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Three Steps Towards Sustainability
Elizabeth Sawin
© Sustainability Institute
November 7, 2005
Elizabeth R. Sawin, a biologist and systems analyst who lives in Hartland, writes a monthly column for the Sustainability Institute, also in Hartland. To sign up to receive her monthly column on systems and sustainability email her at bethsawin@vermontel.net. This column appeared in the Valley News, Lebanon, NH.
Three concrete steps towards sustainability in the U.S.? That shouldn’t be a hard list to create. Certainly there are enough possible steps out there waiting for us to take them. The first that come to mind:
1. Charge the full costs of resource use -- not just what it costs to catch
a fish or chop down a tree but also what it will cost to keep the ocean and
forest healthy for the long term.
2. Ditto for charging the full costs of pollution -- not just the costs of pumping
oil out of the ground, for instance, but also the costs of counteracting global
warming generated from that oil’s burning.
(1 and 2 together would harness the creativity of millions of good-hearted,
moral, well meaning business people who would be rewarded for figuring out how
to meet real human needs with the least costs to the long term health of our
planetary life support systems.
3. Implement everything we already know how to do – from conservation to
renewable energy – so that we can meet our energy needs while cutting greenhouse
gas emissions.
4. Invest in vigorous development of alternative energy technologies, so that,
when we’ve taken everything we already know how to do as far as we possibly
can we can, there is a new generation of solutions ready to be implemented.
Already that’s a list of four, not three. And pollution taxes and investment
in alternative energy and the like might be great ideas, but there’s not
much evidence these days that our national politicians are ready to embrace
them. That fact pushes the search for concrete steps back a level. What concrete
steps can we ordinary people take so that policies like these become obvious
and inevitable?
I can think of at least three steps. I myself don’t take them nearly publicly
enough, courageously enough, or often enough. But if I choose to I can take
them any time, any day, without waiting for my Senator, the President, or my
power company to lead the way.
1. Let reality in.
There’s no use hiding from what is happening. See it and name it. Admit
it. It is a signal calling for action, and we can let that signal use us, we
can be it’s voice. The permafrost is melting. Children are still dying
of hunger on a planet where other children are sick from a diet of empty calories.
Toxic chemicals are there in breast milk, in our bloodstreams.
Reality can be our motive force. Especially when we embrace all of reality,
not just the bad news but also the good news which tells us it doesn’t
have to be this way. We know how to capture energy from the sun and the wind.
We know how to grow food without poisoning ourselves. There’s a lot of
wilderness left, nature is resilient, people can learn new ways of living. Reality
says we need to change. Reality also says we can.
2. Speak the truth.
At least as best we see it. With humility, knowing we don’t see the whole
truth.
Money isn’t as important as health or family. Oil isn’t worth dying
or killing for. Without functioning ecosystems nothing else matters.
We don’t have pollution taxes and a renewable energy infrastructure and
all the other things on my first list because our national conversation is not
in touch with these basic truths. Becoming the kind of person who can state
them (and restate them) calmly, peacefully, emphatically, is therefore a concrete
step towards sustainability..
3. Stay in love with what you love, even when it hurts
Your children, your grandchildren, a neighborhood park, a wild mountain, a tired
old creek. Whatever it is, love it, and give it some of your time. Open yourself
to it and don’t accept substitutes. Television can’t replace nature.
Packaged snacks can’t replace fresh local food. Shopping can’t replace
community. At this moment, as the industrial paradigm reveals its costs to us,
a lot of what we love is diminished, threatened, or even, sometimes, lost. But
we must keep on loving the real thing, the real park, the real mountain, because,
as long as we refuse to settle for the surrogates, we will not forget the true
value of clean air, pure water, and a stable climate. As long as we stay in
love with our world, there’s really nothing to do but keep on trying to
figure out how to live within its limits.
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