Two Metabolisms

A long time ago (2002), in Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart introduced the idea that we need to think about materials as belonging to two different metabolisms, namely a technical metabolism and a biological metabolism. The authors argued that waste predominantly results when the two metabolisms get mixed up and confused with each other in "monstrous hybrids."

It's an interesting idea that I believe is fundamentally right, but it seems that putting the idea into practice is (surprise!) infinitely more complicated. (An interesting article about McDonough and his complicated visionary status can be found here.)

But I'm not writing to talk about the practicality of zero-waste design, I'm writing to extend the idea of two metabolisms to energy consumption and energy efficiency. I've been casually grappling with the idea for a bit now, but I think I've come to something of a revelation with the aid of revisiting Cradle to Cradle.

Just like materials, our energy consumption can be thought of as belonging to two different metabolisms. One industrial/technical and the other ecological/biological. Energy efficiency makes sense only in the context of industrial energy, because industrial energy belongs to a metabolism whose primary input is carbon-emitting fossil fuels. With regards to the ecological metabolism, energy efficiency makes no difference whatsoever.

All the hoopla these days is about increasing the efficiency of industrial energy. I'm beginning to believe that we should really be focusing our efforts on first understanding and then manipulating the interaction between industrial metabolism and ecological metabolism. Okay, that's a bit confusing. But bear with me, this is an idea in progress.

Let's take buildings as an example. We could and indeed are beginning to focus our energies on how to make buildings more energy-efficient. Such efforts belong to the industrial camp. But if we stop thinking about buildings as devices to be engineered, if we get away from the industrial logic of energy efficiency, then we get a different picture and a whole set of different questions. How can we get buildings to partake in an ecological metabolism? How can we capitalize on natural energy flows (regardless of efficiency) to satisfy our energy demands?

In my opinion, we should be trying to maximize our dependence on ecological metabolism while minimizing our dependence on industrial metabolism. Rather than focus on the efficiency of devices, we ought to focus on how to be more a part of an ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think there is potential in exploring the different types of thinking that follow from the different types of metabolisms. Is it possible to reduce our dependence on industrial metabolic logic?