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.