Nature does not compromise; a pelican is not a compromise between a crow and otter, it is just a pelican. Nature makes no compromises; any inefficient products are recalled to the manufacturer!

By skimping on design, the owner gets costlier equipment, higher energy costs, and a less competitive and comfortable building; the tenants get lower productivity and higher rent and operating costs.

I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.

Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own. Such sincerely held beliefs, peer pressures, and the harsh demands that the work itself places on time and energy all tend to discourage such people from acquiring a similarly thorough knowledge of alternative policies and the need to discuss them.

What if we could make energy do our work without working our undoing?

In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don't pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the one hundred or two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies.

Facts are more mundane than fantasies, but a better basis for conclusions.