... People tire of being taken advantage of. Some commit their lives to reforming city politics, and others work on technological solutions that bene… - Dickson Despommier

Time Line for 1937 – Discovered in Uganda in the . Mistaken at first for 1951 – Israeli scientists determine the conditions for transmission from the perspective of mosquitoes. Temperature vrs. 1973 – Biggest outbreak in history in South Africa – 3,000 people sick. Hot and dry conditions followed by heavy rains
1999 – West Nile Virus first introduced in USA. Hottest, driest summer on record.
2010 – West Nile virus now an endemic infectious disease of and people. Yearly outbreaks common. All dependent on hot, dry weather, followed by a rain event

Sustainable urban life is technologically achievable, and most important, highly desirable. For example, food waste can easily be converted back into energy employing clean state-of-the-art incineration technologies, and wastewater can be converted back into drinking water. For the first time in history, an entire city can choose to become the functional urban equivalent of a natural ecosystem. We could even generate energy from incinerating human feces if we so desired. We have the ability to create a "cradle to cradle" waste-free economy. All that is needed is the political will to do so. Once we begin the process, cities will be able to live within their means without further damaging the environment.

Trees sequester carbon, harvest water, produce food, and convert sunlight into energy. Those are the four characteristics I would love a city to have. The resiliency of forests is to be emulated. And that’s the reason why I picked forests as my biomimic. I want my city to be as resilient as Earth’s s.
The main reason why is occurring is to make room for farms. Before there was farming, which was about ten to twelve thousand years ago, we had six trillion trees. We now have three trillion trees. We’ve cut down half of the Earth’s ability to capture carbon. We’re not going to replace all of that with new trees. But if we got back up to five trillion trees, let’s say, simply by leaving the remaining forests alone and letting them repopulate and selectively harvesting, the Earth’s temperature rise would begin to slow down. And, once you’ve slowed it down, that gives you time to reflect and to prepare for these changes that are not going to go away. Replacing three trillion trees by planting them—that’s not going to work. We’ll never be able to do that. So we have to let nature do that part. And, in order to do that, we have to return a lot of farmland back to what it used to be, which was forests.