Despite the short and impromptu nature of the last lecture, we’ve begun to encroach into the specificities of approaching sustainability. In fact, stepping from the general to the specific actually left me feeling quite positive (or at least more positive than before) about the possibilities of the future. The cradle-to-cradle framework, in my opinion, delves deep into the heart of what true sustainability ought to be. As The Principles of Green Engineering notes, most companies think sustainability refers to reducing resource input and waste output by increasing the efficiency of current machinery and technology. However, this seems no different than the end-of-pipe and/or pollution prevention schemas that we talked about in a previous lecture. “Reducing the human footprint” completely sidesteps the possibility of taking away that footprint. As the entirety of this course has shown, this approach spells out disaster for our future—to the extent that it doesn’t attempt to solve the real problem. There is little recognition of the central flaw in the system as a whole.
It reminds me of the discussion that we had about corporations and the great influence they have on our economy. I still firmly believe, however, that such power necessitates some form of moral responsibility. The detrimental effects of corporations’ actions are compounded by the lack of motive to willingly reverse them. This might bring us back to the issue of sustainability, and balancing cost effectiveness with environmental health, but the hands-off approach that corporations usually take towards their environmental impact goes beyond just fulfilling the needs of their consumers. It becomes a violation of their responsibility. Relying on only off-the-pipe or pollution prevention methods is something that should incrementally stop being tolerated by the government. The closer we get to the future, the more our environmental situation becomes even more unmanageable; it is best to get started now, so the future doesn’t suffer as grotesquely. Sustainability must be mandated.
However, while this may be an impossible statement to fathom at the moment, I think that the only way that it could become possible is if there is a collective change in mindset. I value the fact that knowledge provides us with an exact representation of the problems we create, but the mere idea that we cause harm to the environment stems from our selfish desire to fulfill only our own needs. That’s not to say that other animals don’t do this very same thing, but just like corporations are the superpowers of mankind, humans themselves are the superior usurpers of the world. If we are to ever seriously consider “stooping down” to the nature that we have taken over, we have to have a collective shift in mentality achieved only through intrinsic value acceptance.
Doing so would be key to having public policy necessitate sustainability. If everyone were to write to an assemblyman, councilor, or senator begging for the preservation of the environment, it would become absolutely impossible to proceed with policy without the word ‘sustainability’ coming up. It’s a whole package as far as I’m concerned. If we can start teaching our children from the very beginning of their educational lives that the environment is worth it, then I daresay that our future will become much more receptive to procuring cradle-to-cradle technology. We have to start focusing on convincing people of the importance of sustainability. The question is: where do we start first?
