Finding someone who did not fully agree with my views on environment and climate change was not a difficult task. My roommate Jill who I consider to be an average American is my best source for debate. She is middle class, well educated and not a business or SIS major! She always questions what I say which in turn encourages me to question what I have learned. In particular I feel strongly about the negative impacts of coal extraction and burning. Although she understands the environmental degradation to an extent she still falls back on the common notion that "but we need coal." This response use to make me flip shit as I couldn't fathom the idea that people actually believed that! But this approach only feeds aversion to environmental efforts, not to mention this is a common response to steering away from coal useage.
I now listen to Jill and use her as my gauge bouncing my usually more extreme views off of "average Americans." Money is, no matter what anyone says, is what drives the world and this is the approach environmentalism has to proceed with.

Trading Money for your Soul

At first I thought it would be rather easy to find someone in the Kogod School of Business who had a different viewpoint as I in regards to the severity of the environmental situation. However, it seems as if many agree that the potential of global warming, a continuous population increase, and loss of animal species will lead to many negative effects on our environment. Although they view these situations as serious ones, they still see the money signs in the future and believe that producing more, more, more is what will make our economy continue to grow (along with their wallets).

My friend Julia was nice enough to be as blatantly honest about her thoughts. We talked about the problem of consumption and abundance and why it is important for us to consider design issues in order to fix our problems. I think my most effective argument was discussing what we recently learned through Cradle to Cradle and how we must learn to be more efficient in designing our products, because it is our design flaws that can be changed. However, Julia continued to remind me of the fact that if a product is cheaper to make with toxic chemicals and in a process that would not enable all parts of a product be able to be reused, companies would still likely choose this old-fashioned method.

Julia is finishing her second year at American University, but will be graduating from the Kogod School of Business next spring. I think this is an important note to include, because to Julia - "time is money." Julia has no intent on studying abroad because she doesn't see the point, believing that it will cost her more money and understanding that she can complete her degree in the States. Julia was not turned off by this discussion, but was more than excited to continue it after we had finished our iced teas while sitting on the quad. Julia sees that there may be potential problems with the environment, but since she doesn't see these as threats to her livelihood, doesn't consider them on a daily basis.

I sent her the talk I found on TED: By William McDonough about his idea of Cradle to Cradle design. After watching this video, Julia was more inclined to see my point of view, but continued to turn it to what she knew best - business. Julia showed me that it is best to be proactive in trying to get others to listen to my point of view. If I had simply ended our conversation over coffee, Julia would likely have remained with her mindset. This is not to mean that I changed her point of view, but it did make her consider what I was saying a second time. I do not think you can be successful by being conciliatory. Rather, a more provacative, proactive attitude will get those who are skeptical to think about environmental issues.

Even for myself I have realized that the more extreme a potential situation can get, the more likely I am to change my behavior. By showing statistics and facts to business students, as well as lists of toxic chemicals, constructive change can occur--- it just may take a long time and persuasion from many different angles.

Cradle-to-grave: human design

What do you make of the "Cradle to Cradle" vision spelled out by William McDonough and Michael Braungart? Are they on the right track? Or is their optimism misplaced?

One of my favorite analogies that McDonough and Braungart make refers to the Titanic. It was claimed that this ship was indestructible, as it "pours waste into the water and smoke into the sky. It attempts to work by its own rules, which are contrary to those of nature." This example, along with many others scattered throughout the book explains that the problems we have caused to the environment are because of our design problems, not the design problems of nature.

Unlike Malthus, this architect and chemist believe that the world is facing abundance, not limits. They are optimistic that we have the tools to create a greener world by designing new products and procedures. We need to redesign in order to save our environment, but it is important to consider their point, that creating a rug made out of recycled soda cans may actually use more energy and create more waste than your average rug--and you are still going to eventually discard this rug as well.

Cradle-to-grave: I found that this section of the book related a lot to the video, "Stuff" that we watched in class. As consumers, we actually do very little consuming. Instead, the products that we use are designed for us to throw them away. Our food and other biodegradable products are combined with all of your other products and disposed of in landfills, where the value of these products is then wasted.

Defending the Cradle

I would like to take this week's blog to refute most of my classmates' writings.

Starting with my respectable friends of "We Tigers."
Alex explained his interpretation of Cradle to Cradle as a vision "just that, an ideal," I would to beg to differ, this book is not a set of future visionary day dreams, but a workable, feasible, plan that has already begun to work.
John, Sirjac and Alex all brought up the ticking egg timer ending in Earth's destruction....there isn't enough time. I would argue back with 4 points, 1) [a biggie] we have NO IDEA what amount of time we have been allotted to solve this problematic and outdated way of life, 2) the "cradle to cradle" design concept is not one of slowing down and postponing our degradation, but reversing it, bringing back what we have lost, regaining time, 3) this "eco-effective" approach is the most well thought out plan we have yet to come across. Stopping the world's women from having children (good luck with that), creating high-tech urban hot spots where only minimal amounts of space are dedicated to human use and the rest preserved as "wilderness" (suuurrrrre), convincing AMERICANS they have to stop shopping (don't waste your breath)!! Mr. McDonough and Mr. Braungart again and again outline the practicality of their idea, its feasibility, and its overarching please-ability. A lot of which can be achieved with resources and technologies we already have. This brings me to my fourth point, innovation breeds innovation. In taking what we have and know now and creating, we will also create room to improve as we always have and continue to do as a race. Saying we "do not have time" is defeatist and an easy escape to give up and move on, "we don't have time to waste" is encouraging and not accepting of our "time-limit". We must start now, we must "prefer ecological-intelligence" as these two men have told us and we must work together.

I have attached a photo of proof, a photo of realistic ingenuity, a photo of the answer. (and John the ink-water solution can be seperatd and the ink can be used again).

Proof