If it exists, it is possible. (William McDonough)
The cases of ethical invention in this chapter suggest some additional generalizations about invention, design and discovery.
1. Invention and innovative design are often shared activities--successful inventors create networks.
Who invented the atomic bomb? Robert Oppenheimer? He created a network at Los Alamos that built the actual device, but he and his team depended on a huge network of others, including other major laboratories like Hanaford and Oak Ridge, military leaders like Leslie Groves, scientific discoveries made by Lise Meitner and others and catalysts like Leo Szilard.
Who created Climatex Lifecycle? Albin Kaelin’s firm, Rohner Textil, owns the patent, but he did not invent the fabric alone. William McDonough supplied the vision that inspired the project. Michael Braungart added expertise on the dyes and materials. Susan Lyons was a key catalyst, collaborator and financer.
There is no single inventor in either the invention of the atomic bomb or an environmentally intelligent fabric--no Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison. A.C. Rich, the one true solo inventor we have considered in this chapter, was also the least successful. In contrast, what SELF invents is a network and a financing scheme--it uses standard, off-the-shelf technology in photovoltaics.
2. Moral imagination is an important way of coming up with new ethical frameworks and designs that will make a better world.
What does it mean to make a better world? In order to even think about this issue in a non-dogmatic fashion, one has to engage in moral imagination. Similarly, creative inventors have to be able to envision new mental models. An analogy to nature lies behind both Bell and Hawken’s visions for new technologies. In the former case, the result was the telephone, in the latter, a new model for how business ought to be conducted. The goal of both is to make a better world, but only in the latter is this goal articulated in a moral framework.
3. Ethical inventors have to develop or use a moral framework as well as technology, and make sure all members of a network own this framework.
Dow Corning had a Business Conduct Code and made great efforts to insure that all employees ‘owned’ it. However, this conduct code was seen as having nothing to do with safety issues in design: these would be settled by scientific testing. The Climatex Lifecycle network shows how environmental intelligence can be integrated into design. Much of this intelligence concerns the avoidances of threats to human health. Similar frameworks need to be developed as codes of conduct for the design of medical devices.
Al Rich had an ethical design idea, but not a detailed framework like the McDonough/Braungart protocols or TNS. Furthermore, he was not able to successfully instill his personal code of conduct in all salespeople or in SMUD.
Climatex Lifecycle embodies an ethical framework and was created by a heterogeneous network. At one point, one of Kaelin’s top employees made a decision that threatened this network; this employee had not internalized the values. In fact, heterogeneous networks like this are always being threatened by this kind of unintentional defection, which sometimes contains the germ of creativity: Kaelin’s errant dyemaster was right about the new chemical, and it was eventually adopted. It will be interesting to see how this network deals with increasing success, which sometimes drives network members to fight over who really deserves the credit for a new invention.
SELF also has a framework which it embodies in a network, not a device. In this case, not all the members of the growing network have to buy the philosophy--they just want power. SELF has to build ethics into the mode of delivery. Similarly, it is possible that Climatex Lifecycle might be bought by customers primarily for reasons of aesthetic and performance, not because it is ‘green’. But in both cases, the goal is to seduce people into environmental thinking by having them use environmental products, seeing their quality demonstrated every day. Ultimately, DesignTex and SELF seek to bring about a change in thinking via an existence proof experienced directly by customers who, in turn, will inspire other efforts to create similar products.
4. Ethical invention will provide models by transforming reflective cognition into experiential:
As noted at the end of Chapter 3, cognition is in the world; intelligence is embodied in devices. Similarly, environmental intelligence is embodied in devices like Climatex Lifecycle and energy networks like the one created by SELF.
Let us consider the framework created by McDonough and Braungart, for example. McDonough talks about design as a function of five factors: cost, performance, aesthetics, environmental intelligence and social justice. In conversation, Michael Braungart emphasized that environmental ethics should really be integrated into our idea of quality design. This suggests that McDonough’s last two categories should really be part of the first three. Environmental and social damage should be part of cost; designs that benefit the environment and others are more aesthetic; cradle to cradle designs perform better.
5. Trying to solve one global problem will involve trying to solve all of them.
The Donner party realized, too late, that they were not going to be able to cross the Rocky Mountains--the living ended-up eating the dead in order to survive. The image that sticks in my mind is of an 18-month old baby, crying by the half-eaten corpse of his mother. The people in this party were decent folks, but the ruthless logic of survival drove them to cannibalism.
Similarly, the Polynesians who settled Mangareva found a paradise—a lagoon rich with shellfish that also had trees and soil suitable for farming. All the island lacked was stone for tools, and that was available on nearby Pitcairn Island. But gradually, over a period of several hundred years, the islanders deforested their paradise, thereby losing much of their topsoil and their abilitiy to make canoes with which to fish. Modern ancestors of the few survivors describe civil war over the few remaining bits of arable land and widespread cannibalism, with the living digging up the corpses of the dead (Diamond, 1997).
The Donner party had backed itself into this box by a series of bad choices, including taking an experimental route south of Salt Lake on the promises of a guide, who left them in a lurch. Similarly, the Mangarevan islanders could have prevented disaster by exercising a bit of foresight.
Those who say global problems are greatly exaggerated may be right, and certainly some environmental extremists are guilty of crying wolf too often. However, long-term anticipation of possible consequences is the way to avoid getting stuck in a Donner party dilemma at a future date. The Donner party was warned not to take the new route by someone who had traveled it. Similarly, our species is often warned by its own behavior. Hiroshima was a kind of warning. The fact that there has been only one atomic war gives one hope, though the continued spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world is cause for concern.
The sustainability frameworks discussed in this chapter are an attempt to avoid a Donner party scenario, in which an overpopulated world faces limited resources and extensive pollution. Even if one takes the view that global resources are limited more by intelligence than by what is in the ground, the kind of intelligence we need must include this kind of anticipation of long-term consequences.
According to Mark Sagoff, in order to save the environment, we will have to eliminate poverty . Technology can help. SELF is an example--bringing inexpensive power to rural areas will increase the opportunities for education, sanitation and communication with the outside world. One of SELF’s goals is to gradually transfer the manufacture and maintenance of solar panels to local entrepreneurs.
On the face of it, Climatex Lifecycle may seem to have nothing to do with this poverty problem; it is a high-end furniture fabric that will be used only by the affluent. But it is manufactured by a small textile mill that is closely integrated with its community. The Rohner mill might be an example of the kind of business that could take off in developing countries, using materials like wool and ramie that could be grown locally.
War is another cause of Donner party scenarios that exist all over the world today. Refugees in Zaire and Rwanda are fleeing tribal wars. Refugees from Albania are fleeing a corrupt, feudal government that has collapsed into economic chaos. These examples illustrate the link between poverty, dictatorship and tribalism. The kind of dislocations that occur in Zaire and Albania have terrible environmental consequences.
The obvious point is that environmental sustainability is a challenge that cannot be tackled in isolation. Technology alone cannot solve problems like poverty and war. But the same kind of moral imagination that can produce an intelligent fabric could also produce an intelligent future. The first step in moral imagination is recognizing that one has assumptions about reality which constitute a view, or perspective. When someone refers to the realities of the marketplace or the inevitability of poverty, they are confusing a view with reality. Their view may correspond to much of the world as it is now constituted, but not necessarily all possible future worlds.
The major lesson of this chapter is that we are not obligated by the realities of business or politics to design a future that includes war, poverty and environmental degradation. In the immortal words of Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
This page was last edited: Wednesday, July 14, 1999