Ray Anderson, self-proclaimed radical industrialist and forward thinker in the realm of sustainability, delivered a keynote speech to attendees at West Coast Green in San Francisco. Anderson's presentation covered the advances of the first industrial revolution, and how humans are an intricate part of both the "technosphere" and the "biosphere." Anderson offers that the "technosphere" is an integral part of human existence and the industrial system, and that a more comprehensive definition of sustainability is the balanced and continued existence of both the technosphere and the biosphere.
Ray Anderson references the environmental impact equation from The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich:
I = P x A x T
Where:
- I = Environmental Impact
- P = Population
- A = Affluence
- T = Technology
Explained simply, the formula states that the number of people, multiplied by their wealth and their use of technology, determines their total environmental impact. In these excerpts, Ray Anderson covers the effect of technology on our environmental impact, and asks "what confines 'T' to the numerator?" Ray Anderson posits that the simple environmental impact equation is deceptively accurate at describing the impact of the current industrial system — which hails from the early 1800's.
Ray Anderson speaks of how these early extractive technologies led to a pervasive "take-make-waste" system that has taken from the environment without consideration of how human consumption would exceed what nature could support as population grew. Anderson realized that the environmental impact equation needed to be rewritten, which would call for nothing short of a second industrial revolution.
Stay tuned for additional excerpts from keynotes and other presentations from West Coast Green.
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