Post-industrialism is a design problem
We cannot look back to solve the problem of an economic system that does not value the planet's health above human novelty. We have the system we have. We have air conditioning, that incredible wonderful disaster. We have personal IC vehicles, those glorious nightmares.
We need a system of economics that promotes medium-scale, plateau trajectory enterprises. We need a culture of design that promotes ecologically-neutral solutions as the bare minimum. But we have the world we have today, so the more difficult task of our generation (and many more to come, I suspect) is to study the past 200 years for where things went awry within the industrial revolution, and design a world that lets the verve of that era shine through in a manner that does not neglect the needs for clean air, clean water, clean soil, and kinship.
I love being a product of the post-industrial age. I love the privilege of writing on a computer, these miraculous doom devices, to make my living. And I have to believe that if we redesign the world from what it is today, we can find a way to live in harmony with this planet and still have the technology and innovation that I live for. I think it's about time I re-read cradle-to-cradle.