- Our economic system is about 10% efficient. Take a styrofoam cup for instance. Its material constituents and its embodied energy are effectively 0% efficient about five minutes after the cup is first used. Add the near 0% efficient consumer items that are used for less than a month. It’s the 80/20 rule. “Disposables” and short-use consumer goods account for about 80% of the material throughput in our economy. We could do much much better and IMPROVE our standard of living.
- The Earth has everything it’s ever going to get … except new life and sunlight. Therefore radical resource productivity is our only long-lasting option. We humans need to accept the reality that we are only one species and understand that our concerns are not universal. Only after making full use of today’s renewable energy (sunlight) should we consider using distilled sunlight (oil and coal).
- All things on Earth are connected. Scientists, economists, clerics and policy makers are all waking up the fact we must dig much deeper for solutions that are free of unintended negative consequences.
- Wisdom is all around us. Every leaf embodies a million years of design improvements. Product designers and architects are studying how nature works. We are learning. Mother Nature is our best mentor. We call it biomimicry.
- Systemic solutions are found in process and social contract, not product or outcome. So to create a sustainable future, new technologies are not what we need most. Even the most amazing gadgets now imagined are not the answer. We don’t need to innovate products and technologies nearly as much as we need to innovate our process of creating and using those amazing new products and our sense of social responsibility.
- The future cannot be discounted like an investment. This is the primary conundrum that sustainability advocates must address. Business will never embrace effective solutions until we overlay the pervasive financial logic of monetary discounting. Consider that insurance actuaries put a dollar value on a lost life and CFOs logically discount the net present value of an investment designed to eliminate an environmental disaster in forty years. This internally logical economic reality must be overlaid with what we all know to be true – that our responsibility to protect our children and their children is a higher imperative than our immediate ambitions.
- Environmental conservation and social healing is the truly conservative path.
- Heaven is at hand. We don’t need to wait for death. In fact the concept of heaven as being “up there” with its gate keeper is a theology that leads to environmental and social exploitation. It pits religion against religion – us against them. Heaven is in our hand. God is omnipresent. Stewardship of God’s creation is the highest form of respect we could possible make.
- Sustainability is cooperative. Please add your number 9.
- Our sustainable future is not static. It is endlessly regenerative, abundantly beautiful and evolving like life itself.
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