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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Many years ago when studying political theory, our class was required to write an essay on our obligations to future generations. My hypotesis was essentialy this; there are two classes of resource – renewable and non-renewable. Any use of non-renewable resources will ultimately lead to a loss of those resources at some point in the future, thus depriving a future generation of that resource. No single fututre generation can be said to have a greater claim to non-renewables than any other, or this one, therefore there can be no absolute moral/ehtical limitation vis a vis future generations on our use of non-renewable resources. Renwable resources by definition have an (for all practical purposes) indefinite fututre utility. this being the case, we have an obligation not to use renewable resources in such a way as to degrade them or otherwise render them unavailable to fututre generations. In addition, our use of non-renewables must not impinge on the future viablitiy of renewables.
It’s not a complete argument in itself, but I think it’s still a good place to start thinking about the subject
Sustainability is but one of the three aspects of life: to create, sustain and destroy.
It’s all a question of balance.
When the term “sustainable” agriculture was new and intriguing to me, it became apparent that if followed to it’s logical end, the movement’s advocates were really making a call for a return to a hunter- gatherer society, with emphasis on the ‘gatherer’.
Cross country ski-ing is pretty near 100% sustainable.
Make sure you have kids who like the sport.
They can keep going when your gone.
Snow I’m sure (despite GAGW fears) will always be with us.
Take care of your ski’s they’ve got to last a long time
Willis,
You missed one. Wind, Sun, Rainbows, Unicorns. The last consume no food and produce fuel grade poop.
I agree the word Sustainable is a central part of the Agenda 21 society.
A plan to destroy the market and democracy and create a society where only socialism and communism have a place. A plan society with mostly collective solutions only.
So for me sustainable means becoming socialist or communist.
Been there done that so no thank you.
On social and cultural sustainability, these very ideas seem wrong. Unless there is some dead hand blocking their development, society and culture are both in constant flux. To try and make anything sustainable in terms of society or culture would therefore require stopping society and culture changing, which is a totalitarian or arch-conservative instinct.
Interestingly though, it does appear to be the underlying logic behind much ‘environmentalism’ – that society must be frozen in a perfect state. Unfortunately, as anyone who has studied history can tell you, humanity does not freeze societies for long – and the longer the old men with beards or the ideologues try to hold back change, the harder it comes (see recent events in the Arab world for example). People change; society and culture are not separate entities but simply the products of people interacting and expressing themselves; therefore society and culture cannot say the same unless people do. And people always change.
Sustainable development means what the participants in COP 17 want it to mean. You are of course correct; everything we do will impact the future availability of natural resources. The COP 17 members want to reduce economic development in rich nations of the west and demand that they become poorer by taxing them and redistributing the funds to undeveloped nations. It is their fault that the undeveloped nations are poor. Slogans like “hope and change”, “climate modification” and “cultural sustainability” don’t have any meaning inherent in the words. They are devoid of content. Therefore, their meanings depend solely upon the context it which they are used and therefore who is using them and why they are using the terms. Of course the context may not always reveal the hidden meaning of sustainable development. Sustainability of the planet sounds altruistic but the purveyors of this idea are more interested in sharing the wealth created by development and in using the wealth to foster their own well being as government officials.
Nowadays, it is science that is creating new religion. They may be intellectual based religions but their central theme is the same as every religion gone before. We are all sinners, we must repent, we must become sustainable(good) and Mother Nature(God) will pay you back if you are not good.
“Sustainable” is the most abused word in the english dictionary. But in the context of warmism and junk climate science, it really means monetary appeasement to Mother Earth and her disciples. It was invented by climate scientists to suggest if good will is shown by man to planet earth, that it will stave off bad weather events like hurricanes and floods in the future; in other words Gaia will lessen these natural events.
What makes “Sustainable” so utterly meaningless is that sustainability is dependent on monetary contribution. Everything is the same as before but now is sustainable. Coca Cola used to be Cola Cola, now it’s sustainable. Flying used to bad for the earth, now it is sustainable. To be sustainable you just make your offering payable to any of the disciples like World Wide Fund for Nature, to Greenpeace or purchase a carbon credit from a green prophet bank. In fact sustainable is the new currency that buys you exclusive right to belong in the church of Warmism, the more you fund the church, the more sustainable you become, the more you spend, the better Warmist you are.
Roger writes “You are thinking too narrowly, Willis. Sustainable development is bigger than leaving some in the ground for the kids”
And is spot on. Its fairly obvious that use of fossil fuels is not sustainable unless they are used as a stepping stone to some other technology.
The earliest use of “sustainability” that I have found was by the Third Reich. Yup, sustainability = fascism.
And what do women (people) do when faced with the starvation of their children? They produce more children in an effort to continue the family (and sub-species), thus there are more mouths to feed. Same as it ever was – danger of annihilation of species, reproduce, reproduce – more chance of someone surviving if you increase the numbers.
Thanks for that. It’s like in Australia we have Aboriginal Reconciliation. Trouble is nobody has ever defined what that actually means. So now we have a Reconciliation Process. Because there was never a defined outcome. Its all just layer upon layer of bull@ur momisugly#$t.
And Roger Carr: “Working the land so it is more productive” is more BS.
When you grow ANYTHING in land, the growing takes things from the air and the soil – nutrients of various kinds, as well as carbon, water, and such like. The crop (or animal) so grown is then usually taken away from that land and consumed, making urine and human excrement, as well as energy for moving, breathing, exhaling CO2, writing blog posts, and so on. The urine and excrement goes to sewage treatment plants and usually ends up as solid material which may or may not be used as fertiliser or land fill, and nutrient-rich water which goes out to sea.
The nett balance here is that nutrients go from the land to the sea, via kidneys and bowels.
In the long term claiming you can work the land to make it more productive is complete codswallop. Short term maybe. Long term. Simply not possible, by analysis from first principles.
As child, I cut down a tree planted by grandpa and build a dingy to go fishing.
I plant 3 more trees for my grandchildren so they can do the same.
Won’t that work and be considered “sustainable” ?
I like your shovel.
Willis –
Nice post, but I think you’re just scratching the surface of ‘sustainable’. Yes, sometimes it is only meaningless, and sometimes merely unnecessary. Many times, though it is insidious and pernicious. It allows a whole menagerie of nefarious ideologies to creep into our discourse undetected. It allows the most misanthropic disposition to masquerade as ‘caring’ and the most fear-soaked as forward-looking.
Nothing whatsoever that we cherish in our lives arrived by way of the ‘sustainable’. Every step along the way, every resource, every technology, every process was in some way unsustainable – but a stepping stone to the glories of the modern age. Discovering and utilising in short order islands built of guano was hopelessly unsustainable, but brilliant – and fed millions of people. Digging up fossil fuels could only ever end up an unsustainable error….apart from it transforming life on earth, doubling the span of man’s existence and thrusting us into the future of beautiful clean thorium reactors and energy stored in caverns of molten salt.
Without unsustainable practices we would be nothing – cowed and afraid to put our feet on the ground for fear of leaving ‘footprints’.
Down with the sustainable! Let us live fully today and make our descendants both proud and thankful!
Choosing iron as an example of a depleting resource was a mistake. If you wait long enough, everything turns into iron-56.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron-56
Willis, one of the main tenets of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (the STEM professions) is “There’s always someone smarter than you.” The point being, you have to figure out who those people are, and study their best work.
So maybe we all can learn more, and learn faster, not by cherry-picking the worst analyses of sustainable development, but by studying the best analyses?
On a local scale, my father taught me that farmland regenerates on a scale of a few thousand years — a long but not immeasurably long time. And therefore, a good farmer conserves soil, and plants trees, and learns the science of soil conservation and forestry, and imagines how the land will evolve on a time-span of centuries.
It’s true that there are some mighty sobering lessons associated to land husbandry on a time-scale in which a century is a fairly short time. That’s why a good farmer needs to be not only well-learned and foresighted, but courageous too, to face up to these lessons.
For example, I definitely don’t agree with all that Wendell Berry writes, but any person who wants to learn more — and think more — about the sobering challenges associated to sustainable development is far better off studying Wendell Berry’s writings, than reading reports written by UN bureaucrats. That much is obvious, eh?
The best and greatest traditions of American independence and foresight — and respect for science too — are alive today in independent thinkers like Berry. Good.
Let’s keep those traditions alive.
As we see so often, Willis puts his finger on the spot.
As a retired Engineering Surveyor, I used to often deal with ‘Sustainability’ issues in highway and drainage design, to name just two areas. You don’t actually do anything differently, you just add the term ‘sustainable’ in several places before submitting designs to city hall. So long as it has the magic words, it will pass. ‘Simples’.
Which is proof positive of Willis’s point here, it is just meaningless. Nobody really knows what it means!
Agh, stop the spaceflight stuff. Mining minerals on Mars or Venus will require so much energy and material for transportation that it’s waaaaaayyyyyyyy beyond a dead loss.
You’re forgetting the truly renewable part of Earth, which is Life. The nearest hope, both spatially and temporally, is technology based on cells instead of rare metals.
Google ‘bacterial nanowires’ if you’re not familiar with this line of research.
Is ‘moral blackmail’ the term to describe this gumpf. Like most opinion polls on The Environment – the questions are so loaded as to elicit the required response.
eg: take a look at UK supermarket shoppers. When quizzed, going into the shop, you’ll hear how they’ll support British farmers, Fair Trade, Organic producers etc. But, when they’re in the shop and think no-one is looking, they pick up the cheapest old tat they possibly can, regardless of where it came from. Especially witness the rude, almost feral behaviour around the ‘Reduced price- nearly out-of-date’ shelf when a new trolley load arrives. Hypocrisy rules UK
And, when we have saved all this goodness (oil, coal, rare earths etc) for ‘The Children’, WTF are The Children supposed to do with these inherited riches? Sit on them also? Having watched how their parents carry on, I doubt it somehow.
An even bigger oxymoronic oxymoron is “Renewable Energy”
With regards to the world’s large poorer population, it is surely a matter of time before their standard of living begins to simulate the current standard of “modern” first world populations. However by that time those enjoying the current standard will have moved/progressed to something as yet unknown, so in effect there may always be a divide between the two. I further believe that the most energy intensive period is from the “bottom of the barrel to just making it” phase. As access to improved, more efficient technologies increases (wealth dependent) I feel that energy use per capita should actually decline in those more technologically advanced populations. Note: most first world populations are still currently in the just making it/slowly getting ahead phase with only a small percentage able to access relatively expensive efficient technology. When/if more efficient energy/goods/services becomes common place and whether current poor populations will be able to leapfrog the conversion remains a question. So my feeling is that current attempts to limit growth disguised as “sustainable development” may actually hamper the transition to lesser resource/energy usage via improved technologies. Perhaps I am way off, but this is my reasoning.
How many generations are included in-
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Until the sun explodes- that’s billions of generations- try assessing that.
We have no idea which we will or will not be able to do. If nanomachines and space travel doesn’t work out- we’re stuffed- so that says almost absolute STOP- let’s barely subsist so there is a next generation.
You definitely need a better definition.
In nature, “sustainability” is all really about reaching a point of balance between food and feeder.
With humans, this becomes a lot more complicated because we seem to have the ability to alter the balance as we need to. When we needed more energy, we found ways of producing it. We found ways of producing food more efficiently. Water recycling uses water more efficiently, thus increasing security against drought.. etc etc
Where is the end point to all this progress ? I sure don’t know, but I am pretty sure we have a lot more left in us, so long as we are not stiffled by idealist in-efficiencies such as solar and wind .
We should be getting more efficient in things we do, NOT LESS !!
We also need to be very sure that words such as “morally” and “ethically” are not misused to constrain progress (as they seem to be in the AGW scam).
All of the resources humans use are 100% sustainable except for nuclear reactions in which matter is converted into energy. Humans are simply rearranging or moving around the atoms here on earth and putting them to use for people alive today. Those very same atoms will be here for the people alive tomorrow to move around and do with as they wish. What each generation of people need to do for the next is to make technological progress so that we can eventually move off this planet and start to colonize the universe, because if we do not get off this planet, we will eventually become extinct due to the sun/asteroids/other natural or man-made disaster.