Cantilevered Sustainability

The question of how we as a global civilization can achieve a sustainable economic system looms large in my thoughts.  As any economist will tell you, the question of economics is one of scope and scale, but with a population over 6 billion people, our conventional systems and tactics are failing us.  And, while we know what practices are sustainable, the challenge I’m tackling is to achieve global sustainability that is palatable to the great diversity of people that make up our world – not only culturally, but economically.  Because, let’s face it, the world is being shaped and molded by the “have’s” and the developed countries of the world are very much attached to the trappings of modernity they’ve accumulated over the past century.  The solution I’ve come up with is what I refer to as “Cantilevered Sustainability”.

A cantilevered structure is one that is supported only at one end.  As I envision it, a civilization that is economically and socially cantilevered to be sustainable will be anchored by millions of resource-light communities that locally combine their products and services via smart rail and internet to offset the more resource intense cities around which they are centered (see diagram).  In this way, a cantilevered system will allow us to have our proverbial cake and eat it too.

The success of this cantilevered design is rooted in the ability of local communities to resolve and provide for most of their economic needs from local sources.  By resolving these fundamental needs at their production source, a great deal of wasted time and energy is recaptured by its participating members.  This “trickle up” approach to self governance and reliance will eliminate a growing reliance on central governments for local solutions allowing the big governments to focus on the “big matters” such as financing and coordinating rail infrastructure and international relations.

This “whole systems design” approach offers the opportunity to simplify and streamline structures in ways that incremental changes cannot.   The complexities of our current legal, tax, transportation and health care systems are testament to the downside of incrementalism.  While it is a complicated idea to sell, I believe it is one that the Obama administration understands as it tries to reform health care.

Why is this a good idea?  Well, to any undertaking there is a time component.  And, while academics and policy makers think in terms of incentives – carrots and sticks to achieve policy goals, it is also an approach that requires time we don’t have.  I should be clear that this urgency is not about our planet’s environment – the Earth will eventually restore its ecological balances and health.  The urgency is a social one rooted in how our economics is impacting, both socially and environmentally, our fellow mankind.

I understand that such a drastic change in how we live may seem an unreasonable choice – as a species we prefer to take the tried and tested path.  What this argument fails to recognize is that the path we are on is neither tried nor tested because of the scope and scale of the problem.  We are conducting an experiment whose failure can be witnessed in poverty and terrorism.  I truly believe that our humanity is defined by how we treat one another.  And, if we don’t do our best to care for our brother’s and sister’s around the globe, we will have failed the very challenge that a conscious life offers us individually and collectively as a species.

The Changing Face of Agriculture

Bumper Sticker Values and Sustainability

Honor thy parents, our children are our future and one of my personal favorites think globally, act locally may be values that we preach, but is it what we practice? While these bumper sticker gems of philosophy sound great, their disconnect with how we lead our daily lives creates the schism between us achieving our most cherished hopes and the realities we forge through our daily behaviors.

However, such a disconnect is not without reason – there are obstacles that we have created unintentionally that prevent us from living these ideals. Long distance relationships may be commonplace, but are they sustainable? Do they challenge us personally in the same way that the “pinpricks of daily life” do when we have to live in close proximity to these people? Modern realities, however, require two incomes to pay the bills. Modern realities make children leave their families for work opportunities. And, the time demands of these realities bring us to subcontract many of our responsibilities including our children’s education and the care of our aging parents. And, the fast pace of our world contributes to the growing dysfunction among these key relationships.

In order to refocus our attention to what is important its useful to take a philosophical perspective and ponder on that long asked question: what is life about? Ultimately it is about our relationships with friends and family. They say happiness can’t be bought – well, they’re right! This stuff, career prestige, status symbols of house, car and cell phones are for many our society’s means of luring others into our lives when the only real way is to be actively involved in the lives of those we love. And, we do that by sharing our thoughts and feelings and by demonstrating them through our actions. That means giving those we love our most precious resource – our time.

There is often a disconnect between our ideals and the realities of those ideals, so what are the implications of living our values? Well to put it simply, not only would our lives be reorganized, but our world would be transformed. Families would stick together geographically. Extended household would become commonplace as aging parents live with their children. Parents would educate themselves in order to aid in their children’s education. And, basically, we would spend less time working and invest more of it in our homes and communities.

Sustainability is not just an objective process that we will achieve in the environment we inhabit because to truly achieve it “out there” we also have to achieve it in ourselves. By living the values we profess, sustainability will happen without debate of costs and without fear of change. But this is the tallest order of the challenge because few people I know (if any) actually live the values they profess. So I offer you my own best advice to achieve both sustainability and happiness in bumper sticker format! Make your life your testament.

Dissecting Utopia: Will the Details Lead us to a Sustainable World?

Our modern notion of utopia comes from multiple sources ranging from religious texts to science fiction. The result is images without the burden of consequences making them an unrealistic estimates of what or how that utopia will be achieved. For example, there is a Walgreen’s commercial depicting the consumer’s notion of utopia by suggesting there is a parking space next to the store entrance. Is this what Utopia looks like? Will it be a world without limits and endless convenience resembling the ultimate shopping experience? Today, a utopia is still an idea, a concept. In this state it is something “other” and dream-like that will happen in some vague and distant future. And, it will remain so until we define what it will look like. However, by defining what utopia is, we are taking the first steps towards actually building it.

Maybe we can’t know exactly what our utopia will look like, but I believe there are broad areas of consensus. For example, I don’t believe paradise can exist unless it exists for everyone. And, to achieve this goal I think such a society will have to be “buoyant”. By that I mean just as one should float in water with little thought or effort, so too should our systems be designed to provide our basic needs of food and shelter. But, how? I think we can borrow from the lessons of modern business practices, the system design concept of simplicity and the call of sustainable living to rely principally on local resources. I have written previously on possible solutions for specific needs and each can be resolved on one of three levels: one’s household, one’s community and one’s national government. But, each solution strives to resolve problems as close to the source of need as possible.

• Food: Our food can be mostly solved at the community level by organizing them under the umbrella of Community Supported Agriculture also known as a CSA. (see Straightening Out a Broken Food Chain)
• Shelter: Mennonites and Amish demonstrate that housing solutions can be solved at the household and community levels (see The Home: The Cornerstone of a Sustainable Future)
• Energy: The electricity, heating and cooling we need to live in modern comfort can be produced at the household level utilizing renewable resources (See The Home: The Cornerstone of a Sustainable Future)
• Transportation: Our mobility is one of the defining characteristics of our modern society. It is an issue that affects everyone, everywhere and a sustainable system will require the resources and coordination of central governments (see The Transportation Trap)
• Education: Our children’s most profound teachers are their parents. This fact suggests a common sense solution that is rooted at both the household and community levels. However, the idea of equal opportunity through education mandates larger scales of coordination in defining the curriculum to achieve that uniform standard. The Federal government or central authority can empower both households and communities to accomplish this task by providing the systems, tools and framework – specifically a K-12 self-guided curriculum that can be taught in 4 hours of class per day and reinforced by the family during the remainder of the day. (see Educationally Challenged)

While comprehensive systemic design can offer the efficiencies that will fuel the system, the “magic” that we hope for cannot be imposed or created out of design. It is what we choose to do with our newly discovered free time that will make the magic. Will we educate ourselves or pursue our passion? Will we create art or devote our time to our family and friends? When we are no longer burdened with the need to scramble for our survival we will truly experience the freedom to realize both our individual and societal potential.

But, how do we get there? How do we move from ideas to reality? That too will require a paradigm shift in how we each perceive and interact in our world. For sustainability ultimately recognizes that we are all in this boat together. And, it is through this awareness that we will discover the motivation for societal transformation – compassion. This past week the Dalai Lama hosted a conference on compassion. And, while this may strike the western ear as an odd focus for a conference, its importance cannot be understated because it is through finding compassion for our fellow man that we will also find the motivation to transform our world from one of poverty and wasteful consumption to the utopia of our dreams.

Related Entries

The Home: The Cornerstone of a Sustainable Future

Straightening Out a Broken Food Chain

Educationally Challenged

The Transportation Trap

The Responsible Society

We teach the subject of social responsibility in our universities, we lecture the topic to our children and I think many assume that society is generally responsible. But, are we? It seems to me that just as a person is responsible for their choices, society is likewise responsible for its collective actions. What does this imply? It implies that society is responsible for the failure of the systems it implements and that poverty, homelessness, hunger and inadequate healthcare are the manifestations of our system’s failures.

Throughout this blog, I’ve tried to capture the implications of responsibility by describing the essence of what distinguishes children from adults – taking responsibility for their actions. It does not magically happen at the age of 18, 21 or even 74. It is a state of mind that we accept when we are mature enough to comprehend it. And, like a teenager modern society wants the benefits of being an adult, but we still try to escape taking responsibility for our choices.

As a society, I think we have yet to mature to the point of accepting our full responsibilities. The huge variance in incomes demonstrates that we still do not believe every person and job in a system is essential to the mechanics of society. Our economics is like the unexplored frontier where everyone is on their own. But, in a day of global communication, transportation and trade, with a population racing toward 7 billion, we ignore the obvious interdependence and reliance of one people’s prosperity and wealth upon another’s labor. Indeed, we are all in this together and our individual prosperity stands on the shoulders of many others. In a responsible society we will be treating our brothers as we would have them treat us. We’re not there yet.

Getting people to wrap their heads around sustainability is an uphill battle, so framing the argument in terms of responsibility is more tangible, but still neither sexy nor motivating enough for most to take action. So, in search of motivation I ask the following: Is a responsible society also a moral society? The debate of what is moral behavior can become dizzying and lost in the relativism of perspectives. However, if you believe as I do that being responsible is a subset of moral behavior, then by society focusing on meeting its responsibilities we will move a long way toward becoming a moral society.

The good news is that a responsible society also turns out to be a sustainable one. So, while people may not understand what sustainability is, most people value and can strive for being responsible. But now I’m wondering does that also imply our society will not be a moral one until it is sustainable? Hmmm. Curious, very curious…

Related Entries

Ubuntu: Little Word, Big Idea

The Transportation Trap

If we look at the modern world and ponder what single element defines it, I would pick transportation. It has been an essential medium for both our technological and economic progress and in less than 50 years we have conquered the distances that used to separate and isolate us. However, judged against the scales of time and innovation, this transportation system organized on the building blocks of planes, trains and automobiles could easily be described as “version 1.0”. And, while I like what our system accomplishes – mobility, I don’t like how we achieve it – through environmental degradation and the consequential social inequity. So, to achieve a sustainable future we will need a “system upgrade”. Unfortunately, our greatest obstacle to sustainability is our child-like infatuation with the current transportation system based on fossil fuels and the resource intense automobile.

The private car is the foundation of our transportation system in America and in my earlier entry, Transportation and Social Equity, I argue that the auto is also a barrier to participation in our greater society. But, if you consider all the pieces of infrastructure needed to support this system, the investment costs become clearer. These pieces include : roads, gas stations, mechanics, driveways, garages, parking lots, land and space, fuel, refineries, pipe-lines, car manufacturers, dealers, junk yards, traffic police, road signs and lights, regulations, the commute time we invest, bridges, tunnels, pollution, injuries, lives (1.2 million deaths/year), labor to build and maintain, insurance and the health care costs that result from the sedentary lifestyle it systematizes.

Even if we develop a car that travels 400 miles on a gallon of water, the costs are too high – the infrastructure needed to support it largely remains the same and continues to be inefficient, wasteful and a source of poverty. What is the alternative? Public transportation seems the obvious answer. The problem with this simplistic answer is that the domination of the almighty car has shaped American society into a suburban sprawl that makes our current paradigm of public transportation ineffective and not a realistic solution.

In our quest to achieve a sustainable civilization, if public transportation utilizing high speed trains, light rail and automated people movers is to become a reality, then we will need to change the paradigm by reorganizing how and where we live. That is to say, rather than build this system to go where people currently populate (the current mindset), we will have to build the system to connect strategic resources such as agriculture and energy, and let people populate along those routes.

Barriers to realizing this “Transportation System v2.0” reside in the public’s mindset – Americans are unlikely to lead the world toward a sustainable future because of our deep association of the car as a symbol of freedom and individuality. In this way our success also becomes our trap and sustainable transportation systems will probably appear in underdeveloped countries first. Why? One, with scarce resources they must be more strategic in their infrastructure choices. And two, neither their egos nor livelihoods are as invested in the current paradigm to resist such innovation.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

Related Entries

The Home: The Cornerstone of a Sustainable Future

Transportation and Social Equity

Would Jesus be a Republican?

The American political dialogue irks me in several different ways. Among the most needling is the debate among conservative Christians about which Presidential candidate to support and has led me down some interesting thought experiments. While they presume many of their beliefs, they likewise might presume that were Jesus here today, he would definitely be a Republican. But, would he? And, more importantly to my readers, how does this relate to sustainability?

First, for the purpose of full disclosure, this is not my first trip down this particular thought experiment. A couple of years ago I wrote a screenplay investigating a similar idea. If a modern day prophet lived among us with all the answers to our problems, would anyone pay attention to him or his message? While I gave the story a happy ending because people like happy endings and that’s generally what Hollywood buys, we have a real-life example from which we can draw a more rational conclusion.

As I understand the situation, Jesus and most prophets were problem-solvers of their time and culture, so likewise he would be concerned with today’s problems in the context of today’s culture. Being pragmatic, he would not have any party loyalty, but support the one which best tackles the problems he believes most pressing. In a way, the prophet does exist through the concept of sustainability – it explains to us dispassionately the problems humanity faces as well as the solutions, but no one is paying attention – particularly conservatives.

Growing political will for sustainable alternatives is a factor of time and we are at the start of that change in consciousness. While our biggest obstacle to change lies in our culture of presumptions and assumptions, there are signs of hope. For example, among young, conservative Christians, “creation care” is a movement gaining ground that prioritizes the issues of social justice and environmental care before politicized concerns. Pragmatism is reaching solutions and requires everyone to start sleeping with strange bedfellows by crossing political, religious and philosophical lines — democrats with conservatives, conservatives with democrats, and most likely both democrats and republicans with some out of the box ideas that are hard to identify where they fit on the political spectrum.

So, would Jesus be a Republican? No, he would be as apolitical as is the concept of sustainability. And, like a concept, the prophet has no power to change anything. It’s through the billions of choices we collectively make every day that we create our own fate. And, when will we mature as a society to achieve this solution-oriented ideal? I don’t know, but from this perspective it feels like we are not changing fast enough. One thing is true, if we are to find sustainable solutions, change is inevitable.

Sustainability and Cooperation

I think many people resist the notion that they are part of a system, but our modern society seems to be growing the influence of those systems into our lives whether we like them or not.  In our current systems of government and consumer based economics, we are all seen as “consumers” and the account numbers that fill our lives and are now more our identity than our own name.  Now, if it worked, I’d probably have no objections.  But, signs of its failures are proliferating and evident in the poverty, homelessness, lack of health care that surround us, as well as the unrelenting stress we place on our environment.

I’d like to share a few of my personal observations.  One, by investing in unsustainable systems, governments are expanding their sphere of responsibility for their citizenry.  Two, by taking on this added responsibility, governments are mandating future revenue streams (i.e., taxes) in order to provide for these services.  Three, these fiscal mandates raise the minimum levels of productivity needed from each citizen to meet budgetary needs.  As a result, this raises the probability of poverty over time.  The key is: if we want to constrain the size and limits of government, we need to also constrain its responsibilities.

Americans resist cooperative systems.  That’s fine, but it has consequences and that is to strengthen the role of an intermediary (i.e., government) to coordinate between separate interests.  While it may satisfy our short-term (sighted) sense of independence, it erodes at our long-term goal of private freedoms.  One result has been a “safety-net” system which is great in theory until the gaps in the economic system allow more than a very small number of people to fall through.

I’m a pragmatist.  I don’t place my faith in “isms” but in what works.  There are tremendous inefficiencies built into our government and economics today and none are contributing to our individual happiness.  It seems to me that the role of government should not be to provide all the answers.  But should be to frame systems that are built and supported from the ground up – from individuals to their communities and those communities to our greater society so that we can sustain ourselves with minimal intervention.  But in order for it to be successful, people have to voluntarily coordinate and cooperate with each other to a degree that we are presently unaccustomed.

Corporations are present day examples of cooperative systems, but are at least dictatorial if not pathological in nature.  What leap do we need to make as a society to coordinate our actions in a more democratic way?  Examples do exist.  Open source software such as Linux is created and improved by people working together voluntarily.  Again, such a system may require more self responsibility and initiative than we are currently accustomed to.

The lynchpin to the success of a cooperative system is trust – a quality sorely lacking in competitive systems.  But, trust can’t be imposed or willed into existence, it has to be built upon our shared experience.  I think if we are going to achieve sustainable solutions, it will have to be a grass roots movement built by us and for us. And, government will have its role – to coordinate and build those structures that are beyond local means. But I end with a curious thought: that the underlying motivation of a society might determine its social character.  And, if today’s world mirrors the greed and fear that motivate competitive systems, what would a world based on trust and responsibility look like?

Additional Reading

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

Reimagining Our World

While I’m glad that “going green” is now the trend, it is a consumption based trend that will not solve the problems that plague humanity. To achieve truly sustainable solutions will require a paradigm shift in both how we think and how we live. And, our greatest challenge to realizing that change is overcoming our process of imagination – one that is incremental and based on the current systems that sustain us.

For example, many may imagine a future filled with Hydrogen powered cars that may someday fly – a combination of the ultimate green fuel and convenience. But if you reflect on the matter, the hallmark of our modern society is not the car itself; it is the mobility it offers the individual. As I argue in Transportation and Social Equity, I believe private cars actually contribute to poverty and the growth of government – both of which we hope to discourage, if not eliminate, as a society. So, as we imagine a sustainable future, we should focus on transportation systems that enable mobility in an efficient way rather than trying to improve the buggy carriage and its wheels.

Another vision of the future is one in which we all have perfect health. Today our modus operendi to achieve that vision is through working out at gyms, plastic surgery, diet aids and great medical care – a very resource intense system. The thing is that we already know the formula for health – diet and exercise. But, in our quest for a “modern” life, we sabotage this reliable formula. We take the car instead of walking. We replace labor with a sterile gym. We eat ready-made foods instead of preparing wholesome, home-made meals. The pattern is one of perceived convenience to accommodate a work schedule that allows us to bring home the bacon. But, the reality is that these modern habits contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression that make basic health care unaffordable for everyone.

The remedy to these problems can be taken from examples that already exist. What if communities were designed around pedestrians that travelled between communities via people movers and not cars? What if these communities each were organized around CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and instead of paying taxes, we each chipped in to produce the majority of food products we consumed? The kibbutz model demonstrates the premise. Organized in larger numbers, the wisdom of “many hands make light work” could take the chore out of “farming” and we could derive the benefits of exercise and community building. What if we followed the Amish example and built our zero-energy homes with the help of our friends and neighbors from locally available materials like straw? Again, we gain a health benefit, a knowledge dividend, remove the need for insurance (because the community becomes our insurance) and we could earn less since our costs are less.

By integrating these living systems people will need to “work” less and can spend more time with their family – taking care of aging parents and investing time in their children’s education rather than delegating these responsibilities to the state. While this “vertical integration” of living systems may seem strange from our current perspective of how the world should be, as I argue in Understanding the Sustainability Puzzle, sustainable systems will “squish” many aspects of life that we consider separate and distinct today. As I stated earlier, our biggest obstacle to achieving our goals is our ability to re-imagine our world.

Related Entries

Understanding The Sustainability Puzzle

The Home: The Cornerstone of a Sustainable Future

Educationally Challenged

Transportation & Social Equity

Global Warming, Sustainability & the Nobel Prize

Awarding the Nobel Prize to Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has once again highlighted the global crisis we now face.  While the prize raises awareness, it falls short of informing people about the big picture issue of sustainability.  So, the question I’m asking today is: what is the relationship between Global Warming and sustainability, and why is it important to understand?

The topic for this entry surfaced when I heard Lou Dobbs questioning the choice of Al Gore’s Global Warming campaign as worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Dobbs commented that he believed competition for resources will constitute a greater source of conflict than Global Warming.  The truth is both are symptoms of unsustainable practices – the root cause of many of humanity’s woes.  I believe it’s important to understand because our response will be framed by our understanding of the problem.  So, if our goal is only to combat Global Warming, we will still fail the challenge and continue to face consequences of the sort Lou Dobbs refers.

Obviously we urgently need to elevate the public dialogue to include sustainability, but we face an inherent conflict in the argument because it involves changing how people see the world and live in it.  I think it’s natural for people to fear change, especially the economics, because what is unknown is perceived as a threat to their personal ability to survive.  This is why informing people about the issues, as well as articulating and demonstrating our response to the challenge, is so important – to dispel fear and engage people to change their behavior for all our benefit.

Does Gore’s new celebrity status or the popularity of his film diminish the validity of his argument?  This notion becomes particularly fierce during presidential elections.  However, if we as a democratically organized society believe what we preach, then their opinion is as valid as anyone else’s.  Democracy includes everyone, but is most effective when people are informed about the issues.  To dismiss anyone’s opinion is to denigrate democracy itself and I would challenge whether or not those espousing such opinions are interested in maintaining our democratic system.  Maybe they like the name “democracy”, but names are meaningless – it’s our actions that count.  In fact, it’s arguably a moral obligation of celebrities to utilize their fame to focus public attention in our “megaphone-based” version of democracy.  And, while it may be inefficient, it’s what we got.

I believe the Nobel Prize award to Gore is important for several reasons.  It serves as advertising for an important issue and significantly contributes to raising global awareness to create the critical mass needed for change.  Also, the fact that the Nobel committee is relating global warming with peace is significant in educating the public about the complexity of the connections involved, and hints at the integrated nature of truly sustainable solutions.  So, as someone with no megaphone, I’d like to thank the Nobel committee for using theirs to advance the cause.