Sustainability and surfboards
One way to characterize different views about how to reach a sustainable future is in terms of two metaphors, which I call the powerboat and sailboat metaphors. The powerboat metaphor describes what I think is the dominant trajectory of industrial society to date. We want to get from where we are to some desired destination, so we get in a boat, start the engine, and drive directly there. In so doing we consume whatever resources we need to power the boat, and essentially ignore the environmental conditions around us. We drive straight through the waves, adding power and protection when it is stormy outside.
The alternative metaphor is the sailboat, or perhaps the surfboard. We may have the same destination in mind as when we took the powerboat, but now our situation is much different. Instead of powering through the waves and wind, we need to use their energy to help us get where we want to go. Instead of degrading resources by burning gasoline or diesel fuel, we use the energy of the waves and wind in ways that does not degrade them. In essence, we surf the biogeochemical systems of the planet to get where we want to go.
It seems to me that the sailboat metaphor points the way to a rather more positive relationship with our environment than the powerboat approach. Surely we need to move more in the direction of sailing or surfing the major systems of the planet, rather than mining and burning them. The shift to greater energy efficiency and renewable energy use are examples of this approach. But we can go much further. Green chemistry, industrial ecology and biomimicry all represent approaches to nature that are based on learning from, rather than consuming and replacing, 5 billion years of evolutionary process, all of which has tended towards greater eco-efficiency and elegance in matter and energy flows.
The metaphor can be extended beyond the biophysical. Perhaps we also need to move away from what amounts to a powerboat approach to our treatment of social and cultural systems to a sailing metaphor. Should we not be acting in ways that surf the waves of cultural practice and knowledge around the world, rather than degrading them? It is telling, I think, that we already use this metaphor with regard to the internet. We talk about surfing the web, which surely means tacking our way across the information flows of which it is constituted, obtaining the information we need, without degrading those flows. Can we use the rich array of cultural practice and information that surrounds us to devise new ways to achieve a sustainable future instead of powering through such practices in a mono-cultural way in our quest for a better world?
What would our world be like, if we surfed the biophysical and information flows of our planet and our many cultures, using the material and cultural energy in those systems to get us where we want to go, without degrading those flows themselves? I am not sure, but it seems to me like a goal worth exploring.