The environmental movement has a history of negative talk and fear mongering, people react better to positivity. Especially at a political level, politicians have to project positive futures for re-election and progress.
Post-Normal Science (PNS) means ‘the people’ have influence over what science is explored and accepted through lay peer reviews or citizen councils. What Guber and Lincoln call 4th Generation Evaluation, “stakeholders participate in the construction of the evaluation criteria”. In the case of ecological risk, participatory PNS means that people decide the levels of risk, prioritise risks and decide what risk can be lived with.
Design = Intentionality
It is the opposite of evolution, the choosing of what to make necessary, it refuses to accept chance mutation.
The long list of environmental risks we hear everyday (air pollution, desertification, sea level rise) are rarely contextualised or problematised and only presented as sets of facts — proven to have no lasting affect on behaviour.
Sustainability must be tailor-made and localised to allow people the capacity to bring it into their everyday lives. See ‘Fostering Sustainable Behaviour’ by Doug McKenzhie-Mohr.
It is not ideal to just design sustainability into everyday lives, this won’t change attitudes or long-term behaviour which extends into bigger steps and other areas of life.
Make people want the vision of sustainability rather than feel they need it.
Design is always human, the world is post-natural. “If sustainability is not a necessity, then sustainable design cannot be conditioned by nature”, highlights issues with biomimicry in which the human is choosing what elements of nature to replicate (post-nature).
Democratise sustainability and remove the typical ideal and aesthetic of it.
Create realistic but seductive ideas about a sustainable future (be sure to consider historical context).
Remove the idea that sustainability involves sacrifice. “If what you are sacrificing something for is really valued, then it is not really a sacrifice — you are just acting in accord with your values”
Designs must allow for voluntaristic affirmation.