Population size
Last year sometime, a colleague of mine excitedly said, "Okay, I think I know the source of our environmental problems: population size." He'd been talking with one of our science teachers who, at the time, thought the same and backed it up with numbers.
Consumption
Human population size isn't the problem, I told him. It's consumption. As the world's population tries to consume to the standard set by the U.S. and 'the West', the global ecosystem is weakening. On the contrary, Eaarth could sustain many more billions of people if all of us consumed much less than 'the West' currently consumes per person. Consumption means waste, and waste is bad.
It's a design problem
But then I read Cradle to Cradle and I came to believe that
Humanity doesn't have a consumption problem,
we've got a design problem.
Take the cherry tree:
Thousands of blossoms create fruit for birds, humans, and other animals, in order that one pit might eventually fall onto the ground, take root, and grow. Who would look at the ground littered with cherry blossoms and complain, How inefficient and wasteful! The tree makes copious blossoms and fruit without depleting its environment. Once they fall on the ground, their materials decompose and break down into nutrients that nourish microorganisms, insects, plants, animals, and soil. Although the tree actually makes more of its product than it needs for its own success in an ecosystem, this abundance has evolved (through millions of years of success and failure or, in business terms, R&D), to serve rich and varied purposes. In fact, the tree’s fecundity nourishes just about everything around it.
- McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle
No such thing as waste
In Nature, there's no such thing as waste, as demonstrated by the cherry tree. In human production, however, waste is perceived as an inevitable by-product. Engineers and economists seek to minimize waste, whether it's unused resources or toxic effluent.A cherry tree's response to consumption would be to eliminate the concept of waste, and "to design things - products, packaging, and systems - from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist" (Cradle to Cradle).
Re-imagining our system
In the U.S. where most rivers and streams "can't support healthy aquatic life" (source), what if we built facilities whose processes, products, and by-products nourished the ecosystem instead of degrading it?
What if being sustainable weren't our goal,
and instead our goal were to flourish?
Changing paradigms is not naive
I know, I know, I know. It's hopelessly naive to think that we can transform our resource extraction, materials processing, product manufacturing, and transportation methods based on no-waste design models. I think so too.
However, the promise of a life of abundance, fulfillment, and comfort that a shift in our design paradigm would hold for us and our children's children's children's children is worth it.
What they won't care about in 80 years is how naive we thought our ideas were - especially if the ideas give hope that people in 80 years have easy access to water, healthy food, fulfilling relationships, beautiful shelter, and satisfying labor.
Imagine what a world of prosperity and health in the future will look like, and begin designing for it right now. . . This is going to take us all, and it is going to take forever.
- McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle
