Last Blog!

“Imagine what a world of prosperity and health in the future will look like, and begin designing for it right now.” (186 Cradle to Cradle)
“The notion that we should simply let nature take its course is, in a world so thoroughly dominated by humanity, as dangerous as it is self-contradictory. We cannot simply do nothing; neglect will not benign.” (73, End of the Wild)
“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not” (The Lorax)

I think these quotes illustrate a major theme in this class, that we have to actively want change. This is the biggest lesson I’ve taken from this class, and hopefully, I will still value it in the future.

My favorite Quotes

My two favorite quotes from this semester were:

“Guess what percentage of total material flow through this system is still in product or use 6 months after their sale in North America. Fifty percent? Twenty? NO. One percent. One! In other words, 99 percent of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport—99 percent of the stuff we run through this system is trashed within 6 months.” “Story of Stuff”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, rather than bemoaning human industry, we had reason to champion it? If environmentalists as well as automobile makers could applaud every time someone exchanged an old car for a new one, because new cars purified the air and produced drinking water?....If modern societies were perceived as increasing assets and delights on a very large scale, instead of bringing the planet to the brink of disaster?” Cradle to Cradle, page 90

I love these two quotes. The first one shows the true crisis that we are in right now – it illustrates the amount of consumption in the U.S. that quickly becomes waste. It proves that we need a new system. The second quote I equally love because I think that it shows optimism. I don’t think that you can solve a problem by just complaining how negative it is. I think that you need to create positive solutions and create something that makes people interested in doing the right thing.

McDonough and Braungart's book has been the most hopeful thing we have read this semester. Their ideas are innovative, and they are able to give examples of how they have applied their ideas to provide real-world solutions. I feel like after reading Cradle to Cradle I have a vision of what could be in the future, and for once it is a positive vision.
The one problem I see with the authors' innovations is that unfortunately, I don't see them taking shape any time soon. I think the world today is not ready to completely change the "cradle-to-grave" pattern that is so much inherent in everything we do. For us to make the switch to "cradle-to-cradle" I think civilization as we know it will have to almost decompose so that we can start over again. Hopefully, I will be proved wrong, and maybe as countries are developing, people will begin to emphasize new ways to expand our relationship with the environment.

Cradle to Cradle

I agree with Montana that the beginning of Cradle to Cradle was frustrating. While it was a very effective summary of the environmental problems we have been learning about all semester, it was definitely a downer. The book got much more interesting very quickly. I was very interested when the authors challenged the traditional environmentalists and industrialists attempts at being environmentally friendly. I did like their view of learning from nature (ie. The cherry trees and the ants). I think they are going in the right direction. Drastic change is necessary to even begin solving the environmental problems we face; why shouldn’t the changes be exciting, fun, and innovative?

On a side note, the book's form is definitely a talking point. I had it on the coffee table, and I mentioned to a friend about the plastic involved in making it, which got her interested. She wants to borrow it after I'm done. I think the solutions that the authors propose, and the general idea that we should think outside traditional views, would be effective and many would be eager to adapt to them.

I have to say that as i was reading i started to get frustrated with all of the, 'you think you're doing something good, but surprise, you're not at all'. Everything started sounding so pointless and frustrating, but then....i got to the good part. I love these guys' ideas. The passion, imagination and intelligence that has so obviously gone into their thoughts and plans, is incredibly inspirational. Why aren't their more ideas like this out there?! then again, maybe their are, why is this stuff not taken more seriously?! I love how everything they talk about is moving forward. One of my biggest qualms with some environmentalists is that they seem to think the only way to "save the world" is to go backwards, way backwards. That's not only insane, unreasonable, it is such a cop-out. the 'backwardists', if you will, seem to have no faith in humans at all. There is no doubt that we are full of ingenuity, creativity, capability and adaptability, but these virtues have gotten stuck in the industrial system. I have to believe that humans can get through this, that we can move forward, and not by tearing down what we've built, but by moving on to something better, and this is the first book that I've been exposed to that present specific ideas that make this seem possible. One of my favorite sections was the one about how growth, just for the sake of growth, can be such a devastating concept. The idea of growth is going to be one of the biggest hurdles for change towards sustainability because it has become so ingrained as a basic value of individuals, communities, countries and the world.

One thing I would like to hear more about that i wasn't quite sold on, was the part about regulation. They seemed to say that regulations make it harder for some to compete and leave little time or resources for developing new ideas. I would venture that if we don't make being "bad" more expensive to companies, they will have little incentive to look for new ways to be "good". However, they just touched on the subject and i may have misunderstood, or my logic itself may be askew (although my logic is NEVER askew! :) )

Plus, gardens for roofs....AWESOME! My only question, do they have to be watered? who waters them?

Cradle to Cradle

I think that the “Cradle to Cradle” vision is on the right track. It was really interesting to read about how recycling may help the environment in some ways, but in other ways it only adds more pollutants and lower quality materials. I completely agree that it is important to be effective over being efficient. It’s amazing how similar the two words are but how different their meanings are. The best part about the book for me was that McDonough and Braungart stress that creativity and imagination are really important with our future in improving the environment. This means to me that saving the environment is not a pain – it does not need to be something “less fun” than what we have now; instead, we can think of new ways to do what we used to do, to use different materials to make what we used to make. Plus, saving the environment can be more convenient and fun – I wish I was at home so I could read the book WHILE swimming in the pool. That’s cool; it is something we would want to be able to do regardless of saving the environment. That is what is so great about their vision – they make saving the environment fun.

Hands down my best experience with nature was in the spring of 2007 when i spent about a month and a half traveling around Siberian villages. I vividly remember driving from the airport in the city down to the lake to catch a fairy accross, we drove for a couple hourse with forest on either side of us and when the lake came into view it was so white and covered in snow that you couldn't see the horizon line, the sky was white the ground was white, the lake was white, it may sound boring, but it was unlike anything i'd ever seen, it was completely untouched. In the following parts of the trip I lived with an elderly woman in a tiny tiny village where everyone supported themselves through farming (one woman even thought that Americans were very rich and that they must all have really big potato fields and cows...oh if she only knew) and bartering, a mountain village where the cow to human ratio is 3:1 (the cows all 'hang out' on the main street and wander around, when i didn't see any branding or tagging i asked how people know which cows are theirs, i was informed that the cows know who they belong to, i'm still a little skeptical about that) as well as a village on the lake, full of superstitions, that lives in harmony with the water and the world around them. I even got to participate in the traditional (yet not outdated) slaughtering of a sheep, it was incredibly methodical and bloodless and to be honest the meat tasted great. My experiences with nature are few and far between, but each one has stayed with me and opened my eyes to something new. So, i suppose it is worth protecting, but with so many battles to fight, who fights them and which comes first? And so we get into the complicated part, as always seems to happen...