[This paper isn't due until Monday - I finished it Thursday night. Enjoy!]

Executive Summary: Impediments to Establishing Global Sustainability

Ron Khare

The purpose of this paper is to identify and clearly explain the single largest challenge to the establishment of global sustainability.

Our working definition of “global sustainability” is the perpetuity of natural resources. The definition of “civilization” is ever-increasingly complex urbanization. This is distinctly different from “community,” with which it is often confused.

Summary

The only real factor that prevents global sustainability is civilization, or more specifically, the cities upon which civilization is based. Civilization’s basic structure is exploitative, destructive and unsustainable. The continued rise of civilization is the only true source of the destruction in the natural world. No amount of topical solutions will fix its fundamental need, which is to take, by any means necessary, the resources it cannot provide for itself.

Primary Threat: Civilization Itself

Civilization is marked as the shift of mankind from nature to city. As far as human pursuits are concerned, this may be for the best – higher concentrations of people and access to the benefits from the resulting greater division of labor have led to some amazing advances of arts and sciences.

Cities, by design, have one deadly flaw – they cannot support their dense populations with the resources contained within them. In order to survive, then, resources (like food) must be brought in from their surroundings.

Historically, the resource base for a city was strictly limited to what could be walked in by carts or by beasts of burden. The needs of these cities were fewer and simpler – food, primarily, followed by raw resources to be used by craftsmen.

This may seem innocuous at first, but the system of violence, imperialism and oppression is already firmly established in this model. The city relies entirely upon the ability of farmers to farm significantly more than they themselves need, and then expend the energy necessary to transport those heavy, time-sensitive goods to a city center. What follows is a list of the inherit problems with this system.

Resource Redistribution and Loss

In a sustainable agricultural model, most (if not all) of the nutrients in the soil stay on-site, and are eventually re-incorporated into the soil. The nutrients that cannot be recaptured can be replaced by drawing on established wild areas – leaf litter from forests, for example.

Pushing the lands to their limit for exportation to the city destabilizes the soil. The nutrients leave the farm in the form of produce, only later to be discarded by the city-dwellers in the trash or down a sewer system – never to return to the farm. This one-way flow of nutrients means the farmer becomes increasingly reliant on external fertilization means – the farmer becomes a threat, in turn, to the wild areas as his need to replenish the soil increases.

Soil is just one example of the problem with city consumption – any and all natural resources are subject to this one-way flow. The cities take these natural resources and produce ever-increasingly sophisticated and specialized items for human needs – or may lead to better knowledge, science and art. In any case, the resources themselves are never returned to the land from which they came.

The Rise of Civilization is the Death of Nature

Cities, by their nature, are unsustainable – although it is possible that a small city working with the people who live on the nearby land can last for a very long time. However, a successful city (by the common understanding of success) will become increasingly sophisticated, efficient and, in all likelihood, grow.

The city lifestyle is removed from natural processes, even while understanding of those processes may increase from higher learning and observation. Cities are lit up at night, creating an unnatural daytime effects. Roads and sewers are built to efficiently funnel traffic and sewage to predetermined locations. Soil is covered with stones or concrete. Waterways are straightened, and rainwater is flushed away. Views are obstructed by large buildings and walls. Sounds and smells are all of human origin. Animals are either slaughtered for food, domesticated as pets, or killed as pests. Vegetation, if it is allowed, is contained and cultivated for aesthetic properties. City gardens are typically herb gardens or small supplemental plots. As a city expands and increases in infrastructure and sophistication, it further removes those living therein from the natural world. At the same time, it continues to put increasing demands on the surrounding “wild” resources – and those who gather from or farm them.

Eventually, the needs of the city exceeds the yield limit of the immediate land. While it is possible that the city could take efforts to reduce its population, this is almost never the case. Instead, the answer has always been to reach father out, gathering resources from most distant lands.

It may be that those nearby farmers may have some sort of allegiance to the city based on economic or defensive purposes that could justify the loss of their resources. The farther you travel from the city, however, the harder it is to offer benefits that offset that loss. When the city realizes it must have those resources in order to survive and prosper, all too often the answer has been to take them by force.

There is no logical reason that someone living off of a piece of land should voluntarily create a one-way stream of resources off that land. Either those living on the land must be indoctrinated with an established set of illogical principles that support resource exploitation, or those resources must be taken by force. Either way, those living on the land that has city-valued resources is on the losing end of the deal – true sustainability precludes the perpetual exportation of resources.

Symptoms are Not Causes

Every threat to civilization Lester R. Brown mentions in his book Plan B 4.0 is symptomatic of an underlying planetary disease. The problems with climate change, war, water usage, agriculture, energy generation, transportation, peak oil, over-population, failing states and the like are merely the result of a firmly established “civilized” mindset. Resource extraction has advanced to the stage where many people can no longer live on their land – half of the world’s population have followed the flow of their resources to the cities. (source)

Civilization has had a few thousand years to perfect its justification for existence, downplay or re-word resource extraction, and so far remove people from nature that many people today believe that our only hope for sustainability is in the further development and refinement of civilization itself. One-way resource extraction and the exploitation necessary to continue that flow will abate, people say, if we can advance civilization just a little bit more.

Yet, in all the thousands of years that mankind has been developing cities, there has never been a satisfactory way to resolve the fundamental issue: too many people on too little land to support them. There is no guarantee that, if techno-idealist visions of “eco-cities” are realized (making even the largest mega-cities fully self-sufficient) that humanity will abandon the long-entrenched goals and values of civilization itself.

More importantly, even if every symptom of civilization was solved through the application of miraculous new technology, the disease of civilization will only continue to grow. New resources will be found vital to further development, leading once again to extraction, exploitation and scarcity, resulting in more advanced problems in sustainability that we’ve yet to fathom.

Reading: The Efficiency Dilemma (which you can read HERE!)

The better (more efficient) we are at doing something industrial (using coal power, increasing miles-per=gallon), the more we end up doing it. That is, rather than see an overall decrease of gasoline consumption due to more efficient motors, we see a net increase in fuel consumption – more people driving more hours. The more electricity we can squeeze out of coal, the more plants we build, the more power we use.

Here's a picture of Jimmy Carter, for some reason.

There’s just one small neuron that makes this link happen in the brain. Just one tiny bit of information – the better we are, the more we are – is the turning point for the rest of society and civilization. You’re heard me repeat the adage: “If you’re driving to Mexico and you actually want to go to Canada, just slowing down won’t actually help.” That is, if we need to become a sustainable society, simply minimizing non-sustainability won’t actually help – at the very best, you’ve just postponed utter destruction for a while. Where we need to go is in the exact opposite direction, and the only way we’re going to get there is by stopping entirely, turning around, and going the other way.

With the addition of the Jeavons Paradox, we see the worst of it: by simply slowing down, we actually speed our trip up. By conserving fuel, we can drive longer and get more cars on the road, increasing this mass migration to Mexico while Canada slips farther and farther away.

What do you think?

To me, it says one thing: An unsustainable system cannot be retrofitted to sustainability. The very system itself must become something completely different. Anyone who totes themselves as a “green” or “environmentalist” or anything like that, and is all in favor of increasing the efficiency of our current systems needs to stop, read this article, and think very seriously about the wisdom of making a bad machine better at what it does.

In the meantime, the only author I’ve read who actually understands the repercussions of what I’ve just said is Derrick Jensen, and even he stops short of instigating the full-scale revolution that’s needed.

Ah… will I, when that day comes?

I wonder why the word “nature” is used to describe such radically different things.

One definition includes all the trees, rocks, grass, water, animals, sands… those places and things which are least touched by mankind.

But another definition is used to describe the inner behavior of our own selves – our inner nature, what we are compelled to do, those things structured into our own nature.

I would like to reverse these definitions, just to see what happens.

What happens when we talk about the nature (behavior) of nature – how the trees behave, what the grass is compelled to do, how the streams react to the rain on an emotional level. What is the attitude of the forest? What bias does the prairie hold? Does the soil desire something, or is it aimless, even lazy?

Conversely, what does my inner forest look like? Where is my internal river? Do I have plains of the mind, mountains of the soul? Is there a sky of my being, one that storms and rages, only to celebrate sun rises and settings? When do my stars come out, and what mythical constellations are traced upon them?

Can I sit on my beaches, and look out across my oceans that reach far out beyond my sight?

I don’t believe in the arbitrary distinction between man and nature – everywhere is nature, even deep in a classroom or sterile lab, the heat of the city holds just as much nature as a rainforest.

What, then, do my inner cities look like? What kinds of people inhabit them, and what are their professions? What skyscrapers define my skyline? What historic churches sit nestled at special street corners? Are the people happy there?

Switched again – what is the road’s inner nature? Does a house really have a soul, a spirit, a feeling? Does the downtown really come alive? Is it happy that we are there, or do we impose upon it?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but for some reason, just asking them makes me happy.

It’s 11:24pm, and I’m wondering about social customs.

It hot climates, it’s traditional to take a “siesta” – that is, a several-hour long “lunch break” during the hottest parts of the day. During this leisure time people will eat, nap, drink – whatever keeps them cool and rested.

It's almost midnight and I'm sweating buckets.

They go back to work when the sun is lower, and things start to cool off.

We probably have more humidity than “they” did, which means shade and lower sun doesn’t count as much, but this still makes sense. With daytime heat index reaching 117 degrees the last two days, it just makes sense that I shouldn’t be working in a building that has no air conditioning.

I could just move my computer back to my a/c house, and work on digital/management stuff during the day, and only come to the SLC SEED Center during cooler hours. It’s tempting, but I know that I will be less likely to come out here at all – evenings are my leisure hours, when I nap, eat and hang out with friends. If worked both daytime and evening I would rob myself of “me-time” and become overworked, even if I don’t get much done. By keeping my computer here, I ensure my presence at the SEED Center, and thereby a certain level of upkeep occurs – I would not have made that short path in the grass if I hadn’t just decided to do it on the way in to use my computer.

I wouldn’t have a problem switching my hours around – stay up late, get up early, sleep the day away – as there is a strong tradition of it, and it just makes more sense. However, as I’m trying to gain internship credit with Maharishi University of Management, I have to adhere to certain guidelines…..

…. and all of these guidelines I strictly adhere to. The hours I posted at the start of the internship, here on my public blog, are the ones I follow. Right?

Eco-Feminism Reading #2 - Eco-feminism and Deep Ecology (Freya Mathews): Maybe she’ll get into this more, but I don’t see the inconsistency she describes as being “at the heart of deep ecology.” Yes, if the fundamental idea of humanity actually belonging to nature is coupled with ecological destruction, and then deep ecologists call for a change to that behavior, we can superficially see a conflict of ideology. What she’s failed to mention, at least so far, is that humanity changes its behavior all the time, for any number of reasons. Belonging to nature, destroying nature, and then realizing the bad direction with the result of a radically new direction can be just as perfect a fit in the human-is-nature paradigm. More so, I’d say. (ah, that’s her conclusion, more or less, at the end)

“In defending nonhuman beings against human depredations we may even in a sense be resisting the greater moral order, the grand order of ecological justice. The compassion which forms the basis of our environmental ethic, from this individualistic point of view, is a function of our finitude rather than of our cosmic self-realization.” (p.242)  Oooohh snap!

Yes! I’ve got thoughts about this excellent reading. I’m actually pretty excited about it, and I’m not sure what to say. The problem here may not be in the point-verses-whole conflict between Deep Ecology and Eco-feminism, but actually whether or not the problem has a solution at all.

It’s so easy to say that, in enlightenment, one’s actions are totally in accordance with the laws of nature – no divorce between human and nature, then, and thus no problem. But that is akin to saying that by accepting Jesus as your savior, every thing you do from then on will be the best possible thing for the Earth. It may be true, on both counts, but it’s something of a dead-end conversationally. (This is actually why MUM doesn’t have a Philosophy department – all questions are answered in that state of enlightenment).

My point here is that, up until that point of enlightenment, perhaps there is no correct viewpoint. Eco-feminism, deep ecology, anthropomorphism, etc – each one retains intractable, fundamental flaws which no amount of revision or synthesis can fix. We’re still debating philosophic ideas from thousands of years ago – shouldn’t we have figured some of it out by now? If there are no real, scientifically “true” answers in this field of study, then to what end is our study?

We  could take the approach that simply asking the questions these fields provoke has merit. That is, while no amount of study may produce scientifically “better” actions on a individual level, it may contribute to the simple peace of mind of said individual. An extrapolation from “peace of mind” to, by degrees, enlightenment would be the ultimate answer to those questions on the level of action, not necessarily logic or as an explainable rationale.

by the way, Wikipedia’s entry on Deep Ecology is the most concise summary of the topic I’ve heard yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology

This is one of my vlog posts from Growing Freedom, my old blog on the trials of trying to start your own sustainable garden/mini-farm with almost no personal experience.

Let’s just say that this isn’t Iowa Soil so much as Iowa Compacted Clay. It’s like trying to dig wet but setting cement. As you can see… it’s hard work.

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]]> http://forcedsimplicity.com/djangos-garden/feed/ 0 http://forcedsimplicity.com/video-test/ http://forcedsimplicity.com/video-test/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:56:35 +0000 Ron Khare http://forcedsimplicity.com/?p=8

This video used to be the main page greeting. It wasn’t exactly the best sales pitch, but I thought it was fun.

Remember: If you’re going to do something stupid, at least make it for a good cause.

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