This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Consequence, by Saul Griffith.
There is little evidence that we will solve the environmental challenges of our time. Individuals too readily allow responsibility for the solutions to fall on larger entities like governments, rather than themselves. I find one very significant reason for hope amidst this largely hopeless topic. We are learning to measure consequence. Galileo said something akin to "measure what is measurable, make measurable what is not." We are slowly gaining expertise in measuring our impact in terms of carbon, energy demand, water use, and toxicity production.
Why is this hopeful? Now that we can say definitively that even the production of a soda bottle has a measurable (if tiny) increase in greenhouse gases, it’s hard for a thinking individual not to acknowledge that they are working against the things they say they want. After a century of isolating the product or service from its resulting impact, the tide is turning. We are making consequence visible. We will witness the first generation who can truly know the impact of everything they do on the ecological support systems that surround them.
My hope is that we will use this knowledge wisely. We will put aside old ideas of what is good and bad for the environment and ourselves, and will quantitatively make the changes we need with new foresight.
Saul Griffith is a MacArthur Fellow and new father who blogs at energyliteracy.com and designs solutions for climate change at otherlab.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment