Understanding Sustainability
11 March 2009
by Peter L. deFur, Ph.D.
At long last we are all going to hear a lot about sustainability- thankfully. Already our political leaders are talking about a sustainable energy policy and sustaining our future, our food supplies, our resources. This conversation is long overdue and we need to both embrace the dialogue and learn what sustainability means for all of us in the US and abroad. Sustainability is more than curbing our carbon dioxide emissions to halt global warming, it is all-encompassing and goes far beyond any one aspect of our society.
Some members of the agricultural community have been talking sustainability for more than a decade as they’ve attempted to change current farming policies and practices. Proponents of sustainable agriculture have been pushing policies that restore and maintain the quality of land used for farming and the amount of land conserved for our future. Similarly, proponents of sustainable forestry and fishing practices have been, and are continuing to advocate policies to insure our future production and access to high quality food and fiber. In recent years, future-thinking city and county planners have focused on the built environment, and how we can implement sustainable development policies and practices. Experts in all these areas recognize that the path we are on will take us exactly where we are headed now, and it is not a pretty picture of abundance, health and well-being.
A recent book on a sustainable future makes a similar point and goes the next few steps to include even more elements of the human condition. “The Bridge to the Edge of the World,” by James Gus Speth, discusses why we need to change our ways, what those changes mean, and what a sustainable future will look like. Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and famous for his instrumental role in the 1972 Earth Summit, artfully and carefully presents that case for making large and dramatic changes that will achieve, or at least get us closer to sustainability. The frontspiece is a series of graphs presenting data on several critical measures of natural resource consumption over time: energy, coal, food, land under cultivation, water use, carbon dioxide emissions. The visual effect is dramatic and makes Speth’s point that we cannot keep up the pace of consuming all the resources on Earth.
Reading Speth’s book in early 2009, during an economic mess and at the brink of exciting changes in the US, gave a surreal context to his message and meaning. Speth kept repeating that he did not think the US would make the necessary dramatic changes in policy and practice absent some catastrophic turn of events. Well, the current economic mess qualifies as pretty catastrophic in my book. Another big message was that environmental sustainability, including global warming, has to be achieved in the context of social, economic and political reform to correct the desperate conditions around the world. Speth argues forcefully that the practice of achieving wealth by impoverishing others (other countries, other races, other communities) and exhausting our natural resources is part of the problem and has to stop.
Now that we, the people of the US, and it seems of the world, have to stop and reassess our economics, its best we make the world just, equitable and fair, and secure the future for our grandchildren. We, the people and our leaders need to make sure that our consumption is efficient and based more on need than on greed. We need to change our practices of producing food, fiber and energy so as to support our communities and restore and sustain the Earth, rather than degrade and destroy the only place we have to live and the people with whom we share the Earth.