The Right Way to Flourish

It’s important to define resilience and sustainability in ways that are both resilient and sustainable. If we do not, efforts toward creating these properties in a real world setting will always be aimed at a shifting target. Some of my [earlier posts](http://www.johnehrenfeld.com/2009/01/is-sustainability-becoming-ano.html) spoke about fears that sustainability and its cousin, greening, were in danger of becoming mere buzzwords. I certainly hope not. Jamais Cascio, [writing in Foreign Policy](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4851), adds to the confusion by miscategorizing the above two terms. Here’s his cut. > Sustainability is inherently static. It presumes there’s a point at which we can maintain ourselves and the world,… Read More

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[Life cycle assessments (LCA)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_cycle_assessment) are one of the most important tools in reducing unsustainability. They enable designers and managers to determine which of several product or service options will create the least environmental impact. They are not perfect, but can point to the most impactful aspects of a product over its entire life cycle. Slate did an LCA comparing credit card use to paying cash. > > What’s the most environmentally friendly way to spend my money—cash or credit card? Credit cards are made out of plastic, which I know I’m supposed to avoid. But it can’t be good for… Read More

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Behavioral economics is a new branch of economics that has emerged to explore the reasons people behave differently from the way standard economic theory says they would. And the theories being developed in this field have potential to help guide people’s actions toward some social norm. Reporting in Yale’s Environment 360, Richard Conniff writes: > This new way of thinking about — and some would say manipulating — behavior is likely to be an important tool for addressing environmental issues over the next few years. Behavioral economics is the theory behind a variety of measures now being promoted by environmental… Read More

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More unintended consequences of technology. Not only unintended but very much unwanted. The San Francisco Chronicle [reports](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/14/financial/f210641D12.DTL&type=health) on the environmental impact of Internet spam. > There are plenty of reasons to hate spammers. Add this to the list: They’re environmentally unfriendly. > > A report being released Wednesday by security company McAfee Inc. finds that spammers are a scourge to your inbox and the environment, generating an astounding 62 trillion junk e-mails in 2008 that wasted enough electricity to power 2.4 million U.S. homes for a year. > > The “Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report” estimated the computational power… Read More

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E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist bad mouths Earth Day: > With another Earth Day coming up, we’re hearing the usual blather about sustainability — an essentially meaningless term. The [Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability) on the topic says that “For humans to live sustainably, the Earth’s resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished.” McClanahan’s impression of sustainability, like so many others, is distorted by the misuse of this important concept. Sustainability certain does have meaning. It is the ability of any system to produce something we want indefinitely or, at least, over a… Read More

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Here’s another reference to flourishing as the condition that underpins human existence. The website, Citizen Renaissance, is well worth bookmarking and following. It’s very encouraging to find others who see sustainability as I do and am trying to convince others to recognize that this way will change their efforts from trying to fix what’s wrong to realizing a positive vision of life on the Planet. Here’s a few key paragraphs. > The idea of wellbeing is more complex than just ‘happiness’ – in fact, it is more about leading a flourishing, meaningful or virtuous life. The Greeks referred to this… Read More

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If you follow this blog, you already know I have a skeptical or worse opinion of social networking technology. My concerns come from a general critique that points to the tendency of technology to suppress the essence of being human. Now cognitive science adds a more solid grounding to that general concern. [Writing in Fast Company](http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/continuous-partial-empathy), futurist Jamais Cascio, commenting on a new publication by Antonio Damasio and colleagues that claims that the human brain is relatively slow writes that “to recognize and empathize with emotional pain, or to acknowledge and celebrate virtue or skill. What this means is that,… Read More

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I have just returned from a week in the Netherlands talking about the ideas in my book, *Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming our Consumer Culture*. My host was the Director of the Design for Sustainability section within the Industrial Design faculty at the Technical University of Delft. This is where I began to learn about the centrality of design to sustainability. On this visit, I was deeply impressed with their progress in the 7-8 years since I spent a year as a Visiting Professor. So when I come across articles like the one I write about here,… Read More

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Most of the times I read something about the environment by Tom Friedman, my hopes go up a little and then usually come back down. His op-ed piece on Costa Rica evoked the same feelings. Friedman was extolling the effectiveness of Costa Rican policy in preserving biodiversity. > These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system. He calls this… Read More

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Maybe the positive side of the financial collapse is beginning to show itself. I haven’t seen much in the blogosphere that does not talk about the need to get the consumption machine going. Frank Rich writing his Sunday column in the NYTimes changes this tune a bit–only a bit, but that is still a good turn. Using Harvard as his source, Rich criticizes Larry Summers for his accepting large sums from financial institutions while serving as President of the University. Perhaps by osmosis, but certainly by example, students ran to the finacial sector. > The Harvard Crimson reported that in… Read More

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