The Buckminster Fuller Institute offers an interesting primer on Comprehensive Anticipatory Environmental Design Science:

“Humanity on Earth teeters on the threshold of revolution. It has to be success for all or none.  If the revolution is a bloody one, humanity is through. The alternative is a design-science revolution.”                

From the Forward and Overview: 

In order to have a significant effect on vital environmental and social issues, people need to acquire the skills that will allow them to act as planners and participants, rather than as spectators in the defining and solving of problems. If environmental education is to be relevant and effective, it needs to balance its approach between activities which alert people to the dangers of a reckless attitude towards the environment, and activities which that inform people how to design and implement positive alternative solutions. …

This primer outlines one alternative to present problem-solving techniques, an approach Buckminster Fuller calls “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” Design science is “the effective application of the principles of science to the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the Earth’s finite resources meet the needs of all of humanity without disrupting the ecological processes of the planet.”

Comprehensive means dealing with whole systems, the globe, all of humanity and all of the critical variables affecting the problems and needs of Earth and her passengers. Anticipatory means preparing for a crisis in advance of its occurrence and acting for both the present and future needs of humanity. Design is an integrative process – the synthesizing of parts into a whole. Science is the logical, systematic and empirical method of research and ordering of experience.