I read the International Herald Tribune over breakfast in a charming café in downtown Budapest the other day. The paper was filled with interesting stories, some looking back, reflecting on President Obama's big decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, others looking ahead to the climate conference getting underway in Copenhagen. It was all fascinating and quite terrifying. The President's Afghan gamble is a big one. The stakes for this nation are high, the personal stakes for our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president contemplating an escalation of the war are even higher. Though this military exercise is designed to improve the security of the United States, it's a risky strategy that is as likely to fail as it is to succeed. The paper described the President's intelligent process of debate and discussion that lead up to the decision—it was impressive. For the moment I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Much more of the paper was devoted to a discussion of the issues facing the climate diplomats meeting in Copenhagen. The issues at hand there are the biggest ones imaginable: the health and safety of the planet. The questions are not at all clear and the answers are much less so. The potential for conflicts are enormous, interests and histories and economies and resources are deeply divided. Though the debate about global warming continues, most agree on the need for change. To highlight the perils of global warming and the associated rising sea levels to their tiny island nation, the cabinet of the Maldives recently held an underwater cabinet meeting in scuba gear! As the country with the largest economy and the world's biggest polluter, the United States has a tremendous responsibility to change course. China, India, and Brazil, with their huge populations and rapidly growing economies, are feeling the pressure to create a new development model. Smaller developing countries want economic support for the changes they must make. Oil-producing countries are suggesting they should be compensated for the loss of revenue that would result from greener living. The plans under discussion are big and wide-ranging. They all involve international cooperation and the flow of money back and forth. Emissions targets are being discussed, strategies debated.
I am a designer and I am interested in how we can help design the solutions to these problems. Far from the diplomatic chambers, designers are creating change, inventing new ways of processing waste, running cars, harnessing energy, packaging products, communicating more efficiently with less, changing behaviors and outcomes. A few of these inventive minds and smart entrepreneurs are American, many are not. Again I agree with the President, who sees green business as one of the saviors of the American economy. As the world's richest and most polluting nation, we Americans have become way too complacent and lazy, and not nearly as creative as we need to be. We have to believe in the reality and feel the importance of all of this, to understand the implications and engage in a new way of living at all levels. The big plans stimulate the small moves. All together it can make a difference.
As I waited for my plane to Warsaw I saw a very small thing, something we Americans would never do. At the waste bin in the café, the trash was going in the usual place. On top of the stand lay a pile of small sugar packets, unopened and unused. Americans would pitch them along with the mountains of other trash; apparently Hungarians think differently. Why waste perfectly good sugar? They put them back into circulation and reduce the needless sugar consumption at this small café. It's a state of mind. We think supplies of sugar and other commodities are boundless. Hungarians know otherwise, they remember the scarcities. This mindset can change behavior, stimulate new kinds of thinking, and point the way to a new respect for our planet and its resources. So let's make the biggest of plans, but not forget the small things that each of us can do to preserve the planet for those who will come after us.
