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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Dave Springer: If there’s any chaos in the universe I think it might be confined to free will if such a thing as free will really exists.
Dave, you’re just saying that because you have to….
: > )
Don’t forget that more than 30 years ago, the earth could not POSSIBLY
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sustain
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ANY increase in it’s current population and when I hear about “sustainability” I hear the same arrogance of the ‘experts’ who, despite being proven wrong time and time again, continue as they always have to repeat their ‘Gaian’ dogma about mass starvation and mass extinctions…
TXRED,
I absolutely agree with your time and place caveat and would add to it- environmental state. Multiple stable environmental states may exist for any given time or place. As an example the tall grass prairie existed as a sustainable eco-system for thousands of years as the result of the anthropogenic application of fire. Basically, fire precluded a sustainable forest ecosystem. We see these prairies now being replaced by forest as the result of fire suppression. And without fire- the prairie system is not sustainable.
The change from highly fire dependent prairie to forest alters at a fundamental level the physical and biological conditions that determine a “stable state” and I assume for these purposes- what is and is not sustainable.
So what is better – the prairie or forest? Until someone can tell me which is better and why- we can’t even begin to talk about sustainability.
R. Gates doth pontificate:
But to you point about sustainability. The lessons we can learn from nature are enormous. Somehow, for hundreds of millions of years the earth has found a way to sustain life.>>>
Bullsh*t. The earth is an inanimate object and doesn’t do squat to sustain life. Life sustain’s istelf by adapting to the conditions on earth.
R. Gates;
Despite meteor stikes and great extinctions, snowball earth’s and massive volcansim, life has found a way. Life has been sustainable. What lessons can we take from nature as to how to conduct our own life and civilizations?>>>
That nature is trying to kill us. Unless we use the many means at our disposal, she will. Fortunately, we’re not animals and we can defeat everything that nature can throw at us. Look around you at our cities, our roads, our dams, and all that we have built to keep nature at bay.
R. Gates;
1) Use only what you really need. Excesses of use lead to all sorts of imbalances. Lions don’t kill every gazelle. If they did, both would go extinct.>>>
Neither do humans. In fact, we’re not so stupid as to wake up every morning hoping that there’s enough gazelles hanging around to feed us for one more day. We build farms and feedlots and breed crops and animals to maximize production and efficiency and we manage supply and demand accordingly. We can as a result achieve population levels orders of magnitude larger than we would if we were content to use as little of our resources as possible like the stupid animals that live one day at a time.
R. Gates;
2) Use energy that is as closely associated with contemporary solar energy as possible. Wind, direct solar, food, etc. are all examples of “current solar” energy. This is in direct contrast to “old solar” in the forms of fossil fuels.
Why would we consign ourselves to the past? Wind and solar were the primary sources of power for centuries during which famines occurred regularly, half the available food rotted before it could be eaten or transported to somewhere it was needed, land lay unused because there was no possible way to farm it, and people froze to death if they ventured to live outside of tropical or semi-tropical areas. We fixed all that by moving to fossil fuels and you want to go back…to be more like the animals?
R. Gates;
3) Build for reuse, and reuse to build. Everything that is manufactured should have a high degree of reusablility and everything that is manufactured should be made as much as possible from reused materials versus “virgin” materials. This is the way nature has done it for millions of years and it has worked pretty darn well.>>>
Bullsh*t. Everything nature “builds” rots unless some humans come along and preserve it. Build for utility and cost effectiveness. At some point maintainability becomes more costly than disposal and replacement. Throw away plastic blister packs are not only cheaper than glass containers, it takes less resources to produce and dispose of them than it does to wash the glass container for re-use.
R. Gates;
Bottom line: Life on Earth (and in this universe) might not be infinitely sustainable, as entropy will eventually have it’s way, but for all practical puposes, if we watch the methods nature has evolved, we can learn how to be practical sustainable in our lives and in our civilizaitons.>>>
But it is sustainable well into the future for many generations just based on the technology we have today, never mind what we’ll have come up with 200 years from now. Unless of course someone convinces us to go back to being animals because it is “sustainable”.
Willis writes “In other words, Roger, there’s nothing that’s sustainable except building spaceships, and Tim, you agree?”
And I’m wondering whether he’s lost it 😛
I’ve plowed through over 200 comments to Willis’ article and I have come to the conclusion that “sustainability” in the environmentalist context is little more than a sufficiently ambiguous political buzz word. For me “sustainability” only has relevance for about a 40 year time span. After that I expect to be deceased.
My grandparents were alive 100 years ago. I’m pretty sure they didn’t fret about the availability of adequate food and potable water for those who would be alive many years after they died. They worried about having adequate food and potable water for themselves – right then. They didn’t concern themselves with air traffic congestion, internet regulations, using cell phones while driving, nuclear waste, global warming, etc. because they could not even imagine such things. Now we’re expected to modify our lifestyles (i.e. consumption of resources) to benefit future generations. We base this upon the notion that we are as smart and as technologically advanced as mankind will ever get. The “hubris of the present.” We will continue to create and utilize energy 100 years hence just as we do now because we can’t conceive of anything else. The same for anything we mine. Let’s face it, for everything mankind utilizes, if you can’t grow it, you have to mine it. “Sustainable Development” is a load of socialist, bureaucratic hogwash. The best thing we can do for future generations is to leave them wealthier, more developed, better educated and thus better equipped to meet the challenges of the future that we cannot even envision.
What you mean, Dave, is that humanity needs many more scientists like (my fellow Iowan!) Norman Borlaug. Although, your memory of what leading scientists like Borlaug actually have been saying is faulty:
Now in the 21st century, we are faced with the sobering reality, that the breathing time Borlaug gave us has been largely used up.
Willis,
Try Dr. Brian Czech’s “Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train.” Zero growth and sustainability theory are actually deeply rooted in humility and egalitarianism, whether you choose to believe it or not.
I really enjoyed your piece “Fair Weather Gale” a while back, and I learned from it. I have quoted from your work on the climatic thermostat extensively. I was intrigued by your work on tropical thunderstorms. Why not stick to topics where you, um, actually have something to offer?
Well said Willis. The “sustainability” inanity really gets under my skin. It’s a mindset that flourishes in this country courtesy of an education system that inculcates our young with the tenets of PC group think and a moribund MSM too timid to deviate from the group think litany.
People tend to offer a quizzical look when one comments that human existence is not and cannot be “sustainable”. The sustainabites don’t seem to understand that wooden shovels, cars, computers and TVs don’t work all that well. Likewise it is PC hand wringing about land use that has strangled resource development and agriculture in this country. It’s a no-brainer that natural resources should be used wisely, but the sustainabites need to assume a little humility and recognise that the planet does not, and never will need man’s help to rearrange and erode the landscape by kilometers, to cover continents with kilometers of ice and to rearrange the continents at will.
A physicist says:
December 22, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“It is my pleasure to assist you, Theo. The above link is to the Google Books on-line version of Wendel Berry’s pamphlet Another Turn of the Crank (1996) in which the word “sustainable” appears on pages 3, 6, 18, 21, 22, and 23. The first usage is page 3:
“[Farmers] are beginning to see that a kind of agriculture that involves unprecedented erosion and depletion of the soil, unprecedented waste of water, and unprecedented destruction of the farm population cannot by any accommodation of sense or fantasy be called ‘sustainable’.”
Theo, I trust that in this passage Mr. Berry has clarified the meaning of the word “sustainable” to you, and that in particular you now appreciate the severe limitations of Willis Eschenbach’s arguments to the effect that “nothing is sustainable.”
Actually, “A P,” he clarified the meaning of the word “unsustainable,” which I have understood for some time. We are looking for a Berryian definition of “sustainable.” Now, it is clear that “not unsustainable” is not helpful on the road to “sustainable.” So, I do not see how defining “unsustainable” can help us understand “sustainable.”
It seems to me that correct uses of the word ‘sustainable’ always require that an expiration date or time be given. For example, when jogging a particular pace is sustainable for X number of minutes. When dieting, a daily intake of 1000 calories is sustainable for a number of days. When farming, a particular regimen of crop rotation is sustainable until essential nutrients are depleted or, more to the point, until those crops produce too little income.
Taking a longer look at things, one can say that Florida’s beaches are sustainable for centuries, if Al Gore’s beliefs are false and local government continues to behave rationally and Earth is not hit by a meteor and so on. However, it is nonsense to say that they are sustainable without qualification. If the USA becomes as poor as Africa, which seems to be the UN plan, then Florida’s beaches will disappear in a matter of decades because they are maintained through large expenditures by Florida homeowners and local and state governments of Florida. Stop those expenditures and the beaches will be unrecognizable in a short time.
I cannot see a definition of “sustainable” that does not come with an expiration date. In other words, nothing is sustainable without an expiration date. Yet you seem to argue that some things are simply sustainable without qualification.
From his early years, Dr. Borlaug… felt that it only gave the world a breathing space of 30 years.
Borlaug was just one more deluded soul among many, who wrongly believed the end was nigh. We’re well past his 30 years’ “breathing time”, but nothing unusual is happening. The fact is that prosperity, more than anything else, reduces population. Yet the proposed ‘solutions’ are all anti-prosperity. Go figure.
The common thread that runs through every alarmist is the fact that they are always wrong. Their predictions never come true, but that doesn’t dissuade them any more than Harold Camping was dissuaded when the world didn’t end, or Mrs Keech’s followers weren’t dissuaded when the flying saucer didn’t arrive as predicted, or Jehovah’s Witnesses were not dissuaded each time their multiple predictions of the end of the world failed.
Their cognitive dissonance is identical with today’s population alarmists and climate alarmists. No matter how many failed predictions they make, and no matter how many of those predictions never come true, they remain True Believers in their own little secular religions, and they still follow the self-serving climate charlatans who make outlandish predictions. In laymen’s terms, the True Believers are crazy.
Excellent. I’ve had this argument many times with people. Population growth makes any effort towards “sustainability” an even greater joke. If you cut usage of whatever by 20% or whatever, population growth will quickly swamp any gains.
Sustainability is nonsense.
davidmhoffer says:
December 22, 2011 at 2:15 pm
“R. Gates doth pontificate:
R. Gates;
Despite meteor stikes and great extinctions, snowball earth’s and massive volcansim, life has found a way. Life has been sustainable. What lessons can we take from nature as to how to conduct our own life and civilizations?>>>”
R., it depends on whose life you are talking about. And I firmly believe that your assumption that we can refer to something called “Life” that is no particular life is false. Plato might have liked your views.
I would argue that “sustainability” is unsustainable: i.e. the more iron that you mine and the more shovels you make today, the MORE iron and the MORE shovels will be available for future generations. First of all, by mining iron, we are teaching future generations how to mine and where to mine, and that mining can be done. That is valuable knowledge. We’re also providing them with lots of readily-available iron that does not need to be mined. If they want or need to melt down their shovels and make guns, tanks, or I-beams, they can, quite easily, and they will not incur the significant cost of mining and smelting. Sure, some iron will be lost in the process, but a great deal of energy and time will be saved, too.
Future generations greatly benefit from our consumption today.
This particularly true in the case of rare and exotic minerals, like nickel and cadmium mentioned the article. If we mine and refine these metals, and use them productively today to make cell phones with, they will be more readily available tomorrow, if we wish to recycle them, or simply use acquired knowledge to find and extract more of them.
LOL … Theo, had you read Berry’s essay to the end, you would have come to Mr. Berry’s 17-point list of principles regarding How a Sustainable Local Community Might Function.
So tell the truth and shame the devil Theo (as they say in Iowa) … did you read that far? It’s a set of principles well-worth pondering.
Smokey, those lefty nutjobs at Forbes disagree with you; they say the syndromes that Borlaug and Berry foresaw are upon us.
Comments have been largely straw man arguments on all sides because there is no sustainability definition (and I would argue there can be no meaningful and encompassing definition).
I’ve heard a lot of “its” possible and “its” not impossible- but not a lot of definition of what “it” is.
The technical definition of a sustainable process is one in which the output of the restorative mechanism is of equal or greater magnitude than the input of the exploitative mechanism. Timber harvesting a forest can be truly sustainable if the new biomass of growing wood equals or exceeds the amount of wood harvested, AND if the tilth is returned to the soil. Irrigation can be sustainable if the aquifer is recharged at the rate of removal. Of course, if salts build up in the soil then the agriculture is not sustainable, but the irrigation process still meets the definition.
@A physicist says:
December 22, 2011 at 1:27 pm
All well and good, A, but it still doesn’t answer “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
David says:
December 22, 2011 at 7:43 am
The argument that all “greens” are “warmists” and therefore we should allow[!] developing nations to suffocate[!] themselves in coal power pollution is a strawman, and shows weakness of mind.
Likewise, David, as per your own [illogical] “strawman” argument above, do you agree that the argument to the effect that truly scientific CO2 = CAGW sceptics are “climate change deniers”, “flat earthers”, “Big Oil bought and paid for scientists”, or simply “deniers”; and therefore that green “sustainability” Environmentalists of a “warmist” ilk have the right to force developing and developed nations to de-develop further back towards the Stone Age by discontinuing their [often massive] fossil fuel dependent energy development programs, is actually an illogical, completely anti-factual, and provenly counter-productive Climate Science argument and plan, if done solely to stop CO2 outputs? But which “Environmentalists” such as the green “Warmist” ipcc Climate Scientists, enc, themselves do in fact make?
And when you conclude that:
Environmentalists are NOT the skeptics’ adversary. Warmists are. There’s a big difference.
Do you also agree with the fact that CO2 is not a “pollutant” and that it will not cause Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming – on the basis of the scientific fact that the Warmist Climate Scientists have not made even one correct prediction yet derived from their CO2 = CAGW “theory”?
Davidmhoffer sez:
“The earth is an inanimate object and doesn’t do squat to sustain life. Life sustain’s istelf by adapting to the conditions on earth.”
You’re trying to Anthropomorphize the living system that is the earth. The Earth is hardly inanimate. If it were…you’d surely have never existed. This is a dynamic living planet in which the whole is far more than the sum of the parts.
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“That nature is trying to kill us. Unless we use the many means at our disposal, she will. Fortunately, we’re not animals and we can defeat everything that nature can throw at us. Look around you at our cities, our roads, our dams, and all that we have built to keep nature at bay.”
“Nature” trying to kill us? Surely not. Nature is the sum total of interrelated living things. Nature no more is trying to kill the gazelle, when it is attacked by the lion then it is trying to kill you when you’re attacked by a virus. Sounds rather paranoid overall. But no, you can’t defeat “everything” that nature can throw at you…for surely you and I will both face death.
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“But it is sustainable well into the future for many generations just based on the technology we have today…
There is always the balance between quantity or length of life and quality of life. Though you can extend the “life” of a love one with technology long after nature, in her mercy, would have taken them, it doesn mean that you should. There is a reason why they call pneumonia the “friend of the elderly”.
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“Everything nature “builds” rots unless some humans come along and preserve it.”
This is just simple minded. In decay and death, nature plants the seeds for the next generation of life. Have you never had a compost pile? And in terms of “preservation”, that is one area that human have really screwed things up for themselves. Do you know how much pancreatic cancer has been caused by years and years of preservatives being put into the body? Best to just eat fresh food, and stay away from the sodium nitrite especially. It essentially pickles your pancreas.
Should prehistoric homo-sapiens have behaved in a more “sustainable” manner and made sure that they conserved stones for the benefit of future generations?
Theo Goodwin says:
December 22, 2011 at 2:57 pm
R. Gates said;
“Despite meteor stikes and great extinctions, snowball earth’s and massive volcansim, life has found a way. Life has been sustainable. What lessons can we take from nature as to how to conduct our own life and civilizations?>>>”
R., it depends on whose life you are talking about. And I firmly believe that your assumption that we can refer to something called “Life” that is no particular life is false. Plato might have liked your views.
______
Then you miss the essence of the relationships that form the web of life on earth. When a lion chases a pack of gazelles, it is not a particular gazelle it is after, but rather, it is simply following the instincts programmed inside. It is hungry and wants to eat any gazelle that it can get hold of. Sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes weak, and sometimes just plain unlucky. The importance of this relationship is so that both species may continue, without care for any specfic individual of that species. It is this relationship between gazelle and lion that is the essence of the web of life. Though it runs contrary to many people’s belief systems, no man or woman is truly ever an island unto themselves.
Thankyou for your article. “Sustainability” has been a stone in my shoe for years. Here in the Australian Government, the term is bandied around like it is the panacea to everything. Any time I have asked someone to explain what “sustainability” means, they go off on tangents.
Finally I hear some sense. Thanks again.
Jeremy says:
December 22, 2011 at 12:57 pm
The bleeding obvious conclusion is that life (DNA) is incredibly sustainable and there is absolutely no need to worry. Long after humans are gone or mutated into something else, we can be absolutely assured that life (DNA) will continue.
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1. I’m not really worried about too much.
2. Life is more than a sequence of DNA. It is a relationship. And, no, I am not absolutely assured that DNA will continue in this universe after all the useful energy has been used up.
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Jeremy also said:
“You need to learn a little humility and realize that, in the scheme of things, humans are quite irrelevant. The AGW always over estimate human importance – a recurring theme going back to times when it was popular to think the earth was at the center of the universe.”
How odd that you would equate my belief that it is more likely than not that AGW is occurring with some over-estimation of human importance. Life has always affected the atmosphere and hydrosphere of this planet, and it doesn’t raise the importance of humans to be one of many.