by Gareth Hughes
What on earth is sustainability? I was recently asked to give a talk on sustainability to a group of architecture students and maybe it’s my fault that I wasn’t succinct enough, but it took nearly an hour to discuss. It must be one of the most common modern words used by politicians (Helen Clark, used it 33 times in a speech once), businesses, and environmentalists but is it just me, or are we all talking about the same thing?
This edition of Craccum is looking at subcultures, so I thought I’d investigate one that I’m part of – the sustainability subculture.
I wasn’t always a carless, vegetarian greenie. I grew up in Gisborne more boy racer than bohemian. In high school I cared more about cars, girls and parties than I did about the plight of the planet or what our politicians were doing about pollution. It wasn’t till I left home to study at university – and personally contribute my $30,000 to the more-than $10 billion national student debt – that I was exposed to the most radical political idea of the last fifty years: the Earth isn’t growing. Sure it sounds simple and obvious enough but when you stop and think: our economic system is dependent on infinite growth on a finite planet, its earth shattering.
It’s self evident but we don’t often acknowledge it. It is estimated that if everyone on the planet consumed at the average New Zealander’s per person consumption of resources and production of wastes, we’d need seven Earths. It has to be said, we don’t have six in reserve so we better try and get sustainability fast.
At university I found out scientists agree there is an urgent crisis going on, but that’s not always visible in our waterways, in our soil and in our atmosphere. I started reading and trying to find as much as I could about sustainability but the academic definitions didn’t appeal to me. From the Bruntland Commission’s 1987 definition that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, which I thought locked future generations into our choices, to the 2005 World Summit’s three pillars: ‘social, economic and environment,’ which I thought too vague, common sense and bland. I had a different understanding.
For me I define and understand sustainability by an image of the earth floating in the black void of space, perfect and beautiful. The photos that astronauts sent back in the 1960s showed the fragility of Earth – we don’t have a Planet B.
It’s all very popular to be doing your bit for the planet now. Celebrities are driving Prius’ and Signing On to climate action, SUVs are going the way of fur, and like diet or lite-options, many products now come with green eco-versions. Green in many respects has become the new black. However, I always wonder how deep this understanding or commitment goes?
I’d never want to trash society’s late but good-natured desire to do something, no matter how little, for a better world but at some point we are going to have to stop and re-assess because ultimately we can’t consume our way to sustainability.
We and our leaders have to face up to some truths. I have no doubt we will have to address this problem as a society and soon. Already we are right up against the limits. From energy, to food, and pollution to population we’re banging up against resource constraints and natural limits. The most urgent and pressing symptom is the threat of climate change. I don’t want to take up the page with graphs but all the indicators you look at from fisheries and social inequality, to atmospheric carbon dioxide, are trending the wrong direction. The alarm bells are ringing.
Why? Is it human nature to crash and burn as outlined in Jared Diamond’s excellent book Collapse that looked at unsustainable societies like Easter Island that collapsed tragically? Is it our religious and cultural background? Is it our economy? I’m optimistic and believe it’s not a fact of nature but I do believe the answer is a complex interplay between the three. However, with this week being Budget Week one particularly powerful driver is the economy, stupid.
The Government and every other party in parliament is addicted to economic growth and think it’s the height of virtue. John key talks a lot about ‘balancing’ the environment and economy but like Al Gore’s pictorial example of weighing up the Earth versus gold bars, you can’t choose the bars over the Earth. How would you enjoy all those lovely bars if you didn’t have a planet? The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.
Our whole economic system is predicated on infinite growth. We’ve seen in the latest recession how damaging getting off the growth path can be, especially for low income people and students. The way we measure our progress economically demonstrates our focus on growth at all costs. The number one measure, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), cares not if we are happier, healthier or safer – just that we are ‘richer’ in narrow self-defined terms. No doubt the Louisiana GDP has risen as a result of the catastrophic oil spill.
Even though we know the earth isn’t growing, could we stop growing or economy? Like that bus-with-a-bomb in the movie Speed, could we slow down without a catastrophic conclusion? It’s a challenge for my subculture. No one wants to hear much about using less, let alone voting for austerity, yet it’s clearly what we need to do. Energy and resource efficiency for all its positives without limits just prolongs the unsustainable use.
Looking to the future, what are the big ideas that we could implement? We firstly need to decouple economic growth from environmental destruction. This could be through pricing the negative environmental effects or externalities, better regulation, and genuine indicators that provide better measures. Many of the ideas exist already with Maori and other indigenous cultural world views An idea students need to be talking more about is intergenerational equity –fairness for our, and future, generations.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Mon, May 31st, 2010
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Good article Gareth. I remember in one of the many sustainability lectures I attended in my five years of studying geography asking the question of “can we continue to raise our standard of living/quality of life, while striving to achieve sustainability?”
Ultimately, everything comes down to that question. There isn’t a Planet B. Sustainability to me at least seems like it’s saying “don’t take out more than you put back in”. But can you do that while even keeping, let alone improving, our current standard of living, and quality of life? Is the only solution a lower quality of life? If so, that’s a pretty depressing future, but is there a “win-win” situation out there somehow?
Big questions, I know.
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Of course, the argument that future generations require clean air, water and soil has merit. But sustainability in itself does not entail that we need to retain wilderness areas or places of ‘natural’ beauty. The continued existence of these relies on our aesthetic tastes – which are varied to say the least. There is a real danger that the further we are removed from natural (non-human sourced) processes the less concern and ‘appreciation’ we will have for the natural world.
The overall tendency of modern technology is to move us further and further from a reliance on this sort of nature. Science is now almost entirely judged on how useful it can be to mankind. The intrinsic value of scientific investigation and discovery is virtualy forgotten in the rush to prolong our lives, make us more secure or more economically competitive.
Even most arguments for biodiversity are centred around the potential usefulness of the various species.
We need to both decide on what it is we value about nature and whether these values are important for future generations. Sadly, universal agreement on this is highly unlikely.
(The old Values Party was aptly named methinks: Attitude to nature is a subset of our values)
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Well, if ‘standard of living’ equates with ‘possession of consumer goods and services’, I think some reduction would be beneficial. Even Adam Smith lamented our ‘endless pursuit of unnecessary things’. It also seems that there is a level of affluence beyond which we tend to become more unhappy.
But quality of life, although somewhat more difficult to define, is intuitively more relevant. A good quality of life may in theory be consistent with a low standard of living. However contemporary lifestyles including knowledge and experience have changed our perception of what a good quality of life must include. Consequently, it may be that a contemporary view of the good life is inconsistent with a sustainable life.
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Gareth – Good questions.
Some answers:
Sustainable is
1. Banking and economics
a. Taking the creation of money out of the hands of the bankers.
b. Removing fractional-reserve currency from the economic toolkit.
c. Basing money on something that is not someone else’s debt.
d. Basing money on some standard amount of work, in electrical terms, some number of KwH of electricity delivered at a standard outlet in one of the main centers.
d.1 Consider the effect on foreign exchange and transactions.
e. Putting a price on the destruction of the commons of the earth and make those who would use it up before its time, pay heavily for their arrogance.
2. Physical resources
a. Cajoling, teaching, coercing and convincing people that unrestrained population increases are the way INSECTS guarantee survival of some insects, and we are not insects.
b. Having the food supply and energy supply available from renewables alone, to feed and clothe and shelter the population.
c. Having the tools and skills to maintain the renewable systems.
3. Illusion. As in, in the very very long run it cannot be done. Entropy always wins. You can bargain with it, but you can’t avoid it.
…and while there isn’t a “planet” B there IS an optional escape clause if we should build ourselves cheap access to space.
BJ
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Gareth, you nailed it, except in the final paragraph. We can’t reach sustainability by pricing mechanisms; we need a wholesale change in our lifestyles.
Sustainability is very, very simple. It’s about our behaviour. If, by our own behaviour, we bring about our own downfall, then our so-called intelligence will count for nothing. I refer to our own behaviour because some denialists tend to say that asteroid strikes, super-volcanoes and, ultimately, the death of our star means that sustainability is an impossible dream. However, to me, sustainability is about our own behaviour.
If we consume resources beyond their renewal rates (and, remember, non-renewable resources have a renewal rate of zero, whilst some important renewable resources – like fossil fuels – have a renewal rate well beyond what is meaningful in human terms) or degrade our habitat/environment/biosphere then we are behaving unsustainably.
Tweaks here and there won’t do it. If your information is right, that us Kiwis are consuming resources and damaging the planet at a rate that is 7 times more than a sustainable rate, then we need to drastically change our behaviour.
The pursuit of economic growth is madness but we seems completely incapable, as a species, to understand that. It seems that we will always wait for catastrophe (or collapse) before we learn the lessons (and, even then, the survivors will probably eventually forget those lessons).
You’re right, “the Government and every other party in parliament is addicted to economic growth”. I had hoped that the Greens might be an exception.
Tony
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In the long term Entrophy (as BJ says) will win out – but I wonder if Star Trek type Replicators can even defeat that (dream on).
In all my reading & research on the subject, no believable system of human existence has ever been proposed that includes the principal of Zero Growth. This is merely an acknowledgement of the ultimate victory of Entrophy.
Is it an inescapable fact that overall sustainability of any system can only be temporary & an illusion anyway, being composed of retraction in one area countered by expansion in another.
There is an old political mantra, ‘there will always be winners & losers’, & you’d be a fool to not want to be on the winning side more often than not.
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The argument that entropy wins out, in the end, is an argument for living unsustainably and it is a poor argument, since it will inevitably mean societal collapse and environmental destruction by our own hand. I don’t understand why anyone, except those in denial, would want that. It’s the easiest choice, of course, but only until it doesn’t work any more.
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So…. how do you, Gareth, define sustainability?
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