Black Swans and the U.S. Future: Creating Sustainable & Resilient Societies

by Dr. David W. Orr
Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College
Friday, September 14, 2012 - 7 PM CT

Lecture title: Black Swans and the U.S. Future: Creating Sustainable & Resilient Societies

‘Black Swans’ are infrequent and unpredictable events that can drive change in both human and natural systems.  What qualities make societies resilient and sustainable in the face of environmental Black Swans? How can we prepare for, absorb, and recover from the unpredictable disruptions from climate-related ecological change?

In this public lecture, Dr. Orr discusses several promising strategies, including building upon what we already know about sustainable design, construction, and technology to create resilient societies and support systems. Co-sponsored by UT's President’s Office of Sustainability, ESI, School of Architecture and Center for Teaching and Learning.

More Information

Copy of Presentation

Is Population a Problem?

Is Population a Problem, Maywa Montenegro, Seed Magazine, 6/10/10

Some excerpts:

"The number of people on Earth is expected to grow from 6.5 billion to about 9 billion by 2050. That much is relatively uncontroversial. But recently, we’ve seen disparate views emerge as to how this population growth will affect the planet.

Four decades after publishing The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, for one, is still a firm believer that overpopulation—and along with it, overconsumption—is the central environmental crisis facing the world. In an opinion piece for Yale e360, he and Anne Ehrlich write: “Many human societies have collapsed under the weight of overpopulation and environmental neglect, but today the civilization in peril is global. The population factor in what appears to be a looming catastrophe is even greater than most people suppose.” The reason, say the Ehrlichs, is that each additional person today on average causes more damage to humanity’s life support systems than did the previous addition. And because Homo sapiens are smart creatures, we have already farmed the richest soils and tapped the most abundant water sources. Therefore, to support more people, it will be necessary to move to poorer lands, dig deeper wells, and spend more energy to transport food and water to increasingly distant homes and factories. Population, the Ehrlichs aver, remains an underacknowledged apocalypse in waiting.

Others, however, take a markedly different view. In the recently published book, The Coming Population Crash, and in a series of articles also for e360, environmental journalist Fred Pearce looks at the same demographic trends and sees very good news. “The population bomb is being defused at a quite remarkable rate,” he writes. “Women around the world have confounded the doomsters and are choosing to have dramatically fewer babies.” He then goes on to cite declining fertility rates in countries across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. And in Africa, where high fertility remains the norm, Pearce is optimistic that those extra people can provide a way out of the continent’s poverty trap. Bad agriculture, not population growth, he contends, is the continent’s main predicament—and in this essay, he describes how more people, employed on ecologically friendly, small-scale farms will be key to African sustainable development. Chris Reij, a Dutch geographer whom Pearce interviews for the article, concurs. “The idea that population pressure inevitably leads to increased land-degradation is a myth,” he says. “It does not. Innovation is common in regions where there is high population pressure.”

Consumption, not population, Pearce concludes, is the main problem confronting human society today. After all, he writes, “virtually all of the extra 2 billion or so people expected on this planet in the coming 40 years will be in the poor half of the world.” Assuming per capita emissions remain roughly where they are today, those 2 billion poor people will only boost the developing world’s share of greenhouse gas emissions from 7 to 11 percent. In other words, achieving zero population growth—even if it were possible—would barely touch the climate problem. The real culprits, according to Pearce, are not “generations of poor not yet born” people, but the stable population in the developed world with its gigantic ecological footprint."

***

"The paradox embedded in our future is that the fastest way to slow our population growth is to reduce poverty, yet the fastest way to run out of resources is to increase wealth. The trial ahead is to strike the delicate compromise: between fewer people, and more people with fewer needs, in a new economy geared towards sustainability. The easy part is birth control. The hard part, as Paul and Anne Ehrlich write, is that we still don’t have condoms to prevent over consumption, or morning-after pills to reverse unwanted buying-sprees."

Julia Whitty

***

"So, in all of this doom and gloom, is there any good news?

Yes: not too long ago, demographers were forecasting that global population by 2050 would reach 10 to 12 billion, instead of the 9 we expect today. And when I was a kid, people were talking about 15 to 18 billion people by 2050. As population forecasts have been revised over the years, they have generally been revised downward.

Fortunately, population growth in the world appears to be slowing faster than anyone forecasted, largely through voluntarily measures (with the exception of a few states like China), while simultaneously improving human welfare around the world. The demographic transition appears to be working. People, all across the world, are choosing to have smaller families.

The bad news is that consumption appears to be still increasing rapidly, with no end in sight. So far, there hasn’t been a negative feedback on consumption, telling us to slow down. The rich want to be richer. Big consumers want to consume even more. It’s an endless treadmill, and no one knows how to get off. Instead of the “Population Bomb” of the 1960s, we now have an even larger “Consumption Bomb”, and we don’t now how to diffuse it. And this bomb may well define our relationship to the environment for the 21 century and beyond."

Jonathan Foley

Read More

Tim Jackson's economic reality check

As the world faces recession, climate change, inequity and more, Tim Jackson delivers a piercing challenge to established economic principles, explaining how we might stop feeding the crises and start investing in our future.

Tim Jackson studies the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment to question the primacy of economic growth.

This is a bold vision of a new economy, one with a human purpose.

Transforming Cultures from Within

Anderson, Amodeo and Hartzfeld summarize their work how businesses can change the culture of their organization to embracing sustainability while still being profitable. They open the article with:

“The current Industrial Age was born out of the Enlightenment and the unfolding understanding of humanity’s ability to tap the power and expansiveness of nature. The mindset that was developed early in the Age was well adapted to its time, when there were relatively few people and nature seemed limitless. Unfortunately, this mindset is poorly adapted to the current reality of nearly 7 billion people and badly stressed ecosystems. A new, better-adapted worldview and global economy are being born today from a greater understanding of how to thrive within the frail limits of nature.

Vital to the transition of the economy is the very institution that serves as its primary engine: business and industry. To lead this shift, business must delve much deeper than just the array of eco or clean technologies that are in vogue, to the core beliefs that drive actions. While a few visionary companies have been founded on the principles of sustainability, most businesses will require radical change. In the coming decades, business models and mindsets must be fundamentally transformed to sustain companies’ value to their customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.

More and more organizations are turning to sustainability as a source of competitive advantage. Yet many companies are trapped and frustrated by their limited understanding of this challenge; many see it only as a set of technical problems to solve or a clever marketing campaign to organize. Perhaps the greatest danger is that these superficial approaches give companies a false sense of progress, which in the long run will very likely lead to their demise.”

One of the companies on this journey that was profiled in this article is Interface, Inc.

“The U.S.-based global carpet manufacturer Interface, Inc. offers a valuable case study of a company that has embraced and achieved transformational change toward sustainability. Interface reports being only about 60 percent of the way toward achieving its Mission Zero 2020 goals, but the company has come far in its 15-year journey to sustainability. It has reduced net greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent, water intensity by 74 percent, landfill waste by 67 percent, and total energy intensity by 44 percent. It has diverted 175 million pounds of old carpet from landfills, invented new carpet recycling technology, and sold 83 square kilometers of third-party certified, climate-neutral carpet. In the process, Interface has generated substantial business value in its brand and reputation, cost savings of $405 million, attraction and alignment of talent, and industry-leading product innovation.”

The cultural change model they used is summarized in the graphic below and described in the article.



Other businesses profiled are Nike, and Wal-Mart.

The cultural change model is similar to the one I have used to increase innovation in organizations. This model is specifically applied to sustainability.

I speculated in an earlier post that ecology might be the single issue that can drive substantive change. Perhaps we have almost arrived there.

“Business and society are in a period of crisis as well as potential. Doing the same things a little differently, better, or faster will not bring about the transformational changes needed to address today’s challenges or grasp new opportunities. The Industrial Age can be supplanted by a new age of evolving human wisdom and emergent innovations, but only if businesses are willing to challenge existing paradigms and proactively discover new answers through collective inspiration.

Business and industry—the most dominant institutions on the planet in both size and influence—can bring about organizational awakening that can catalyze more sweeping societal change. If business models are grounded in the values of sustainability, the people who work in those firms will also likely accept and adopt the behaviors associated with sustainability as the “way things are and should be.” This offers business and industry a unique opportunity to accelerate the tipping point needed to correct society’s current trajectory. To achieve this shift, companies must explore new worldviews and discard the old flawed views by encouraging personal reflection and new dialogue about the purpose and responsibility of business.”

Changing Business Cultures from Within, Ray Anderson, Mona Amodeo and Jim Hartzfeld, 2010 State of the World, Transform Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability, The Worldwatch Institute

For additional information, go to the Blog Transforming Cultures.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration.

Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”

Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today. Leonard’s inspiration for the film began as a personal musing over the question, “Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?” She traveled the world in pursuit of the answer to this seemingly innocent question, and what she found along the way were some very guilty participants and their unfortunate victims.

Written by Leonard, the film was produced by Free Range Studios, the makers of other highly popular web-based films such as “The Meatrix” and “Grocery Store Wars.” Funding for the project came from The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Tides Foundation.


View the Video