The slogan 'Re-use, recycle and dispose responsibly' is a familiar one. 'Use less', however, should be our over-riding maxim. Manufacturers and their designers are frightened by the idea of using less. It implies that less will be bought and that profits will shrink. Yet if we disengage ourselves from this linear way of thinking, we see that quite the reverse may happen. In a world in which less is used and less is bought, products that are designed to last longer and are more carefully crafted and assembled will obviously need to cost more.
Most designers today don't seem to feel comfortable with a term like 'social responsibility' in reference to the built or designed environment. The Post-Modern condition can be characterized as a vacuum of conscience in which such socially responsible notions as fair housing, a clean environment, health care or access to services are considered somewhat of an embarrassment.
Product culture has been allowed to run wild, and has substituted trendy objects for community values, many of them provided by industry and their captive industrial designers, designers and architects.
The richer countries of the world should feel guilty for a statistic that has often been cited since 1970: 6% of the world's population consumes more than 35% of its resources.
A riveting fact is that individual sentiments of guilt or shame have done little to alter collective or governmental or professional accountability. Each new insight into the environmental crisis has led to a normalization of a Green Apocalypse - global warming, acid rain, soil and water depletion and the toxification of the land - all these have become accepted penalties for our high-entropy way of life.
The consequences, which seemed far off and uncertain, are now with us, and yet are treated with the same inattention as the weather.
The great threats which have contributed to this crisis - mechanized agriculture, dirty industry and rapid urbanization - are well-known. Roughly 70% of the energy used in the United States (which produces more than 25% of the planets greenhouse trace gases) is attributable to urbanization: this includes transportation, heating, lighting and power, and the generation of that power itself.
Yet it is stupidly optimistic to imagine what might happen if we don't know how it will happen. This is why concern for the ecology involves ethics and social responsibility. Using less, preserving for the future, conservation and softer energy sources are only drops in the bucket unless these activities are linked to a greater social process that can influence industrial design, industry and policy.
The question of ecology as a socially based priority asks that design and planning consider sustainability and social justice as reciprocal conditions - that saving the planet and saving the community become one - inseparable.
Most designers today don't seem to feel comfortable with a term like 'social responsibility' in reference to the built or designed environment. The Post-Modern condition can be characterized as a vacuum of conscience in which such socially responsible notions as fair housing, a clean environment, health care or access to services are considered somewhat of an embarrassment.
Product culture has been allowed to run wild, and has substituted trendy objects for community values, many of them provided by industry and their captive industrial designers, designers and architects.
The richer countries of the world should feel guilty for a statistic that has often been cited since 1970: 6% of the world's population consumes more than 35% of its resources.
A riveting fact is that individual sentiments of guilt or shame have done little to alter collective or governmental or professional accountability. Each new insight into the environmental crisis has led to a normalization of a Green Apocalypse - global warming, acid rain, soil and water depletion and the toxification of the land - all these have become accepted penalties for our high-entropy way of life.
The consequences, which seemed far off and uncertain, are now with us, and yet are treated with the same inattention as the weather.
The great threats which have contributed to this crisis - mechanized agriculture, dirty industry and rapid urbanization - are well-known. Roughly 70% of the energy used in the United States (which produces more than 25% of the planets greenhouse trace gases) is attributable to urbanization: this includes transportation, heating, lighting and power, and the generation of that power itself.
Yet it is stupidly optimistic to imagine what might happen if we don't know how it will happen. This is why concern for the ecology involves ethics and social responsibility. Using less, preserving for the future, conservation and softer energy sources are only drops in the bucket unless these activities are linked to a greater social process that can influence industrial design, industry and policy.
The question of ecology as a socially based priority asks that design and planning consider sustainability and social justice as reciprocal conditions - that saving the planet and saving the community become one - inseparable.