Conducting nature, or Why sustainability is not enough
Monday, April 21, 2008
In the documentary Waste = Food (showing tonight on the Sundance channel at 5 pm), chemist Michael Braungart says something like,
“If I told you my relationship with my wife was sustainable, you would feel quite bad for me.”
I’m sure he typically gets a chuckle out of this line. The idea of choosing a partner, job, home, or anything else simply because it will continue to exist is laughable. In every area of our lives, we want excellence, not just something that doesn’t die out. I wonder, then, why are so many of us trying so hard to build a world based on simply not depleting natural resources?
Maybe we should set our sights higher. Is there any reason why we can’t create a future that is better in every respect than today? I envision a world with more beauty, better food, cleaner air, slicker toys, cooler fashions, amazing opportunities, and unprecedented awesomeness for everyone. Is reaching for sustainability going to get us there?
Think of how nature operates—a cherry tree for instance (an example from Cradle to Cradle, written by Braungart and his business partner William McDonough). There are no programs to ensure that the cherry tree doesn’t have a bad impact on its environment, no need for measurements of the tree’s carbon footprint, no government directives to keep it in line. Instead, simply by existing, the cherry tree adds value to the planet, in the form of housing (for birds), food (yum!), pollution control (trees love to suck up greenhouse gases), nutrient dispersal (falling petals and leaves decompose into the soil), and aesthetics (heart-stopping gorgeousness every April).
As we walk the path of reinvention, we should keep the cherry tree in mind. Our goal should be to recreate human civilization in its image, so that just by going about our day-to-day activities and pursuing our dreams and falling in love and doing all the things humans like to do, we add value to the biosphere. We can’t stop at doing less harm to the planet. We must configure our societies so that they create wealth and beauty and justice as byproducts.
Why must we reach beyond the merely sustainable? Because anything less is simply not going to inspire us to the greatness we need to embody in order to overcome the massive challenges in front of us. Not to mention, those who have less-than-enough now are probably not going to leap directly from not-having to voluntary simplicity. Everyone deserves the opportunity to dream and chase those dreams. We need to strive for a world where doing so doesn’t automatically create waste and in fact makes the world richer, the biosphere stronger, and humanity happier.
So, how do we get to better-than-sustainable? Maybe we can begin to see ourselves not as masters of nature or slaves to it, but as conductors. Leonard Bernstein probably couldn’t play all the instruments as well as his musicians, just like we can’t break down soil like earthworms or drop perfectly nourishing pink blossoms at the exact right time like a cherry tree. But he did have an amazing ear for how it all works together, how the cellos should feel propping up the violins, or how the oboe solo should cut through the strings. In the same way, we humans seem pretty uniquely suited to coordinate nature’s activities so that they operate in the most optimal, nourishing, and gorgeously elegant way.
It all begins with paying attention and looking for opportunities to create greater harmony and impact using the instruments before us. Farmers who practice permaculture and biodynamic farming do it with dirt and trees and flowers and beasts. Mentors who attune themselves to the needs of their charges and respond with games and lessons that reach kids where they are do the same thing in education. Restaurants that get involved in growing their own food are conducting as well.
Every day, we have opportunities to choose to reach for a better-than-OK solution, in our work environments, at home with our families, on the road, with our friends and neighbors. And every time we approach a situation with an open heart and an intention to do more than the minimum required, we increase the net goodness available to everyone, including ourselves.
The vision that inspires me was described by my friend Richard Kotlarz, an incredible thinker whose take on economics is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. In one of his papers, he describes how we will know we have succeeded: when a child is born, we will celebrate the unique and valuable gifts she brings to the planet rather than shake our heads in sadness that a limited pie now has to be divided amongst more people.
Every creature on this earth has a contribution to make. Let’s dispel this false notion of limitation and pie allocation—there is no pie!—and instead take up our birthright as the only creatures on the planet which have the ability to discern and predict and conduct.
Let’s allow ourselves to be inspired by a vision of the future where, like the cherry tree, the gifts we all bring with us when we come here are given freely to a planetary economy that never stops growing, because it is based on life itself. Let’s not stop at sustainable. Let’s go for magnificent.
(image by alisdair via flickr)
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Wow ... Megan ... you are ON it!!
Every time I write the word sustainability, as it has become a way too common buzz word, I think to myself, “There has to be a better word.” I’m not sure what the word is, but ... being able to transcend that limited perspective of all our relationships is a pivotal psychosocial turning point for all of life.
I loved reading your every word.
From sustainable to magnificent.
Let make it happen!!
Well said! I think you have hit at the heart of why so many people turn away from environmentalism. We need to feel inspired that we are working towards something better. Humans are a pretty adaptable species. Eternal optimist that I am, I get excited when I think about the future.
Dear Megan, Braungart and McDonnough are two of the most inspiring people I know. Thanks for writing about this! They were mentioned in NY times magazine last weekend and in Vanity Fair’s green issue as well. And what you, Brandon, say about truly embodying this new relationship and understanding of our place in life is very true, it is a psycho-social, soul-level, profound re-orientation. I don’t know if those two speak about this having a spiritual dimension - actually I think M. Braungart doesn’t like to at all, but when you think about it, it really IS a spiritual change.
thanks for the kind words! this piece comes from the heart of what the sunny way is all about.
i can understand why so many of the “bright greens” have difficulty with spiritualizing the road to the future—there are so many brands of spirituality out there, so adding that level to the discussion really complicates things unnecessarily, from their point of view.
also, i think sometimes spirituality (especially new-age spirituality) is seen as weak / wimpy / not rigorous / mystical / too old-school. and if i’m honest, i have to say i agree with them on this—many of the spiritual flavors out there are simply about making an individual feel better, which is nice, but ultimately not going to get us anywhere new.
i think putting the evolutionary aspect into it juices things up incredibly. we really are responsible for whether nature’s experiment in self-reflective consciousness is successful or not! at this point, we are the agents of natural selection; we decide what lives and dies.
i guess i’m hoping we can decide “everything lives!” and then go from that point.
to me, that feels like a spiritual choice, but i understand if others don’t see it that way.
Naturally, I would have a lot to say about these things as my studies have definitely taken on a highly spiritual road to engage people in thinking about their relationship with nature and all of life. However, I will keep it brief.
Everyone needs to be in this discussion. The educated, uneducated, spiritual, non-spiritual, rich, poor, adults, kids, on and on. When I began studying Ecopsychology and Deep Ecology I learned how Social Ecology and its contingency are at odds, philosophically, with Deep Ecologists. It is the very nature of divisive thinking that puts us at odds with each other, when, understanding that we all have evolved out of the same source but manifest various forms, we can hopefully develop a interlocking unity that enables us to work together. We may have differences in opinion/experience, but the fact of the matter is that what we are dealing with affects all of life. No one thing goes without the need of oxygen.
Preachers need to preach to those people in their pulpit that come from different walks of life. Teachers need to teach to their students that also come from different walks of life. Employers need to talk to their employees, etc.
We really need to get beyond ego ... the us vs. them mentality ... and really start to think about ways that we can work together, not against each other.
i totally agree, brandon. for me, it’s important to include the spiritual/evolutionary aspect, as it fires me up and brings me together with other fired-up people (and we all know how awesome things get when many fired-ups get together).
but i would never lay the requirement on anyone that they think exactly as i do on these matters. we all have a contribution to make, each of which is unique in its placement and scope. we have so many more similarities than differences. high time we focused on the shared instead of the individual.
more on this topic coming tomorrow when we roll out the idea of “sitting out the culture war”!
Megan, I really enjoyed this post! I don’t know if you were intending to address this, but you’ve touched on why many religious people I know are turned off by the environmental movement. It seems the loudest and most publicized environmentalists see humans as a problem the earth has to endure, rather than the gift we were meant to be. I’ve heard a lot about how we need to stop population growth by any means necessary because we’ll run out of resources, when we ought to be discussing how human ingenuity can be harnessed to make “the pie” bigger.
What you said about the uniqueness of each person and the gifts each of us bring echoes what the Catholic Church teaches about human dignity (though from what you’ve said of your past, maybe that doesn’t bring you any enjoyment…;)) However, it does mean that you and others like you are in a good position to bring religious people into a conversation about how we can be the best stewards possible of our planet and the future of humanity. Thanks again for the excellent posts - I’ll be back for more! :)
I have been thinking about and chewing on this posting for—well, as you can see for quite a while.
I guess I have a slightly other take on it: first, let me say that describing my nearly 10-year-old relationship with my partner as sustainable seems wonderful to me. I’ve had numerous, way too numerous relationships that were NOT sustainable. In fact, I’ve had any number where the lack of sustainability was as plain as the nose on my face, to everyone but me that is. I’ve had relationships that could be described as consumption-based in that they required tremendous effort on my part—and possibly on the part of the other guy involved, but we don’t care because they’re all poop heads—just to keep them alive. They were not sustainable.
And that takes me back to environmental sustainability. It seems to me sustainable is a bottom-line question. I agree that whatever we’re doing or making or thinking about should be cool in some way, but, when we ask the jumping-off questions like can we afford this, are we willing to commit the time, etc., we also have to ask, what is the impact on the planet.
Here’s an example. I’m not a big fan of Apple for reasons that are too historical and far too boring to go into. Nonetheless, at the gym, where I do some of my best thinking, I noticed someone with an iPhone.
In fact, I was thinking about sustainability and innocently wondering how we’d gotten ourselves to a point where environmental impact wasn’t even a consideration in the moves we made. I was getting all self-righteous thinking about my farming ancestors who, since they didn’t move much and relied very much on what they grew, would probably never have considered making something the by-products of which would polute their land and end up poising them. You know the old, “when they slaughtered a pig, they used every part but the oink,” story? Yep, that’s where I was. And then I noticed this guy with his iPhone.
I must guiltly confess, I want an iPhone. The interface strikes me as so cool. I want to make that two-fingure gesture that lets you zoom in on something. So, there I am in full-on iPhone lust. I’m thinking that I can’t have an iPhone because we just renewed our phone contract, because the monthly data connection would double the bill, because we’d have to change cell phone companies. And then it hits me. Where is the consideration of sustainability? I just got a sleek new phone which contains numerous non-bio-degradable, non-recyclable parts. My sleek new phone also generated lots of toxic by-products as it was manufactured. And it required packaging (which I think was pretty much all cardboard, but still), and shipping to get to me. As much as for all those other reasons, I can’t have a new phone until I figure out what can be done to minimize the impact of my consumption on our poor old planet.
I think we have to learn that sustainability is a primary consideration. Not how do we make this look sustainable—like some of the so-called hybrid SUVs, but how do we minimize the impact of this change on our planet, and, given how much impact it will still have, should we really do it? “Because I want it,” is just no longer enough.
I think Megan is absolutely right that this consideration will ultimately spur us to make better, and yes cooler, gadgets and choices than we do now. I guess sustainability is like a heart beat: if all you do is just sit around with your heart beating, well, you’re just not that interesting. But, if your heart isn’t beating, you’re not at all.
Thank you, Megan, for that very wise essay on sustainability vs. magnificence. I believe that your vision of the world is one that would make the many people who are now expressing green fatigue feel better. And since we in the green movement need everyone, including the green fatigued, to join in, this is not only a true vision but a smart one to share.
Sarah
on a ledge
thoughts on green living and progressive parenting
http://progressivekid.wordpress.com
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