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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R. Gates;
To set the record straight here on this beautiful Christmas Day– despite the contentions of some, never once have I advocated for the elimination of 6 Billion people, or 3 Billion, or even 1 person.>>>>
Really? Allow me to quote:
R. Gates;
Six million children die of hunger every year. If you want to measure human success by quantity, why not use this one? Your own values will dictate what you want to call success. Personally, I favor quality over quantity. How we live is far more important to me than how many of us do or how long we do. If there were only 1 billion humans on earth but none went hungry– that to me would be success.>>>
You have a sick and twisted definition of success. You have a sick and twisted measure of quality of life. You have a sick and twisted aversion to addressing the real cause of starvation which is corruption and tyranny. If there were only 1 billion people on earth it would do exactly nothing to help those who have the misfortune to be born in countries ruled by corruption and tyranny. That you see a population of 1 billion instead of 7 billion as the solution says much about your twisted sense of reality and complete lack of morality. You said what you said, and all the re-positioning now doesn’t change that. You stepped in it big time, and don’t have the guts to say you were wrong.
Excellent post Willis. “Sustainable development” is an Orwellian Newspeak myth propagated by dim-witted “intelligentsia”, instigated by Statists.
Under a plethora of various Statist Newspeak myths such as: “economic justice”, “social justice”, Gloooooobal Waaaaarming”, “redistribution of wealth”, “We are the 99%”, “fiat currency”, etc., the state slowly steals our individual rights and wealth and replaces them with a hell-on-earth totalitarian state.
True evil lies behind these warm & fuzzy sounding oxymoronic Newspeak phrases, and the powers that be simply manipulate mob mentality to achieve a “consensus”, and that contrived consensus ultimately leads to totalitarianism.
History shows (Stalin, Kim, Hitler, Mao, Ahmajinedad, Pol Pot, etc.) that individuals failing to agree with the mob’s new “consensus”, usually end up kneeling next to a bag of lime in some cornfield or rice field with a gun to the head….
The answer is simple. Just to let free-market economies determine efficient allocations of land, labor and capital and allow small central governments to set economically feasible pollution standards based on hard science, not scientific “consensus” or ulterior agendas.
@R. Gates says:
And it’s nice to know that you “walk the walk” when it comes to personally protecting and sustaining yourself [and the and my environment in a reasonable way], (though you probably meant “walk the talk”), though of course you know you’d be nothing without the millions of other people who indirectly or directly support your existence on the earth in this hugely interconnected collective civilization we have now.
“If you talk the talk, you better be able to walk the [implied] walk.” Talking about something is one thing, but “walking the walk” or doing it is another, right?
But it’s not a mystery any longer why you don’t understand what words mean, because you’ve admitted that in your case your usage is totally arbitrary [as an arbitrary construct of your own human mind] and, therefore, you must think it’s the same with everyone else.
This dispenses with any need or possibility to even talk about about whatever the idea or words that, “you know you’d be nothing without the millions of other people who indirectly or directly support your existence on the earth in this hugely interconnected collective civilization we have now,” mean. But let’s assume the words mean something which the rest of us who do think we can talk meaningfully about “reality” might be able to decipher.
I’d say it sounds like some of Elizabeth Warren’s reasoning, to wit , that because hardly anyone in the U.S. can exist without contacting another human directly or indirectly, and so on and on, that my fortune has been determined by everyone else in the United States, and likewise for them. But in which case, that’s the end of the discussion, because, numerically speaking, essentially no one has been in control of anyone else – each person’s contribution has been 1 in about 300 million. So why all of a sudden jump up and arbitrarily punish or reward anyone to make them “equal”, and how would you enforce that equality? Because it should and would be immediately unstable just as it was before: If you build a $5000 garage and I party away $5000, do you owe me $5000 to get us back to being equal?
No, according to one of Elizabeth Warren’s principles, it simply “is what it is”, and we’re back to square one where you still have no argument as to why you and your fellow admitted “nothings without being connected” connectivist dependents should be telling anyone or everyone what to do, instead of me, “the 1%”, the VFW, the Sierra Club, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or anyone else.
But fortunately we do have a socio-economic system based upon Constitutional Capitalism which has achieved the highest standard of living for the most people ever in the history of the United States! Even the poorest person is vastly richer now than, say, George Washington was in many critical areas and significant ways, right? And among the highest rates of various stats relating to health and well-being compared to other countries, nearly none of which the U.S. “robbed”. I don’t get richer just because a poor person is born in a country with an inferior socio-economic system.
While Totalitarian Countries are way down on the well-being scale. As are the vast majority of countries living in what might be called a more “natural” web of connectivity or even in a pretty “equally” “sustainable” way, the more “natural” they get.
So, Gates, I’d suggest that if you suddenly find the ability to understand words and numbers as having “objective, logical, factual, real, and scientific meanings”, for example, you should read the Constitution, etc., and take a good look at how a very successful system based upon rugged individualism, instead of on dainty collectivism, actually does walk the walk.
Btw, rugged individualists are, almost by definition, never “nothing”.
JPeden says:
December 25, 2011 at 10:50 pm
“”Btw, rugged individualists are, almost by definition, never “nothing”.””
Exactly. We do things for ourselves. We don’t rely on the “state” which simply redistributes
wealth from those who can to those who can’t thereby creating a huge cadre of whinging parasites
unable to support themselves. Eventually they will become aware of the failing systems
and go on the rampage demanding their “rights”.
Meanwhile we prepare for the worst, which won’t be a climate problem but a total break
down of society when the energy crisis hits.
I don’t think Gates is trying to say 6 billion people shouldnot be here. I do think he is terribly naive about humans and how hard life is without a cheap energy source. Most folks like him may not have a history passed down from their grandparents to attest to this hard life eekes out without abundant wneegy. That 1 billion people he thinks of so fondly would not be singing his praises.
Stephen Harris says:
December 23, 2011 at 6:29 am
Edo Japan is a good example of what sustainable development really means. It should be studied to see what lessons we can learn and apply in our time.
=========================
Yes, it should be studied, but studied rationally. I take it you mean the romanticised version being presented by the eugenicists of today, as here:
http://www.japanfs.org/en/aboutus/who/
And doesn’t it sound just marvellous? As if they’d found the answer to “sustainability” which each country should follow? Just read how they present it in a couple of essays: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5140
Just how did this differ from, say, England? When wood is your main source of fuel trees were pollarded, clothes were darned until they fell to pieces, night soil from London was moved to the surrounding countryside for fertiliser.., and so on.
To make such a “virtue” out of lack for the majority of the population by ignoring that what it really shows is man’s ingenuity in survival techniques, is unconscionable.
The following is the reality of a majority forced peasant society taxed into misery while their food went to the elite always well fed eugenicists of the Edo period who continued to be well fed and catered for with the luxuries of the time while the oiks providing it starved on masse.
Read these again: “Japan in the Edo Period could serve as one model of a sustainable society. The basis of its sustained economy and cultural development was not mass production and mass consumption for convenience, as we see in modern society, but rather the full utilization of limited resources.” & “During that period Japan was self-sufficient in food and energy, had low population growth and recycled almost all materials.”
– and compare with the reality where low population growth was from mass starvation..
– whenever you read such a phrase “limited resources”: the limitation is imposed by the elite who are under no such constraints. “Limited resources” is only for the oik masses whose only use to the elite is to provide the elite with unlimited resources.
Something seasonal to think about from the same wiki page above:
Benevolently and Humanely letting millions starve in famine after famine.. But that’s not my point here, although I hope this will make the disjunct between propaganda pieces by the eugenicists and actually reality clearer, my point is that whether religious or atheists, Jesus pointed out the fallacy of the elite masquerading as benevolent rulers:
[Caveat for the American theologians here – my use of the King James doesn’t mean anything more than that is the only Bible version available when I was being taught this in RK at school, yes I’m that old, it’s what I’m used to.]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+20:24-26&version=KJV
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10:41-43&version=KJV
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22:24-26&version=KJV
From Luke: 25And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.
26But ye shall not be so:
Masquerading as benevolent this is tyranny over the masses. Don’t be conned either by the word “anarchists” given bad rap by the tyrannical benevolent benefactors who say it is against democracy, tyranny through democratic ballot is well tested.., variations on the Gentile system, ‘the teachings of men’. What Jesus is saying here is that there are none in his teaching who can claim to be such, that each is equal with no other able to claim authority over another, an-archia, without another’s head over you. This is Common Law, natural law applicable to all and of Britain and the Constitution of the US.
http://www.britsattheirbest.com/freedom/f_british_constitution.htm
You don’t have to believe in God to see the logic here, but, for any calling themselves Christian and seeking to create a society of such tyrannical benefactors, now masquerading as caring for the environment while reducing others to abject misery through taxes and limitions on their freedoms, you cannot call yourselves Christian. Because:
This is the heart and mind of all of Jesus’s teaching, the foundation stone to building any society in real freedom and dignity for each and every one. (As Christian to Christian of course, you would have to sort out problems on a person to person basis, before taking recourse in the law courts, a step further.)
Once again I apologize for my tying skills on the phone. Editing is a bitch so u may have to guess at some of my comments.
At first, you find it easy to describe. It would not take you a long time to understand it. At last you reach to the spiritually meaning of the GOD.
Here is a big “IF”.
IF we look to the “ETERNITY”, the “time scale” is ETERNAL, then everything is sustainable.
To be-and-not to be is cyclic term to the eternity,
and this is sustainability;
If we say only “not to be”(nothing), then we have left the part of “to be”, and even in this case,
“NOTHING” itself is sustainable;
“NOTHING” means “it doesn’t exist”,
and this is sustainability.
@ur momisugly acckkii…
IF God says “I am the Alpha and the Omega”, THEN all things must be RELATIVE, when it come to sustainability right?
…at least that’s what I think…I think; but it hasn’t been peer reviewed…and I know I don’t actually no much…
Andrew
SUN_SEA_LAND this combination, are making together WIND. Today I as was driving from a place near a sea back to home. There was a powerful wind blowing from the sea to the land. I was thinking about “NOTHING IS SUSTAINABLE”.
I know this place from long time ago maybe for 55 years. The place is well known because of its non stop WINDS. I was looking at the windmills…
As long as the SUN-SEA_LAND are there, “WIND” would blow and it is sustainable.
I stopped the car and got out of it for a while, I could not stay there, the wind was pretty powerful, wow! What a wonderful eternal resource.
(W.) is right, it is free energy….
‘(W.) is right, it is free energy….’!!!
Apart, that is, from the costs of construction, land, maintenance, depreciation, transmission, externalities like bird kill, …..
There was a severe thunderstorm in Melbourne here in Australia on Christmas Day, with hailstones the size of lemons. Among the photographs of damage: many of those taxpayer subsidised solar panels. They, too, provide ‘free’ energy – apart from capital, fitting, cleaning, replacement (or insurance), inverters, …
You might as well look at a pile of coal or a drum of yellowcake and say ‘free energy!’
Andrew,
1st: start with NOTHING, and say “NOTHING” is sustainable, is this “NOTHING” really sustainable? your reply is supposed to be “VERY YES”;
2nd: when there is something ( the meaning of “to be”), the next must be “not to be” not nothing, and the next again “to be” and …;
3rd: “to be” and “not to be” (birth -die) are a cyclic term in the whole planet. This is sustainability, Andrew and Acckii are nothing, they are included in “CYCLES”;
Now NOTHING (to be+ not to be) is sustainable.
Same as RISE and FALL, this does not mean nothing is sustainable.
And about GOD,
I am not religious, the sound of NOTHING IS SUSTAINABLE, reminded me to the point. That’s it.
Acckkii is not sustainable when he is alive, but when he dies (acckkii alive+acckkii dead) would be sustainable, what do you want from nothing that is sustainable? The aftermath! ACCKKIIs are sustainable.
This coming and going never stops no matter who/what they are, I am sure you don’t know too when this cycle may stop, we don’t know how many no-wheres there may be.
ACCKKII;
The thought that your thoughts actually make sense to you is painful.
ACCKKI says:
“…we don’t know how many no-wheres there may be.”
By definition, there are none anywhere.
Brian H,
this pain is always sustainable.
Can we get back to we are born, we get to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, have some sex, and then die? Hey! Isn’t it beer:30 somewhere?
Aynsley Kellow,
You cannot imagine how clean and nice is the place with that FREE!!! really FREE!!! energy that I told you here. But there are many places around the earth in Africa and Saudi Arabia you can never stay for an hour. Keep Melbourne in your both hands tightly.
Can you say if you have such place with that powerful all the time the wind what do you do with that? Your reply is that on Melbourne you had a problem for a day? !!
Pamela Gray,
if you like to solve it differentially, of course you can, don’t forget this is again dsustainable(dx). The equation is for GREEDY ones as well.
Brian H,
It is interesting thing. I can just guess that you agree with the issue of global cyclic terms. Day-Night, Seasons..,
How should we expect that with the scale of the whole planet and time scale to the eternity, we can comply with “nothing is sustainable”, the trend is “sustainability”? Everything around us is cyclic. NOW,
Do you understand this:
“Pamela Gray says:
December 26, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Can we get back to we are born, we get to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, have some sex, and then die? Hey! Isn’t it beer:30 somewhere?”
Here, what is HEY! for? Is this one a scientist? Oh, GOD!
In Real Science you see COW BOYS, why here?
ACCKKII says:
December 26, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Acckkii is not sustainable when he is alive, but when he dies (acckkii alive+acckkii dead) would be sustainable, what do you want from nothing that is sustainable? The aftermath! ACCKKIIs are sustainable.
This coming and going never stops no matter who/what they are, I am sure you don’t know too when this cycle may stop, we don’t know how many no-wheres there may be.
——-
Actually ACCKKII you’re pretty much sustainable all the time you’re alive. Your body is constantly renewing itself, I think it’s something like every seven years every cell in your body is new – it’s the general pattern that stays the same from birth to death so that’s renewable..
ACCKKII says:
December 26, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Aynsley Kellow,
You cannot imagine how clean and nice is the place with that FREE!!! really FREE!!! energy that I told you here.
Can you say if you have such place with that powerful all the time the wind what do you do with that? Your reply is that on Melbourne you had a problem for a day? !!
Hey, ACCKKll, if the wind energy is free, why don’t you find your “free” place with enough wind yourself and then build your own “free” windmill and distribute “that FREE!!! really FREE!!! energy” to whomever you want to “free”? Wha…what’s that you said back, “because it would not be sustainable”?
Hey! JPeden,(sorry but if you like!)
1st of all….Merry Christmas and Happy New Year…
Don’t worry, someone else has made the windmills earlier and he is lucky..
Don’t be so sorry and aggressive. I don’t know what to call you, specialist scientist? what is your objection about, there is a wind, we have a fan, if I put the fan against this wind there would be a gain, what’s your problem? Should we burn oil and gas in a place that the energy is coming to us without pipeline without tankers without fuel station? Do you lose anything? Or generally speaking and objecting is going to be a rule for the friends like you.
If you like to know, I’m not pro/anti CO2 individual, I think there is a river when I reach there I should make a bridge and pass the river. Japanese are having electricity from a small water fall where ever it is and light a short alley, what should be our problem with that?
Objection on what?
apology for that HEY!
Merry Christmas and Happy new year, may GOD help us.
Myrrh,
It’s your turn my patient!,
When you have problem with as simple as possible ACCKKII! how can I help you?
Hope you know what is (dx) or dsustainable. I’m afraid I cannot help you.
A poster calling themself “A physicist” said:
What substantial risk to the planet has science demonstrated?
ACCKKII says:
December 26, 2011 at 11:18 pm
I don’t know what to call you, specialist scientist? what is your objection about, there is a wind, we have a fan, if I put the fan against this wind there would be a gain, what’s your problem?
My answer to you is why I asked you to try it yourself as your own personal experiment first to see how free it actually is, and also to see how efficient your allegedly simple schema or “idea” would actually be in terms of actually being workable on a large scale in providing usable energy to large populations of people. Europe has already done the same experiment on a very large scale, and it has failed on both counts – to be either free or efficient. Europe’s system was also massively corrupted by criminal operations digging into the “free” money handed out by Governments there. Wind power also has to be backed up by conventional sources for when the wind doesn’t blow and also partly because any excess electricity it generates cannot be effectively stored for later use.
But I do agree with you completely when it comes to hydropower, which does have a long record of being a very successful source of electricity supply.
And don’t worry about the “Hey”. It sounds like you are not just not totally up to speed yet in the ways in which “Hey” is used among people whose native language is English. Anyone can use it.
“Merry Christmas and Happy new year, may GOD help us.” Back at you!, meaning, I’m saying the the same thing back to you!
JPeden,
Thank you very much for your kind comment. I liked it very much.
Windmills where about I said, have special situation. Generally, windmill plan is successful when the following conditions are met:
1. Sustainable wind;
2. No other choice for the power supply is available;
That place is really unique. Sustainable wind through days of a year is unbelievably within your reach. I can give you an imagination of the place. The sea, then the land and the sun. The land around the place is not flat. Mountains all around. There is just one narrow low corridor that lets the wind gets exhausted. As it is not so wide, so there is a permanent wind blowing. You feel sustainable resource here, you cannot count on an oil/gas reservoir like this. As long as the 3 system there are, it works.
In that area the cheapest energy for the olive farmers is this wind-fan system.
And about comparison; when you have only one choice what would you do? Besides, is the living cost in Tokyo and London the same? In EU windmills didn’t work?The place that I saw it,windmills are working it is feasible. About the windmills there are stories…woooh, the birds,the…. about nuclear plants wooooh as much as you may wish, about Dams and hydro s ….HELP! …fishes….about Hydrocarbons…CO2, global warming…
All these are essential just the road map to be adjusted not to be stopped. Fossil Based Fuels (FBF) among all resources of energy still is GIANT and sustainable. You cannot look at this resource as energy only. It is economically a phenomena. The only important thing about this material, is how can we extend its life time. Here is the technology that works.
Efficient Consumption, long life FBF.
And as long as this resource is economically efficient it works, unless the next resource(s) are available.
Best Wishes.