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In early October, The New York Times reported
that the United States was preparing to launch
a $94 million counter-insurgency program to help
the Columbian military protect a 500-mile oil
pipeline. The pipeline, which transports 100,000
barrels of crude a day for the Los Angeles-based
energy company Occidental Petroleum, has been
regularly attacked by Columbian rebels since the
1980s. In an effort to make Columbia safe for
ongoing oil exploration and meet one of the Bush
Administration's national security goals—diversifying
the sources of America's oil—U.S. military
personnel will train 4,000 Columbian troops and
supply them with high-tech surveillance equipment
and combat helicopters. The Columbian army, in
turn, will use this array of American technology
and know-how to defend the nation's oil fields
and take the offensive in its decades-old civil
war.
"We have been fighting here," a Columbian officer
told the Times, "but there are still so
many things the Americans can teach us."
Teaching counter-insurgency is not a new strategy
in the search for security. For many, it echoes
an American tradition of strategic intervention.
But perhaps there's a more secure approach. In
the midst of a civil conflict that has cost more
than 35,000 lives and displaced nearly 2 million
people, what if we waged peace as fiercely as
we are prepared to wage war?
 This,
too, is an American tradition. There is no denying
that the outcome of World War II was achieved
with military power. But immediately after the
war, American might was harnessed to building
democratic values and institutions. The Marshall
Plan, for example, distributed $12 billion over
four years to revitalize European nations, including
West Germany. There, aid fed hungry children,
rebuilt the industrial infrastructure, supported
civil society and demonstrated the attractiveness
of democracy. In Japan, the military occupation
was conducted in part by young American couples—unarmed
and disarmingly cheerful—who visited even
the smallest Japanese communities, all in the
spirit of peacemaking, good will and respect.
Along with an infusion of monetary aid, this intentional
honoring of Japanese individuals and cultural
traditions yielded an ally and an economic partner.
The same was true in Europe. Where dictators had
reigned, democratic values emerged and Japan and
Germany became two of the world's most vital nations.
The architects of their recovery plans? George
C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, American generals
bent on waging peace.
Design and American Security
Today, we might try waging peace on the scale
of the Marshall Plan with the widespread application
of intelligent design. This could take form in
a concerted international effort to develop products,
industrial processes and social systems that support
sustainable economic strength, cultural diversity
and environmental health. From this perspective,
sustainable design can be seen as one of the essential
paths to peace and security.
Following such a path, we might see the design
problems inherent in the world's reliance on a
single, non-renewable resource to fuel economic
growth. In Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, for example,
we would see how oil generates wealthy elites
but no democratic institutions and no emerging
intellectual infrastructure to support long-term
social well-being or economic growth. In America,
we might celebrate our strong democratic traditions,
while also acknowledging that the U.S. spends
up to $50 billion annually, as well as lots of
international good will, to protect the oil fields
of the Persian Gulf.
The far-flung assembly line expresses other design
problems. As supply chains span the globe, many
U.S. manufacturers are importing materials and
product components that are causing health problems
for American workers, and for their customers
as well. This increases health care expenses for
U.S. companies, drives up costs for waste management,
squanders material assets, and ultimately leads
to more outsourcing for cheap materials—a
toxic flow of losses and liabilities that threatens
long-term economic strength.
How effective, productive, and smart is an economy
based on such energy and manufacturing systems?
And, if the current business model is indeed unsustainable,
how can intelligent design contribute to the creation
of products, services and systems that transform
the American economy into a model of healthy,
safe and peaceful productivity? Given the powerful
influence of the United States on the global economy,
these become security concerns and design questions
not only for Americans, but for the entire world.
A New Business Strategy
 Design
questions are design opportunities. If our energy
and manufacturing systems are not currently optimal
we can see them as ripe for redesign. And if we
begin now to develop business models that enhance
human, environmental and economic health, the
U.S. can become a world leader in intelligent
design and resource recovery, rather than competing
on uneven and unhealthy terms within the old industrial
system. This would not only protect the health
and well being of American consumers, it would
nourish the American economy and the American
land. It would also yield exceedingly profitable,
effective benchmarks to export to developing nations.
And as we renew product quality, we will also
be developing an intellectual infrastructure supporting
the making of things that will give us long-term
security and prosperity, rather than the tenuous
promise offered by the policing of distant oil
fields.
Clearly, this is an ambitious strategy. Yet innovations
in design, business, and government are already
laying the groundwork for strategic change. With
the transition underway, here's a brief look at
our strategy for building a strong support system
for peaceful economic renewal.
Intelligent Products
High-quality products are the cornerstone of a
strong economy. From a sustainable design perspective
quality is a measure of the degree to which a
product enhances peaceful prosperity, social equity,
and environmental health. Within our Cradle to
Cradle Design Protocol, achieving high levels
of product quality is a step-by-step process of
assessing the chemistry and full life-cycle of
materials so that products can flow within closed-loop
systems of manufacture, use, and recovery. At
any scale, manufacturers gain a distinct competitive
advantage by finding reliable sources for intelligent
materials and developing systems for their retrieval
and reuse.
Materials Pooling and Corporate Cooperation
American companies can begin to recover the value
of high-quality industrial materials by participating
in Intelligent Materials Pooling, a collaborative,
business-to-business approach to managing the
industrial metabolism. Partners in an intelligent
materials pool agree to share access to a common
supply of a particular high-tech, high quality
material, pooling resources and purchasing power
to generate a healthy system of closed loop material
flows.
The process begins with an agreement to phase
out a hazardous material common to a number of
companies. Out of this shared commitment to intelligent
design comes a community of companies with the
market strength to effectively engineer the phase-out
and develop innovative alternative materials.
Together, the companies specify for preferred
materials, establish defined use periods for products
and services, and create an intelligent materials
bank from which each partner withdraws and deposits.
This business support system built on cradle-to-cradle
principles gives companies the strength and know-how
to make materials flow management an ongoing harvest
of assets rather than an endless exercise in managing
liabilities. Ultimately, it eliminates the concept
of waste.
Energy Effectiveness
Even when materials have been defined as safe
and beneficial, the energy required to illuminate
and run the assembly line is likely to depend
on fossil fuels. This need not be so. Rather than
developing an expensive infrastructure to support
a scare resource, design for energy effectiveness
taps the perpetually abundant forces of the sun
and wind to deliver clean affordable energy to
all. Indeed, despite fossil fuel subsidies, wind,
solar and hydrogen power have already become viable
alternatives to oil. As energy writer Matt Bivens
has pointed out, "America is the Persian Gulf
of wind." Opportunities for using solar power
are also abundant, and the prospects for renewable
energy in general have never been better.
From Regulations to Benchmarks
Intelligent products and systems are designed
to be self-supporting, enhancing productivity,
profits and sustainability without the carrot
of subsidies or the stick of regulations. That's
why we have been working with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to develop new benchmarks that
can be presented to industry as alternatives to
regulation. As the EPA and other state and federal
agencies support industry with design information
and know-how, American business will be able to
choose good growth: a healthy environment, a productive
economy and a better quality of life for all Americans—and
for the rest of the world.
Principled Policy
We would also encourage new strategies on Capitol
Hill. While a government role is not required
in the practice of intelligent design, federal
policy does affect the economic landscape and
the principles that guide civil society. Among
them are those principles that shape the relation
between people and nature. For 30 years, a public
dialogue led by citizen activists and NGOs has
firmly established that the U.S. government, as
well as state and local governments, will be held
responsible for protecting America's air, water
and soil.
 Perhaps
now is the time to broaden that conversation to
include a dialogue on the relations between economy,
ecology and security. The transformation of the
U.S. economy depends on it. American security
and the security of the world depends on it. If,
as the Columbian military officer suggested, there
are still so many things the world can learn from
America, what is it we will choose to teach?
By teaching intelligent design, by fiercely waging
peace, we can take the future into our own hands
and shape a world in which our children and our
children's children find prosperity, security
and health along with all the world's citizens—and
indeed, along with all the creatures of the Earth.
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