Doing More With
Less
“Doing More with Less” was a phrase used by the industrial philosopher
Buckminster Fuller. He believed it was the direction that society was evolving
as our tools improved. Tools can be either software or hardware. Tools evolve
as knowledge grows, and Fuller believed that you could not learn less, so
knowledge would always be growing. So far so good and doing more with less is a
useful way of thinking about progress.
But with the increasing
complications of modern life, it becomes more difficult to know if the change
you make does in fact do more with less or not. And so I propose two more
truisms. You stand a better chance of actually doing more with less if you can
“do away with” the detritus of
superfluous consumption. A redesigned car that gets more miles
per gallon, is not as powerful as redesigning communities that do not rely on
automobiles and paved roads as the mode of transportation. Small changes to the
end products of our industrial society, will not get us to a point that is
sustainable. And so to the second truism; a lot of what is heralded as
environmental progress is what I call “Eco-porn”. Electric cars that run
on electricity from a coal fire plant is not a solution to anything. Making
ethanol from corn to add to gasoline takes more oil than just using untreated
fuel.
Be very wary of any
claims of new and improved technology. You have to analogize the total life
cycle of the product. I'm not sure if anyone could answer with certainty whether
paper or plastic is better. We need to decrease our use of fossil fuel to below
10% of our current level, (just a guess on my part). Which means a lot more
“doing away with” and less improving.
No comments:
Post a Comment