I ran across this ted talk and the speaker Michael Pawlyn embodied what I think environmental/sustainability progress should be. The tone of Pawlyn's talk was much more uplifting than the average eco-friendly speaker. He certainly didn't skirt the negative aspects of our culture, Pawlyn focuses on the fact that processes that cause environmental degradation are the result of not having a closed system. By adding steps that help the environmental deal with our footprint, we can gain value from our endeavors and actually add value to the environment.
“You could look at nature as being like a catalog of products, and all of those have benefited from a 3.8-billion-year research and development period.”
While all of this sounds quite lovely, does it work? Pawlyn backs up his optimistic tone quite nicely. One of his projects is a huge greenhouse that is built over a functioning mine, to turn an otherwise toxic environment into a lush garden, helping the natural system recover while our society still gets the use of metals. For the project they  modeled the layout on soap bubbles, because of their ability to maintain structural integrity over moving landscapes. Instead of glass they used 3 sheets of plastic that were sealed and inflated so they pressurize. The weight of the dome weighed less than the air inside it. The design of the panels was inspired by polin grains and carbon molecules, using hexagons. The Eden Project is the only World Heritage Cite designed by a living architect. In the first 3 years of operation it created .5 billion pounds for the local Cornwall (UK) economy.