We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem

We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?

Honor commerce as the engine of change.

Peter Drucker has pointed out that it is a manager's job to "do things right." It is an executive's job to make sure "the right things" get done. Even the most rigorous eco-efficient business paradigm does not challenge basic practices and methods: a shoe, building, factory, car, or shampoo can remain fundamentally ill-designed even as the materials and processes involved in its manufacture become more "efficient."

You need that same creative force that exists in a building like Disney [Walt Disney Concert Hall] to actually tackle that most prosaic of problems.

I'd rather have that dialogue right now than only the other one, which is starting at such a basic level, that we start rearranging stuff on the Titanic, trying to be less bad with ordinary stuff.

Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.