People. So diligently
digging their own grave, congratulating each other with their ingenuity.
Unfortunately, their ingenuity has to compete with their shortsightedness in
terms of size. You’d laugh about it if you weren’t a human yourself.
Want to know
the state of the world? Read Al Gore’s The
Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (2012), an impressive overview of the
adverse effects of human presence on our planet and our inability to join
forces in order to improve our prospects for the future – even in possession of
all this ominous knowledge. It’s not a matter of ignorance anymore, it’s full-on
denial.
You would lose
all hope reading how powerful political lobbies spread misinformation with ice-cold
cynicism just to cast doubt on the seriousness of our situation. This strategy perfectly
matches the way the tobacco industry responded to the inevitable spread of the
understanding that smoking is a health hazard. They tried everything to convince
us that smoking wasn’t really that bad and that it made you a happy and
interesting person. With enforced measures such as lowering the tar levels they
pretended to be concerned about humanity’s welfare, while secretly further boosting
the addictiveness of their products. Smokers lived on in denial, non-smokers
had no choice.
About ten
years ago, the perception of smoking changed suddenly. By now smoking is banned
in public areas and every pack of cigarettes reminds the smoker of the hard facts.
Smoking is uncool and denial has become impossible (all of which doesn’t prevent
the tobacco industry from disgracefully scraping the bottom of the barrel).
The
difference between smoking and the environmental problem is that smoking is a
personal choice with personal consequences that almost everyone has witnessed personally
through family, friends or acquaintances suffering from cancer. When it comes
to the environment, there is no personal choice but a collective – and yes, addictive
– lifestyle, the harmful consequences of which, such as climate change or decrease
of biodiversity, are far removed from the cause.
Anyone can show
shock and indignation when confronted with alarming information about present
and future environmental damage, but turning alarm into action and long-term
commitment is a much more difficult thing to do. Certainly, overall environmental
awareness has increased over the years, but the proverbial switch hasn’t been flipped
yet, which is an absolutely necessity given the scale and the urgency of the
problem.
Why are we not
capable of putting all our differences aside and give the highest priority to
solving the environmental problem?
It’s too complicated
– there isn’t much each of us can do individually, while politics are momentarily
(of all times) caught up in a crisis of confidence.
It’s too much
of a long-term issue – we have found out only about a hundred years ago what an
ecosystem is and only fifty years ago that our planet is such an ecosystem. Soon
enough this turned out to be in the process of being disrupted by the presence
of one overly successful animal.
*
A
psychological barrier prevents us from flipping the switch. The environmental
impact of our actions remains too abstract when it doesn’t relate to our
immediate environment. We see too little result of our good intentions. There
is no guarantee that we are accomplishing much of anything, and worse, most of
times we aren’t.
Meanwhile, let’s
not forget that a lot has been done during the past 25 years. Firstly by those
who have worked wholeheartedly for saving the environment. But also by
countless others who made small contributions, even if half-heartedly.
In a sense, the
fact that we haven’t made up much ground, in spite of all of these efforts, doesn’t
matter. The environmental problem is a moral issue.
Morality is activated
when people have to be protected from the unrestrained gratification of their
impulses. An individual, a group or even a whole generation cannot always calculate
the consequences of behavior that may be harmful in the long run. Hence, commandments,
prohibitions and taboos emerge that regulate such potentially harmful behavior.
For example,
indigenous peoples often have in-depth knowledge about the ecological balance within
the biotope in which they live and on which they depend. That knowledge is not
always explicit, but exists in the form of rules that we – city-dwellers, thoroughly
alienated from nature as we are – dismiss too easily as expressions of
primitive superstition. Rules such as: ask permission to the gods first before
cutting down a tree or killing an animal, take nothing from nature without offering
something back, consider each harvest as a gift from the gods, etc. The wisdom contained
in these rules, gathered over many generations, protects our natural habitat against
the effects of rampant intervention.
This kind of
wisdom is exactly what modern society lacks. Wisdom is knowledge combined with
knowing what to do – obviously, we don’t. Modern society is technocratic and
relies too much on science to give an answer to all our life questions. Science
is supposed to be objective and value-free, which is at odds with making moral
decisions. Many of the questions we ask science, science cannot answer. Our intellect
knows perfectly well that we are polluting the environment and depleting natural
resources, but the last fifty years it has become painfully obvious that that
makes very little difference. That same intellect always manages to come up
with a rationalization for not having to do anything.
That’s why we
need deeply ingrained moral rules to ensure that we all make our contribution –
without asking why. You follow moral rules because that’s just what you do and
because violating them gives a bad feeling.
*
Environmental
strategies that strive for a general overall improvement try to convince anyone
who is willing to listen to do with a little less, appealing to reason and trying
to avoid scaring anyone off by asking huge sacrifices. That’s very thoughtful, but
also ineffective.
In Cradle to Cradle: Changing the Way We Make
Things (2002) by Michael McDonough and Michael Braungart – which I consider
a milestone in our thinking about the environmental problem – this ineffectiveness
is fully recognized. It is not enough for us to slow down, because it will only
make us reach our undesirable destination a little later. What we have to do is
choose a different direction – preferably the opposite: we must make sure that
human activities improve the
environment rather than deteriorate it. If we manage to take all energy and
materials from renewable resources and there are no more emissions of harmful
waste, we can consume as much as we want.
In itself this
is a liberating perspective, but it’s still very far removed in the future –
unfeasible, given the current state of technology. The good thing about it is
that we can stop fooling ourselves with false solutions.
The task may be
enormous, but perhaps it can inspire us to prove against all odds that it is feasible, if we join hands and apply all
possible means and human inventiveness. In the coming decades, digitization
will spur on the development of science and technology to ever-greater speed, which
will allow for all sorts of unforeseen inventions.
That doesn’t
mean we can lean back and do nothing – not least because science and technology
are part of the problem.
*
We must put
an end to the self-destructive narcissism of humanity. Man is an animal with remarkable
capabilities, but we are not the crown of creation and we do not have a license
to plunder it.
We must learn
to listen better to our intuition. The intellect vastly overrates itself and
can be used for any sordid purpose, from tobacco lobby to Final Solution. At
the same time, it underestimates the power and value of our intuition when
making moral judgments.
We have to
face our poor prospects and stop looking the other way. As a species, we must
take responsibility for the consequences of our actions at a global level. As
individuals, we must make the active contribution that we are capable of.
*
All of the
above applies to designers as well as to any other world-citizen. Do designers have
a special role to play in solving the environmental problem?
It is now 25
years ago when the first impetus was given for an international eco-design
movement. In 1988 in Milan the O2 Platform for designers was founded. During the
preceding decades environmental awareness had been growing, but in line with
the general attitude towards the possible outcome of the Cold War, there was a
rather depressed and even fatalistic mood – we were going to hell anyway. But when
the Iron Curtain fell, new hope began to dawn.
A mixture of
momentary enthusiasm and opportunism towards the environment manifested itself
– also in the design world. Designers realized that their clients might start
asking difficult questions and some of them did so indeed, often compelled by
new environmental regulations. Many designers threw themselves on this novel subject,
some with more conviction and energy than others. The expectation was that
environmental considerations would play an important role in design from then
on, but the economy was on the rise and in no time everybody was too busy
making money.
Ever since, interest
in eco-design has been going up and down. Around 2002, Cradle-to-Cradle caused a
revival. Because it focuses on the production of things, Cradle-to-Cradle seems
close to industrial design, but the key to the Cradle-to-Cradle solution is chemistry
and molecular technology. In 2008, Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for
his environmental activism, which was a huge boost for the environmental
movement and a form of recognition that many had long been waiting for. Gore’s story
is comprehensive and possibly inspiring for designers, but it doesn’t offer
them any concrete solutions and his greasy hairstyle is nothing to write home
about either.
At the
moment, it looks like the Circular Economy
is becoming fashionable. Under this flag, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has
combined a number of existing theories, among which the Cradle-to-Cradle
philosophy. I like their choice of using well-being and ‘genuine progress’ as
benchmarks, instead of prosperity and growth expressed in gross national
product. It’s bad enough that economic interests always get priority, but then
at least there should be proper bookkeeping; the economic theories with which the
world is governed are retarded enough as they are. Initiator and driving force
behind the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is Ellen MacArthur (1976), who became famous
as a long-distance sailor and has far better hair than Al Gore. For designers,
there is nothing really new about the Circular Economy, but Cradle-to-Cradle could
use a boost anyway. The theoretical groundwork looks good and the Foundation is
ambitious.
My comments about
Gore’s and MacArthur’s hairstyles may seem gratuitous, but the reality is that people
have a strong need to identify with someone who is supposed to set a good
example, in which case hair can make a lot of difference. Al Gore looks like a car
salesperson on steroids and somehow that doesn’t help his case.
After 25
years of eco-design, not one designer has emerged as a role model (and you might
ask yourself if that says something about the impact of eco-design in general).
At one point, Philippe Starck seemed to have aspirations in this direction and being
a widely admired designer he was an excellent candidate too. But what’s with dramatically
declaring that he was going to stop designing because he was ashamed of his
profession, and then just went on?
The fact that
he got away with it tells us that nobody is impressed when designers threaten to
strike. Design is an ambitious profession with a tendency to believe its own
propaganda. The resulting false self-image creates high expectations that can
only lead to frustration. It is possible that the world would be a better place
if designers had more to say, but they don’t. The vast majority of designers
are hired hands that deliver a rather noncommittal and exchangeable contribution
to their clients’ businesses. On that basis, many responsibilities they think
they can take on will never be entrusted to them. When designers underperform,
there are no publications that will make their failure public (design magazines
are reserved for successful projects), they will receive their wages or
salaries anyway, and there are no networks of entrepreneurs who warn each other
for mediocre designers.
In short, I
don’t think designers are ‘chosen’ when it comes to solving the environmental problem.
The good news is that it doesn’t matter. As a designer, you should just deliver
the contribution that is within your power and be realistic about it to avoid
disappointment. There are few ready-made solutions, so there is a lot of work to
be done, which mainly consists of accumulating knowledge, applying and possibly
distributing it. Never count on being paid for this effort as part of a job.
Let’s call it
a sacrifice.
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