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Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news about the impending apocalypse? When talking about the environment these days it’s hard not to feel dread or romanticize an apocalypse in a kind of eco-noir way. In fact, there’s a core 2% of people I talk to about sustainability who are super cynical about the individual’s ability to affect the future. It can feel like no one really cares, but apathy is pretty ineffective, not particularly pro-innovation! So here’s the good news first. Individuals and communities can and are evolving to move beyond the throw away, car culture that Americans have marketed to the world. I’m fortunate to live in a region where citizens and the local government do care about environmental conservation and green designs for the future. San Francisco recycles 77% of its waste and is the second greenest city in the country. Oakland is fourth with a super creative urban homesteading and do-it-yourself and maker counter culture. We have boulevards and bike lanes for cyclists and sidewalks for walking. Berkeley, the seven greenest city after Cambridge MA, is designed to be a pedestrian city with hubs of commerce near housing to make walking and biking the norm. My own kids think we are on vacation when we actually use a car. It’s frankly easier to change old habits when your neighbors, government and basic infrastructure support you. So if I were to define sustainability this would be Sue’s definition: positively engaged individuals and communities working together to design institutions and infrastructure that support healthy ecologically-atuned habits of mind or ways of being that support the earth we desperately care about and depend upon.
Sustainability is a fashionable buzz word now associated with smart growth. When Sustainability was first defined by the UN World Commission on Sustainability in 1987 it was before climate change was a concrete reality. Instead it was in response to a growing concern over the accelerated deterioration of the human environment and natural resources. And this commission set out to highlight the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development. This UN commission and its findings, called the Brundtland Report, published this well-accepted definition: “development that responds to the needs of present generations without compromising the capacity of future generations to respond to their own needs.”
I see enterprise solutions for poverty as clearly tied conceptually with Sustainability. As David Brower, the legendary Sierra Club executive director once said: "There is no business on a dead planet." In fact, as history has shown us too often business as usual has exploited resources and led to unsustainable practices and even dead civilizations In Lester Brown first chapter in World on the Edge, he points out that “no previous civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports.” “For the Sumerians it was “rising salt concentrations in the soil as a result of an environmental flaw in the irrigation design. For the Mayans, it was deforestation and soil erosion.” In fact at this late stage in the degradation of the environment, I believe to be an entrepreneur requires that you understand and practice COW-F (Customers, Owners, Workers and Future Generations) and work towards ending poverty otherwise we will see more communities at risk and suffer from the related political instability.
As educators, we are always focused on how to shape learning for future generations, for those who will need new skills and mindsets to solve complex global problems. For example, our students ought to know why the melting of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau impact US food prices. As China runs out of water to irrigate its crops and feed its 1.3 billion people, they will enter the world food market and drive up food prices in the U.S. and around the world because of increased demand. Students we teach will be coping with these price hikes and those in poverty will eat on the cheap, or go hungry. The reality of climate change and its ties to the grain market are already taking effect; in 2008 world hunger spiked and passed 900 million as a grain was diverted to produce biofuel for cars.” (Brown 11) Ultimately, sustainability is the key element in any discussion of entrepreneurship, leadership and social justice because the control of resources tend to be wielded by the most powerful, and resource scarcity can affect political stability. Failed states then ensure cycles of poverty, migration, violence and further environmental degradation as clearly outlined by Brown in the required reading.
My own interest in environmental issues had more to do with immediately coming to terms with what happened on Sept 11. And I think many people like me began connecting why we were involved in the middle east to our addiction to oil. It was a simplistic answer when in effect there are many issues around resource depletion that are causing suffering and political instability around the world.
I want to talk more specifically about food shortages because Brown and many other leading environmentalists see it as a chief concern or as Brown calls it, “the weak link in our twenty-first century civilization.” (Brown 10) We are already feeling the effects of water, oil shortages and now food scarcity. Threats to food security are caused by soil erosion linked to deforestation, over grazing and over plowing. Water shortages are caused by climate change. Too much of the world’s food market is dependent on aquifer depletion and melting glaciers. Over-population, crop-shrinking heat waves, and grain crops farmed for bio-fuels are also threats to food security. Even the loss of croplands to pave roads makes a difference. Consequently, the Geo Politics of food scarcity has already led to land grabbing in Africa and Russia. Nations like China are buying and leasing farmland in Africa to export grain for food and biofuel. Political instability will follow if the exported food crops are on the very land that otherwise would feed hungry locals.
I really like Lester Brown's book and I’m referring to it a lot tonight. I recommend that you read the whole thing because it clearly explains the complexity of sustainability. I was inspired by his "Plan B" or proposed solutions to prevent environmental and economic collapse. Though his ideas are almost fantastical, I want to believe they’re possible and glad he’s put Plan B on the table. Here’s what he proposes to the world community:
1) Massive cut in global carbon emissions of 80 percent by 2020
2) Eradication of poverty
3) The stabilization of world population to no more than 80 billion by 2040
4) Restoration of forests, soils, aquifers and fisheries
He suggests that most of the money to make these changes will come from taxing carbon and re-distributing the US national security budget to fund research and development of transit systems, renewable energy and other innovations that cut carbon emissions. Money would be budgeted to safeguard against global food and water shortages and also to subsidize early childhood education and adult literacy to eradicate poverty, and finally to teach reproductive health and proper care for the environment. Though Brown doesn’t seem to indicate whether he expects growth aid to do all this in developing countries.
With teachers and students in my school I prefer to talk about change at the micro rather than macro level because it’s much easier to imagine change when it’s a concrete local action rather than a global strategy. Rajeev Goyal’s Peace Corps work in Nepal described in Hessler’s The New Yorker piece is a great inspiration for example. With the community he helped, he made a do-it-yourself water pump that allowed kids to go to school instead of lug water, but he also began to ask himself what is smart growth once his adopted village was threatened with a real estate boom due to the water pump. Then he returned the US and spear-headed a grass roots movement to boost Peace Corps funding back in Washington DC.
Another inspiring story: The Berkeley Edible Schoolyard a few miles from my house created by Alice Waters; the garden and its tenders teach middle school students organic farming, composting and healthy eating habits. It’s a beautiful, simple design that has a huge impact because it engages a school community with a solution that serves and educates the individual and the community.
This year in my English class we saw the movie Trouble the Water about Hurricane Katrina refugees. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you do. In class we talked about how human rights and basic human needs can deteriorate rapidly when cities haven’t been designed to withstand the new mega storms and floods caused by climate change. My students were outraged by the unfairness and racism depicted in the movie and inspired by the resilience of the main characters. The protagonist in the movie were New Orleans homeowners without cars who had no means of evacuation and then when seeking higher ground were held at gunpoint by the understaffed National Guard on leave from Iraq. Middle Schoolers have a real affinity for unfairness and already have expectations that the US government should protect human rights even when faced with unpredictable effects of climate change. They also really connected with the hip-hop artist/refugee in the movie who wrote about her experience in a song she produced. Contrary to what cynics say, everyone wants and deserves designs for the future that make sense and this movie concretely makes that idea relevant.
The Sustainable Communities model as a solution to environmental and economic collapse aims to engage citizens to look to the future with goals that integrate environmental, social and economic needs. I really like this model in theory and Wangari Mathai’s model, which honors ecological knowledge as capital in Kenya and shifts mindsets towards locally-based self-determination. Maathai started a greenbelt movement in 1976 and since then has assisted women in planting over 20 million trees in schools, churches and farms. Maathi uses culturally relevant metaphors because when we are talking about becoming more aware of our environmental impact we have to make it personally relevant. She saw local women farming on hillsides using methods that immediately lead to soil erosion and decided it wasn’t enough to work at the national level that you have to engage individuals and link them to farming collectives that will help them learn with sustainable methods and build small businesses.
Since I’ve become involved in the Sustainability Movement, I’ve become aware that schools are communities and teachers are community organizers. I believe teachers play a key role to ensure a better world for our students or I wouldn’t be teaching still. Some of the questions I ask myself and ask my community: What does smart growth look like in concrete community actions? What ecological knowledge do we need to know to be healthy and ensure a healthy planet for my students, my own children and grand children? Who are the disenfranchised and what is their vision of the future? How can they be included? In any community, who are the key players and how can I engage them to work creatively and inclusively with students and families to problem solve?
Should we adopt the commandment Shall Not Want in the name of sustainable development? What happens when we all just "Live Simply So Others May Simply Live"? Will the world really be better? Stephen Greenblatt's New Yorker piece made me rethink the idea that if we greatly scale back the culture of beauty and materialism, we will live better. His piece describes the shift that occurred between the classical age and the dark ages when beauty and the "principled pursuit of pleasure" was seemingly buried for good, save for a few important texts saved by monks-- texts that inspired the "swerve" that was the Renaissance. Sometimes it feels we're entering one of those dark ages. I, for one, want beauty and pleasure AND healthy practices. Why can't they all co-exist? Or HOW can they co-exist?
