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August 18, 2005 The Dangers of Dualism Part I: Sustainable Development 
Prelude: Guess what? If the apocalypse hits in August, we will not starve. According to the handy-dandy wildflower guide I purchased a few days ago, there are all kinds of edible wildflowers in Ontario. For instance, did you know that Queen Anne’s Lace is a feral descendent of garden carrots? Neither did I. (But note that there are many relatives in the wild carrot family, some of which look very similar and are poisonous, so if you’re going to experiment with eating wildflowers make sure you are equipped with a very good guide.) Yes, I sat down and read through the wildflower guide in my spare time. Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, I made little chattering sounds of excitement when I realized that there was a checklist in the back of the book and some suggested activities to introduce children to wildflowers. What’s your point? Onwards: In my uncompleted Master’s Program, I took an independent study course in which I focused on sustainable development and international trade—specifically, how to measure the sustainability of international trade agreements. Doesn’t that sound gripping? Aren’t you jealous? Actually, it was great; it gave me an opportunity to muck around with the Big Ideas that are so much more satisfying (yet seemingly so much more useless) than the front-line-worker small actions I deal with every day. What I learned during that project surprised me not at all; yet again, more proof that the fundamental problem facing humans and their environment today is not a question of resources, technology, pollution, or any other tangible, concrete thing. No. The problem is mindset. Sustainable Development (or SD) is big news these days in the environmental field because it offers a solution to the seeming insoluble problem of: How to balance the misery of poverty against our increasing knowledge of the limits of Earth’s resources? Should people starve or should we continue to exploit? It’s still easy enough to find people who come down on one side or the other, but most of the people I deal with in my personal and professional lives subscribe to the ideal of SD—increasing wealth on decreasing resources. The well-publicized failures of SD as a concept and as a movement are a function of our fundamentally flawed mindset regarding humanity’s place on Earth. My work with my current employer demonstrates this to me on a near-daily basis, as we cling to a concept of SD and a mandate based on that concept which has been about as effectual as wringing our hands and singing the theme song to the Facts of Life backwards. One would think that in the nearly-30 intervening years we might have reevaluated the original concept, but no. Here’s the concept:
A prize to whoever first spots the basic flaw. Yes, there are variations on the titles given to each segment of the venn diagram; but that’s not the problem. Nor is that there should be more pillars, nor fewer. Here’s a clue: Can anyone tell me what, exactly, exists in that tremendous half of the “economy” sphere that overlaps with neither equity nor environment? Uh, nothing. Eh? Nothing. There’s no such thing as an economy that exists outside of the environment and society. And yet—every major government SD effort I’m aware of, every half-assed corporate gesture to the notion, is based on this idea: The flawed idea, the broken mindset at the heart of western culture and our modern development model, that humans exist outside of or apart from the world, and that the economy exists outside of and apart from the rest of human society. No wonder it’s not working. How could it possibly when it’s so completely fucked up? If we really want to save the world, we need to go back to the beginning and reimagine our place on Earth. We need to accept that everything humans do is natural, is intimately and unavoidably connected to the Earth—because we are the Earth. We need to accept and behave as if we know that nature does not stop at urban boundaries, that human societies are not an overlay on natural landscapes but a fundamental part of them, and that our societies and economies are small and ultimately insignificant pieces of a much larger whole known as the Earth. I do not believe that there is any way to avoid greater environmental destruction and hardship for as long as we believe or act as if we believe that human spaces are not also natural spaces, that we exist outside of or apart from or above the rest of nature. Normally, I don’t talk about this very much, here or elsewhere. It’s too hard. It seems so obvious to me that before we can develop a healthy relationship with the rest of the world, we first have to acknowledge that we have no option to separate from it; we have to accept our ultimate dependence on and interdependence with every living thing. But what I see around me—and working in the environmental field, I see it every day—are half-hearted, largely ineffective attempts to cut back a little here, a little there, tinker a bit with human systems of various sorts, always based on the assumption that what we are trying to do is balance “human” and “nature.” As long as we believe that, we’re fucked. I don’t much like to think about being fucked, so I just turn off that part of my head and do my job, most of the time. But that’s no answer, either. Is it? So I might rant about this a fair bit over the next little while. Links: International Institute for Sustainable Development Posted by Andrea at August 18, 2005 8:49 AM under The Green Family EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: Comments Go Berserk |
Change is God (Octavia Butler, Parable Series) "Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate." Albert Schweitzer Email Frances! frances AT athenadreaming DOT org You can email her mother too (that's me):
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