Sustainability

1. Class 9: Env History & Context CofC Fall 2010 Sustainability

2. Diamond, “The Last Americans” • Thesis: Civilizations prosper and ultimately decline because of environmental conditions • Population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production reach limits that outstrips resources leading to societal decline

3. Diamond, Misconceptions about Environment • Must balance the environment against human needs: actually the reverse—we depend on the environment! • Can Trust technology to solve problems (GMOs, hydrogen, biofuels, etc)”all of our current enviroprobs are unanticipated harmful consequences of existing technology” • Environmentalists are fear-mongering, overreacting extremists—the problems we face are compounded by ignorance and arrogance (lack of history)

4. Lynn White, “Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” • Main Point: Our solutions to environmental issues is determinant on how we see ourselves in relation to the environment. • Support: • We all change our environment or “modify its context” • Industrial Rev turning pt in our history • Combined Technology with Science to create a potent destructive force to environment • Baconian Mentality: “Earth as a resource” • Driven in large part by Christianity • “dominion over nature”mode of Anthropocentrism • Man created in “God’s image” is superior over rest of nature • Conclusion: Religion-driven attitudes have created indifference toward environment; technology/science won’t help either. It’s human ideas about nature that must change. • they must abandon "superior, contemptuous" attitudes that make them "willing to use it [the earth] for our slightest whim."

5. McNeil, Epilogue • “human history since the dawn of agriculture is replete with unsustainable societies, some of which vanished but many of which changed their ways and survived. They changed not to sustainability but toi some new and different kind of unsustainability. Perhaps, we can as it were, pile on unsustainable regime upon another indefinitely, making adjustments large and small but avoid collapse…most societies, and all the big ones, sought to maximize their current formidability and wealth at the risk of sacrificing ecological buffers and tomorrow’s resilience.”

6. McNeil • “with our new powers we banished some historical constraints on health and population, food production, energy use and consumption generally…but in banishing them we invited other constraints in the form of the planet’s capacity to absorb wastes, by-products, and impacts of our actions…Our negotiations with these constraints will shape the future as our struggles against them shaped our past.” (p 362).

7. History of Environmental Problems—Globally(McNeil, Something New Under the Sun) Part II

8. Historical Continuum of Global Environmental Governance • 1972, Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (differences b/w GS and GN) • 1982, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1994)—strongest environ agreement • 1992, Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and Development World (based on Brundtland Commission or WCED, 1983), Rio • Created sustainable development paradigm • 2002, Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Jo’burg  Thrust was implementation of Rio

9. Clashing Backdrop to 1972 Stockholm Convention Developed: Surge of environmental concern, primarily within nation Developing (G77): concern over preserving their sovereignty and control over their resources  poverty, lower life expectancies, illiteracy, sanitation, etc Indira Gandhi at Stockholm: “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?...How can we speak to those who live in villages and slums about keeping oceans, rivers and air clean when their own lives are contaminated at the source? The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.”

10. 3 Massive Historical Changes Social Triumph at a Price: • Economic Growth • Population Growth • Massive Increase in Energy Use (primarily driven by fossil fuels)

11. Economic Growth Per capita, the world economy has grown 120 fold since 1500; yet, individual (avg) income has grown only 9 fold.

12. Population Growth

13. Energy • 2 Costs of Energy Intensification: • 1. fossil fuel combustion generates pollution and GHGs • 2. fossil fuel use SHARPLY increased the inequities in wealth and power globally (McNeil, 15-6) Global Energy Use in 1800: 250m (metric tons of oil equivalent) Global Energy Use in 1900: 800m Global Energy Use in 2000: 10,000m

14. 3 Marked Results from 20th Century 1. Econ Growth: Exponential increased economic growth & living stnds (because of ↑ pop, ↑ tech) 2. Environmental Harm: Increases in widespread environmental degradation (from burning of fossil fuels for energy consumption & waste) 3. Inequality: Modern expansion, while liberating to many, brought severe inequality

15. Population & Environment Video • Population and Environment Video (5m) • Downsides to Economic Growth (Bill McKibben) (6+m)

16. Inequality

17. Global Policy Solutions • Global Policy since 1950 (post WWII) has been an emphasis on: • 1. faster economic growth (“rising tide raises all boats”) • 2. raising standards of living • Elite powerbrokers/nations erected new politics, ideologies, and institutions predicated on this principle. • Harnessing fossil fuels played a central role in widening gap wealth & power • RESULT: • 1. More environmental degradation than any pt in history • 2. More inequality between humans than any pt in history • 3. More complexity to problems themselves • 4. Ideology that technology is part of “progress” that will save day; abstraction of nature

18. 3 Waves of Environmentalism • 1. Conservation Wave: Began with conservation/preservation of ‘wilderness’ in early 1900s—setting up national parks, etc. (Muir, Leopold, Pinchot) • Wilderness: “biotic associations be maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was first visited by the white man.” • 2. Human Health Wave: Earth Day (1970) • Primarily Concerned with human health from environment--Rachel Carson (DDT) (beginning in late ‘60s); Air/Water pollution; population growth • Marked by fed legis & laws passed on enviroprotectction: Superfund, CWA, CAA, NEPA, Wilderness Act • In 1970, 53% of Americans viewed “reduction of air/water pollution as a nat’l priority” • Shift away from elitist, natural roots of enviromentalism: NGOs. • 3. “Beltway Environmentalism” (late 80s) • Responding to antagonistic Reagan Admin, which attempted to roll back all legis/laws from the 2nd wave • Enviro NGOs focused on priorities of Wave 1 to accomplish this, rather than controversial industry practices (e.g. animal preservation) • Conclusion: This created a “disastrously incomplete picture of environmetalism” b/c it left out human communities, cities, post-industrial landscapes, and challenges of sustainability. • EJ in the 90s sought to correct this problem

19. 4th Wave of Environmentalism?? • Defined more by the problems than by the attempt to change/solutions • Concern over megatrends: Climate change, biodiversity loss, urbanization, modes of energy, globalization of environmental problems • Interconnection of Environmental change to larger scale problems: poverty, social problems, education, disease, inequality (gender, class), conflict, migration/displacement, etc. • Interconnection of paradigmatic approaches to problems: human rights, development, security, • Debate centers over solutions and scale • Sustainability, climate adaptation, econ development, renewable energy portfolios, security • Scale: global solutions vs regional or even local