The Sustainability Imperative - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 217

chapter 6
The Sustainability Imperative
Warning : We get a bit philosophical in this chapter!
In Chapter 5, we allowed ethics to help to set the stage for green design and the
means for optimizing among disparate design criteria. Let us go one step further.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant is famous for the categorical imperative, which
says that the right thing to do requires that a person must “act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” 1
In other words, in deciding whether an act is right or wrong, it is our duty to
think about what would happen if everyone acted in the same way. This should
sound familiar to those of us concerned about the environment and public health.
In fact, it is the essence of sustainability. The only way to ensure that something
is protected for the future is to think through all of the possible outcomes and
select only those that will sustain a better world.
Kant's imperative is the rationale that underpins environmental mottos:
Think globally, act locally.
We are not going to be able to operate Spaceship Earth successfully or
for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as
common. It has to be everybody or nobody. (This was articulated first by
R. Buckminster Fuller.)
Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the
same boat. (The musings of Jacques Cousteau)
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of
the world. (The philosophy of John Muir)
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