Why Sustainability Won’t Work

In a world where ever expanding population is reality, we are expected to reach nine billion by 2050, the challenge of meeting the needs of that population in a just and equitable manner within the Earth’s ecological capacity is a major difficulty for people who believe development can be sustainable. One of the most intractable problems facing the “sustainability” movement is how to persuade rapidly developing countries not to follow the development trail blazed by the West. “Do as we say, not as we do,” is the West's increasingly desperate mantra. If that does not happen and rapidly developing nations start consuming energy and water, eating meat and processed foods, and using automobiles and air travel at levels approaching those of Westernized countries, then it's game over for the environment and probably for Western culture as we know it.

The thing that affluent countries—meaning the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc.—are desperate to avoid is to have to radically alter their energy-intensive lifestyles. Although some European countries have made tentative moves in that direction, they have fallen woefully short of genuine progress. Telling people who love their comfortable, energy-intensive lifestyles that the only real solution is to cut back drastically on energy use is political suicide. No sane politician who wants to stay in office is ready to advocate such a position.

Westerners are only willing to make enormous personal sacrifices when faced with direct threats to life (such as war and invasion); indirect threats like global warming do not qualify. Even if every one of the energy hog countries adopted the most technologically advanced, energy efficient solutions to curtail their energy use, if the majority of the people in developing nations would adjust their energy consumption to that level, carbon emissions would be far too high to be sustainable.

Naturally, since we spoiled Americans (among others) will continue to refuse to adopt less energy profligate lifestyles, we will be forced to turn to geoengineering to address rising CO2 levels. Too bad we have an incredibly poor grasp of the unintended consequences of such behavior. But I can guarantee those lessons will be learned the hard way. When it comes to the carbon cycle, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Soon or later, the piper has to be paid.

Fresh Water

Most people I know enjoy taking showers, especially after the scorching summer we've had already. Afterwards, you feel so wonderfully refreshed. Compared to showering, taking a bath is, well, a tepid experience. Obviously, all types of bathing use water. Other things we do also use water but many of those uses are hidden or, at least, not particularly obvious. I was reminded of that recently when I read a Fidelity Investment newspaper ad that was intended to shock readers by informing them it takes 35 gallons of water to produce a single cup of coffee and 635 gallons to produce one hamburger (I believe those numbers are exaggerated but that’s another column).

Naturally, Fidelity wanted readers to think about financial investment opportunities, such as new technologies to produce fresh water in areas that need it. Instead, I thought about how water affects our daily lives. Few people in West St. Louis County think of fresh water as a problem, not even in the drought we have now. Not with the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in our backyards, so to speak. If you stand on the bank of either river and watch the water flowing by it seems almost limitless.

When we brush our teeth we use one gallon. A ten-minute shower uses about 25 gallons. A toilet flush takes between one and three gallons. Washing your hands or face takes one gallon. About 100 gallons of water are needed to make one cotton shirt. Producing one pound of wheat takes 80 gallons. (Source: http://ga2.er.usgs.gov/edu/sq3action.cfm)

Although West County residents seldom think about water shortages, we are not insulated from fresh water supply problems. Witness what has been happening over the last thirty years on the Great Plains. Also known as America’s Breadbasket, the Great Plains is one of the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural regions. Agriculture there, from which all Americans benefit in terms of food products, is largely sustained by groundwater irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer. That massive underground system of nearly 175,000 square miles stretches from central Texas through southern South Dakota. Nearly 30 percent of all irrigated land in the U.S. uses groundwater from the Ogallala.

Only problem is, that Aquifer has been depleted over the past several decades by excessive withdrawals for crop irrigation. You might have seen the tell-tale green circles when you fly over the region. That situation isn’t critical yet but needs to be carefully analyzed and viable options pursued before it’s too late.

No matter what your opinion may be on environmental issues in general, water use today and in the near-term future is an important challenge because of present-day tight supply and looming population growth. And here you might think about the one billion plus people in China who are getting used to a diet higher in animal protein, especially beef, and remember Fidelity Investment’s statistic of 635 gallons per hamburger and the 35 gallons used to produce each cup of coffee.

Please note that this essay was first published as an Opinion Shaper column in the Suburban Journals, on July 25, 2012.

Jared Loughner’s Plea

Allow me to start this essay with a brief quote: “Experts had concluded that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, and officials at a federal prison have forcibly medicated him with psychotropic drugs for more than a year.” Washington Post 8-8-12

So, what we have is a society (and its legal system) that forcibly medicated an acutely mentally ill man, who was found to be so sick and non-functional at the time of his arrest that he could not be tried (because the judge found him so impaired that he was unable to understand the charges or participate in his defense), until he could appreciate exactly how fucked up he was when he pulled the trigger, and then incarcerate him in federal prison for the rest of his life. All because he committed violent acts while mentally ill but was not “insane” under federal law (don’t even ask about Arizona law because that totally fucked up state doesn’t recognize mental illness as affecting individual actions).

It doesn’t take a brilliant legal scholar to see that Americans are so angry with and so frightened of people who have serious mental illness that it is far better to throw them into prison than to recognize and treat their illness. After Ronald Reagan was shot and John Hinckley “got off” by successfully pleading that insanity rendered him incapable of rational judgment, the key federal law dealing with insanity pleas was changed drastically. The goal of Congress was to raise the bar defining insanity so high that practically no one, no matter how mentally ill they are, would be “let off” so to speak by finding them not guilty by reason of insanity and then putting them in a mental hospital for treatment.

As a society we are obsessed with the punishment of those who violate our rules, witness the recent Texas execution of a black man with an IQ of 61 and our coldhearted eagerness to try children as adults and throw them into prison for life. Throwing those sick fuckers and rascally little bastards into prison should make our chests swell with pride to be Americans. Hey, we’re the BEST country in the world. If you didn’t know that all you have to do is ask us. We’ll be glad to tell you exactly how backward all the other countries are and how God has smiled directly on our form of government. We are, after all, an exceptional country.

More Bad News from Coastal Louisiana

People who understand how crude oil affects living organic material must have seen the writing on the wall. And, yes, we’re talking about the April 2010 BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A group of scientists from the University of Florida and two Dutch universities recently reported what they found after studying direct and indirect effects of the oil spill on Louisiana’s coastal marshes. Please note that the study combined biological and geomorphological field investigations with control sites (reference marshes) and coastal morphology modeling techniques so the researchers could understand the complex dynamics of key coastal processes. They were concerned about the health of Louisiana coastal habitats since salt marshes provide critical ecosystem services to plants and sea life.

The researchers found the oil-affected marshes had hydrocarbon concentrations more than 100 times that of unaffected reference marshes, a near total loss of above ground vegetation extending up to 30 feet from the water’s edge, and oil-driven plant death on the seaward margins more than doubled pre-existing rates of shoreline erosion. In simple English that means that the marshes on which most commercial and sport fishing depends on for vital nursery services are disappearing at twice the previously measured rate. Although the study found clear evidence of plant recovery at affected sites, overall the oil spill caused an accelerated decline of salt marshes that were already being degraded at an alarming rate as a result of stress introduced by human activities.

The authors conclude by stating: “It (the study) warns of the enhanced vulnerability of already degraded marshes to heavy oil coverage and provides a clear example of how multiple human-induced stressors can interact to hasten ecosystem decline.”

The trouble is most of us have already put the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster in the “out of sight, out of mind” category and have moved on, literally and figuratively. We don’t want to think about the consequences or relate them to human actions other than those that can be categorized as technological accidents. We just want to get on with our lives as though nothing happened.

Source: Silliman, B. R., van de Koppel, J., McCoy, M. W., Diller, J., Kasozi, G. N., Earl, K., Adams, P. N., and Zimmerman, A. R. (2012). Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Published online before print June 25, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1204922109; Retrieved on June 26, 2012, from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/20/1204922109.full.pdf+html

Jon Christensen and Cities of the Future

A few minutes ago I read an article in Grist in which a grad student interviewed Jon Christensen, an environmental history professor at Stanford, about what kinds of cities will we build to encourage human and ecological health. Sad to say, it sort of struck a nerve because it was sooooo pie-in-the-sky. My comment on that interview follows.

Comment

Since we have demonstrated so powerfully as a global civilization that we do not wish to design and build cities that foster both human and ecological health, what possibly could lead anyone to believe that we have the political will or the determination to do that in the future? Academics who live in ivory towers generally know a great deal about theory but are not as well informed about the down and dirty practice of planning and building real cities populated with real people, many of whom are conservatives who soundly reject anything that smacks of green, sustainable, or urban-ecological responsibility.

The visceral desire by certain members of the student generation to do "something" about our mounting ecological crises has to be informed by the applied challenges of identifying and implementing solutions that can pass real-world political tests. To this date, I have seen nothing in the U.S. that would lead me to believe that effective urban-ecological planning solutions can appeal to both progressives and conservatives. Especially not at a time when millions of conservatives believe that Agenda 21 and sustainability are part of a plot by international socialists to deprive Americans of their property rights and individual freedoms. Anyone out there who does not believe that last sentence has probably not attended public hearings on land use planning and urban development in the last several years.

Plus, what in the world would we do about the many trillions of dollars already invested in cities that basically give the finger to ecological health? Too many people are comfortable in large square-foot homes on large lots in low-density suburbs, driving their SUVs everywhere. Check out mall and school parking lots if you want to see the scale of the problem we face.

That problem is NOT ecological in nature, it is cultural. And changing cultural direction-orientation is very difficult owing to inertia, indifference, ignorance, mindset, and greed. If that's the goal of student planners and ecologists, good luck; because they are going to need it.

Average Life Span of a High-Tech Civilization

As the question was originally put in the famous Drake Equation (formulated in 1960-1961 by Frank Drake, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California—Santa Cruz), what is the average lifetime of a civilization advanced enough to be detectable by intelligent beings located on other planets? In answer to that question if polled on the streets, many if not most Americans would likely express the opinion that it would last thousands of years. But, what if, as the historian of science, Michael Shermer, predicts, the average lifetime of a technological civilization is only 300 years?

A logical follow-up question is, why would high-tech civilizations only last a relatively short time? If we use our present circumstances as a guide, many might conclude that technological civilizations that fail do not recognize until it is too late that the civilization had become ecologically unstable and self-destructive. In other words, by the time a species has developed technology capable of communicating with intelligent life on other planets, they most likely also have created and are using that technology to destroy their environment and thus the foundation of their civilization. The dark thought we must consider is that when short-term economic gain (meaning self-centeredness and greed), ignorance, indifference, and system-wide inertia—once a system has moved in a specific direction in terms of allocating resources it is extraordinarily difficult for it to change direction—take precedence over ecological health, the results are predictable, disastrous, and nearly impossible to reverse.

That prospect means that the far greater majority of all high-tech civilizations might disappear within 300 years of becoming high-tech owing to the above listed self-destructive propensities. The bottom line is whether Earth’s current civilization has what it takes to work through the technology-ecology conflict we are currently experiencing to the other side in a way that ensures survival for thousands of years. To aid this mini-test, we’ll assume our base year for calculation is the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution, 1800 CE.

The reality should be easy to see. In today’s America, many millions believe global warming/climate change, smart growth, green development, and sustainability are made-up nonsense and constitute socialist attacks on individual freedom, liberty, and property rights. Many if not most of those same people also believe that their elected representatives should get rid of the US EPA or, at the very least, scale it back until it is ineffectual in preventing corporations from doing whatever they please in terms of the environment.

In the U.S. today, many millions are determined to stop or eviscerate federal programs that address the 5.14 billion metric tons of CO2 (2017 estimates) Americans inject into the atmosphere every year. They are determined to ignore the meaning of methane released by the Arctic’s melting permafrost, deny the rapidly increased rate of melting of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic sea ice, deny the implications of ocean acidification and heating, and ridicule the science that documents the rapidly changing geographic range of species that result from global warming.

Who are the people who sneer about global warming? They are voters who have given rise to the current malaise in the White House and in Congress. Americans like them form what is perhaps the most critical reason the U.S. has rejected coherent and effective policies to decrease air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and environmental destruction that threaten our prosperity and our quality of life. People holding that worldview have elected national representatives who refuse to allow the U.S. to engage in international agreements that seek to cut CO2 emission on a global scale.

Although most of us don’t want to think about it, my personal conclusion is our high-tech civilization has already hit the critical tipping point and is on the decline. On those rare occasions we do think about it, we tend to throw up our hands in frustration because solutions are too hard to figure out or too far into the future to worry about. Yet, in reality, we seem hell-bent on ensuring Carl Sagan's chilling but prophetic words are fulfilled: “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” The trouble is the vast majority of us just want to go on living the sweet life as though tomorrow will never come and we will never have to pay the price for our profligate behavior.

Guess what. That tomorrow is around the corner but it will affect the coming generations far more than us. You should be relieved if you are more than 30 years old in 2018 but not so relieved if you have children or if you are over 65 and have grandchildren. Those children are the ones who will have to live with the decisions we’ve made. Isn't it comforting for us to be able to push the risk into the future and on someone else and not worry about consequences?

With all the physical evidence, it is hard not to see a bleak future when you look at our present conditions. Acidifying oceans. Rising sea levels. Warming climates. Increasing drought. Dying coral reefs. Increasing mercury levels and anti-biotic resistant diseases. Every place on Earth has been adversely affected by human agency. Countless species have been lost; others are endangered and are standing on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss.

The way our species has developed over the last several hundred thousand years has ensured we focus the far greater majority of our attention on immediate or short-term challenges, like threats to our current well-being, and basically ignore long-term, slowly emerging issues, like climate change, habitat destruction, or global population growth. What was once an evolutionary advantage has morphed into something far different, far more deadly to our survival.

Here’s my prediction. We are a species with nearly countless individuals who are willfully blind to the consequences of our current actions and will wind up destroying our high-tech civilization with a fatal combination of greed and indifference. Our epitaph should be:

 

Although once we ruled the Earth,

we lacked the intelligence to survive.

Non-Sustainable America—Don't Worry, Be Happy

On 5-22-12 David Roberts wrote a column in Grist Magazine (http://grist.org/article/toward-a-future-that-makes-sense/) about "the intense need these days for positive visions of the future." The material below is my response to that column.

For the last four decades an urban planner I have had to deal with the world as it is, not with the world I wished were there. It would be quite refreshing to chat with Pollyanna over tea and crumpets (or in this particular case David Roberts) about delightful sugar-plum visions of the future or about things that are "more forward-looking, wide-ranging, optimistic, and, well, helpful." Certainly, that would make us feel oh so much better, especially those who have no jobs and gigundus college debt hanging over their heads and are too frazzled even to think about something as non-threatening to their daily lives as 5.5 billion metric tons of CO2 Americans inject into the atmosphere every year.

Quite frankly, despite what Roberts writes, it doesn't matter how many individuals get involved in "bike culture, livable neighborhoods, urban agriculture, sharing economies, distributed energy, and many other ways people in America today are trying to live better, more sustainable lives." Those issues are totally irrelevant to our future if government policy is not adopted and implemented that drastically pushes the envelope of ecological responsibility.

Now, for a dose of that real world I mentioned above. Has anyone out there found one committed right-wing, Tea Party supporter who would go along with federal policy that drastically pushes that ecological responsibility envelope so critical thresholds aren't crossed? And what about all those Republicans elected to office in Washington, surely they’d agree to jump on the environmental bandwagon. Permit cynical me to laugh.

Look at the real world another way. How many people in China and India are anxious to cut their energy consumption and waste production so the world can be better off. Hell, Americans have refused to do it so why should they?

So, go ahead with your feel-good crap about livable neighborhoods and bicycling to work and sustainable growth (what an oxymoron). It's a wonderful narcotic and will prevent people from feeling the pain of thinking about and confronting the real world. Besides, what does it matter? Everyone alive today will be dead before the worst hits. We won't even have the satisfaction of pointing the finger of blame at idiots like Jim Inhofe and the American Petroleum Institute.