If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.

In planetary terms, we're all downstream.

It would be nice if all that exuberance and abundance was connected to a deep ethos of planetary responsibility.

We have carbon in the atmosphere. That is a material in the wrong place problem. It's just like what I said about the lead. Lead in the biosphere is not good. Carbon in the atmosphere (over natural levels) is a problem.

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it?

The problem I have with carbon as a bad thing issue, is that people go out and say they want to be zero carbon. You see it everywhere.

It's going to sound strange probably. But I really like Frank Gehry's works.