Utopia and/or Revolution

When McDonough and Braungart write that they “see a world of abundance, not limits,” they seem go challenge Wessels and those like him who believe that the ethos of consumption needs to be changed. I don't think that they literally mean not to recognize limits to growth, however: the difference is in large part a semantic one, reflected in the constructive framing of environmental/industrial tension that Dave Kaczynski so astutely pointed out in his post.

While I recognize the ideological utility of such positioning, the authors' position seems to have an empty world-style economic perspective because of its focus on human-created capital. They provide numerous exciting examples of reprocessing, repurposing, and recycling manufactured goods while maintaining access to some form of those goods (in contrast to Wessels's anti-entropic intention to simply do away with many consumer goods). As I spent more time thinking about it, though, I realized that McDonough and Braungart are really avant-garde full worlders looking to “increase the productivity of the scarcest (limiting) factor” (natural capital), “as well as to try to increase its supply.” (Costanza, Robert. Ecological Economics, 83)

So it seems to me like the Cradle to Cradle authors are looking to find a way to maintain a dynamic equilibrium in the world's economy after all. By mimicking the natural world's efficiency at storing and utilizing energy the concept of waste could be eliminated and society's economic life could become more self-sustaining and anti-entropic. This is the bridge between these books: although McDonough and Braungart envision a world in which our modern material expectations continue to be met, their road to that future is the same as Wessels's to long-term sustainablity: a “more diverse, integrated, and efficient” economic system. (89)

Incidentally, Paolo Soleri presaged this conversation as early as 1971: “The only hope, which is then in addition the chance to gain for one's self some "divinity," lies in replacing man, this phenomenon of supercomplex nature, within the terms defined by reality, accepting the first postulate thereof ... that of complexity and miniaturization.” (Utopia e o Revoluzione, Perspective v 13 / 14 p 281-285, 1971) Earlier in the paper he rejects the idea of utopia because it involves an attempt to live outside the limits of natural laws, and the idea of revolution because it suggests a movement to a human condition previously unexperienced in history. This consideration is relevant in a comparison of these two books as well, I think: McDonough and Braungart's "city like a forest, cool and quiet" and "ecological footprint to delight in" (14, 16) might sound utopian just as Wessels's "Need for Cultural Change" -- and associated rhetoric, e.g. "Never in the history of democratic societies..." (107) -- might sound like a call for revolution. One very important consideration for those interested in implementing their ideas will be how to persuade society not just of their virtues but of their achievability. To do that it is important to present (as Cradle to Cradle especially tries to do) such new models as natural adaptations to natural law that are compatible with human nature as well.