1
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Cays, An Environmental Life Cycle Approach to Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63802-3_1
Chapter 1
Do Nothing: The Danger of Believing
in a World Without Limits
Abstract Human desire and ingenuity have shaped the modern world. The natural
human need to consume and fears of scarcity drive desire for more and more creature comforts. We must and can improve the way we consume.
The American Way of Life is often interpreted as an exhortation to freely pursue
individual happiness without regard for physical limits or finite resources.
Engendered at the end of the eighteenth century in a new nation, this worldview is
rooted in the pragmatic and powerful impulse to satisfy individual well-being at a
time when nature’s abundance seemed limitless. That idea continues to beckon us to
live large. It is still the context in which we consume nearly two-and-half centuries later.
The penchant for planning, making, and consuming is normal; it is what humans
do. Yet as technological innovation has removed nearly all natural limits to our species growth, it has also produced myriad, unintended, negative environmental consequences. Reversing these effects requires us to coordinate “best practices” to
guide our individual and collective decisions.
New and constantly evolving tools, data, and methodologies reveal our impact
on the planet as we design each new product and service. They allow us to quantify,
evaluate, and improve the environmental impacts. It promotes system-wide
approaches to innovate truly sustainable ways to satisfy growing global demand.
1.1 Living Large: The American Dream
Some of us live large. Not content with mere survival, we take in and give back
significantly more than we need to maintain internal physiological balance—
homeostasis—in our environment. Every day, more people around the world
embrace an ethos of overconsumption. Fueled by imagined, personal, future gains,
it is a hedge against suffering that expresses itself as acquisition, a desire for more
and more stuff. The starkest expression of this ethos is, perhaps, the aspirational
American dream. No longer confined to the culture that coined the term, it is magnified by at least three orders of magnitude as continues to spread across the globe.
While more than half of the earth’s seven billion people live on less than $10 per
day (Rosling et al. 2020), the number of people able to participate in acquisitional
pursuits, representing individuals in every country and culture, is still measured in
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Cays, An Environmental Life Cycle Approach to Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63802-3_1
Chapter 1
Do Nothing: The Danger of Believing
in a World Without Limits
Abstract Human desire and ingenuity have shaped the modern world. The natural
human need to consume and fears of scarcity drive desire for more and more creature comforts. We must and can improve the way we consume.
The American Way of Life is often interpreted as an exhortation to freely pursue
individual happiness without regard for physical limits or finite resources.
Engendered at the end of the eighteenth century in a new nation, this worldview is
rooted in the pragmatic and powerful impulse to satisfy individual well-being at a
time when nature’s abundance seemed limitless. That idea continues to beckon us to
live large. It is still the context in which we consume nearly two-and-half centuries later.
The penchant for planning, making, and consuming is normal; it is what humans
do. Yet as technological innovation has removed nearly all natural limits to our species growth, it has also produced myriad, unintended, negative environmental consequences. Reversing these effects requires us to coordinate “best practices” to
guide our individual and collective decisions.
New and constantly evolving tools, data, and methodologies reveal our impact
on the planet as we design each new product and service. They allow us to quantify,
evaluate, and improve the environmental impacts. It promotes system-wide
approaches to innovate truly sustainable ways to satisfy growing global demand.
1.1 Living Large: The American Dream
Some of us live large. Not content with mere survival, we take in and give back
significantly more than we need to maintain internal physiological balance—
homeostasis—in our environment. Every day, more people around the world
embrace an ethos of overconsumption. Fueled by imagined, personal, future gains,
it is a hedge against suffering that expresses itself as acquisition, a desire for more
and more stuff. The starkest expression of this ethos is, perhaps, the aspirational
American dream. No longer confined to the culture that coined the term, it is magnified by at least three orders of magnitude as continues to spread across the globe.
While more than half of the earth’s seven billion people live on less than $10 per
day (Rosling et al. 2020), the number of people able to participate in acquisitional
pursuits, representing individuals in every country and culture, is still measured in