Bio-Mimicry:

The obvious deficiency in our wasteful society has been our tunnel vision on the economic principal of creative destruction as a driver of modernity, consumption and economic growth. We have fixated on structures in consumables, infrastructure and lifestyles that are modeled on a "cradle to grave" architecture.

For the developed world is to continue onward with a high quality of life, and bring the entire human race forward into modernity, a new paradigm of systems and consumables must be implemented. The efficiency of new and existing systems for modern and evolved human living must be structured according to the principals inherent in nature and architected on existing biological systems. In pristine natural environments, noting is wasted in any life cycle. From micro-organisms to flora to fauna all things have a interrelation: whether that is competitive, collaborative, predatory or symbiotic. Nature knows no waste.

Humankind, however, has involved itself and spread beyond its natural balance in all ecosystems planet wide. It has dominated the biosphere, over populated, over consumed, crushed the biodiversity necessary for continued evolution,  predatorily manipulated resources and replaced naturally occurring balanced systems with monocultures that continue to produce waste and imbalance for the very same biosphere environment that we need to continue as a species.

As population concerns are likely to continue, the requisite clamoring for development and improved standards of living are unlikely to change. This situation creates an interesting conundrum for economics and governance. How are these increasing pressures addressed under the circumstances of increased demand, deteriorating environmental conditions, and diminishing resource availability? 

The answer is bio-mimicry: we need to examine nature's profundity, frugality, its utilization of closed and open systems, zero waste reality, cradle to cradle life cycles, its predation, collaboration, competition, and symbiosis etc, to create truly cradle to cradle systems of consumption, societal architecture, and personal conduct. 

We exist because of the evolution of this model, but like any dangerous highly mutable virus, we are expanding beyond the ability of the host to bear us further. For the sake humanity and our planet, let's hope we consciously correct our conduct and find our balance in nature again. The alternative is that nature does it for us, like all other times in our home's history, and largely executed via extinction. What goes around comes around.

The Emerging World: American Opportunity: Part 2

Rules of the Road for American participation in the development of the Emerging World:

Point #1: Environmental sustainability, cradle to cradle product cycles, and global energy program stability.

The climate is in crisis and the ramifications of climate change are escalating faster than IPCC scientists can accurately project. This poses a massive existential threat to mankind's survival, and the nature of our bio-sphere generally. The effects have only recently been felt, but they are a cascading and arithmetically accelerating series of interconnected events. 

The conundrum is that the developed world has no rights (nor should it) to deny the economic benefits of development to a developing world hungry for the same opportunities that we in America have capitalized on for a century. What to do then? 

The minority percentage of the world's population (that is the developed world), has already flung our planet into environmental chaos.  So how to fulfill our responsibilities to the rest of the human family and still save the habitability of our biosphere? How can we orchestrate and insure a continued high quality of life for all citizens of our planet, when we have so poorly mismanaged resource and environmental assets to this point?

The answer beautifully folds the a) fulfillment of opportunities needed for economic revivalism in America, post economic crisis, b) the need for a comprehensive global strategy to address climate change, & c) the fulfillment of the promise of the developing world all into one potential path to progress.

America needs to shift immediately (WWII style) to produce and aggressively compete with, the developed world in the creation of new green and clean technologies, applicable to all modalities of living. (separate thread of posts) 

America then needs to actively export those technologies and make their usage/implementation in different areas of the developing world part of an UN and national aide architecture that constitutes one component of our global diplomatic/ security/ entrenchment strategy.

This will require the revitalization or conversion of vast portions of the private sector and new thinking in the public sector. That particular thorny issue will be addressed in detail at a later date.