We breathe in oxygen
and exhale carbon dioxide.
We should never forget
we fart methane, too.
There's a methane economy as well as a hydrogen economy. There's a methane cycle as well as a carbon cycle and controlling our contributions to that methane cycle could be crucial to our effect on global atmospheric chemistry.
8 of the TOP 50 LOW-CARBON PIONEERS of CNBC European Business companies are doing waste recycling and biofuels. 7 companies are doing solar. 12 companies, the largest sector, are involved with investment, finance, and carbon trading. Money talks and talks louder the more zeroes there are to the right of the first number.
Waste equals food is one of Bill McDonough's ecological design principles. Waste not want not is as true today as when Benjamin Franklin first published it. [Update the adage as a button, a bumpersticker, an elevator speech?]
Zero emissions, as in zero defects from a production line, as in W Edwards Deming's statistical quality control, as in Total Quality Management and Total Environmental Quality. That should be one of our goals.
You know, at least as a thought experiment.