GP Radio: Oct 23
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
When it comes to being Greener, if you’re not on the cutting edge of technology and innovation, then you might miss the boat. For example, I thought I knew everything there was to know about material efficiency, cradle to cradle manufacturing – all that stuff. And then in waltzes in Tim Antoniuk with a revolutionary idea: if we can maximize the desireability of the objects we use, then we will reduce the chances of throwing it away.
In fact, his ideas would be great entries into the Buckminster Fuller Challenge: a $100,000 prize for the best idea that enables us to live sustainably. I interview Elizabeth Thompson of the Buckminster Fuller Institute about this prize as well as the legacy that Bucky Fuller has left behind.
For those unfamiliar with Buckminster Fuller, here is a short excerpt courtesy of Wikkipedia:
Fuller was concerned about sustainability and about human survival under the existing socio-economic system, yet optimistic about humanity’s future. Defining wealth in terms of knowledge, as the “technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life”, his analysis of the condition of “Spaceship Earth” led him to conclude that at a certain point in the 1970s humanity had crossed an unprecedented watershed.
Fuller was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of key recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had reached a critical level, such that competition for necessities was no longer necessary. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. “Selfishness”, he declared, “is unnecessary and…unrationalizable…War is obsolete…”
