as the keynote speaker at its BuildGreen Conference, to be held Oct. 14-15 in Philadelphia.  We hope that convening scientists, investors, design professionals, manufacturers, and policy makers will lead to a long-term conversation about how our region can contribute to national and international goals around sustainability.

The sooner we accept that many natural designs far surpass what we’ve cooked up in our laboratories and polluting factories, the better we’ll be.  And by following an earth-bound blueprint, biomimicry design actually contributes positively to the health of the ecosystem in which it cohabitates.  For all our good intentions and investments into research and development, we still haven’t figured out how we can meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.  We’ve introduced thousands of new products, but too many of them have poisoned our air and water, or compromised our ethics.

We must leverage Philadelphia’s creative capital and desire to be America’s most sustainable city into locally manufactured green products that contribute to our economy, protect our environment, and - maybe most importantly - inspire our imaginations and restore our wonder of the natural world.  If a paintless, peacock-blue flying car ever arrives (covered in tubercules for efficiency), we can only hope a locust designed the GPS system.

By Heather Shayne Blakeslee, Interim Executive Director Delaware Valley Green Building Council (DVGBC)