Quote of the Day: Michael Braungart on Population

Michael Braungart is co-author with William McDonough of Cradle to Cradle. He writes a very strange article in Abitare that includes a few gems, including this one about the population problem.

"But I can tell you, sustainability is boring. It is just the minimum. Like when you were asked: ”How is your relationship with your girlfriend?” What do you say? Sustainable? I’d say: “I am so sorry for you.” Design is the complete opposite of sustainability. We would still live on trees if we were sustainable. Sustainability just keeps the same things over and over again. Instead we should celebrate being human beings and our creativity, which is far more important than sustainability.

So believe me, we are not too many people on this planet. If you take the total weight of the planet’s ants on one hand and the total weight of human beings on the other, you’ll see that the ants’ weight is four times higher. It is not only the number, but ants weigh out human beings. Further they have a much shorter life span than we have. And because they work much harder physically than we do, the calorie consumption of ants equals about 30 billion people. It is clearly not about the fact that we are too many. Ants don’t produce waste. They don’t need to minimize waste. They produce nutrients. Again it is a design question."