The Sustainability Imperative - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 218

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. (Aldo Leopold's
“Land Ethic”)
Nothing ever goes away. (Barry Commoner's admonition against the “throw
away” society)
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has
one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his
world. (Rachel Carson's fear of an impending silent spring ).

And even a few folks who are not likely to be called “environmentalists” have
supported the need for a sustainable and universalizable approach to society's
challenges:

Our ideals, laws, and customs should be based on the proposition that each
generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of
our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance
on to the future. (Charles Lindbergh, New York Times Magazine, 1971)
There is no silver bullet.

... The important criteria are reliability, ... is it

affordable? ... We need to use fuels that have minimal emissions of green-

house gases. ... (James Rogers, President and Chief Executive Officer of

Duke Energy)
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children
this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take
the first step into a thousand years of darkness. (President Ronald Reagan)

GREEN PRACTICE AND THE CASE FOR SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

In this topic we describe the approaches and techniques available to designers
to shape a more sustainable existence on Earth. An additional focus, one that is
unique among most design guidebooks, is to explain the underpinning science
that allows such approaches and techniques to work. We “close the loop” by
enhancing the designer's understanding of these processes and cycles of nature.
This leads to a deeper understanding of systems that operate once the design is
implemented and, ideally, forms a foundation for the exploration and discovery of
innovative ways to minimize risks to health and safety, increase design reliability,
and reduce our ecological footprint. With a better understanding of sustainable
processes, new strategies will emerge to supplant old ways of thinking, especially
replacing those antiquated templates that depend on the subjugation of nature to
achieve human ends.