HPSC2500 essay, S1 2006
While forming a consensus about what kind of action is sustainable is often impossible, it can be easy to get people to agree about activities that are unsustainable, that consume resources that we cannot replace. Opinion can then be further divided between those who believe that when irreplaceable resources run out, we will find a way to substitute or work around that problem with technology or ingenuity, and those who believe that this is not a viable way to manage non-renewable resource depletion. There is much controversy over the “environmental crisis”. Who's fault is it? Who is responsible for fixing it? What are its exact parameters? Is there only one crisis, or are there many different crises, from smaller, local or regional problems, like deforestation or salinity, to larger, global problems like ozone depletion or greenhouse emissions?
While some commentators might frame the problem as a matter of looking at the world through the world ethical framework, or even a problem of the intellectual framework we use, the way we understand the relationship between language and the world (cf. Szerszynski, 1996). Any given problem can be stated in as many different ways as any given solution[1]. I do not want to go into specifics, but would rather address the problem pragmatically - given that we humans as a species seem to be living unsustainably, what can we do to change this?
My position is based on a number of assumptions, the key assumption being in direct contradiction to Szerszynski (1996), that many people already derive meaning from the world and their beliefs that inform their ideas of what to do. Our beliefs in themselves do not cause problems of sustainability, but our behaviours do. I also assume that the people who live the least sustainably are satisfied with the way they live and will be resistant to change. For this reason I think that change must be positive, focusing on the things that people can do rather than the things they can't. Furthermore, I think that the focus for change should be on individuals, ordinary people. While we can learn to think from an ecocentric point of view, ultimately we can only ever act as people. I believe people have the right to think and believe whatever they like, but that we each have a responsibility to act the best way. “Best” will mean many things to many people, but I think that a part of any given person's “best” behaviour should be that their actions are sustainable, and indeed that this notion of “best” can find a place in people's existing beliefs, regardless of who they are or where they live.
In fostering change I want to focus on three general strategies, aimed at those of us in the developed world who live the least sustainably. The first is creating awareness – helping people to realise the extent of their influence, just how large their ecological footprint is and how widely it ranges over the world. The second is to foster responsibility, getting people to contribute to resource and technology issues that affect them and their community, such as water supply, transport and electricity and to accept the consequences of those decisions. The third, least specific but perhaps most important, strategy is to create broad cultural change, for example by examining prestige and desirability and finding ways to make people's aspirations sustainable. We may also need to examine our expectations of rights and responsibilities for sustainability.
“Rights” are a contentious notion, so I will rephrase this paragraph as a quick review of behaviours that are widely agreed to be either necessary or acceptable. These would include meeting our individual or collective basic needs, such as water, shelter, nutrition and education. We could also add to this list good health, freedom of self-expression and choice about your individual lifestyle, the work you do and the government that has jurisdiction over you. It is also generally seen as acceptable to have whatever you can pay for, especially when referring to material goods. But how far does money go toward dissolving responsibility? I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with saying that we can have whatever we can pay for, but perhaps we need to expand our ideas of how we can “pay” for the things we want. As well as being responsible for handing over money for products or services, we need to include responsibility for accepting the physical realities and consequences of creating those things.
Awareness
To a certain extent, people are already responsible for accepting the way products are created. We are given the responsibility for using our “sovereignty” as consumers to supposedly influence everything, from labour conditions in the factories where our clothes are made to the meat content of a meat pie. However, the overwhelming influence we consumers have had is to make things cheap and available. Labelling is meant to help us make informed decisions, so that we can buy the thing we believe is right or best, but when it gets down to a purchase decision, most often the only label that is useful to us is the price tag. This is not to say that all consumers don't care about the production of the things they buy, but there is no one set of facts that all people will base their decisions on. Even the company responsible for putting information on a label may not know how the components of their product were made.
With the internet making so much information readily available, we might expect the average person to be more informed about their activities and the impact they have on the world. But this information is only available to us when we're surfing the net, as opposed to when we're switching on the heater or eating out at a fast food restaurant. Given that people can only make choices based on the information they have at hand, how can we make people more aware of what their choices mean? Labels can give you information on the country the product was made in, but what about the origin of the components or even the raw materials those components were made from? The life-cycle of the products we consume, from televisions to food, is obscured to the consumers who are given the responsibility for choosing not just the products but the production practices that made them.
Building on the idea of ecological footprint calculators, I can imagine a small portable device that estimates a person's ecological footprint based on lifestyle and purchasing information that a person inputs at the device's request. The concept would be similar in design to a tamagotchi pet[2], in that the interaction could be initiated by the user whenever they felt like it and the device, which could attract the user's attention at various points during the day to offer advice and information about whatever they were doing at the time. Similar to labelling, which is meant to have an effect at the point of purchase, the device could have an effect at the point of choice for behaviour, with a potentially profound effect on a person's lifestyle.
I think consumer sovereignty has the potential to be a much more powerful force for change than at present, but that in order for people to use their influence they need much more information than they presently have access to, and need to have access to that information at the time they make their choices. We need to come up with creative, timely ways of giving people information they can use, preferably in such a way that reinforces their sense of autonomy and responsibility rather than dictates how they should live their lives.
Responsibility
The aim of awareness is to allow people to be more responsible with their choices and actions. The next step is giving people more responsibility for their choices and actions, by giving them a bigger role in making decisions and contributing to the systems they use and are affected by. This will also hopefully help overcome the limitations of those systems (cf. Evans et al., 1999). Another form of responsibility I would like to see fostered is for users to accept the consequences of their consumption. The non-monetary costs of developments, would need to be acknowledged and accepted by the consumers of the utility – part of the price of electricity, for example, could be that you end up living near a wind farm. But people would also need to have a say in the kind of facility or development that was proposed for their area, and have the opportunity to suggest alternatives that might eliminate the need for development altogether.
Ideally, people taking responsibility for the externalities of their consumption could even prompt a move away from centralised utilities, especially if a very direct approach was taken to supply, by choosing to locate sites where demand is the greatest. By creating awareness of the need for and the nature of development, people may even be able to suggest solutions that are more appropriate for their area or community. The more involved people are in the systems that they use, the more ownership and pride they can feel in them and about the responsibility they have, to accept what negatives there are and to encourage those who build and maintain the system to do so in a way that is socially and environmentally responsible.
Cultural change
Moving away from individual values and beliefs, what can we say about the broad cultural values we hold as a nation? Owning a house or car is something many people aspire to – indeed, in Sydney people who already own a house might aspire to owning an investment property as well. We seem to prefer to own personal goods like televisions or computers, even though we know that we'll probably throw out the one we have in a few years when it breaks, or when we want to upgrade to a better one. Making people aware of unsustainable production practices and patterns of consumption and responsible for what they consume is a start, but what alternatives do we have for the way we consume goods in the present economic system?
Changing our cultural values, our beliefs about what is “best” or desirable to do at a group level, rather than as individuals, will be complicated but necessary for sustainability. As I said earlier, I think it is important to assume that people like the way they live at present, and that this applies equally to the people who live the least sustainably. For this reason it is vital to be aware of the cultural momentum that drives peoples' aspirations and behaviours and to find ways to work with it, rather than against it. It is also vital to recognise that no one single strategy will work for all people, and for any given strategies there will be people for whom it works and can effect a positive change in their behaviours, and people for whom it likely has the opposite effect. So appealing to people to use less electricity to save themselves money might work for those who are keen to cut their costs of living, but push the message too hard to the wrong audience and being wasteful with energy can become a sign of wealth and luxury.
Take progress, for instance. It is very appealing to be able to say, as a nation, “We have the tallest building in the world,” or, “Our scientists and engineers are the best in the world and we have a proud history of innovation and invention.” Progress has a lot of momentum as a cultural ideal, so we should learn to work with it and manage it, rather than abandoning it altogether. In this way, sustainability can become a point of national pride. Danes, for instance[3], can be proud of their wind generators and see them as the cutting edge of sustainable electricity generation, stuck all over the country like monuments to the public's belief in alternative energy. What if progress did become identified with sustainability (or vice versa) rather than economic growth, or the biggest, most complicated technology? I would argue that for many people who are passionate about the environment, it already is.
The link between belief and behaviour is, I feel, a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem – what does come first, the thought or the act? Although I agree with Szerszynski (1996) that the way to resolve the modern problematic cannot come through understandings of environmentalism or ecology that we have now, I disagree entirely with the suggestion that the way out of the mess we've made is to simply rethink the relationship between language and the world. The beliefs that people hold already inform them as to what they should do. Instead of solving the academic problems of modernity, problems with little scope for a solution that ordinary people can participate in, we need to help people overcome the barriers that prevent them acting sustainably and in harmony with their beliefs, by giving them information they can use and letting them act upon it.
References
Evans, R, Guy, S & Marvin, S (1999) 'Making a difference: sociology of scientific knowledge and urban energy politics.' Science, Technology and Human Values, 24:105-135.
Szerszynski, B (1996) 'On Knowing What to Do: Environmentalism and the Modern Problematic.' In: S Lash, B Szerszynski and B Wynne (eds), Risk, Environment and Modernity: towards a new ecology. Sage, London. pp.104-138.
[1] For a quick example, we could take the case of a polluted river. The problem could be variously stated as a lack of water treatment, or poor management of a factory on the river, or bad agricultural practice, or lack of respect for the river's intrinsic value. A solution, for example fining the party responsible for the pollution, could be variously seen as revenue raising by the government, a demonstration of a clearly inadequate reactive system of pollution control that needs to be replaced with a preventative system or an effective deterrent that will reduce the likelihood of pollution in the future by giving businesses on the river a wake-up call to improve their effluent control systems.
[2] A little electronic toy, a “virtual pet”, which first appeared in Japan in the 1990s and was briefly but wildly popular in Australia. It requires maintenance to be kept happy and healthy and would alert you with a noise if it was “hungry” or wanted to play and so on. The unique feature of this toy was that you had to keep on taking care of it and interacting with it, or it would “die”.
[3] The following is based on my experience living in Denmark in 2002.
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