The design of the 21st Century is being based on the design of a tree. Study the book Cradle to Cradle. The authors write the potential goals of human design on pg 90 “buildings create more energy than they consume, water leaving factories is cleaner than entering, etc”.

Both of which have already been accomplished.
Oberlin College www.oberlin.edu/campusmap/South.htm and Rohner Textile www.climatex.com/en/start_e.html

Here’s an academic journal talking about eco-effectiveness.
www.mbdc.com/news.htm

There are magazines on eco-effectiveness.
www.theatlantic.com/issues/98oct/industry.htm, www.time.com/time/reports/environment/heroes/heroesgallery/0,2967,mcdonough,00.html, www.noetic.org/ions/HTML/Online|0Library/nsrev/review_archives/issue64/r64holland.pdf, www.greenmac.com/bioneers/McDonough/

The Cradle to Cradle movement does not promote lean production or dematerialization with the intention of reducing the ecological footprint of humanity. That movement is eco-efficiency: do more with less. Eco-efficiency was adopted by business after Rio Conference in 1992.

Eco-effectiveness, Cradle to Cradle, and the Next Industrial Revolution does instead promote re-materialization and the abundance of energy and material used by humans. Here’s the requirement, as long as these materials are designed to be totally safe for air, water and soil and children of all species (biological nutrient) or as safe, perpetually up-cycled material for industry (technical nutrient). When everything is put into either biological or technical cycles we stop mining and logging the Earth and landfills and incinerators become obsolete. Eco-effectiveness is about a sustaining agenda not a sustainable agenda.

A sustainable agenda is maintenance. To sustain is the maintenance of a system. In our case this would mean the maintenance of a system that balances destruction and conservation. A system that gives better masks to workers, where fossil fuels are using for efficiently, fewer people die from toxins, goal is zero waste. Sounds mostly dark and boring to me.

What I think is exciting is a “sustaining agenda”, a system that helps the natural world. Where products that are good for the natural world, communities and the economy. Where we restore wetlands, grasslands, great forests because we no longer get our raw materials from the natural world we get them from closed loop technical and biological metabolisms. This is where we love all the children of all species for all time. A sustaining agenda would not need masks because the products give people nutrients not cancer, we use the sun, no one dies from toxins and waste can not be conceived because we are working with Nature.

The energy for our economy will come solely from the sun, because every time we use nuclear, fossil fuel we are not working with Nature. Trees do not make nuclear reactors in their trunks. However, right now solar collectors are not true technical nutrients, they are working directly on that right now.

The daily solar energy on the Earth is between 5,000 (McDonough 2003), 13,000 (Rifkin, 2003) and 20,000 (Neville, 1995) times more energy than humans presently use every day.

Let's turn Hardin's Trategy of the Commons into the Celebration of the Commons. We have solar income let's go catch it. On decentralized massive, slow, quiet, technical nutrient wind turbines (blades legth 90m).

The author of Cradle to Cradle, McDonough, gave speech to the media in front of BushII
www.npr.org/programs/npc/2002/020424.wmcdonough.html
Why did we not hear about this?!!

Here are other audios that I have found, if you find any more send them my way please.
talktotara.com/health_mind_body.php under Cradle to Cradle
evworld.com/view.cfm
www.savvytraveler.org/show/features/2002/20020628/interview1.shtml
wpr.org/webcasting/ideas_audioarchives.cfm under McDonough
www.kpbx.org/news/poverty/mcdonough.htm

Every where you look and see pollution, you see a negative that is under attack because it does not makes a much money. Pollution is about to disappear because this is about business. Study it, critique it, share it. I think we should stop teaching hopelessness.

Aaron Vallejo