The disposal of human wastes is a practice that has, of course, been around as long as we have. As long as humans wandered about in small groups, nature provided disposal facilities everywhere. But as settlements grew, some form of technology was required to keep the wastes out of places that posed dangers to health and welfare. In modern societies, waste treatment is an essential part of the infrastructure of settled areas, and carries with it large environmental demands for water and places to deposit the residuals from treatment. Low-flow toilets came into service as water consumption started to strain… Read More
Continue ReadingThe “Green” House Effect
The NYTimes carried a story on March 10 about a controversy over plans to build a very large home in Berkeley, CA. The plans which have been approved show a total area of about 10,000 square feet, of which 3,500 are for a garage. The owner, Mitch Kapor, is the founder of Lotus and has used his ample wealth for many philanthropic ends including many concerned with the environment. Perhaps he lost so much of his money in the crash that he plans to operate a public parking lot. The controversy here rose from the designation by a city board… Read More
Continue ReadingEngineering and Sustainability
My trip to Cincinnati and the conference on *Engineering Towards a More Just and Sustainable World* was most productive and provocative. Combining mostly academics from the engineering and the philosophy world is bound to be fascinating, and this event was indeed. My presentation was designed to make the concept of sustainability clearer than it is in normal conversation within either of these two communities. The same can be said of any mixture of a profession based on positivism and on some sense of determinism, that is, the world can be described by some sort of model and associated sets of… Read More
Continue ReadingAway for a Few Days to Discuss How Sustainability Impacts Engineering
I’m off for a couple of days to participate in a mini conference on “Engineering Towards a More Just and Sustainable World,” sponsored by the National Academy of Engineers in Cincinnati (my old home town). It’s part of a larger meeting–The Nineteenth Annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. I’m excited to see such an august institution take up this daunting issue.
Continue ReadingWhere’s the Care in the Health “Care” Debate?
As long as I have rediscovered the centrality of care to sustainability, I will continue for a few posts. I have been teaching a course at the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement focussed on the writing of Alfred North Whitehead and now a brief tour of Martin Heidegger. There is quite a bit in common between the two. Both are trying to explain how meaningful objects show up, rather than our seeing nothing but atoms and empty space. The other commonality is that both are so dense as to make reading a huge chore. Fortunately we are using a… Read More
Continue ReadingEmergence, Rules, and Sustainability
I spent a few days this weekend teaching my course on “Exploring Sustainability” at the Marlboro College Graduate MBA in Managing for Sustainability. I’ve written about this terrific program many times now, but I am always impressed what the combination of an enlightened faculty and a group of committed students can produce. I have only limited time allotted to my course in a very busy weekend. It’s an important moment as it’s the only chance for me to meet the students face-to-face rather than read their posts to the program pedagogical website. We are reading my book as the text… Read More
Continue ReadingChemotherapy for Climate Change
With the likelihood of any significant agreement on lowering greenhouse gas emissions coming out of Copenhagen small, attention to geo-engineering has taken a big jump. More than merely refocusing attention, this turn of events has catapaulted geo-engineering from the fringe smak into the center. I find this disturbing and fraught. In an article in Greenbiz, David Keith, one of the more level-headed people in the area of climate change, is quoted: Geoengineering, says scientist David Keith, “is like chemotherapy. It’s something nobody should like.” But if you can’t avoid cancer, chemotherapy may be your best option. And, if it becomes… Read More
Continue ReadingFrom Washing Jeans to Caring for the Planet
In my last post, I wrote about a survey comparing public perception of a firm’s greenness and their rated performance toward climate change. Of the nearly 100 companies in the survey in all sectors the public perception leader was Levi Strauss with a score of 86 out of 100, compared to their “actual” rating of 58. To put this into perspective, Liz Claiborne got a 42 in the perception and only a 7 in actual performance. As happens so often, I came across another article about Levi Strauss at about the same time. Green Design had posted excerpts from a… Read More
Continue ReadingPerception Is Reality Except for Green Business
I read a very interesting report recently about differences between the way the public perceives the “greenness” of companies and the reality of their green activities according to some “objective” scale. The report is the second published by Maddock Douglas, a Chicago-based business consulting firm. Here is the preamble to the report. A sustainable image can be a brand’s best source of competitive advantage. Although there are benefits to adopting sustainability measures for other reasons (efficiency or compliance, for example), building sustainable consumer-facing brands can provide real differentiation in increasingly commoditized consumer product / service markets. Change’s first MapChange study… Read More
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