Download Defining Sustainability

Sustainability
Class 7: Defining Limits: Lessons for Sustainability
POLS 319
Maymester 2011
P. Brian Fisher
Agenda
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Lessons from Analysis #2
Hawken, Ecology of Commerce
What is Sustainability?
Student vids
Part I: Ecology of Commerce
Hawken, Ecology of Commerce (1993)
• Thesis: Biosphere is being destroyed by our industrial society
and economic system, but same elements that destroy the
biosphere—markets and gov’ts, are the solution (if can
replace “greed”)
• “I have come to believe that we in America and in the rest of
the industrialized West do not know what business really is,
or, therefore, what it can become.” (p1)
• "The promise of business is to increase the general well-being
of humankind through service, a creative invention and
ethical philosophy. Making money is, on its own terms, totally
meaningless, an insufficient pursuit for the complex and
decaying world we live in. We have reached an unsettling and
portentous turning pt in industrial civilization.” (p1)
• The current economic system is not "the inherent nature of
business, nor the inevitable outcome of a free-market system.
It is merely the result of the present commercial system's
design and use."
Ecology vs Commerce
• “there is no polite way to say that business is destroying
the world.” (p3)
• An oxymoron that speaks to the gap between how earth
lives and how we now conduct our commercial lives.
• “We don’t think of ecology and commerce as compatible
subjects. While much of our current environmental policy
seek a ‘balance’ between the needs of business and the
needs of environment, common sense says there is only
one critical balance and one set of needs: the dynamic,
ever-changing interplay of the forces of life” (p3)
• Ecology of commerce is the unity of them into “one
sustainable act of production and distribution that mimics
and enhances natural processes” (p3)
What we Need to Do
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“Constructive changes in our relationship to the environment have
thus far been thwarted because business is not properly designed
to adapt to the situation we face.” (p5)
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“having expropriated resources from the natural world in order to
fuel a rather transient period of materialistic freedom, we must
now restore no small measure of those resources and accept the
limits and discipline inherent in that relationship. Until business
does that, it will continue to be maladaptive and predatory.” (p6)
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Today, the liner process of industrialization creates massive amts
of waste and its grossly inefficient, resulting a decayed earth.
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“the economics of restoration is the opposite of industrialization.
Industrial economics separated production processes from the
land, the land from people, and, ultimately, economic values from
personal values…in a restorative economy, viability is determined
by the ability to integrate with or replicate cyclical systems, in its
means of production and distribution (p11).
Birth of Death
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Biodiversity loss is massive and widespread  “Every natural system in the world
today is in decline.” (p22)
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Human systems exceeding carrying capacity (p24-6)
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Econ System = “immature” system
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“immature system” = aggressive & invasive weeds take over space…wasting
energy, undermining diversity, with plants of lower quality and usefulness (p19)
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Mature system = evolution from “growth” to high efficiency and resourceconserving  “climax systems comprise an assoc of organisms that reach a state
of equilibrium which leaves the habitat largely unchanged…they are more diverse,
stable and complex communities, and are thus more resilient.”
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David Wann: “the present American culture is still the bare field full of colonizing
weeds, struggling toward something more sophisticated, interwoven and
permanent. Until now, we’ve consistently chose the resource-hungry path of least
resistance. (p20-1).
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“Because richer northern countries do not see or experience the impact they have
on their poorer southern nations, we do not realize what a powerful and
destructive impact our demand on carrying capacity is having.” (p26)
Hawken’s 8 Elements to Solve Enviro Crisis
1. Reduce energy/resource consumption by 80%
in next half century
2. Secure, productive employment for all
3. "Be self-actuating as opposed to regulated or
morally mandated.”
4. Honor market principles
5. Be more rewarding (than our present way of
life)
6. Exceed sustainability by restoring degraded
habitats and ecosystems to their fullest
biological capacity.”
7. Rely on current income
8. “Be fun and engaging, and strive for an
aesthetic outcome."
Part II: Defining Sustainability
Defining Sustainability
• Sustainability Explained Animation
(2m)
Care Instructions for
Sustainability
• Sustainability: “things can keep going,
and sustain themselves, and keep going
into the future.”
• Planet Sustainability: “can continue to do
what it was designed to do”
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Reduce dependence on fossil fuels
Reduce dependence on chemicals
Reduce destruction of nature
Remove barriers to meeting basic needs
Our Enviro History
• In NA, mainstream enviro discourses
have “failed to halt advancing enviro
degradation. Even more, these same
discourses have failed to halt
advancing social degradation. In spite
of our overall optimism, we hold that
things are getting worse, not better,
and the trajectory of history is directly
tied to, if not entirely caused by, the
development of liberal capitalism as a
means of production.”
History  Sustainability
• Our shared understanding of
“sustainability” is less a scientific concept
than an historical discourse through which
we might imagine more hopeful futures.”
• We need “new ways of talking about
sustainability that will galvanize diverse
and experimental forms of action b/c it is
through such experimentation that we
will find the vocabulary we need.” (p4)
What is Sustainability?
• Sustainability = resource sufficiency and
functional integrity
• Non substantive Sustainability: much of
discourse is based on political, ethical, and
cultural concerns—that have nothing to do with
above (sufficiency)
• Jamieson: Sustainability does little to explain
human activities in terms of philosophy (moral
obligations) and/or motivational power (little
effect on behavior)
• Sustainability must be more than optimization
(or well being over time), it must be a by product
of resource sufficiency and functional integrity of
the system
Studying and Employing
Sustainability
• Resource Sufficiency = Econ sustainability
• Functional Integrity = Ecological
sustainability
• Equity Fairness = Social Sustainability
• Environ + Soc Justice?
• Sustainability as social mvmt
• Sustainability = interests of labor,
marginalized
• Sustainability = storyline contested in locale
Thompson’s conclusion
• Social Sustainability (or non-substantive
sustainability) amount to merely normative
commitments and is insufficient.
– Need empirical factors like resources &
functionality
• Yet, sustainability as social impetus is
important and compensates for its
vagueness.
• Believes that storylines are important, esp
around democracy and social justice
Beyond Limits to Growth
Heinberg
• 1. Rapidly Reduce dependence on fossil fuels
• 2. Adapt to the end of economic growth: reworking our
current economic system without “continuous
expansion”
• 3. Design and Provide basic needs for 7billion people
(and constrain pop growth (e.g. education)
• 4. Address environmental consequences—first and
foremost is GCC
• Post Carbon Transition: “must entail the thorough
redesign of our societal infrastructure, which today is
utterly dependent on cheap fossil fuels…This difference
will be reflected in urban design, land use patterns, food
systems, manuf output, distrib networks, job mkt,
transportation, health care, tourism, etc…It will also
require a fundamental rethinking of our financial and
cultural systems.” (p10-11)
What is Sustainability
Heinberg
• Heinberg’s five axioms
• 1. Any society that continues to use critical
resources unsustainably will collapse
• 2. Pop growth and/or growth in rates of
consumption cannot be sustained
• 3. To be sustainable, the use of renewable
resources must proceed at a rate that is less than or
equal to rate of natural replenishment
• 4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewables
must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the
rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the
rate of depletion
• 5. Sustainability requires that substances
introduced into the enviro from human activities be
minimized and rendered harmless to the biosphere
Vids
• Visions of Sustainable Future