A vision straight out of ‘Futurama’ gives birth to a Columbia professor’s belief that it is by converting the skyscrapers into crop farms, global warming can be reduced, making New York cleaner.
Here’s how it might work –
Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University thinks that ‘vertical farm’ skyscrapers could help fight global warming.
The concept is like, for example, a cluster of 30-story towers on Governors Island or in Hudson Yards produces fruits, vegetables, and grains and at the same time it also generates clean energy and purifies wastewater.
According to Despommier, it is roughly 150 such buildings, which are capable of feeding the entire New York city for a year. He believes that by using current green building systems, a vertical farm can be made self-sustaining. It can, at the same time, produce a net output of both clean water and energy.
The vertical-farming concept could take a working group of agricultural economists, architects, engineers, agronomists, and urban planners five to ten years to figure out — how high-tech agricultural practices and the latest sustainable building technology can be married successfully and sustainably.
It is only by allowing Earth’s significant portions of farmland to return to forest, climate and weather patterns can be stabilized. It is only by allowing forests to regrow in place where crops are now cultivated, carbon dioxide reduction in the atmosphere is possible, he believes.
