My self appointed task is to bring back Buckminster Fuller’s important ideas and serve them up in meaningful bite size pieces, so that average individuals can use them to help change the world. I believe this is do-able, because true genius is actually quite simple. Take Einstein’s E = mc2 for example. It’s easy to understand if explained simply: E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass, and c2 is the speed of light squared, or multiplied by itself. Because the speed of light is a very large number and is multiplied by itself, this equation points out how a small amount of matter can release a huge amount of energy, as in a nuclear reaction. The core of Bucky’s genius is even more simple. It’s all about triangles. Bucky’s Synergetic Geometry explains that a triangle is the fundamental building block of the universe, the strongest structure in existence. Modern science is proving him right. But what difference does this big scientific idea make to “ordinary little individuals” like you and me? Can a basic understanding of the physical realities of the universe actually affect our daily life? The answer is yes, if, that is, we want to survive as a species.
Bucky knew that if we understood how nature worked, we could use that knowledge to design a world that’s livable for humans and also works for nature. Nature is, after all, the perfect designer. She has been on the job for billions of years. Any living thing that doesn’t abide by nature’s rules becomes extinct. This is the pathway that many scientists fear the human race is on right now. To change that path, Bucky called for an “Anticipatory Design Science Revolution.” It sounds like an monster of an idea, but breaking it down makes it much more simple:
Anticipatory – Figuring out which way things are headed.
Design – Creating technologies and artifacts that work with that future.
Science – Accepting the absolute truth and priority of nature’s principles.
Revolution – Turning things upside down if necessary to make it happen.
The good news is that Bucky’s Design Science is happening. Designers all over the world are using nature’s design principles to inspire breakthrough inventions. Solar powered butterfly wings are teaching us how to make more efficient solar panels. Shark skins inspire better bathing suits. Velcro imitated prickly burrs. It’s become a whole new exciting field of design science, called Biomimicry. The question is whether or not the “revolution” part is happening. Is it scaling up quickly enough? There is no longer a question as to whether or not fossil fuels are contributing to our increasingly precarious relationship with mother nature. As Bucky put it so simply, using fossil fuels is “like burning up the house to keep the family warm.” The fact that we are currently allowing, even subsidizing, more and more desperate measures to extract fossil fuels (through fracking and Tar Sands and building huge new pipelines across continents) is surely evidence that the revolution has not yet begun. As Bucky put it in a myriad of ways, because tax-hungry government and money hungry corporations have not figured out how to place a meter between us and the sun, we are not allowed to enjoy the vast supplies of free (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc) energy that could be powering the world.
A recent study by the Nature Conservancy shows that the older generation still puts the economy first, ahead of the environment. Younger people are smarter. Young people instinctively know that economic cycles come and go, but that environmental change is forever. Nearly 70% of teens say the needs of the environment should come first, ahead of the economy. If our leaders were listening to them, the revolution would be well under way.
Another of Bucky’s favorite rules of nature is leverage, which explains how even a little individual can have great power. No matter what your age or station in life, you have power to influence others. Even if you cannot vote, you can post, you can tweet, you can speak and you can influence those who can and do vote. Bucky would have loved Facebook. In fact, Bucky knew the democratization of media technology was coming. When I met with Bucky in 1982, he explained a couple of times that in the future “We would be able to vote just by thinking.” I gave him my stupid blank look, thinking he meant we would all soon become psychic and that government would read our minds and carry out our will. Social media brings us pretty darn close to realizing the same objective of communicating instantly with each other and the world. Now if we could only figure out how to get people in power to listen to the will of the people. But wait, there are signs that this is also starting to happen. There was the whole Arab Spring thing, where students used social media to spread the word about when and why and how to gather in Tahrir Square in Egypt. In the 2011 elections in Nigeria, Africa, an estimated one million young people on smart phones connected with one another, even in areas where there is still no electricity. When Planned Parenthood let the world know that the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s had withdrawn their funding, the outcry on Facebook and Twitter was so great it only took four days for the Komen Foundation to reverse its decision. The anti-slavery You-tube video called KONY2012, aiming to stop a brutal man named Kony, got a million views faster than either Gaga or Justin Bieber ever had. If Facebook users were a country, it would be the third largest, behind China and India. The United Nations, which provided that statistic, also predicts that virtually everyone on the planet will have access to mobile technology by the year 2015.
This is affecting media too. People don’t just tweet and post about what’s going on, we comment about how the media is covering it. This is creating a whole new check on our government. These kinds of ‘checks and balances’ were the whole idea behind America’s new government back in 1776. The three branches: Legislative, Executive and Judicial, would keep checks on each other. And the fourth estate, the Media, would keep checks on it all. But then the other great power, the corporations, took over the reigns. By using their dollars to buy legislative representatives who would pass the right (wrong) laws and appoint the right (wrong) executives and judges, the checks and balances have been weakened. Social media can help build them back up. We can be the fifth estate. We can take power into our hands every time we pick up our phones. We can voice our opinions louder, quicker and easier than ever before. We can demand that government support technologies to create a clean energy world. We can demand a focus on the environment to create a better working relationship with our undeniable boss, mother nature. And guess what? All this will also create real jobs and a better economy.
If Bucky were alive today, I think he would ask us all to make political expression part of our daily routine. Twice a day: Brush your teeth, comb your hair, and speak your mind. Speak out about something you care about. Put some of that time you spend on digital media to work for the planet and the future and your fellow humans. Focus on the environment, peace and justice, whatever you care most about. If even a small percentage of the (seven plus billion) of us started doing this, the revolution would be underway in no time. Just like Einstein’s law, such a big concentration of something very small could release a huge amount of energy. Let’s get this revolution started.
While conservatives quibble again over which precise words to use, please note proof of what they actually believe. Here’s an exact quote from A James Baker Energy Task Force report to President George Bush in 2001 (Wikipedia shows it as 1981): “Given the magnitude of the potential threat represented by global climate change, it is equally in the strategic interest of the United States to identify and implement cost-effective measures at home and abroad to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses at levels that will not lead to catastrophic climatic change.”
It goes on to say: “Many different constituencies within the U.S. government will need to work together to develop a unified and integrated energy policy framework with well-defined and orchestrated goals—a policy that addresses not only today’s energy bottlenecks, but also will seek to provide affordable, clean, and reliable energy supplies five to fifteen years into the future, in order to underpin long-term economic growth in an environmentally acceptable manner and to promote the security of the United States, and its allies” Here’s the LINK to the PDF Go to page 35, and please let me know if you go there and it has been taken down. (It wouldn’t be the first time.)
So just to review, this conservative Republican task force, sponsored by the James Baker Institute and the Foreign Affairs Council reported in 2001 that they knew and understood we had a serious problem. At the time, they said it would take 5 to 15 years to provide alternatives, which would, in their words, promote the security of the United States. That should have meant we would have made the transition by now, at the latest. They have known all along they were throwing all Americans and every living thing on the planet under the bus. Just for their own measly little careers and fortunes, they have been forsaking the future for the rest of us.
When will it be time for torches and pitchforks in the streets? What are we going to do, Mr. Obama? What are we going to do?
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Since everyone except the fossil fuel industry seems to agree about the need to phase out fossil fuels as soon as possible, and the industry, understandably, has no interest in committing suicide, it is probably time for some big crazy ideas.
Here’s one, inspired by my attendance at the amazing Fuller Future Festival at Southern Illinois University: Let’s use some carrots in addition to the sticks and incentivize the fossil fuel industry to develop solar.
Let’s wrap the sun in a big petroleum plastic bow, and give it to them, at least for a while.
We would offer them a free, long-term lease, of, say, fifty years, in exchange for their leaving fossil fuels in the ground; and instead developing solar, wind and other clean energy technologies.
Of course, it sounds crazy. Most good ideas do at first. But how hard would it be really? We could craft an agreement that requires outstanding performance by the industry in developing clean energy technologies. In exchange, we would continue to pay for all of this new energy, and keep giving them the billions (now trillions?) in subsidies which taxpayers are now paying in order to subsidize our own demise.
The industry would be required to commit to developing solar and wind with the same reckless abandon they are now putting behind fracking and tar sands and other desperate measures. Those ridiculously risky activities would of course cease at once.
The industry gets the profits it needs. The rest of us get to survive. It’s a win win.
As Bucky said, “We can’t keep burning up the house to keep the family warm.”
Let’s give away the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, anything it takes to buy our way out.
If anyone’s got a better idea, please share it. Time’s a wasting.
An amazing week all about bringing Bucky’s ideas back into the world, at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale. From left is playwright D.W. Jacobs, who wrote “The History and Mystery of the Universe”, Steve Brant, a leading management consultant who uses the Trimtab idea, and L. Steven Sieden, leading Bucky biographer. Each presented their views, works and plans related to Buckminster Fuller’s brilliant solutions for our planet. Bucky’s ideas are more relevant and needed today than ever before!