Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
People have this idea that sailing is cheap, because of the low fuel costs. But blue-water sailors have a saying that goes like this:
The wind is free … but everything else costs money.
Reading the various pronouncements from the partygoers at the Durban climate-related Conference of Parties, I was struck by the many uses of the words “sustainable development” and “sustainability”. It’s pretty confusing. Apparently, paying high long-term subsidies for uneconomic energy sources is sustainable … who knew?
Anyways, I got to thinking about how I’ve never been sure what “sustainable development” means, and of how much it reminds me of the sailors saying. One of the first uses of the term was in the UN’s 1987 Brundtland Report, which said:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
I never understood that definition. How could I use a shovel to turn over the earth for my garden, for example? Every kilo of iron ore that is mined to make my shovel is a kilo of iron ore that is forever unavailable to “future generations to meet their own needs”. It’s unavoidable. Which means that we will run out of iron, and thus any use of iron is ultimately unsustainable. My shovel use is depriving my great-grandchildren of shovels.
Oh, sure, I can recycle my shovel. But some of the metal will inevitably be lost in the process. All that does is make the inevitable iron-death move further away in time … but recycling doesn’t magically make iron extraction sustainable.
Figure 1. Example of unsustainable development.
And if me using a steel shovel to dig in my own garden is not sustainable … then what is sustainable? I mean, where are the “peak iron” zealots when we need them?
So other than sunlight, wind, and rainbows … just what is sustainable development supposed to be built of? Cell phones are one of the most revolutionary tools of development … but we are depriving future generations of nickel and cadmium in doing so. That’s not sustainable.
Here’s the ugly truth. It’s simple, blunt, and bitter. Nothing is sustainable. Oh, like the sailors say, the wind is free. As is the sunshine. But everything else we mine or extract to make everything from shovels to cell phones will run out. The only question is, will it run out sooner, or later? Because nothing is sustainable. “Sustainable Development” is just an airy-fairy moonbeam fantasy, a New Age oxymoron. In the real world, it can’t happen. I find the term “sustainable development” useful for one thing only.
When people use it, I know they have not thought too hard about the issues.
Finally, there is an underlying arrogance about the concept that I find disturbing. Forty percent of the world’s people live on less than $2 per day. In China it’s sixty percent. In India, three-quarters of the population lives on under $2 per day.
Denying those men, women, and especially children the ability to improve their lives based on some professed concern about unborn generations doesn’t sit well with me at all. The obvious response from their side is “Easy for you to say, you made it already.” Which is true. The West got wealthy by means which “sustainable development” wants to deny to the world’s poor.
Look, there could be a climate catastrophe in fifty years. And we could hit some sustainability wall in fifty years.
But when a woman’s kids are hungry, she won’t see the logic of not feeding them to avoid “compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”. She won’t understand that logic at all.
And neither do I. Certainly, I think we should live as lightly as possible on this marvelous planet. And yes, use rates and R/P ratios are an issue. But nothing is sustainable. So let’s set the phrase “sustainable development” on the shelf of meaningless curiosities, go back to concentrating on feeding the children we already have on this Earth, and leave the great-grandchildren to fend for themselves. Everyone says they’ll live to be a thousand and be a lot richer than I am and have computers that can write poetry, so I’m sure they’ll figure it out.
w.
PS—Theorists say that it’s not enough that development be sustainable in terms of the environment. They also demand sustainability in three other arenas: social, economic, and cultural sustainability.
Socially sustainable? Culturally sustainable? We don’t even know if what we currently do is culturally or socially sustainable. How can we guess if some development is culturally sustainable?
I swear, sometimes I think people have totally lost the plot. This is mental onanism of the highest order, to sit around and debate if something is “culturally sustainable”. Like I said … let’s get back to feeding the kids. Once that’s done, we can debate if the way we fed them is culturally sustainable.
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The definition of a boat is that it is a hole in the water into which money is poured.
Every (used) condom is thousands of people being prevented from being born, and their children and grandchildren etc etc. It’s a crime against intergenerational justice. /sarc
Absolutely on the button. Brilliant as ever, Willis.
Does a bamboo slide rule count as sustainable? And 50 points for using ‘onanism’ in a sentence.
There is a difference between sustainable development and “Sustainable Development” (note the capitalization). One is the concept of doing things in such a manner as to be considerate of your neighbors and future generations. The other is a mechanism by which governments abdicate their representative responsibility and allow their planning boards, zoning commissions, and environmental agencies to be run by policy set by the UN. “Sustainable Development” as set forth in Agenda 21 of the Rio conference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21
and includes such concepts as the “Precautionary Principal” where something must only be a “plausible” threat to the environment and scientific uncertainty is not to be a factor in limiting action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
We have zoning compliance boards now throwing people out of their homes in LA county in the name of Sustainable Development. It works kind of like this:
You develop high density “affordable housing” along transportation corridors. Then you start making it unaffordable to live in rural areas or to live “off grid” by mandating that you must be connected to the grid and you must be connected to a municipal water supply of that your water supply meet the same standards as a municipal water supply. In other words, they make it unaffordable but anyone other than the very rich to live in rural areas. The poor are “stacked and packed” into “high density” housing while low density areas are condemned as “under utilized” and people are forced to move out.
But more importantly, national governments, states, and localities are encouraged to “internationalize” their policies. This means they are encouraged to go lock-step with UN policy recommendations such as the UNFCCC recommendations. This means that a group of unelected bureaucrats who are for the most part appointed by third world despots get to dictate policy directly to the local level without anyone who is an elected representative of the people being involved anywhere in the process. And they do this under the Orwellian name of “Sustainable Development” knowing that anyone who opposes it will be accused of wanting “unsustainable development”.
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/index.shtml?utm_source=OldRedirect&utm_medium=redirect&utm_content=dsd&utm_campaign=OldRedirect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development
So basically, some political crony of the President of Bolivia gets to set zoning standards for people living in South Carolina.
It is complete freaking crazy and the first thing we need to do after this next election is to extract ourselves from the Rio treaty.
In fact, just a few days ago the EPA was asking for expanded powers in order to implement Sustainable Development (in the UN sense).
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/19/epa-ponders-expanded-regulatory-power-in-name-sustainable-development/
The UK’s DEFRA has already “internationalized” and simply follows UN guidelines in lock-step and pays the University of East Anglia (via Tyndall Centre) to help them implement it.
Willis: Yup. The old Marxist five-year-plan drone, dressed up in sheep’s clothing. (Fill in appropriate socioeconomic construct) will be (fill in postulated better condition) in the future, if we (engage in such-and-such process) today. Which guarantees that none of it will happen.
But hang on…
We emmit CO2, it gets absorbed by the oceans and taken up by phyto-plankton, sinks to the bottom in the sediment layers and in a few million years it becomes a future source of fossil fuel.
And the cycle continues…..
This seems very sustainable !
Famine has been a traditoinal delimiter for economic and cultural sustainability. Another has been neglect of the aged, neglect of the infirm,, and the selling of children when the limits of sustainability have been reached. Of course, The latest Lotus Eaters, of course, are contemplating nothing less than the establishment of the Rule of the Airmen, where the limits of Sustainability is found within their own boredom with Paradise
Famine has been a traditional delimiter for economic and cultural sustainability. Another has been neglect of the aged, neglect of the infirm,, and the selling of children when the limits of sustainability have been reached. Of course, The latest Lotus Eaters, are contemplating nothing less than the establishment of the Rule of the Airmen, where the limits of Sustainability is found within their own boredom with Paradise
This is the first time that I have seen anyone tackle the subject of what is meant by “sustainable development”. I have some theories about what it can partially mean based upon some of the architectural practices here in Canberra.
Another one that really irks me is the use of “ethical”…. e.g. “ethical insurance” where the ad reads like an advert for being a watermelon. It is also used by small farmers who are making their own wool etc. Or “fair trade”, which used to have one kind of meaning but now seems to mean something else.
I had not thought about what is meant by “sustainable development” except that it seemed to be aimed at the coal miners, or other minerals mining. Yet the truth is that if it boils down to farming that it should refer to leaving one field fallow every year!!!
I wrote exactly the same thing to my federal conservative politician last year and got a response that said to me he didn’t want to go anywhere this sort of philosophising. And he is quite a pragmatic person. Maybe a sensitive issue to a politician these days when we are are all pressured into feeling guilty about possibly making the world a worse place (via AGW) for people who don’t even exist but who will have incredible technologies available to them if current rates of progress are allowed to continue. There’s no doubt in my mind if we don’t look after the 7 billion already here the future generations won’t have a chance – they may not even get born. I guess someone will find a way of making us feel guilty for all those don’t even get born…
You are thinking too narrowly, Willis. Sustainable development is bigger than leaving some in the ground for the kids
Sustainable development is working the land so that it becomes increasingly productive. It is using iron ore, nickel and cadmium (to use your examples) to build to go to the stars to get more — and that is exactly what the best of the breed are doing.
Viewed that way your quote from the UN’s 1987 Brundtland Report makes sense:
It does not mean Stop!
In the architecture business that word has become a ‘must use’ term and I have sought to find a meaning from those using it – to no avail… I am forced now to treat any sales literature with the S word in it with great suspicion…
Thanks Willis for setting out the situation with your usual clarity.
Stu
Back in time when the atmosphere was all CO2 and no oxygen, life forms evolved which photosynthesized CO2 to oxygen. Was that sustainable development? No way! They would sure experience peak CO2 and then all die out if enough non-photosynthesizing organisms hadn’t evolved right in time when they were needed.
Even life itself is not about sustaining. It’s about evolution.
Plenty of additional resources available off world!
See Agenda 21.
“generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability”
Can you believe these people?
In terms of just the objects, it’s merely a reallocation problem, Give or take a few atoms that are lost to outer space, we have the same quantity of the 90+ odd elements on our planet as were there four billion years ago. I say ‘merely’ but that assumes the availability of boundless energy with which to undertake any required re-reallocation. Doubtless someone can provide us with an estimate of the number of spades which could be made given the amount of iron on this planet. Enough, I suspect.
Willis, if you have a cell phone with a NiCd battery, you’re really a “sustainable guy” reusing obsolete technology 😉 (All modern ones – AFAIK – have lithium-based batteries these days)
One thing that has proved again and again to not be sustainable is central planning. It doesn’t work. One mistake leads an entire nation over the cliff. We must learn to treat economies as ecosystems with economic microclimates. We need millions of individual micro-decisions to be made that all have a synergistic and symbiotic relationship with each other. Attempting to manage ANYTHING on a central basis is destined to fail. History shows us that every single time. Yet every single time the people proposing it seem to believe they are smarter than everyone else that has ever come before them in history and the result is always catastrophic.
read a book called “this time is different”.
Excellent ‘Back to Basics’ post which all of these dreamers should read.
The developing world is held in limbo at present by these fools who are denying the needy the resources to help themselves. On a recent visit to India my wife discovered that the best thing to give the poverty stricken children in rural villages was not sweets but a pencil and writing book which was immediately taken with thanks and used to help writing practice. It would appear that education is not free in India as it was when we left in 1948. If the West does nothing else we must make sure that education is free in the developing world.
Knowledge is everything.
It is something that baffles me also.
Look at recycling, iron, steel, lead, copper, aluminum, huge savings on raw resources and growing.
look at massive savings on weight and materials using modern techniques.
Look at massive declines because of change use, such as newsprint and paper.
Look at renewable sustainable materials such as wood for building.
The adaptability, flexibility and ingenuity of man knows no bounds.
Love it or hate it, every liter of bio fuel replaces and reduces demand for fossil fuel.
Yet Water Melons wish to hear none of it.
Why?
Sustainability is one of those flexi-terms that bends and twists to suit the user’s wishes. It’s also the poisoned rapier of choice for the watermelons. As w. notes, the term “unsustainable” can be used to condemn any kind of productive activity. But the “sustainable” alternatives are all illusion and selective accounting.
The greatest real force for maximum return on any resource is efficiency.
It also happens that the lithium is almost entirely recyclable and reclaimable.
This argument comes from the far left and radical enviro’s. They are totally and compleatly against today’s Western growth and comsumption as the communist’s in USSR or religious leaders in the Muslim world. And the reason they are against it is because they can’t offer the same with their ideology or religion. They can’t compete so the only way they can get to power is to annihilate the ideologies behind economic growth and consumption. They are only looking for problems and don’t want solutions for the problems they have made up or found.
Their main objective is to get to power, global power. And with the treaty they have put forwards in Copenhagen and Durban it look”s more and more like global enviro socialism. That easily can become enviro communism.
All their arguments to achieve their main goal, power, is mostly unscientific rubbish.
And so is also their sustainable doctrine. Bjorne Lomborg showed that in the book skeptical environmentalist.