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  • John Robinson 7:57 pm on June 5, 2010 Permalink  

    Sustainability and sacrifice 

    [Based on some early reaction, which made me realize I was not clear, this blog has been revised on June 12, 2010.]

    Do we need to make sacrifices to achieve sustainability? The kinds of behaviour changes being proposed in the service of sustainability are often framed in terms of limitations on our desires and habitual behaviours. On this model, we need to choose consciously to moderate our consumption, to drive less, for example, or do without unnecessary goods or services.

    But the language of sacrifice and doing without is not in itself strongly motivating, especially over long periods of time. Is such an approach likely to lead to widespread global adoption of changed consumption practices that can be maintained indefinitely into the future? I doubt it. Sustaining the planet by a conscious process of continuous collective self-denial does not strike me as a very robust path to follow.

    We can agree that we need forms of collective and individual behaviour that are themselves inherently benign, indeed restorative, of social and environmental conditions. But, to be sustained, these activities need to be behaviours that fulfill our desires and aspirations, not sacrifices we must force ourselves continuously to make.

    Some people may indeed be strongly motivated by calls for sacrifice and self-denial, and such early adopters may play an important role in the initial development and implementation of more sustainable technologies and behaviours. But we need to move quickly to embedding such technologies and behaviours in social practice, in the form of positive and habitual activities that enhance our lives, rather than constrain them. This suggests the desirability of paying more attention to how social norms become embedded in our society, at both the collective and individual level, and to how sustainability can be connected to our aspirations and desires.

     
  • John Robinson 9:56 am on May 30, 2010 Permalink  

    It’s just going to continue and continue . . . 

    My favorite New Yorker cartoon shows a man in sackcloth and ashes carrying a sign. The sign doesn’t say “The world is ending;” it says “It’s just going to continue and continue”. My biggest fear about unsustainability isn’t massive and abrupt ecological or social collapse; it is a continuing incremental deterioration in the state of the world, both ecological and socio-cultural, which we adapt to over time.

    This has two implications. First, there is already a great deal of social and environmental injustice and damage which we need to address, irrespective of future changes. Existing conditions of starvation and mass poverty, and of ecosystem and resource base decline, need to be remediated. It’s worth remembering that we need not only prevent future problems, but attend to those already in place.

    Second, our ability to adapt as a species is both a cause for celebration and alarm. Celebration because change has already happened and will continue to do so; a static state is not available to us, so adaptation of various kinds is imperative. And alarm because our very success at adapting to incremental change (even when it is punctuated by abrupt events like fisheries collapses, extreme weather events, or wars) can militate against more fundamental changes in the underlying development path we are on. That is, if we can find ways to mitigate the worst effects of the changes we are experiencing, without making more substantial changes in the direction and nature of societal development, there is the danger that we will gradually come to accept social and natural conditions that are extremely undesirable, even if we don’t run into any abrupt discontinuities that would challenge our continued existence.

    We should therefore be worried not just about the possibility of some sort of environmentally-induced collapse, but also about the possibility that we can avoid such a collapse by a continued decline in social and environmental conditions. This latter possibility includes the imposition of highly undesirable forms of environmental and social control to avoid such a collapse. The fundamental normative and ethical question, as always, is what kind of a world we want to live in.

     
  • John Robinson 12:17 pm on May 24, 2010 Permalink  

    The powerful vagueness of sustainability 

    What does sustainability mean? Is it so vague a term that it has no real content, and can be high-jacked by anyone in the service of greenwashing unsustainable practices or policies?

    In thinking about this issue, I would like to suggest that the appropriate model is not science, but the humanities. On this view, sustainability is not a scientific concept that can be precisely defined but instead is a normative ethical principle that should be based on our best scientific understanding, but cannot be reduced to a single unambiguous definition. Instead it represents a provisional judgement about the most appropriate action, given environmental, social and economic goals and constraints. It needs to be thought through and decided upon in any given situation. Sustainability as process.

    A parallel from diplomacy seems relevant. Those who write international treaties know that it is often desirable to leave a little wiggle room in the language of a given treaty, which will allow different signatories, with perhaps very different agendas, circumstances and constituencies, to be part of the process. We might call this constructive ambiguity. A procedural approach to sustainability allows different interests to stay at the table, instead of walking away.

    But does this amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Won’t this just open the door to endless procedural wrangling in which those that have typically had most power and influence will simply ride roughshod over the very real environmental and social concerns that sustainability is supposed to be about.

    Another parallel might help us out here. There are no precise and universally agreed-upon definitions of truth, democracy or justice. They need to be grappled with and articulated over time, by each society for whom they are important. Yet they have served as crucial concepts in the development of societies around the world, and provide the conceptual underpinnings of many political and legal systems, not to mention—in the case of truth—science itself. I think the history of these concepts provides pretty good evidence that, despite their vagueness and the ever-present influence of powerful interests, constructively ambiguous principles of this kind are more useful than precisely defined concepts would be. I would be happy to see the idea of sustainability playing a similar role.

     
  • John Robinson 7:01 am on May 17, 2010 Permalink  

    From less bad to more good 

    The environmental agenda is sometimes seen as being about reducing impacts, mitigating emissions, avoiding harmful chemicals, and so on. In other words it is about reducing the damage we do to the planet. The sustainability agenda extends this to the human side: reducing social injustice and poverty, maintaining human rights, avoiding deterioration in quality of life, etc. Again, the focus is on being less harmful that we otherwise might be.

    These are of course desirable goals. But they suffer from two problems. First, because they are usually expressed in negative terms, they are not very motivating. Being less bad is a good thing, but hardly inspiring. Second, they are insufficient. We don’t need simply to reduce harmful outcomes; we need to create positive ones. We don’t want a less unsustainable world, we want a sustainable one.

    We need to take a leaf from the playbooks of industrial ecology, biomimicry and lifecycle assessment, and begin to look for restorative and regenerative approaches. We need a positive agenda, one that will improve environmental and social conditions. That is the agenda we are following in the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (www.cirs.ubc.ca). CIRS will be a 50,000 sq. ft. building that is net positive on water quality (it will rely entirely on rainwater and improve the quality of the water flowing through the building), net positive on energy and carbon emissions (adding CIRS to the UBC campus will reduce UBC’s energy use and carbon emissions) and net positive on structural carbon (the building will sequester more carbon than the carbon emitted in building it and decommissioning it at the end of its life). We also plan to improve the productivity, health and happiness of the building inhabitants over time.

    How can our buildings and cities be regenerative, and enhance ecological and social conditions. I think that’s a good question to be asking.

     
  • John Robinson 3:13 pm on May 9, 2010 Permalink  

    Running out of the wrong resources 

    It is sometimes argued that the main reason for switching from non-renewable energy sources to renewable ones is the finite nature of the former and the inexhaustible nature of the latter. We will soon run out of non-renewables, the argument goes, so we need to switch to an energy system based on renewable resources. This view seems to receive support from the current resurgence of peak oil arguments about an imminent decline in the production of conventional crude oil.

    This view, however, is actually deeply problematic. In some ways the problem is exactly the reverse. We never actually physically run out of non-renewable resources, they just become too expensive to produce. When we cap an oil well in Alberta with concrete, over half of the oil in place is still underground. We have a very large amount of delineated coal resources, and very large supplies of unconventional oil and natural gas resources. With the notable exception of conventional crude oil, the problem with non-renewables from a sustainability point of view is not their physical scarcity but the environmental and other impacts of using them. The big problem with coal, natural gas, and unconventional oil is the climate change they cause, not running out.

    A similar reversal of conventional wisdom applies with respect to renewables as well. As is shown by the collapse of the cod fishery in the Atlantic, and the effects of forestry harvesting practices around the world, we can indeed run out of renewable resources, if we over-harvest them, or degrade the habitat on which they depend.

    So the real reason to switch to renewable energy resources is that their use offers the potential of doing much less damage to the planet, and to people, than the use of non-renewables. Indeed, there is even the potential for truly restorative or regenerative use, which actually improves the state of our world. In turn this means that we need to pay very careful attention to those environmental and social impacts. The goal is to avoid harmful impacts (or create positive ones), not simply to replace one type of damage with another.

    And as to peak oil, the decline in deliverability of conventional crude oil can be expected to cause oil prices to rise, perhaps significantly. From a sustainability point of view, nothing could be better.

     
  • John Robinson 9:44 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink  

    The Real Barriers to Sustainability 

    It is sometimes argued that there are many technological and economic barriers to sustainability. It is my experience that these are seldom the most important barriers. In fact, we are surrounded with sustainable technologies—in energy and water systems, transportation, industry—that are not in common use. And contrary to common perception, these technologies are often not themselves more expensive than the alternative.

    Instead, the main barriers to sustainability are institutional and behavioural. They can be found in our codes of practice, job descriptions, performance evaluation criteria, social norms, regulatory requirements, etc. These are the rules that actually govern what we do on Monday morning, and even on the weekends. They prevent organizations from implementing otherwise economic and technologically viable sustainability solutions. Because they are different from more traditional solutions, and don’t fit the highly path dependent patterns of existing behaviour, they take substantial time and effort to change.

    One example is sustainable buildings. There is growing evidence that highly sustainable buildings are not more costly to build than those that are not. But to be successful they require design and construction practices, and an engagement with building operators and inhabitants, which are not just unusual but actually violate existing standards, codes, rules of practice and norms.

    The implications of this are significant. We need to focus much more on the institutional and behavioural sides of sustainability. It is good to have technology policies that set targets and goals. But let’s also focus strongly on changing the job descriptions, evaluation criteria, and codes of practice.

     
  • John Robinson 1:35 pm on April 14, 2010 Permalink  

    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.

     
  • John Robinson 1:36 pm on April 3, 2010 Permalink  

    Sustainability and social learning 

    What do freeways, office electronics and safer sports equipment have in common? They are all examples of what I have come to think of as a rule about technological change: the second order effects of any new technology are often in the opposite direction of the first order effects, and bigger. The first order effect of highways is to reduce congestion by providing more space for the same number of cars. The second order effect is to induce more traffic, and by so doing, eventually create more congestion than was originally there. Similarly, with office electronics, the initial effect is to reduce paper use, since so much can now be stored electronically. The second order effect is to make it much easier to print things, but also to make possible new and more complex types of data collection, leading to a huge increase in information collection, most of which gets printed. The paperless office is drowning in paper. And safer sports equipment makes any individual action safer, but seems to lead inexorably to greater risk-taking. It seems clear that socio-technological change is inherently unpredictable and gives rise to many unexpected effects. As someone once said, the only law of sociology is the law of unanticipated consequences. 

    I think the implications of this are not that all our sustainability actions are futile (or that we should try to promote unsustainability in the hope that the second order effects take us where we want to go!). Rather it is that we need to think about emergence, resilience and adaptability in everything we do. We need to develop technologies, and design policies that are designed to be adaptive, and cope with unanticipated effects. We need to pay attention to the behavioural dimensions of our technologies and policies. We need to be more participatory in our design and evaluation of technology and policy. Achieving a sustainability future will be less like deciding on a future state and then making it happen, and more like a process of social learning characterized by experimentation and trial and error.

     
  • John Robinson 3:37 pm on March 29, 2010 Permalink  

    Earth Hour and UBC 

    On March 26, UBC sent out a broadcast email asking people to “Turn Off and Unplug for Earth Hour” on March 27. I have since received several emails expressing some skepticism about the actual effect of such actions on electricity use at UBC, and suggesting that this type of action is a misguided substitute for real energy conservation and efficiency. 

    In fact, my correspondents are right that the actions taken during events like Earth Hour are not going to make any significant different to annual electricity use at UBC.  Instead, they provide important information about two things: (i) the degree to which people are receptive to such appeals (a proxy for possible behavioural responses to other, more ambitious programs), and (ii) the degree to which we can monitor the effect on electricity use of behaviour change, which will feed into our ambitious efforts to develop real-time monitoring of energy use on campus, in partnership with Pulse Energy, among others. 

    If we are to reduce GHG emissions by 33% by 2015, 67% by 2020, and 100% by 2050, then we will have to significantly ramp up our energy conservation and efficiency programs. We need all the information we can gather about how energy is used, what measures we can take to improve energy conservation and efficiency, and how behaviour change can be part of those measures. Earth Hour can play a useful role in that process.

     
  • John Robinson 2:33 pm on March 24, 2010 Permalink  

    A new initiative, a new blog, and new targets 

    I am launching my blog this week to correspond with one of UBC Vancouver’s most significant sustainability initiatives.

    Today UBC announces its climate change targets, which are more ambitious than any other university targets we know in North America. On its Vancouver campus, the university will now aim to:

    • reduce GHGs an additional 33 per cent from 2007 levels by 2015
    • reduce GHGs to 67 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020
    • eliminate 100 per cent of GHGs by 2050


    YouTube Preview Image

    I am proud to be part of this initiative, and when I think of the last 18 years of working towards sustainability goals here at UBC and in other organizations and jurisdictions, I am struck by the speed with which things have moved in the last year or so. Of course this was a classic case of an overnight success which was ten years in the making (the Campus Sustainability Office is 11 years old this year), but the speed of change since roughly 2008 is remarkable.

    Moving our Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) to the UBC Vancouver campus, getting rapid-fire Board approvals, creating a proposed Sustainability Academic Strategy in 2009, the creation of the UBC Vancouver Sustainability Initiative to implement that strategy in Jan 2010, and now the climate change commitments; all this, together with a suite of ongoing initiatives, makes for a pretty breathless time. We have moved the dial on sustainability at UBC; now we have to make it happen.

     
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