Sustainability

1. Class 5: Personal to Global Maymester 2011 P. Brian Fisher Sustainability

2. Review of Ecol Analysis Experiences Wrap Up Discussion on Part I of the course Videos Agenda

3. Part I: History and Context Wrap up

4. Findings on personal footprint? Any interesting stories? Connection to environmental degradation? How do you (and your footprint) fit into the larger systemic drivers of the problem(s)? Ecological Source Analysis

5. “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). McNeil

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

7. “Limits to Growth”Meadows, Meadows, Randers, Behrens 1972 Projections: Limits 2004 Projections: Limits

8. 1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years (from 1972) 2. It’s possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and econ stability that is sustainable. The state of global equilibrium could be designed to meet basic material needs of each person on earth 3. If the world decides to strive for this 2nd outcome, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater the chances of success 3 Conclusion from “Limits to Growth”

9. E2 Series Story of Stuff--Consumption YoutubeVids

10. Part II: American Attitudes Wrapup

11. Conclusion: While many Americans consider themselves “environmentalists”, they show “little willingness to voluntarily restrain their behavior or to support specific fiscal policies that would result in increased levels of environmental protection” Why?? How important are incentives? Trust? Problems too complex? Too Interconnected? Berry/White: Wrong relationship to nature? Jamieson, ‘An American Paradox’

12. “Are existing environmental institutions up to the task of imagining the post-global warming world? Or do we now need a set of new institutions founded around a more expansive vision and set of values?” Shellenberger & Nordhaus--Death of Environmentalism

13. Environmentalism has become a special interest group, like any other political interest Current model of doing politics is largely based on successes that the environmental movement had in the early '70s. They were developed to use scientific and legal expertise to identify a problem, craft a very specific technical policy solution to address that problem, and then go hire communications specialists and lobbyists and organizers to go sell that technical policy solution. What must die is a particular conception of what environmentalism is and how enviro advocacy and campaigns are organized and run. Shellenberger & Nordhaus--Death of Environmentalism

14. Enviro approach has failed for 2 reasons 1. the values, mindsets, frames of reference, and belief systems Americans use to make sense of the world have changed dramatically over the last 12 years, but the strategies of the environmental movement have not. 2. We are faced with a set of massive ecological challenges -- global warming, global habitat destruction, global species destruction, deterioration of the world's oceans, the ozone hole -- that are fundamentally different from the kind of problems the environmental movement was constructed 30 years ago to address. On every one of these emerging issues, our national environmental movement has been strikingly ineffectual. “Death of Environmentalism”

15. 1. Americans’ environmental concerns are divergent and polarized. 2. Libertarian values are ascendant over communal values. 3. Issue complexity has paralyzed many Americans. 4. Men and women have some very different environmental concerns. 5. Environmentalism is hampered by anti-science attitudes. 6. Indifference is a major factor among some groups of Americans. 7. Competing priorities affect all groups of Americans. 8. There are three major environmental issue groupings among Americans. 9. The pocketbook is the most powerful leverage point for changing personal behavior. 10. Environmental responsibility is getting more personal. 11. Environmentalism and environmentalists have an image problem. American Enviro Values Survey

16. Deprioritize “environment” now, but in future, many Americans see it as a priority • Jamieson, “An American Paradox” • Nichols Institute’s findings—MOST VOTERS: • Believe significant progress has been made on EP • Perceive enviro as “long term issues that did not warrant the same priority as more ‘immediate concerns such as jobs and health care.” • Assume that enviro policies would have a negative economic impacts such as lost jobs and higher taxes. • By 2009, Gallup Poll indicated that for the 1st time in 25yrs, a majority favored protecting econ growth over the environment. Environmental Attitudes

17. Part III: Ecology of Commerce

18. 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." Hawken, Ecology of Commerce (1993)

19. “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) Ecology vs Commerce

20. “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) “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) Today, the liner process of industrialization creates massive amts of waste and its grossly inefficient, resulting a decayed earth. “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). What we Need to Do

21. Biodiversity loss is massive and widespread  “Every natural system in the world today is in decline.” (p22) Human systems exceeding carrying capacity (p24-6) Econ System = “immature” system “immature system” = aggressive & invasive weeds take over space…wasting energy, undermining diversity, with plants of lower quality and usefulness (p19) Mature system = evolution from “growth” to high efficiency and resource-conserving  “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.” 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). “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) Birth of Death

22. Reduce energy/resource consumption by 80% in next half century Secure, productive employment for all "Be self-actuating as opposed to regulated or morally mandated.” Honor market principles Be more rewarding (than our present way of life) Exceed sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and ecosystems to their fullest biological capacity.” Rely on current income “Be fun and engaging, and strive for an aesthetic outcome." Hawken’s 8 Elements to Solve Enviro Crisis