Our friends at WorldChanging are running a series of think-pieces to celebrate Earth Day. My piece is about designers as hunter gatherers, and what we can learn from the explosive growth of cellular churches as we seek ways to expand the footprint of sustainable design.
An intriguing piece in the same series by Bill McDonough argues that “to move from improvement to revolutionary transformation, we need 5% of the human population committed to cradle to cradle flows”.
A curious contrast emerges here. As a lad, I was a paid-up Trotskyist vanguardist. Whenever the membershp of our party exceeded 100 people it would split, with great acrimony. These days, I advocate working with apolitical NGOs, corporations, and churches in order to achieve mass participaton in the transition to sustainability.
Bill, on the other hand, seems to be moving in the opposite direction. He quotes Mikhail Gorbachev – I think, approvingly – on the notion that “significant change can come from the actions of a few”. Shock horror: could there actually be political disagreement in the green design ranks?
