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Is Sustainability a Myth?

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  • + johanclaes johanclaes 6 months ago
    Nice presentation. Can you share the .ppt file?
    Thanks Johan
  • + SanderJanssens Sander Janssens 7 months ago
    I would like to have the presentation.
    Could you email it to me
  • + kevinms Kevin Struck 7 months ago
    HERE ARE THE NOTES FOR EACH OF THE SLIDES (K.S.)

    1- Presented at the Joint Conference of Extension Professionals, 2009, Madison, Wisconsin

    2- (none)

    3- Sustainability is not an entirely new concept. For centuries there have been indigenous peoples who have strived to live sustainable lifestyles.

    Sustained-yield strives to harvest only that which can be replenished naturally before the next harvest. Sort of like living off the interest and never touching the principle.

    4- Dozens of definitions – this one the most well known.

    5- There are dozens or hundreds of types of sustainability and literally thousands of practices that promote sustainability. This presentation is not asking whether these practices are myths. These are outstanding activities that we should be encouraging. These practices absolutely will help to make the Earth a better place. But whether they can make anything sustainable is another question entirely.

    Notice also that sustainability encompasses much more than just the environment.

    6- Sustainable Development is like the trunk of the tree. (In this context “development” means much more than subdivisions and shopping centers. It means civilization in general, including education and health, for example.) Many types of sustainability branch out from SD, and the leaves are the practices. We don’t have time to analyze all of the branches, so this presentation will focus on the base of the trunk: the Earth, and more specifically the biosphere, which is the part of the planet where life is found. If that is not sustainable then everything else becomes moot.

    7- Every movement has advocates and skeptics, and sustainability is no exception. The following two slides include quotes from a couple of skeptics.

    Farmer is not against the practices we looked at in the previous slides. He’s simply not convinced we can make progress. Why does he feel that way?

    8- (none)

    9- What hurdles or challenges stand in the way of achieving sustainability? There may be others, but we’ll focus on these six.

    10- These two professors point out a common argument. Sustainability lacks an official definition or time frame. Nevertheless, on small, local projects we can probably overcome this by doing some visioning or planning upfront. We can talk with our clientele and define for ourselves what sustainability means for the project and for how long.

    However, the issue is not limited to local projects. Sustainability has regional, national, and global goals and objectives. Most efforts will have to cross many boundaries and organizations. Reaching consensus at these higher levels will be extremely challenging because . . .

    11- Even among staunch believers in sustainability there are vastly different ideas of what it will take to achieve it. Some say we need some growth (done carefully) in order to provide suitable health care and education in underserved parts of the world. Others say we’re already at the edge of the cliff and we need to stop all growth immediately. Still others contend that the biosphere will only be sustainable when we eliminate all human impacts.

    It seems unlikely that such diverse viewpoints could ever find common ground. News headlines bear this out. A blurb in a recent issue of TIME (April 6, 2009) regarding a proposed wind/solar/geothermal project in the Mojave Desert indicated that while the Wilderness Society opposed the project, the Wildlands Conservancy supported it.

    12- To achieve sustainability we will have to alter our behavior – but we need to know by how much. Models help us define what the target is: What are we hoping to achieve?

    Unfortunately, models are not always reliable, as Duffus points out. The collapse of the California sardine industry is another example of calculations gone awry.

    Models aren’t worthless, however. Some sustained-yield projects do seem to be working. We just don’t know for sure when they’ll succeed and when they’ll fail. This is due to . . .

    13- . . . The number of inputs into the model that are estimates at best, guesses at worst.

    Nevertheless, even oft-criticized models like those for future climate conditions that only put us “in the ballpark” keep putting us in the same ballpark, which tells us something needs to be done. But what exactly? Do we all need to abandon our cars tomorrow and ride bikes from now on, or will leaving our cars at home three days a week do the trick? Will alternative fuels save us? Which ones? No one knows for sure. And if we try to be safe and adopt standards and practices that will cover us even if the most pessimistic models are true, we risk conflicts in meeting human needs – which leads to our next hurdle . . .

    14- (none)

    15- Lemonick had in mind initiatives like corn ethanol and nuclear energy when he wrote this. Complete life-cycle analyses are very complex to do, and when done well they will often show that an initiative that was thought to be a clear-cut winner has some unintended consequences.

    It’s important to keep in mind that “meeting the needs” of current and future generations means more than just meeting physical needs. Putting us all in small, clustered, uniform housing might best promote sustainability from one perspective, but we also have needs like the need for space and the need to express ourselves as individuals. Conflicts are likely to arise.

    16- Jepson said this because he recognized that we need to control wayward inputs. (Surprisingly, however, Jepson also seems to believe we actually have closed systems.) In reality, thanks to advances in transportation, our communities, regions, and nations are more open than ever before. This is why we now have problems with zebra mussels, gypsy moths, and the emerald ash borer.

    17- What could be below the species level? The genetic level.

    While Vandeman’s argument may seem extreme, it is technically correct.

    18- When we try to manage the biosphere we see how out of our league we really are. In 1991, eight men and women said goodbye to well-wishers and walked into Biosphere 2, a 3-acre airtight greenhouse in the Arizona desert. The door was locked behind them. The $200 million enterprise represented years of planning and the most up-to-date research into ecosystem design and function. They tried to think of everything.

    Biosphere 2 was a closed system except to sunlight. It featured a productive mix of biomes, including miniature forests, lakes, streams, and even an “ocean.” The researchers expected to live off the system’s internal output, without additional food, oxygen, or other supplies.

    Biosphere’s experts were blindsided by unforeseen developments. After only 18 months, oxygen concentrations had dropped from 21% to 14%. Other troubles, apart from friction among the human inhabitants, included the extinction of three-quarters of the small animal species and all of the pollinating insects. Food plants grew poorly, but weedy vines ran wild.

    19- One of the most fundamental processes on the planet, Darwinian evolution, actually works against sustainability. Evolution inevitably develops ever more complex life forms. As complexity increases, however, so do needs and the resultant demands on the planet’s resources.

    It’s pretty easy to sustain an ameoba. Much harder to sustain human beings – and in the last few decades we’ve made it even harder. That’s not our fault. It’s just the way evolution works.

    20- Fifty years ago ecologists believed in a steady-state environment where nature, when left to itself, will achieve a balance or equilibrium. This view is no longer the predominant one, as Botkin points out.

    Concepts like Chaos Theory (the most basic building blocks of matter behave unpredictably) and the Butterfly Effect (a small event in one place can ultimately cascade into a major event somewhere else) have become well known ways of expressing nature’s volatility.

    21- The Earth’s demise is a certainty; our planet is already middle-aged and not going to last. In about 5 billion years the Sun, which will have burned up its core hydrogen, will expand into a Red Giant and engulf the Earth.

    But we don’t have to wait that long. Because the Sun is already growing in luminosity, it will be hot enough in only a billion years to boil away the oceans. Goodbye biosphere.

    But we don’t even have to wait that long. There’s nothing magical about the line at “Today” on the graph. The trend of major extinctions will likely continue. In fact, some ecologists say that considering how many species have disappeared in the last couple of centuries we are in the midst of the sixth major extinction right now.

    22- Over 99% of all of the species that have ever lived are extinct. No wonder Erickson titled his book Dying Planet.

    23- The reason we can expect continued calamity and extinctions is because the probable causes in the past are still out there today. They haven’t gone away.

    In early March 2009 an asteroid capable of wiping out everything within 800 square miles of its impact passed between the Earth and the Moon. Astronomers didn’t even know it was on its way until two days before it passed by!

    24- The magnetic field protects us against radiation from the Sun and from deadly cosmic rays. It has reversed itself many times in the past. At the point of reversal it first collapses, leaving the Earth temporarily unprotected. This process is quite random, happening roughly every 300,000 to 400,000 years. Our last one happened 700,000 years ago.

    25- Notice how ice ages are becoming more numerous and with less interval in between their occurrences.

    The stunning thing is, if not for global warming, there’d be another ice age beginning right now . . .

    26- According to UW-Madison researchers, “. . . were it not for a rise in global temperatures that started thousands of years ago with the first clearing of the European forests, we would be entering another ice age.”

    27- Sometimes the Earth’s volatility can hit very close to home. Some residents of Barneveld, Wisconsin thought the Blue Mound Ridge would protect them from tornadoes. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Every home and business was destroyed; only the water tower was spared.

    28- As if all of these threats weren’t enough, today there is an additional threat that did not exist during the five major extinctions: human beings. We are the ultimate wildcard. Our wars and weapons are capable of inflicting tremendous damage on the biosphere. Even a well intentioned genetic experiment gone awry could have dire consequences.

    29- Where does that leave us?
    Although Wisconsin naturalist Aldo Leopold died before the modern concept of sustainability was formalized, he almost seemed to anticipate the difficulty of the challenges facing such a goal. Consequently, he spoke of a land ethic, an ecological conscience, and personal responsibility, rather than trying to achieve harmony.

    30- (none)
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Is Sustainability a Myth? - Presentation Transcript

  1. ? IS SUSTAINABILITY A MYTH USRA Prepared by Kevin Struck ~ Geographer ~ 2009
  2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Barbara Lazewski Steenbock Library liaison to UWEX Cooperative Extension Steenbock Library University of Wisconsin-Madison Photos courtesy of Microsoft Design Gallery unless otherwise noted.
  3. WORD & CONCEPT ORIGIN “Sustain” comes from the Latin Sustainability was preceded sustinere, meaning by the “sustained-yield” “to uphold” or concept, which had its roots “to bear the in the forest industry of weight of.” 1800’s Germany. Other definitions include “to keep going” and “to endure without giving way or yielding.”
  4. MODERN USAGE Modern concept of sustainability was popularized by 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) report Our Common Future. Development is considered to be sustainable when it meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
  5. TYPES and PRACTICES TYPES: Development, Agriculture, Design, Living, Energy, Tourism, Housing, Industry, Communities, Foods, Packaging, etc. PRACTICES: Green roofs, organic fibers, walkable communities, community supported agriculture, renewable energy, micro loans, conservation subdivisions, low VOC inks, day-lighting, closed-loop manufacturing, biodegradable materials, urban gardening, hazardous waste collections, manure digesters, rain gardens, mass transit, publishing on demand, historic preservation, permeable pavement, virtual education, accessible health care, biomimicry, recycling, value stream mapping, etc.
  6. TYPES and PRACTICES nutrition organics value H e a l th stream I mapping nd us tr e y ur ult solar ric y erg Tou Ag rism n E Eco hotel Development Biosphere EARTH
  7. SKEPTICS “It is increasingly difficult to have a discussion about planning or urbanization without mentioning sustainability. And if you don't, you're likely to be dismissed as being hopelessly out of date and out of touch with today's dogma. I myself have often experienced this reaction, in part because I describe myself as a sustainability skeptic. I do so not because I am skeptical about the underlying issues, but because I am skeptical about our current ability to find solutions.” – Paul Farmer, Executive Director, American Planning Association July 2008
  8. SKEPTICS “That so few sustainable resource-use plans have been effective stands as testimony to the differences between what we expect of nature and what nature can provide. In the context of the use of wild living resources, I suggest that sustainability is more myth than reality.” – David Duffus, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia, June 1993
  9. HURDLES 1. AMBIGUITY 2. MOVING TARGETS 3. CONSISTENCY 4. BIODIVERSITY 5. COMPLEXITY 6. VOLATILITY
  10. AMBIGUITY “Sustainability, to begin with, “The idea of ‘sustainability’ is an idea that has never really is problematic precisely been defined. . . . Consider because it is utterly devoid the matter of a time frame. Is a of truth content — one sustainable society one that can never know if one endures for a decade, a human has achieved it.” Ahl’s lifetime, or a thousand years? . . . What degree of sustainability – Daniel W. Bromley, should we settle on?” Professor of Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison Ecological Economics, – Donald Worster, Distinguished Professor of March 2007 History, University of Kansas, The Wealth of Nature, 1993
  11. AMBIGUITY Extremes of opinion of what is needed to attain sustainability . . . Sustainable Development Club of Rome concluded that advocates support economic growth in order to avoid ecological, demographic and resource as long as it doesn’t harm humans disasters in the near future, and the environment. it was necessary to stop demographic and economic growth. The \"deep ecologists\" suggest that negative growth is the only option, with the ultimate aim of eliminating all human impacts. Wildlands Conservancy opposes a new wind/solar/geothermal project in Mojave; Wilderness Society supports it. (TIME Magazine, 2009)
  12. MOVING TARGETS Modeling the future is far from an exact science . . . “Originally, industry and Forest Service planners stated that the rate of logging was sustainable. However, so many different figures and interpretations have been made of the forest's productivity in the Tsitika valley that . . . Now it appears that nobody believes the forest has been logged at a sustainable rate.” (David Duffus, 1993) Ecologists can try to make predictions, but the uncertainties are so great that a crystal ball might do as well. Stephen Carpenter, a freshwater ecosystem specialist at UW-Madison, says that ecologists tend to use words like “projection” and “scenario” rather than “prediction” or “forecast,” for just these reasons. (World Watch, Sept/Oct 2003)
  13. MOVING TARGETS Modeling the impacts of human activities on the future global climate, for example, relies on the following inputs . . . Economic activity (estimate) Population (estimate) Energy usage (estimate) Land use/land cover (estimate) Technological innovations (guess) Volcanic activity (estimate) “Estimates of future global and regional impacts of human-induced climate change are inherently uncertain. This is because projections are based on a series of model calculations with each succeeding model using as its inputs increasingly uncertain outputs of previous models.” – 2007, Indur Goklany, U.S. delegate to International Panel on Climate Change
  14. CONSISTENCY 1. INTERNAL: Need consistency among your own efforts so as not to conflict with what you’ve already done or with other types of sustainability goals. 2. EXTERNAL: Any process that doesn’t get total participation from everyone risks being undermined by negative efforts.
  15. CONSISTENCY ( INTERNAL ) “You cannot really declare any practice ‘sustainable’ until you have done a complete life-cycle analysis of its environmental costs. Even then, technology and public policy keep evolving, and that evolution can lead to unforeseen and unintended consequences.” - Michael D. Lemonick, Scientific American, 2009 Not all human needs can be met legislatively.
  16. CONSISTENCY ( EXTERNAL ) Outside influences . . . wildcards “Under sustainable development, success is dependent upon the extent to which a community is a closed system.” – Edward Jepson, Jr., Ph.D., WAPA News, 2001
  17. BIODIVERSITY “The notion of a ‘sustainable yield’ is a myth. It assumes that the preservation of species is all that is important, and ignores loss of diversity below the species level.” – Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D., UCLA, 2001 The very first time a new gene is created, it most likely exists in a single individual. Suppose, for example, that a soon to-be-logged tree in a “sustainably” harvested forest contains a mutation that would allow the species to survive global warming. Harvesting even that one tree could destroy biodiversity and have a significant negative effect on the species. Thus, harvesting any reproducing organism can never be “sustainable.” No one can guarantee that it won't destroy a key piece in the world's future store of genetic biodiversity.
  18. COMPLEXITY Biosphere 2 is a major sealed glasshouse complex north of Univ. of Edinburgh Tucson in the desert of Arizona “Biosphere 2 was an experiment in sustainability, exploring the essential question: How do we make a self-contained place to live, and keep it going for a long time? Biosphere 2 showed that ecosystems are extraordinarily complex and dynamic, poorly understood, and prone to unforeseeable behavior that may alter their functionality. (As the saying goes, ecology isn't rocket science; it's a lot harder.)” – World Watch, Sept/Oct 2003
  19. COMPLEXITY Advanced life-forms require more resources, and thus make ever more demands on the ecosystem. AMEOBA: Simple life-form needs only water, food, air HUMAN: Complex life-form needs clean water; vitamins and minerals; a specific ratio of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases to breathe; nurturing and care for our first years of life; shelter from the elements; warmth; clothing; a mate in order to reproduce; mental stimulation; and probably more. Humans are much harder to sustain than any other life-form. Even worse, in the last 100 years, our life span has increased, our caloric intake has risen, and our interests have become more varied.
  20. VOLATILITY “Change now appears to be intrinsic and natural at many scales of time and space in the biosphere. . . . Whenever we seek to find constancy, we discover change.” – Daniel Botkin, Ph. D. ecologist Chaos Butterfly Theory Effect “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” – John Muir
  21. VOLATILITY Major Extinctions 5 billion ABCDE 5 billion years years ago Brighter sun ahead boils off 3 billion Earth’s oceans years ago First single-celled Today Sun engulfs Earth organisms Earth formed A. Ordovician (marine species) B. Devonian (marine species) C. Permian (marine species) D. Triassic (land and marine species) E. Cretaceous (dinosaurs)
  22. VOLATILITY “Since the dawn of life, species have become extinct, paving the way for the development of new species that might better utilize the environment. . . . If species did not become extinct to make room for more advanced organisms, life on Earth would not have progressed to where it is today. . . . Geologists are beginning to accept global catastrophes, such as mass extinctions, as normal occurrences in geologic history.” – Jon Erickson, geophysicist, author of Dying Planet
  23. VOLATILITY VOLCANOES: About 14 active and dozens more considered dormant (not extinct). VENTS / GEYSERS: “Old Faithful” is overdue for a super explosive caldera- forming eruption. QUAKE FAULTS: \"Nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the crust USGS of this earth.\" - Charles Darwin ASTEROIDS: An approximately 400-meter wide NEO will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. If it passes through a several hundred-meter wide \"keyhole\" in 2029, it will impact Earth in 2036. Current estimates, however, rate the probability of impact as very low.
  24. VOLATILITY SOLAR RADIATION: Supernova Vela appeared about 10,000 years ago. Its deadly cosmic rays may have led to the extinctions of mastodons and mammoths. DISEASE: Several pandemics have swept the Earth. MAGNETIC FIELD REVERSAL: Currently undergoing a slow steady decrease in intensity; Earth well overdue for a reversal. PBS CLIMATE CHANGE: There have been 4 major ice ages in the last 100,000 years.
  25. VOLATILITY 15m Recent Major Ice Ages 30m 4m 65m 700m 230m 1 billion 2m years ago 250 750 500 Today 100,000 1m 20,000 15,000 10,000
  26. VOLATILITY “For . . . as long as anyone would claim for ‘ecological time’ there has never been an interval when temperature was in a steady state with symmetrical fluctuations about a mean. . .” – Professor Margaret Davis, University of Minnesota December 17, 2008
  27. VOLATILITY Barneveld Tornado NOAA 93 homes were completely destroyed, 64 others were damaged. 17 of the 18 businesses and public facilities in the community were also destroyed.
  28. VOLATILITY Human Beings
  29. CONCLUSION The Earth is volatile, unpredictable, temporary, QUOTATIONS from Aldo Leopold and unsustainable — and we keep hoping to make it stable, predictable, permanent, and sustainable. “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.” \"That the situation appears hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.\" “SUSTAINABLE” vs. “RESPONSIBLE” “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence Taking proper care of my yard is being responsible, that I can of an ecological conscience, and this guarantee. But nothing I do will guarantee my yard is still in turn reflects a going to be around 50 years from now. conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land.”
  30. THE END Dan Wilson ( IS ALWAYS ANOTHER BEGINNING )
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