opinion: Addicted To (Snake) Oil

by Matt DeNoto

 

Just four weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this site extolling the virtues of ‘Cradle-To-Cradle’ design, in which products are planned from conception to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I mentioned the book Cradle To Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. At the bottom of the piece, The Golden Spiral’s editor placed a link to video of a talk given by William McDonough, in which he details a city being built in China founded on C2C. The city would provide food and energy for all of its inhabitants, without producing any waste to sully the surrounding lands. The video left me with a sense of wonder.

But it also left me with a sense of unease. After all, the book was published in 2002, and it ends with the authors optimistically discussing their plans with Ford to redesign their factories. The video was from a talk McDonough gave in 2005.

So…where are the results? Why are we not hearing about C2C on the news? What about the Ford plant? What about the city in China? Is there really so much of a bias against environmentalism that the world would ignore these amazing accomplishments?

No. There is not. The actual answer is more complicated than that, and while it may not have much to do with the environment, it has everything to do with nature. Human nature.

An intriguing and revealing profile in the November 2008 issue of Fast Company reminds us that the people at the forefront of the environmental movement are just as subject to the whims and weaknesses of life as anyone else. While William McDonough has done an excellent job spreading the word about the problems our world faces, his record with solutions is less than exemplary.

That city in China? It now sits abandoned and rotting. Not only did it cost far more than estimated, the design was fatally flawed. The city planned to use corn husks as biofuel to run the village. But the Chinese farmers who would actually be living there already had a use for the corn husks, as feed for their goats. When presented with this conflict by his crew as the village was being constructed, McDonough was evasive. He seemed only to visit when there was a camera crew following him around, planning to portray him as a visionary who could save the world.

And the reason you don’t hear cradle-to-cradle more often? Because McDonough’s company has the term trademarked, and they charge hefty fees for its use. According to the Fast Company article McDonough has been heard to say, ‘I want to be the Bill Gates of sustainability.’ The article makes the case that by this statement McDonough is not ju st referring to the way Gates is ubiquitous with computing, but also the way it has made him an icon. And rich.

To be sure, McDonough has brought attention to the Green Revolution and that is a good thing. He’s a charismatic speaker who leaves his audiences shining with hope. But he appears unwilling to open his tightly-controlled world up either to the rigorous scientific testing that refines and improves ideas like C2C (and keeps disasters like the city in China from happening), nor to the masses who would spread C2C around the world, but as a philosophy first and a marketing term second.

The article concludes with McDonough seeming to gain a sense of self-awareness. An acceptance that the way he has been trying to get things done for the last couple of decades is not working and may in fact be harming the overall movement. But whether that will be enough to convince him to change his ways will be up to him. Whether it will be too late for the rest of us to care will be up to us. Now that the Revolution seems to be gaining momentum, there will be new icons to take McDonough’s place.

The Revolution came about when people began to question the world as it was. The world that made toys with toxic chemicals, the world that burned or buried its trash, the world that puts profit ahead of basic human life. The Fast Company article serves as a stark reminder that we must continue to question everything. Especially those who would sell themselves as saviors.