Hope for The Future

Many people have suggested possible steps in developing sustainable communities and ultimately a sustainable globe.  Paul Hawken is one example.  Hawkin along with Hunter and Amory Lovins have developed 12 Steps to Sustainability in their book, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.  This focuses on changing the current structures in a top down approach and policy changes by: changing the tax system, removing business from the government, voting with your dollars and taking back the charter.

Other idealist such as Peter Joseph, the creator of the Zeitgeist film series, and Jacque Fresco, founder of the Venus Project, focus on creating an image of a sustainable world and what momentum we need to move forward.  Joseph and Fresco focus on remedying social issues that will in turn remedy the environmental issues by creating a resource based economy.  The video above will give you a debriefing of what a resource based economy entails.  In my blog on Powering the Sustainability City, I presented a video speech of Prince Charles who offers a definition of the German word “Zeitgeist”.  He defines zeitgeist as the current realisation and change in the world.  These approaches will be looked at more in depth after discussing “The Natural Step” used in planning sustainability.

The Natural Step involves four components:

·         The funnel,

·         System Conditions,

·         Implementation Strategies and

·         Basic Science.

In order to create sustainable solutions, it is imperative to determine where we are in the funnel.  Are we following the unsustainable direction and how do we get to sustainability?  What are the steps to sustainability?  This funnel visualizes the need for a clear and compelling vision to sustainability as determining the steps to sustainability is more effective if done by backtracking.   I believe this step is where the Venus Project has excelled.  They present an unique and optimistic view of sustainability.  There website is full of computer generated images of what they believe is the future of sustainability and descriptions of what this new world would be like; it’s very easy to jump on board.  A world free of social problems, where technology replaces people in useless jobs and innovation is motivated by social and environmental conditions rather than money. 

Our future cities according to Fresco

Implementation follows the A, B, C, D approach:  Awareness, Baseline mapping, Clear vision and Down to Action.  The Venus project has created baseline mapping and is working on aligning a common understanding through social media (the Zeitgeist film series).  They have also created a clear vision of what they would like to see in global sustainability.  Their progress is limited by the down to action step.  They have not addressed the steps to take to a sustainable future and so the project’s feasibility is hard to understand.  In addition, Fresco’s lack of credentials leaves him unable to be respected by the scientific community.  This leaves the project subject to criticism.  

Fresco believes that the economy creates scarcity, when in actuality the world’s resources are abundant and by removing the monetary economy these resources can be made accessible to all people.  The criticisms lie in the technological solutions, as technology creates an increased detachment from the natural world which increases the destruction of the environment.  The tragedy of the commons may result in a world where natural resources are available equally to everyone.  

The Venus project has its criticisms, but it leaves optimisim for the future.  Following the natural step, sustainable solutions can be created and with the support of the global populations a sustainable globe has the potential to be created.   

Sustainability and Communities

Bringing the focus back on to the community is essential to sustainable development.  This limits the scale upon which the development would be instated.  Often harmful environmental effects are related to the size of the development. By limiting the size, the environment will be more prone to overcome the strains placed upon it.

By keeping development confined to the size of a community also increases the public’s awareness of the economic, social and environmental impacts as the community is generally directly involved or affected.  Often the residents are employed by the businesses and industries located in the community.  By engaging the residents and creating distinctive boundaries between communities, the residents are given a sense of pride and invested interests in sustainability. 

At the community level, sustainable development can inspire innovation in technology and produce social benefits.  These innovations are generally scale and place specific and can lead to an aggregation of sustainable solutions.  The solutions will generally be readily adopted as they are created by and for the community.  The adoption of a series of place specific solutions allows change to take place at a faster rate than globally or individually.

A sustainable community should be innovative, proactive, thriving and adaptable or resilient.  Communities generally share an overall goal, ideas and interest in development and thus change can take place faster as they do not run into the conflicts of interest seen on a global scale.

One example of a community working towards sustainability, that is particularly close to home is the group called “Save Mary Lake”.  Every Sunday, the community gathers to save Mary Lake and you can see bikes and cars lined up and down Munn Road.  They represent the concerned Highlands residents who believe in protecting the endangered Dry Coastal Douglas fir ecosystem surrounding Mary Lake.  The foundation must raise $4.5 million dollars to save this ecosystem from residential development.  The Mary Lake property provides one of the last green links between Gowlland Tod Regional Park and Thetis Lake Regional Park.  This link is a part of the sea-to-sea greenbelt and is essential for wildlife conservation.  Their ultimate goal is to save 65, 000m² of greenbelt and to date they have conserved 18,706m².  Without community involvement and all of the donations this could not be possible.  Currently, they are reaching out to the extended global community through an online campaign. This lake will most likely be protected from residential development as there are many people who are passionate about its preservation have come together to create change.

The Highlands district is not a virgin to inhibiting development; many communities have joined forces to ensure there are no commercial developments in the ecologically sensitive area and that residential development is limited.  This is not just for environmental reasons as seen above when saving Mary Lake, but also for social and cultural reasons.  For example, there is a community of people trying to stop the development of Colorado Christian University (CCU) from developing on 100 acres of open space ranch land.  The Highlands cattle raised on the open ranch lands in Highland are culturally important to the area and are a symbol of the Highlands ranch community.  These cattle are unique with their long horns and long hair.  I have often heard ranchers in our neighbourhood boasting about their cattle and that Highlands beef is better than Angus beef.  The cattle also contribute to the community’s food security, enabling resident to get their beef from local farmers.  This group is known as Save Highlands Ranch Open Space.

These are just some impacts of the local community in my area, but sustainable developments are happening on a community level all over Victoria and the world.  These two examples are examples of the community action to stop unsustainable developments from occurring.

My Stuff and Consumption

After watching “The Story of Stuff” I began to contemplate the collection of “stuff” I had obtained throughout my 24 years of life.  When I looked at it all, the majority of my stuff (by quantity) was clothes and cosmetics.  I don’t even consider myself to have a large closet or collection of clothing as I constantly find myself saying “I have no clothes,” or “there is nothing to wear”.  These statements are of course not true and are more of an expression of the unsatisfied consumer inside of me.  I have been made to feel discontent when I look at my wardrobe which contains clothing ranging from six months to five years old.  Our current economy runs on this dissatisfaction as to sustain the economy we need to keep consuming.  

While I’m writing this post my roommates are watching the cartoon movie “Megamind” and I happened to look up when Megamind, the villain of the movie gains power of the world after defeating the hero, Metroman and can have whatever he wants.  You see a clip with Megamind surrounded by all this “stuff” and yet he still isn’t happy.  Even though we know “stuff” does not make us happy we feel the need for it.  Advertising is partially responsible for inducing these feelings that our subpar things make us subpar.  Today, children are exposed to more advertising than ever before.

The concept of dematerialization is to lower the materials intensity of the economy.  Dematerialization will reduce the amount of garbage, hazardous materials and destroyed land.  Even renewable resources cannot be sustained and the pace we are demanding them.  Thus dematerialization of goods would continually support the economy without creating the destruction of the natural world.

More and more products are getting dematerialized with the use of computers replacing paper, but the sheer growth in consumption has led us to use a kilogram of paper per day.  The paperless office has failed.  One essay suggests that dematerialization needs to take place in four stages:

1)      Resource extraction,

2)      Industrial products,

3)      Consumer behaviour, and

4)      Waste generated.

The concept of industrial ecology is the study of the relationships between industry, their products, and the environment.  Current global accounting puts material consumption at 50kg/capita/day, excluding water and air.  Plastics have dramatically increased in consumption, and the transition from using metals to using plastics does not accurately reflect the weight of material consumption as they have increased the volume of consumption but are a lower density material.

Dematerialization is based on the Berardini and Galli theory that suggests research and material development will ultimately reduce the material flows in developing nations.

In order to reduce the materials being used in industry four suggestions have been made by a study conducted by Rockefellar University:

1) Reduction of primary materials can be attributed to materials substitution, efficiencies and the use of scientifically selected materials. These may be lighter, but do not reduce the volume (like plastics).

2) Reduction in industry can be attributed to efficient material use, functions, and products.  The taste for complexity and higher performance may increase environmental problems while reducing materialization.

3) Consumers show no significant signs of dematerialization as the level of consumption increases.

4) Waste reduction has potential.

They also suggest that the development of a self-consistant scenario for a dematerialized economy and the changes in technology and behavior needed to achieve it needs to be studied.  Humanity has changed from using resources of ages of a few elements to a resource complexity that uses all elements on the periodic table.  They suggest using all these elements responsibly.  I think they are wrong here, we need to go back to using the elements recycled in nature, as nothing we have dug-up from the deep earth has done us any good in creating sustainability.  

The most important take home message of this study was their 3^rd observation, that on a consumer level there is no evidence of dematerialization.  This is something we have the power to change.  We can vote with our money and reduce our total consumption of material goods.  One of the coolest things I ran into while researching dematerialization was the book “The 100 thing Challenge” by Dave Bruno.

In this book Dave suggests many ways you can reduce your consumption and your amount of “stuff”.  He also tells the reader of his own personal journey to reduce his “stuff” to 100 items.  I thought about reducing my own personal things and wondered how much stuff I really did have.  I tried to estimate but really have no idea. I am contemplating trying minimalizing my “stuff”. 

I dare you to try to....

Reduce your life to 100 things.

How is Sustainable Development in Practice

One of the largest barriers to sustainable development today, is the lack of communication between people with different expertise such as biologists and engineers.  Designers cannot design sustainable systems without the help of scientists or someone with a firm understanding about natural designs.  Biomimicry is the term used to describe these systems that mimic nature in their designs and functions.  These designs have proven to reduce the amount of harmful chemicals, heavy metals and plastic we use.  Natural design has been retained in natural systems for thousands of years, making these designs resilient.  Could we design systems that could “heal themselves” like natural systems do?  Often our engineered designs require engineering the environment they work in which is costly and energy inefficient.

I came across this TED talk recently about biomimicry by Janine Benyus.  Janine is an author and a scientist who has come to specialise in the field of biomimicry.  She works on integrating the natural methods of design into human design to minimise the use of environmentally harmful products and is an active participant in the Biomimicry Guild.   

“Life conduces the conditions conducsive to life.” This was the last slide Janine presented during her TED talk.  I believe this was planned out as one of her last slides on purpose so that if the viewer learned anything in her TED talk about biomimicry and the nature of things they would take home this message.  I certainly did.  Life is continually giving back so that life can go on. 

A World with NO Waste... seems impossible, but it’s not.

The Earth has created this perfect “garbage to gold” philosophy where all the wastes produced by living organisms are recycled back into the soil, the water or the air for reuse by other organisms.  This creates a world of no waste because the waste becomes a resource.  This isn’t a huge stretch for humans, but it is very obvious that this isn’t the current human condition. I’m talking about the many synthetic compounds we produce. When they become waste, they do not have a mutualistic relationship with other organisms to be used as a resource and our accumulating on our globe. 

The greatest example of this lack of mutualism is the “toilet that won’t flush” filled with plastics in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  This is not sustainable and plastic was never created with the intention of degrading.  If we can begin to focus on turning our waste into resources and creating products so that their waste products are resources for us or other organisms the world will begin to shift to becoming more sustainable. 

A current example of creating products for human use while using their waste products as a resources for other organisms is the idea of making plastic out of mushrooms.  This is a fascinating TED talk by Eben Bayer creator of Ecovative Design's MycoBond on the use of mushrooms in making a bio-plastic.  These are disposable plastics.  His team has focused on replacing Styrofoam packaging and plastics which contributes 25% of our landfills.  The bio-plastics his team creates uses mycelium found in mushrooms, which are nature’s janitors.

I hope these videos have shown you some glimpses into the current work that is going on to create a world where there is NO waste.  It is possible and its happening.       

Powering the Sustainable Society

Since the industrial revolution, the majority of our power comes from a centralized approach coupled with a distribution grid.  This method can be traced back to the discovery that energy could be generated by burning coal.  Once the environmental footprint and health issues of burning coal began to surface, alternative technologies began to be researched and used.  At the heart of sustainable development lies the search for the best alternative energy source.  First, the reduction in our consumption of energy needs to be addressed.  Many alternatives fail to compete with fossil fuels because of the high demand for energy.  Secondly, it may be critical to implement local power sources through a decentralised approach rather than the traditional centralized approach.  Some of the decentralised alternative energy sources being explored and implemented today are solar and geothermal, energy from waste and wind.  There are many benefits from the decentralised approach: large cooperations will begin to disappear and small local businesses will begin to supply their communities with power.  Currently, in Canada only 1% of our energy sources are renewable. 

Reducing our Energy Consumption

Unfortunately, between 1990 and 2005 our energy consumption experienced drastic increases.  Even though energy efficiency was increasing our consumption was out weighing the efficiency.  This is largely due to the bigger, faster and stronger mentality retained by North Americans.  For instance, the size of home increased by 23m² even though family sizes decreased.  The number of televisions increased from 1 per household to 1 per person!  In addition, the number of light trucks on the road has also increased.  The advances in efficiency, unfortunately, cannot be seen until consumption habits have changed.   Look into how to make your home more energy efficient.

Local power Sources and the Decentralized approach

One reason local power works is that it puts jobs and money back into your communities.  Local businesses distribute the power to their communities, who pay for the power and the wages of the employees.  It also reduces lost energy through the large grid systems and reduces the need for generation stations.  Localizing power also allows the consumers to see exactly where their power is coming from and environmental impacts from the generation of power are directly experienced by the consumers purchasing the power.  This is important as it may lead to the public demanding “green” power.  In the centralized system, it is easy to pay your power bill without thinking about the environmental damage that was created by every kilowatt consumed.  If the Alberta oil sand’s tailings ponds were in your backyard, you would be forced to see the environmental damages. You would probably even pay more for energy if the tailings ponds could be removed and an alternative energy source utilised instead. 

The decentralised approach also encourages people to become creative in their power generation, implementing methods that are community specific.  The variety in power generation across communities may even contribute to the identity of communities, increasing the social capital of the regions.  This may even result in rapid technological advances as each community would be responsible for a cheap and efficient source of energy with minimal environmental impacts.  This will also encourage continual technological advancements.

The idea of microgeneration will wipe out the current centralised approach and with it the stride towards nuclear power, which despite some advocates claims, is not the answer to alternate energy.  Nuclear power may reduce the amount of fossil fuels being burnt, but it provides more problems as it produces tonnes of nuclear waste that cannot be safely disposed of or renewed.  We need to forget about digging things out of the ground and using them for energy in a non renewable method! Haven’t we learned from coal and oil?  Things that were buried deep in the Earth’s crust were never meant to be in our hands.  

Diversity - The Underlying Theme of Sustainability

Currently, a great deal of research has been conducted on alternate energy.  It is important to understand that if the new form of energy is to be sustainable and able to resist change, it must not be ONE type of energy generation.  There is power in diversity, even in our energy sources.  If we learn one thing from the global use of fossil fuels for energy it should be that we should never put all of our eggs in one basket. 

Sustainable Cities: New Urbanism, Ecocities, Living Forests

What is the answer to making cities more sustainable?  Is there one urban design that can solve the car dependence of Canadian cities and get people walking, biking and using public transit?  Will we ever be able to find the solution to the design disaster of suburbia?  These questions are being asked by urban designers and engineers all over the globe. 

There is no one answer to creating sustainable cities as the design of each city is dependent on place and time.  In fact, most solutions are not relevant to all areas of the globe or in the vast diversity of regions in Canada.  In my blog addressing the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, I suggested the need for focus on community solutions in combination with globalization.  The natural diversity of the globe requires different designs for different regions.  I also addressed that the focus on sustainable communities will increase diversity making the globe more resilient to socioeconomic fluctuations, climate change and natural disasters.  Last week, many different designs to create the sustainable city were presented to me such as: New Urbanism (transit orientated developments), the Living Forest Communities in B.C. and the Ecocity.   

I recently watched a great TED talk by James Howard Kunstler addressing the “Tragedy of the Suburbs” which I encourage you to watch.  Kunstler presents a humourous lecture on his idea of the disaster he calls “the national automobile slum”.  I think Kunstler is right on the mark here as he addresses the dismal cities poor urban designs.  He suggests our current design does not incorporate nature, but instead tries to put on a “nature bandaid”.  Nature makes people feel good, but trying to encorporate the rural into the urban areas was ultimately an urban design failure.  It lead to the creation of suburbia and urban sprawl as people had a need to become reconnected with the land and nature.  Kunstler presents a solution that he believes will be increasingly important as we approach the end of oil and vehicle reliance.  He suggests downscaling drastically, growing food closer, living closer to one another and our work, reconstructing cities, smart development and the creation of “meaningful places”.

The following video is a trailer for the film "The end of Suburbia".  The full video if you are interested can be found on Amazon for $1.99 and is also available in parts on youtube.com.  The trailer provides the basic premise behind the creators opinion on the future of suburbia.

Yet, there are still some people who believe that suburbia will live on, just in another form.  This video was created to contrast the opinion showcased in "The End of Suburbia".  It explains the change that can occur in the suburbs to ensure they flourish as a radically retrofitted, food producing suburbia.

New Urbanism focuses on constructing cities similar to how they were constructed traditionally.  I think they had it right as older cities created a great sense of community, increased the social interaction between residents, the sense of safety and of place.  New urbanism focuses on compact building, range of housing opportunities, decreasing car dependence, incorporating pleasant walkable neighbourhoods and a variety of transportation choices.  They also focus on making distinct communities, mixed land use and preserving open space.  The design below shows an example of New Urbanism design that could be coupled to a rapid transit link resulting in a transit oriented development (TOD):

One example of new urbanism is Copenhagen, Denmark.  In Copenhagen, they have created a new influx of residents living in the downtown core by creating a community with many of the aspects of new urbanism.  They have tried to increase the aesthetics of downtown, increase walkability and bike riding and restrict a large amount of automobile traffic by creating pedestrian only streets, heated bus stops, bike rentals and vegetation.  To learn more about Copenhagen’s attempts to create a more sustainable downtown core visit the Community Research Connections’  website by clicking this link.

Living Forest Communities have been erected to save the forests from intensive logging by turning to sustainable selective logging.  These communities focus on increasing the benefits of logging while protecting the integrity of the forests.  The picture below is of the living forest community called Everwoods on Cortes Island near Vancouver Island, B.C. where 15 home sites are placed on 150 acres of forested land.

This method may not be able to be used in places of the world where it is needed the most as it is very site specific.  Some countries may not have the slow pace of growth that the living forest communities require and must use other methods.  The Ecocity is a feasible design to insure sustainability in rapidly growing populations for example, the Tanjin Ecocity in China.  They invision the city running 100% on solar and geothermal power with 90% of the population using public transit for their primary source of transportation.  Wetlands will be implemented to help treat wastewater and runoff and increase the biodiversity of the area.  China needs to implement the development of sustainable cities as they are experiencing great stress caused by rapid population growth and a recent influx of people into the inner cities.  The Ecocity design hopes to prevent slums from occurring in the inner cities in China. 

The following video showcases William McDonough, a world-renowned architect and designer on Ecocities in China:

There is ongoing research into how city planning will solve the disaster of urban sprawl and the reliance of the automobile.  It is increasingly important to note that time and place are of importance when designing sustainable cities and communities.  If we can start the sustainable community trend and decrease our reliance on the automobile, the impact of the end of oil will be less devastating. The influx of people into the inner cities must be managed to insure there are a variety of housing types and communities to provide socially equitable development.  These ideas presented above are only a few of the sustainable city designs, some which are waiting to be discovered.  As the demand for environmental and urban planning and innovation increases, we can expect the future to hold a multitude of solutions for a variety of places across the globe.

Population or Consumption? How About Both!

Often it is suggested that over population is the source of our environmental emerging problems affecting sustainability.  Around the dawn of agriculture, the human population began to exponentially increase and continues today.  As the population increased, the world began to  divide into developed and non-developed regions.  Today, the number of people living in undeveloped regions greatly outweigh the number of people living in developed regions.  The main cause of this delineation is human welfare.  Even though the death rates are high in non-developed countries due to AIDS and malnutrition, the population continues to increase exponentially.  In developed nations, the death rates are low and our population is stabilized.    Poor living conditions and uneducation women can lead to having more children.  Human welfare also corresponds with a region's ecological footprint.  Initially the ecological footprint will increase as a country develops and the quality of human welfare increases. Once human welfare increases to a certain point the ecological footprint starts to decrease as there is money to put into making production more efficient and sustainable.

The United Nations has produced 4 scenarios related to global population growth in its Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  It has been predicted that the global population will level out around 9 billion.  The manner in which we chose to manage the environment and the future development of the world can be inferred using four scenario models:

1)      The Adapting Mosaic

2)      Global Orchestration

3)      Order from Strength

4)      TechnoGarden

These scenario models can be related to own another by the table below:

Ecosystem Management	Global Development
	Globalization	Regionalization
Proactive	TechnoGarden	Adapting Mosaic
Reactive	Global Orchestration	Order from Strength

The Adapting Mosaic

This model uses a proactive approach to ecosystem management by increasing regionalization and developing local or regional solutions which will lead to increases diversity.  Increasing the diversity will make the communities more resilient to environmental, economic and social disasters.  Some outcomes associated with the adapting mosaic model are:

1)      Rise in local ecosystem management strategies

2)      Strengthen local institutions

3)      Improving knowledge about ecosystem functioning and management

4)      Trade barriers for goods and products are increased

5)      Barriers for information nearly disappear

6)      Subject to the tragedy of the commons

7)      Built on successes and failures of communities and trading of information

Order from Strength

This model represents the regionalized and fragmented world.  Nations will close their doors to each other as a form of protecting their economic stability.  This model focuses primarily on countries looking out for number one resulting in strong regulation and policing of the movement of goods, people and information.  This model uses a “Darwin Theory” approach as only the strong nations and people will survive.  Some outcomes associated with the Order from Strength model are:

1)      Expanding the role of government

2)      Technological change slows (from the decrease in trading of goods and information)

3)      Increases global inequality

4)      Degradation of global commons (Treaties are not weakly implemented)

5)      Increased gap of rich and poor within countries

6)      Shortages in food and water in poorer regions

7)      Decreased diversity  

Global Orchestration

This model incorporates a globally connected society with open markets with equal participation and equal access to goods and services.  The design aims at reshaping economies and governance.  This model also focuses on improving human welfare by: global public health and education.  Global Orchestration outcomes:

1)      Lack of focus on ecosystem management increases vulnerability to unexpected environmental situations

2)      Global environmental issues can be dealt with

3)      Expand into a global middle class (ending poverty)

4)      Increases global consumption

5)      Decrease in ecosystem services (water, food, recreation)

6)      Increase in ability to find substitutes for ecosystem services

7)      Expansion of abrupt, unpredictable changes in ecosystems

TechnoGarden

This scenario focuses on a globally connected society focused on technology to develop our ecosystem services.  Solutions are developed to protect both the economy and the environment.  This model uses the surfacing of property rights to reduce the amount of ecological damage by paying for emissions.  Ecological engineering is the key to managing ecosystems in this model.  Some outcomes of the TechnoGarden are:

1)      Increase in Green Technology

2)      New markets for ecosystem services associated with agriculture (tradable nutrient runoff permits)

3)      Environmental entrepreneurship expands

4)      Forms a global middle class (ending poverty)

5)      Loss of local culture, customs and traditional knowledge

6)      Reliance on technology creates new problems (often from old solutions)

7)      Growth of companies and cooperatives providing technologically developed ecosystem services

In conclusion we can compare these models and their effect on population, human welfare, malnourishment and the number of ecosystem services.   All these comparisions were made in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  Below is an example relating the 4 scerarios to the effect they will have on change in ecosystem services.

These models all indicated that in order to reduce population we need to increase the human welfare globally by providing education, health and nourishment.  This will also increase the rate of consumption as people gain knowledge and money to buy the things they want and need.  As the rate of consumption increases so does our ecological footprint.  Hans Rosling has spoke about this situation very clear in a TED talk you can find by clicking this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg&feature=relmfu

In conclusion, both consumption and population need to decrease in order to live within the carrying capacity of the Earth.  Consumption in the developed nations has gotten out of hand.  Where as population growth in non-developed countries has increased.  Both situations need remedies as the Earth continues to get smaller.  I would like to end this blog with a video of Prince Charles advice for the 21st Century.  It is about 40 minutes long, but very enjoyable.