It’s been fashionable for a while for us to talk about how we “should” go green. It’s a little like the smoker saying they “should” stop, and the fatty saying they “should” diet. What are we really doing to change the systems & technology we depend on to solve this massive problem of dependence on fossil fuels?
How do we move to green technology without plunging the vast majority of society into poverty needs to be the key question. We could throw away power stations tomorrow, and with it would go Medicine, Oversea’s aid, Cancer Treatment, Pharmacies, Animal Welfare, The Internet (Free Knowledge)… and you can forget about investment in sustainable technology if we did everything we “should” do.
In short, it’s time to move from sentiment to action. We’ve known for at least 2 decades we “should” change. That doesn’t mean anything without real action. Yes, recycle. Yes, take the bus. Yes, turn the lights out… But do so in the knowledge that every year China builds 2 new coal power stations. It will take a lot more than efficiency improvements, or the adoption of one single technology to get us where we need to be.
We are rightly, moving to a world where previously less important aspects of humanity are gaining focus because they are delivering results the old way of working couldn’t. It was historically very easy to criticise innovation, design & sustainability as being mental masturbation. A “nice idea that doesn’t get results”.
Then the world changed. Like all change, it doesn’t happen with an election, it happens very slowly over the course of a generation or so. Suddenly sustainability won awards. Profit chasing mega coporates found themselves on the wrong side of the law… and most importantly of all, the public perception shifted. People love nature, and can see for themselves the damage we have caused it already.
On the flip side, business cannot make a profit going back to the oil well for much longer. We have seen the beginnings of oil market instability, a huge shake in financial market confidence as well as the beginnings of profitable renewable energy. We’re at a tipping point between beating and ignoring sustainable development & making it the very centre of business execution.
Yet there is still a massive communication problem. The type of person who does design, and the type of person who is capable of getting a product to market are rarely anything other than strange bedfellows. The design types have to make a leap of faith into mass market thinking with their skill, while the mass market has to sit up and listen to our designers. The old enemy has to be our friend if we are to achieve anything.
It requires a full scale investment and replacement in our power infrastructure, technology , and distribution systems. It requires replacing with an equivalent every package, building block or material that is not sustainable, with one that is… A monumental task. How will you be part of the solution? At the individual level? At the activist level? Or at the socio-economic level, where a real difference will be made?