| Foreward to the Chinese Edition of Cradle to Cradle |
from Cradle to Cradle: Exploring Design for the Circular Economy
Tongji University Publishing House |
| December 2004 |
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| "Our vision owes much to Chinese culture. The idea that humanity can have a mutually beneficial relationship with the biological world is the foundation of the 4000 year-old tradition of Chinese agriculture. Without a fundamental understanding of the regenerative, cradle-to-cradle nutrient flows that enrich the soil and bring new growth, without a keen appreciation for the many ways in which human participation in the landscape can support life, Chinese civilization would not have survived. And yet it has thrived. How inspiring to see that cradle-to-cradle thinking can become not only the common knowledge of a people, but the rich soil of a lively culture and a venerable philosophical tradition." |
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| A New Design for Human Enterprise |
| Speech to the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development |
| September 2002 |
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| "Perhaps this is the moment in our history when we realize that if today’s tragedies are perpetuated by our everyday acts, then our cultures have adopted a strategy of tragedy. Any enterprise that recognizes that it has become strategically tragic must begin to determine an appropriate strategy of change. Only a strategy of change will give human enterprise an enduring strategy of hope." |
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| Foreward to Leading Change Toward Sustainability |
from Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society by Bob Doppelt
(Greenleaf Publications, 2003) |
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| "What, exactly, is sustainability? Once you've defined what sustainable business is, how do you effectively pursue this new strategy? How do you transform your organization from top to bottom so that your vision of sustainability drives everyday decision-making and defines short-and long-term success? In short, how do organizations change and thrive? And what if we could move beyond sustainability, which suggests the maintenance of a damaging system, to a truly beneficial and sustaining model for industry that gives our children a delightful prospect, rather than simply a less terrifying one?" |
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| Address to the Woods Hole Symposium |
| 2003 |
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"I remember being here a few years ago when George Woodwell and I first started talking about the Woods Hole Research Center. 'Wouldn't it be marvelous,' we said, 'if this little Victorian summerhouse extended into the forest behind it and, like a leafed branch, started to act photosynthetically?' We imagined this little flower of creativity with roots in the last century aspiring for the 21st, a famously historic building with an anonymous structure in the background sequestering carbon, making 'food' from sunlight.
"We know, of course, that we have not reproduced a natural system, only learned a bit from nature's intelligence, so there is great humility in this."
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| Hope and Human Enterprise |
| Address to the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development |
| 2001 |
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"One of the wonders of human nature is our ability to hope. Even in the midst of tragedy we dream and think ahead and persevere. The great biologist Edward O. Wilson calls us 'the future-seeking species' and suggests that natural selection has made hopefulness a unique human quality, 'a necessary companion of intelligence.'
"Still more human, perhaps, is our capacity for acting on our hopes. We not only dream, we strive to achieve the dreams we imagine. Behind all human achievement, from the creative acts of artists to the building of communities, from the making and trading of goods to the work of nations, there is aspiration, resolve, and action."
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