So, everything I enjoy about my modern life is killing me softly? Not only me, but the rest of the planet as well. That's the impression that I get from reading the first two chapters of Cradle to Cradle. The authors, Braungart and McDounagh, seem to enjoy elaborating on just what it is in my lifestyle that's slowly eating me up. There's no way to make what I've read so far seem positive. I know that the Industrial Revolution led to our current way of life. However, there's no real reason to make it seem as if the first man to hook a waterwheel to a spinning jenny committed to a deal with the devil.
In addition, the book treats the eco-friendly movement like a child's 1st grade art project. You can almost hear the authors saying "Awww, that's cute." while silently judging the work to be completely idiotic, smug and satisfied in their beliefs. It's certainly easy enough to sit back, write a book, and wait for the change to occur, bleating all the while when your ideas aren't taken to heart. These guys even mention Carson's Silent Spring and notice that her ideas took decades to be put into effect; even longer to bear fruit. Not every book author that comes out with a "radical redesign of society" can enjoy that sort of success. Silent Spring's suggestions were not entirely odious and onerous to our society as a whole. Refitting every factory, every industry to wash out all the junk in the production process AND produce something that can be beneficial to another production process when THIS cycle of usefulness runs its course? First of all, good luck getting companies to agree to that. Second, who could afford something with that much overhead behind the price? The global economy would throw a fit, and we would likely have a war on our hands from the mind-boggling market crash.
I usually don't appreciate being bullied by scare tactics. Cradle to Cradle has not impressed much else upon me. I'm only one third of the way through the book, and I can feel myself saying already "Ugh, here we go again", thinking back to The World Without Us. Though the authors manage to keep their organization together, the same "our civilized way of life is actually the Boogeyman" approach starts to feel trite the second time around.
In addition, the book treats the eco-friendly movement like a child's 1st grade art project. You can almost hear the authors saying "Awww, that's cute." while silently judging the work to be completely idiotic, smug and satisfied in their beliefs. It's certainly easy enough to sit back, write a book, and wait for the change to occur, bleating all the while when your ideas aren't taken to heart. These guys even mention Carson's Silent Spring and notice that her ideas took decades to be put into effect; even longer to bear fruit. Not every book author that comes out with a "radical redesign of society" can enjoy that sort of success. Silent Spring's suggestions were not entirely odious and onerous to our society as a whole. Refitting every factory, every industry to wash out all the junk in the production process AND produce something that can be beneficial to another production process when THIS cycle of usefulness runs its course? First of all, good luck getting companies to agree to that. Second, who could afford something with that much overhead behind the price? The global economy would throw a fit, and we would likely have a war on our hands from the mind-boggling market crash.
I usually don't appreciate being bullied by scare tactics. Cradle to Cradle has not impressed much else upon me. I'm only one third of the way through the book, and I can feel myself saying already "Ugh, here we go again", thinking back to The World Without Us. Though the authors manage to keep their organization together, the same "our civilized way of life is actually the Boogeyman" approach starts to feel trite the second time around.
