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Dickson Despommier

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Dickson D. Despommier (June 5, 1940 – February 7, 2025) was an American medical ecologist and pioneering advocate of vertical farming. He was a professor of microbiology and public health in environmental health sciences at Columbia University, as well as a science and technology communicator. His articles appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Time Magazine, and The Washington Post.

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  • 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.
  •            Time Line for West Nile Virus
    1937 – Discovered in Uganda in the West Nile District. Mistaken at first for sleeping sickness
    1951 – Israeli scientists determine the conditions for transmission from the perspective of mosquitoes. Temperature vrs. Viremia
    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 wildlife and people. Yearly outbreaks common. All dependent on hot, dry weather, followed by a rain event
  • Ever since we became a species, some 200,000 years ago, parasites have been responsible for untold amounts of human suffering and countless deaths. For instance, some experts believe that Homo sapi­ens almost became extinct as the result of epidemics caused by malaria that coincided with a time when our numbers were perhaps as low as 400,000 individuals. The worst part is that this killer is still with us. In just over the past one hundred years, as many people have died from malaria worldwide as now live in the United States. While the number of people dying from this one parasite is high, consider the fact that ma­laria in all its forms (there are four) infects some two billion individuals each year. This reduces the mortality rate to around 1 percent, making this group of infectious agents some of the most successful parasites on the planet.
  • Vertical farms mainly differ amongst each other in terms of the technological methods used to grow edible plants indoors.
    1. The first one, hydroponics, consists of growing plants on a neutral and inert substrate (e.g. sand, clay, and rock material), which is regularly irrigated by a liquid fortified with minerals and nutrients that are necessary to sustain plant growth. Hydroponic systems use 60-70% less water than traditional outdoor agriculture. They are widely employed by hundreds of thousands of commercial greenhouses and vertical farms throughout the world.
    2. The second process of vertical farming is aeroponics, through which plants are grown without the use of any soil (or soil replacement): their roots, hanging down in the air inside a closed container, are exposed to a fine mist of nutrient-laden water, regularly sprayed through a nozzle. While this is a relatively new method for growing edible plants – it was first developed in 1983 – it is increasingly employed by commercial vertical farms such as AeroFarms and Tower Garden in the US.
    3. Finally, a hybrid method, aquaponics, integrates fish production into the hydroponic growing scheme. More precisely, it uses fish waste as a nutrient source for the plants after treatment, operating as a closed loop ecosystem for indoor farming. However, this system’s complexity and high cost hinder its widespread use. The former two methods are the most common forms of CEA.
  • ... People tire of being taken advantage of. Some commit their lives to reforming city politics, and others work on technological solutions that benefit both humankind and wildlife. The latter efforts have led to (1) the development of efficient, affordable renewable-energy strategies; (2) carbon-capturing, recyclable construction materials with low carbon footprints; (3) cost-effective atmospheric water-harvesting methods; and (4) productive vertical farms situated within the city. Environmental justice issues are now front and center on many city council agendas. I call these four applications of technology the four pillars of sustainability.
  • 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 hardwood forests.
    The main reason why deforestation 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.

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