If the landscape reveals one certainty,
it is that the extravagant gesture is the very
stuff of creation. After the one extravagant
gesture of creation in the first place, the
universe has continued to deal exclusively in
extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi
down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions
on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole
show has been on fire from the word go.
— Annie Dillard
Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion
years of natural design, forged in the cradle
of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of
forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity
of life on Earth. Responding to unique local conditions,
ants have evolved into nearly 10,000 species,
several hundred of which can be found in the crown
of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce
thousands of blossoms—an astonishing abundance
of blossoms—so that another tree might germinate,
take root and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a
taste for the extravagant: Who could say the wood
duck's plumage is restrained?
For most of our history, the human response to
the living earth, to particular places, has expressed
the same flowering of diversity. Bearing the unique
human ability to imagine and create, we entered
the show and developed our own extravagant gestures.
We built not just shelter, but beautiful, elegant
responses to locale; the breathing, shade-providing
Bedouin tent along with the ornate, aspiring temples
of cool, coastal Japan. We designed not just wraps
against the wind but tailored garments for ritual,
celebration, and our own delight. We spoke and
moved not just for utilitarian ends but to make
drama and poetry, Balinese dance and Shakespearean
verse—human creations stoking the fire.
 Commerce,
too, burns with vitality. Though human industry
in the past 150 years has resorted to brute force
rather than elegant design, the making and trading
of goods can still be a wellspring of creativity,
productivity, and pleasure. Think of the thriving
marketplaces that have enlivened the world's great
cities, the cherished objects and materials that
transform shelter into soulful dwelling. These
need not be sacrificed to protect our forests,
rivers, soil and air. Indeed, human industry and
habitations can be designed to celebrate interdependence
with other living systems, transforming the making
and consumption of things into a regenerative
force. Design can perform and preserve the extravagant
gesture—in the marketplace, in the human
community, and in the natural world.
An Age of Limits?
For many advocates of sustainable development
the notion that the production and consumption
of goods can be a regenerative force is not only
alarming, it's downright heretical. Our age is
widely perceived as an age of limits. The conventional
wisdom holds that the rate of consumption of natural
resources by the world's developed nations is
damaging the Earth's ecosystems and consigning
the Third World to poverty. While some industrialists
still use brute force to gain short-term profits,
many business leaders have come to realize that
a system that takes, makes, and wastes is not
sustainable in the long-term.
 In
response, we all try to limit our impact. We "reduce,
reuse, and recycle" at home and in the workplace.
Business leaders plan for reductions in resource
consumption and energy use. They strive to "produce
more with less," "minimize waste" and release
fewer toxic chemicals into the air, water, and
soil. These industrial reforms, which have come
to be known as eco-efficiency, are an admirable
attempt to come to terms with the conflict between
nature and commerce-they may well help resolve
it. But they don't really get to the root of the
problem. Working within the same system without
examining the manifest flaws in its design, eco-efficient
reforms slow industry down without truly reshaping
the way products are made and used. In effect,
industry is simply using brute force more efficiently
to overcome the rules of the natural world.
Using fewer resources, people may feel a bit
"less bad," but no one can quite slip the trap
of being merely a "consumer" in a world of poorly
designed, toxic products. Every choice seems to
contribute to the erosion of human and environmental
health: the carpet makes your children sick; the
car burns too much gas; the TV is loaded with
toxic materials. When anything you buy does damage
to the world, consumption remains freighted with
anxiety and divorced from any notion of sustainability—not
to mention pleasure and delight.
. . .
We are proposing something different. We'd like
to see a true transformation of commerce in which
design goes beyond using nature efficiently and
instead creates value and opportunity with products
that nourish rather than deplete the world. This
is not to gainsay efficiency. We'd simply like
to put efficiency to work in the service of an
effective, life-centered vision. As the business
genius Peter Drucker has said, being efficient—doing
things right—is the crucial role of the manager.
It's the leader's job to be effective, to see
that the "right things get done." Efficiently
managing a toxic system is not the "right thing."
Efficient innovations within a life-affirming
design protocol, however, suggest a dynamic path
to a cradle-to-cradle world.
From Maintenance to Renewal
The conceptual, and actual, shift to cradle-to-cradle
products transforms the impact of industry. When
all manufactured products and materials are designed
as nutrients, the production and consumption of
goods enriches the natural world. And when those
nutrients flow within coherent cycles, human industry
and human desires can become the cherry tree,
writ large.
Fanciful? Not at all. The leaders of companies
all over the world have begun to move from the
maintenance of the old industrial system to a
renewal of commerce. They have decided to recognize
the far-reaching influence of their creative acts
and celebrate their impact on the world rather
than disguise it. They have launched the Next
Industrial Revolution.
(End of excerpt.)
 |
Read the entire essay in Sustainable
Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-First Century,
ed. Juliet Schor, just published (November
2002) by Beacon Press.
Buy this books from your local bookstore,
order locally through Booksense,
or order from Amazon.com.
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