Synchronicity is at work again, After posting yesterday’s entry about consumption questioning the convention wisdom about why we consume as we do, this column by George Monbiot showed up on my screen. I have posted links to Monbiot before. He is a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued columnist for the Guardian (UK). With a backdrop of suicidal cultural/economic practices, he argues we have lost our collective way largely out of an old, deeply entrenched, but incorrect, view of human rationality and behavior. He column cribs from a recent report done for the WWF which presents a very different model of behavior rooted… Read More
Continue ReadingSustainable(?) Consumption
I’m teaching a course about sustainable consumption at Marlboro this trimester. Our next face-to-face meeting is coming up next weekend, and I have been getting prepared. I don’t like this the name of the subject at all. It’s not consumption that we want to sustain; it’s the possibility of flourishing. Sustainability is not about production or consumption. Sustainability depends critically on the nature of these two halves of the economic identity that says in a perfect (economic) world the two will be equal. But it is not the same, and the sooner businessmen, planners, and policy makers learn the difference,… Read More
Continue ReadingPlus �a Change
The reappearance of Napoleon III after the revolution of 1848 in France prompted a journalist to utter the memorable epigram, “Plus �a change, plus c’est la m�me chose.” Dripping with irony, its English equivalent is, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” The phrase seems to fit the behavior of consumption patterns in the US as the debris from the financial crash is slowly being cleared away. The initial severe drop in consumption spending was thought by the sustainability optimists to signal a structural change. The financial straits was forcing many to look closely at their life… Read More
Continue ReadingDreams of Sustainability
I’ve been slowly compiling my blogs, and notice a few things about the movement of topics over time. The number of words amassed is surprising. The quantity is more than enough for another book, but the content wanders too widely. I find it increasingly difficult to grab an item out of the cybersphere and use it to base a post containing any semblance of novelty. The sameness of news and its implications for change is subtle when viewed day by day, but jumps out when looked at retrospectively. Change is central to my thesis about sustainability. If the existing culture… Read More
Continue ReadingA Small Diversion
Yesterday, I suggested that our political system here in the US was broken. Until we fix it, we will not be able to do much for sustainability. Pretty serious stuff. It’s hard to find any humor in all this, but the NYTimes columnist, Gail Collins, managed to do it. Here’s a recent [column](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/opinion/02collins.html?ref=gailcollins). Not much to do with sustainability, but if you are close to the same frame of mind I am in, it helps to see some lightness in the news.
Continue ReadingInequality-A Major Obstacle for Sustainabiliity
Sustainability is a property of the whole Earth system. As long as large numbers of people cannot obtain the resources to flourish, we will remain far from sustainability. Economic disparity has long been a concern. The notion of “sustainable development” arose from two sources: 1) knowledge of severe environmental impacts and threats, and 2) huge gaps in wealth between the “North” and the South.” These differences still remain although the two populous economies, China and India, are closing the gap. Often lost in the focus on the “developing” world is the state of the US economy. I recently read an… Read More
Continue ReadingSocial Media–Weak Ties v. Care
Malcolm Gladwell has an intriguing article in the current New Yorker (subscription required), questioning the claims frequently made about the “revolutionary” power of social media, like Twitter or Facebook. Since it takes a subscription to access the article, I will quote some of the key parts here. Jumping right to the main conclusion, Gladwell argues that the kind of concerted, extended action necessary to change well entrenched institutions requires strong ties, rather than the weak ties that social media create. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by)… Read More
Continue ReadingYou (Don’t) Actually Get What You See
Another blog in my informal series that what you see is not necessarily what you get (especially when it comes to greener goods). The Economist recently carried an article claiming that the new solid-state lamps now coming on the market will not bring the energy savings the technology promises. Titled, Not Such a Bright Idea, the gist is that these intrinsically brighter lamps will increase the demand for light as all major lighting innovations have done historically. Solid-state lamps, which use souped-up versions of the light-emitting diodes that shine from the faces of digital clocks and flash irritatingly on the… Read More
Continue ReadingA Glimmer of Hope
I have been uncharacteristically almost depressed about what I see and hear these days. The economy has recovered somewhat, but at the expense of unemployment at levels I cannot remember having lived through before. I was born in during the Great Depression, but have no direct memories of its impact, only the remnants I saw for years later in the attitudes and behavior of my parents. The political world is filled with static and anger, leading me to try to avoid this arena which I am usually deeply immersed. Progress toward action on climate change is dormant, and, worse, is… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Impossibility of Measuring Greenness
If you have been following me for a while, you know that I am a skeptic about the ability of life-cycle analyses and all related indices or ratings based on them to allow consumers to make meaningful decisions about the products they choose to purchase. My resistance comes from two sources. The first has to do with the methodologies, and the second with the basic idea that numbers and the analyses that produce them can describe reality sufficiently to ground purely rational processes. All composite measures of environmental and social impacts are just that–a melange of factors spanning all the… Read More
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