This month, I have spent much time thinking about design and responsibility. I’m thinking about how we make things, why we make things, and why we make things how we make things. I’m thinking about how we distribute and consume the world’s resources.
Our society has a grossly distorted perception of cost. We dye upholstery with toxic chemicals because doing so is “cost effective.” We buy toys from Chinese factories because it costs less to make them there. We shop at Wal Mart because it offers “good value.” Before Hurricane Katrina, some of FEMA's most vital services were outsourced to private contractors who then outsourced to others who outsourced even more. Forty years after construction on the levee system began it was still incomplete and under-built because it wasn't a spending priority. All these cost/benefit analyses are extremely myopic.
What makes carcinogenic rug dye cheap if living with it gives us respiratory problems? How inexpensive is a toy covered with lead paint if our children suck on it and suffer brain damage? Does Wal Mart really have good values if its practices bankrupt our local economy, and its cheap plastic-wrapped products end up lying in landfills, outliving our children’s children? What does it matter if government outsourcing saves money if it costs lives? How can the government say it funds a war on terror to protect our way of life while neglecting basic domestic responsibilities? Americans have an obsession with their right to cheap petroleum. My friends, fuel is not cheap if it darkens our skies, destroys our wildlife, propels a military-industrial plague and legitimates plutocrats’ wars of empire.
I am aware that there are plenty of angry progressives (and cowboy-hatted rock stars, and smiling politicians) championing sustainability. It is becoming fashionable to speak of reducing waste, and reducing resource use. Captains of industry regularly speak about corporate responsibility, and being good corporate citizens. At the World Economic Forum this year, much of the discussion focused on the current crisis in the world economy, and how inventive belt-tightening was needed. In a Foreign Affairs article from last month, Executive Director of the WEF Klaus Schwab wrote an article entitled Global Corporate Citizenship. It laid out some of the new responsibilities for transnational corporations discussed at Davos. He wrote, “International business leaders must fully commit to sustainable development and address paramount global challenges, including climate change, the provision of public health care, energy conservation, and the management of resources, particularly water.”
Sounds pretty good, right? Sounds like a nice change from the days of robber barons and the injustices that raised the ire of the anti-globalization movement. But wait a minute, there is a brief phrase that bares notice: the management of resources, particularly water. He did not say water conservation; he said management. Management means control. In 1995 World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin said, "If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water." If there are to be wars fought over water, I certainly do not want corporations managing water the same way they manage ammunition or Iraqi reconstruction. Read General Smedly Butler’s book War Is A Racket about profiteering in World War I and tell me if you think corporations should be managing such a precious good.
Even if wars are not to be fought over the single most valuable resource on Earth, consider how corporations have managed water so far. In India, Coca Cola plants have been using so much water the wells in surrounding communities have run dry. Coca Cola is then discharging toxic wastewater back into the ground. When Sharad Haksar, one of India’s best photographers made a billboard criticizing Coke’s practices, they threatened to sue him. According to the book Blue Gold by Maude Barlow, “Since water services were privatized in France, customer fees have increased by 150 percent. The government of France also reports that the post-privatization drinking water of over five million people was contaminated.” These are but two of dozens of alarming case studies about corporate water management.
We surround ourselves in poison because we think it saves money, and we let corporations manage our resources because we think they can do it better than us. And we are all suffering because of these misperceptions. There is a solution, however. We need a new industrial revolution. We need to reconsider how we make and use the world’s gifts, and that revolution has nothing to do with sustainability. Sustainability, though now a popular term (and seemingly better that the militarized, endless consumption that currently dominates our world) is a rather boring idea. As William McDonough, one of the founders of the Cradle to Cradle movement said, “If someone asked you how your marriage was doing, and you said, ‘it’s sustainable,’ that would be rather depressing.”
The Cradle to Cradle movement is a new way of designing that looks to nature for inspiration. And nature has nothing to do with sustainability. Sustainability is about less—reduced energy use, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller meals. Theses ideas sound good, but in our current society I believe such rules would only apply to those who couldn’t afford to consume as much as they want. We talk about sustainability and efficiency, but efficiency can be terrible. Factories are much more efficient than small workshops, but deadening to the human soul. Nazi concentration camps were quite efficient, but I don’t think anyone in his right mind would applaud such judicious use of food, clothing, and Zyclon B.
Nature is simply not efficient. Look at the number of fish eggs spawned to the number of fish that hatch to the number of fish that survive to mate. Cherry trees are not conservative in their production of cherry blossoms. Nature’s abundance is one of its most admirable and sublime features, and its most effective. In nature, waste equals food. Over production benefits the environment. This is the foundation of the Cradle to Cradle movement. The industrialized world is the way it is because its behavior patterns and values developed at a time when the Western Culture understood very little about the world and believed it so vast and powerful that no human activity could alter the oceans or the trees. We thought we could take all we wanted and dump what we didn’t need and nature would never notice. We were, of course, terribly mistaken about this.
This miscalculation has proven tragic, but at least it is only a mistake and not inevitability. We have the power to do everything right. We have the power to produce as nature does. McDonough’s design firm has worked with major corporations to rethink production in ways that benefits the environment. They worked with a Swiss fabric maker to design an upholstery that’s so safe you can eat it. The excess material is ground up and used as mulch for rose bushes. The water that leaves the plant is cleaner that the water that enters it. The factory, no longer relying on hazardous materials to manufacture its product, has become a safer, more pleasant environment for its employees. We can make every factory and every product like this.
Humans are amazingly resourceful, creative, and industrious. The Manhattan Project was an example of what can be accomplished when great minds are networked, given the necessary resources, and set on a common goal. The result was monstrous, but the effort was laudable. What if we had a Cradle to Cradle Manhattan Project? What if we fought a war against waste?
I have no interest in any corporation, no matter how benevolent its rhetoric, managing my resources. Monsanto seeds produce over 80% of the soybeans in the US. This is bad. Corporations are eyeing our food and water, offering to be good citizens, sagacious caretakers in an age of decreasing governmental authority. I don’t want technocratic wannabe philosopher kings telling me humanity is using too much water and eating too much food and they need to close the spigots for our own good. There is a better way. We can live in an abundance that embraces the earth. We can build and shape and create in ways that benefit all creatures. We can live free from regulation and liberated by a sound philosophy and intelligent design.
