Systems

We have built a system that is modeled on efficiency. For the average person, the rules are simple. Buy More. The economic system is modeled on, and depends on it. The industrial systems are built on the idea that if it can be produced faster and for less money, people will buy more. The priority has been and remains efficient production for increased profit.

We are trying to build a new system that is more environmentally friendly on the foundations of a system that is inherently not. Industry has been built on the idea that cheaper is better, green products and materials are expensive, as they are not produced with the brute force method that our current cash crops are. This idea of profit being the number one priority would need to be moved down the priority list, which is difficult in a country where the American Dream is coming from nothing into something, or more aptly coming from nothing into millions.

There are few who would give up the “mistakes” of our industrial past to rebuild their production systems and make a greener, but more expensive and time consuming product. Beyond that, who wants to see their hard work and effort being “labeled” as a mistake? As I said last class, the green revolution has been marketed as a band-aid to the mistakes of the industrial revolution, rather than a goal of innovation, a race to the moon. There are currently, few economic incentives to developing green products and manufacturing practices. Nothing to give manufacturers, who have built their empires on the efficiency cradle-to-grave model, to re-develop their practices and join the green race.

Even if we did become a green planet, as the author stated, our population couldn’t be greenly supported in a mono-culture of consumerism. I do not mean to sound pessimistic at the prospects of going green. I simply mean to insist that we are creatures of habit, comfortable with what we have, what we want, and how we get it. I would like to see the catalyst that pushes us to change because the threats of climate change and environmental disaster have not.