Sustainability

1
Sustainability

• Sustainability and Slag Conference
• 4th May 2007
• Glenn Albrecht PhD

2
Discovering Sustainability
.
Main Street Goa India (2005)
3
Overview

• Defining what is not sustainable
• Responses to non-sustainability
• Business as usual
• The implications
• Defining what is sustainable
• WCED model?
• Balance model?
• Nested model?
• Genuine Sustainability and Industry
• Industrial ecology
• Conclusions

4
Non Sustainability or Old Business As Usual

• Deny the existence of limits to growth
• Employ skeptics to undermine actual knowledge
  about reality
• Employ spin doctors to massage perceptions
• Focus on the single bottom line while giving lip
  service to the triple bottom line
• Test the limits of corporate ethics and
  responsibilities (ENRON, HIH, AWB!)
• Sustain profits!

5
Reality Hits Business As Usual
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Global Cumulative Emissions
450-550 ppm for tipping points and extreme
change?
380 ppm now!
Cape Grim Tasmania
2 increase per annum 2040 for 450 ppm
7
Global Warming Data
2005 hottest year on record ( 1998, 2000, 2001,
2002, 2003, 2004 , 2006 in top 10)
15.08
2003 Northern summer 20,000 35,000 excess
deaths due to heat stress in one month in France
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Danger Level
Now
C02 increasing at 2ppm per annum
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Per Person Responsibility
Tonnes carbon per person
10
Arctic Sea Ice melt thirty years ahead of
schedule (2007 Study)

• The study indicates that, because of the
  disparity between the computer models and actual
  observations, the shrinking of summertime ice is
  about 30 years ahead of the climate model
  projections. As a result, the Arctic could be
  seasonally free of sea ice earlier than the IPCC-
  projected timeframe of any time from 2050 to well
  beyond 2100.

http//www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid971661
40
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Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

• Its not just the climate!
• Approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem
  services that support life on Earth such as
  fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water
  regulation, and the regulation of regional
  climate, natural hazards and pests are being
  degraded or used unsustainably.

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Peak Oil
2008-2018
Mid-Point
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Impossible Growth

• Total reliance on finite energy resources such as
  oil and coal
• The finite capacity of environmental sinks for
  assimilating our wastes is being reached
• Many aspects of the global industrial system
  appear to be attempting the physically
  impossible, that is
• infinite growth in a finite system

14
Failure of Economics

• Traditional economic bookkeeping has not alerted
  us to the extent of the negative impact of the
  human sub-system on the ecological and climatic
  health of the planet.
• The materials and entropy (energy) bookkeeping
  that explains the persistence of natural,
  biological systems has yet to be fully applied to
  industrial and social systems
• The obvious need to seek a sustainable foundation
  for society and its economy

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Seeking Sustainability
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Definitions

• Sustainable development is development that
  meets the needs of the present without
  compromising the ability of future generations to
  meet their own needs (WCED 1987)

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Economic Views on Sustainability

• The World Commission on Environment and
  Development (WCED) produced Our Common Future in
  1987
• Our Common Future could be considered a
  conservative and anthropocentric approach to
  the issue of sustainability
• There is a strong emphasis on the role of
  economic growth in achieving sustainable
  development

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The WCED Model?
Ecology
Society
Economy
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The Balance Model
Economy
Society
Sust
Ecology
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The Balance Model

• All components of sustainability of equal value
• But hang on economy is part of society
• Economy Society trump Ecology
• All that is sustained is the economy
• A guarantee that non-sustainability will prevail?

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The Laws of Ecology

1. Everything is connected to everything else
2. Everything must go somewhere
3. Nature knows best
4. There is no such thing as a free lunch

Barry Commoner 1971
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Nested Relationships Model
Ecology
Society
Economy
After Ian Lowe
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Ecologically Sustainable Development
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5 Principles of ESD

• The conservation of biological diversity and
  ecosystem integrity/health should be a
  fundamental consideration in decision-making
  (interspecies equity)
• We should always provide for equity within
  generations (intragenerational equity)
• We should always provide for equity between
  generations (intergenerational equity)
• If there are threats of serious or irreversible
  environmental damage, lack of full scientific
  certainty should not be used as a reason for
  postponing measures to prevent environmental
  degradation (the precautionary principle)
• Always recognize the global dimension of our
  actions

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Larson on Interspecies Inequity!
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How Do We Apply the Principles?

• Interrogate a development proposal by requiring
  answers to each and every principle
• Community participation in decision-making a key
  element of ESD
• If answers are positive with respect to each and
  every principle then the proposal is sustainable
• If not then revision or rejection

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A Coal Fired Power Station?
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A Nuclear Power Plant?
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A Wind Farm?
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Glenn Albrecht 2007
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The New Industrial Revolution

• A need to apply the principles of sustainability
  to all forms of industrial activity
• Included in this is the need for industrial
  systems to eliminate all forms of waste (not just
  C02)
• Industrial systems must be symbiotically
  connected to societies and ecosystems
• Corporations who move in this direction will be
  internationally competitive while at the same
  time acting in ways that are socially and
  environmentally responsible.

32
Industrial Ecology

• The term Industrial Ecology has been coined to
  describe the symbiotic interrelationships that
  can occur between the elements of industrial
  complexes.
• An industrial complex which is modelled on
  natural systems will have a similar flow of
  resources, materials and energy where ultimately
  waste is completely eliminated as an end-product
  that can be described as "pollution".

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The Kalundborg Network (from Tibbs)
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Greenwash or Revolution?

• There is a fear that some industries will simply
  use the rhetoric of eco-industrialism to
  "greenwash" or hide the reality of most
  industrial production, that of unsustainable
  growth in production and toxic waste.
• This potential for abuse of the ideas of
  industrial ecology need to be weighed up against
  the benefits that will accrue socially and
  environmentally if humans can come close to
  mimicking natural systems in the design of their
  industrial systems.

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Conclusion (mild)

• Sustainability and sustainable development (ESD)
  have now become terms that are used universally
  in relation to the need to renegotiate the
  human-nature relationship
• Sustainable development has become central to the
  core business of industry, government, and
  education
• This makes it one of the master concepts of the
  early twenty-first century

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Conclusion (strong)

• The New Sustainability?
• Climate chaos is driving a revival of
  sustainability thinking
• The post-combustion economy?
• A challenge bigger than any before in human
  history
• The bottom line is the health of the earth
• To sustain is to endure and bear the burden
• Is the construction industry up to this
  challenge?