(from Schnaiberg & Gould, chptrs 1-3)

What is sustainable development?

The Brundtland Commission, working under the auspices of the United Nations, came up with the most famous definition in its 1987 publication:

The ability of humanity to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

If this seems sort of vague and hard to put into practice, well, it is. The concept is multi-dimensional to boot. Some of the more important dimensions include ecological, economic and cultural sustainability. Missing any one of those, it isn't likely that one has a sustainable system or development movement. Ecological sustainability implies that resources are not being used at a rate that exceeds their production--i.e., if economies are growing faster than nature is, then the economic growth is unsustainable. Economic sustainability is important, because without it, no matter how wonderful an idea ecological sustainability might be, it isn't likely to be accepted. Thus economic sustainability implies that the economy can still support its members, without a drastically reduced standard of living required. The current White House has opted for economic over ecological sustainability, contending that the U.S. economy would pay a dear price for making concessions on global warming, and that the welfare of the economy has to come first. A third type of sustainability might be considered cultural sustainability. Think of culture as a system of shared beliefs, values, symbols, and artifacts (in other words, it's both shared ideas and concepts, and shared material stuff--the tools we use, the kinds of houses we live in, our transportation systems, etc.). A notion of sustainability that doesn't fit in with the shared ideas of culture isn't likely to be sustained. In our particular case, think of the importance of consumer culture in this country. What would happen if politicians tried to seriously challenge it, both economically and culturally, to promote a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and ethic?

Why is sustainable development important? Because without it, human societies are using up their resources faster than they're being produced, and essentially that means we're borrowing resources that future generations would have needed to maintain the living standards we currently enjoy. Of course, when you take this outside the U.S. and away from the more affluent societies, the idea of sustaining a lifestyle we've become accustomed to takes on a darker meaning. Much of the world gets by on an average income somewhere between $1 and $2.

Some useful concepts

Keep the idea of sustainable development (SD) in mind, but let's digress and go over some basic concepts that underly any notion of SD:

Laws of thermodynamics:

1. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. We've discussed these ad nauseum in class, but they are fundamental to the whole point of teaching environment and society. We can't pull energy out of an empty hat, and we can't make it go away once we've used it. Like matter, we can merely transform it. Pollens fertilize. Flowers are produced, then fruits, then seeds. Seeds disperse. Some germinate, become seedlings, then saplings, then mature trees, they senesce, die, fall, and are decomposed by organisms, with much of their biomass being returned to the soil. But they don't go away, nor do they come from nothing. And they wouldn't grow without all the other resources necessary to permit it--soil with nutrients, rainfall, sunlight, etc.
   
   So . . . energy is similar. A river valley is dammed. Gravity is used to force water through turbines, which turn and generate electricity. A form of potential energy is converted into something more useful for humans. The electricity is sent along wires and used by consumers, both in residential and commercial settings. We have appliances, light bulbs, heating and cooling, etc. And we transform energy. But it doesn't go away. We get lots of heat. When we burn fossil fuels we get carbon dioxide, with coal add sulfur dioxide. They create problems for the environment, the atmosphere, the organisms that depend on it. They may favor some organisms or species over other species. For instance the gingko tree is an ancient species, in a family all its own. It has been around since the days of volcanism on the earth, and is well-suited to high pollution. Consequently it does well as a landscape tree in urban settings (although the female has a pungeont smell when it's producing its cones).
   
   
2. The second law helps explain what happens to the energy. As it is transformed, a loss of organization occurs. This is called entropy. The loss of organization or disorder created is greater than the organization created. The human body is an incredible achievement in organization, but it takes quite a bit of disorder elsewhere to keep in healthy and thriving--more in indusrialized than agrarian societies. If you look at the food chain, or a food pyramid, you'll notice that there is always more biomass below--there is a significant loss of usable energy in its transformation. That's why it's more energy efficient to eat plants than meat. The meat concentrates protein, yes. But those animals require large amounts of energy to sustain themselves, whether elk or feedlot cattle. There are whole fuel-intensive industries around the latter.

Ecosystem

This is another concept we'll use extensively in this course. Here are some definitions:

1. A discrete ecological unit consisting of all of its constituent organisms and its total environment. http://www.jbpub.com/oceanlink/interactive_glossary_showterm.cfm?term=Ecosystem
2. An ecosystem consists of a dynamic set of living organisms (plants, animals and microorganisms) all interacting among themselves and with the environment in which they live (soil, climate, water and light).
   An ecosystem does not have precise boundaries - it can be as small as a pond or a dead tree, or as large as the Earth itself. An ecosystem can also be defined in terms of its vegetation, animal species or type of relief, for example.
   The major ecosystems are generally described as:
   • aquatic ecosystems - saltwater or freshwater ecosystems;
   • terrestrial ecosystems - forests, prairies, deserts, etc.
   • Forest ecosystems are characterized by a predominance of trees, and by the fauna, flora and ecological cycles (energy, water, carbon and nutrients) with which they are closely associated.
     http://www.cfl.scf.rncan.gc.ca/ecosys/def_eco_e.htm
3. An ecosystem is the dynamic and interrelating complex of plant and animal communities and their associated non-living environment. It includes the physical and climactic features and all the living and dead organisms in an area that are interrelated in the transfer of energy and material. It is an interacting complex of a community and its environment functioning as an ecological unit in nature. Differs from "system" in being a more rigorous definition that encompasses and requires assumptions of energetics, ecological interactions, species adaptations and so forth.
   http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/ecosystem
   

There are a few common themes running through these definitions: interaction, dynamics, plants and animals and the non-living environment, system or complex. When ecosystems undergo change, especially as a result of human intervention or activity, their complexity makes it very difficult to predict what will happen, which organisms might be favored in the post-disturbance landscape. For instance, clearcutting radically changes sunlight and moisture conditions, favors different plants, maybe helps certain fungi get a foothold, creates food sources for different animals, etc. Ecosystems are one level of organization. Above them are biomes. There are really five types of biomes we discuss: forest, desert, aquatic (including fresh and salt water), grassland, and tundra. Obviously there are many types of forest ecosystems that are under the forest biome classification: boreal forests, temperate and tropical rain forest, dry forests, mountain forests, etc.

Implicit as well is the idea that there exists in most ecosystems a diverse ranges of plant and animal species and communities. The idea of biodiversity is thought to be an adaptive trait at the ecosystem level, because when change occurs, there is likely to be enough biological diversity that some organisms will have adaptive traits and be able to take advantage of disruptions.

A note about evolution

The idea that ecosystems are dynamic is an important one. While we won't specifically talk about evolution often in here, it is implicit in the notion of the ecosystem. Organisms compete for resources. They are part of a complicated food chain or web, and there are many predator-prey relationships and transfers of energy that take place. Within a species, the environment may favor certain traits over other traits, for instance, an aardvark with a longer snout may have more success in finding food, is likely to live to an age where it will mate and reproduce young who also have a better chance of having long snouts (and the ones that do a better chance of surviving to reproductive age, etc.). Evolution is differential reproduction. In class we discussed the squirrels crossing the streets on power or phone lines. They're more likely to live long enough to reproduce, and produce offspring more likely to cross the street on lines. The human ecosystem selects for that behavior among squirrels--those that exhibit it have a selective advantage over those that run back, and then out, then back then out, then OH MY WHAT'S THAT BIG METAL AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

So ecosystems are in constant flux, even though it doesn't always seem like it. Human ecosystems probably more so (that is, ecosystems that have a dominant human presence). If your religious beliefs lead you to doubt evolution, that's fine--but that's faith, not science, and the science overwhelmingly supports the theory. So even if you disagree with it, you need to understand it to understand human-environment interaction. And if you agree with the notion that humans are not somehow a species exempt from natural laws such as thermodynamics, it's difficult to argue that with evolution it's somehow different.

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Back to the concept of sustainability. According to Schnaiberg and Gould:

1. Societal functioning requires us to maintain some features of environmental systems;
2. In order to preserve these features, environmental functioning requires us to restrict some of our social uses of these systems. This begs some questions:

• Why must we sustain environmental systems?
• How do we decide what to sustain?

This isn't easy--resources today may be less useful tomorrow. For example, high-sulfur coal isn't as valuable as it was even 20 years ago, and the economies of mining communities have suffered as a result. The U.S. Government gave the Navajo what at the time was thought to be uneconomic desert reservation land, only to later discover coal reserves underneath. The discovery of uranium created boomtowns and industries. We as an industrial species are constantly redefining what constitutes a 'resource', but most of it relates back to its utility for humans.

Economics obviously plays an important role in this. Economists have an easier time figuring out the value of things that they can price. They often don't consider ecosystem functions and their roles in providing humans with resources and livable habitat as exploitable resources, and even when they do they try to monetize these functions and come up with some sort of 'willingness to pay' scheme.

Ecosystems, additions and withdrawals

Let's start with the first question: why must we sustain environmental systems? We should know the answer by now--matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, but if we use them up faster than they can be transformed into usable forms, we cross the point of sustainability, and somewhere in the future we will either run out of resources, or have to rob other ecosystems or reserves to keep our consumption levels steady. But how do we go about examining the impacts of our actions on the natural environment? When humans 'interact' with the environment, for instance build a factory, a road, a house, a subdivision, re-channel a river, build a dam, log a forest, etc., they create disruption. The disruption has a local dimension, but depending on where the resources came from, it could have effects in the far reaches of the planet. When we create order somewhere, we create disruption elsewhere. Think of industrialization--the more massive the scale of our creations, the more massive the disorganization that results. The authors refer to this as 'ecological disorganization.'

Basically, human activity adds and takes away from ecosystems in which they live and interact. Pollution from some industrial process is an example of an addition, unwanted. We take our waste and dump it in landfills--more additions. Generally additions somewhere imply withdrawals somewhere else. Heat from a power plant would be an example of an addition--for instance, the water used to cool uranium fuel rods gets pumped back into waterways at elevated temperatures. That addition affects the aquatic ecosystem, fish, insect, plant and other populations, etc. We withdraw the freshwater to use in our cooling system. When we log we withdraw massive amounts of biomass, create more disorder, change the conditions to which living organisms must adapt,etc. When we convert energy from one form to another, we generally lose some through heat loss, less usable forms. We lose some socioeconomic 'utility.' And the price of cheap goods? Externalities--not all the costs of production (logging, mining, transporation and greenhouse gas production, effluents in the water, use of fossil fuels to drive the whole process, loss of habitat/biodiversity, etc.)

This of this sort of like a bank account--you can add up the withdrawals and additions and try to figure out a balance. But the currency isn't money, and it's hard to compare some of the resources lost and additions gained. Again, we have to decide what parts to sustain. The ecosystem is incredibly complex, unlike the bank account, and unlike the account, not all additions are beneficial, at least to humans (waste isn't generally defined as a resource, though there are exceptions. Can you think of any?).

The authors are pointing out the tension between economy and ecology--the use of resources and the preservation of ecosystems. Thermodynamics make fine organizing principles for ecosystems, but NOT FOR ECONOMIES.

Now . . . enter humans. They are a part of most of the ecosystems on the earth, yet often we exclude them when we study ecosystems. What kinds of disruptions do humans cause? Go back to the three basic functions of the environment:

• Living space: Species displacement. For example, cougar habitat is being decreased in communities near the mountains, such as Halfway. We find deer in La Grande because the valley was likely part of their natural habitat.
• Waste: Pollution (sewage, detergents, etc.). We alter the environment and change the requirements of organisms for survival, the opportunities and niches available. For example, sewage and agricultural runoff contribute nitrates to the water, which may be fed on by bacteria, which use up more oxygen in the water, changing the conditions of life for fish and plants. We call this process eutrophication.
• Resource bank: extraction, for example, a clear cut, an open pit mine, commercial fishing, groundwater irrigation. These actions all have consequences for the environment, and some organisms will benefit, others may have to find new places to live, find niches where they can adapt, or risk disappearing. Humans have gone through the same processes through history as well. Were we pushed into agriculture, or did we embrace it? Was Europe nearing its carrying capacity when it 'discovered' the 'new world?'

Some changes are dramatic and permanent, others may be more absorbable within local ecosystem. You should try to come up with examples here. One major impact we have had, and that most of the scientific community agrees on, is depletion of the ozone layer around the earth that protects the planet from ultraviolent rays. We know that rates of cancer go up, plants and animals die or mutate, when they are exposed to excessive UV. We can't, as former Secretary of the Interior under George Bush Sr., Donald Hodel said, wear hats, sunglasses and sunscreen to protect ourselves from ozone depletion. Why not?

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Organization and entropy: nailing down the concepts

Here's an exercise for you. In this class, we may be seeming to go over and over topics ad nauseum. Think of it as an opportunity to learn how to think in a new way, about the environmental and ecological consequences of human activity. It will serve you well on the midterm and finals in here. Go through these examples, pretty extreme examples of human/environmental organization, and see how well you understand the idea of ecological disorganization, of entropy, of additions and withdrawals.

• A major city (pretty organized, isn't it?)
• A university (physical, bureaucratic organization)
• Columbian/Snake river system
• A bookshelf (pretty organized, no?)
• Ecosystem (organisms finding niches, responding to environment, EVOLUTION)
• A giraffe
• a skyscraper

Remember Barry Commoner's quote that everything is connected to everything else. We discussed in class the example of high sulfur coal. Scientists discovered the role of high sulfur coal in producing sulfur dioxide. This created severe pollution and health problems for cities located near coal-fired power plants, especially in the Midwest. What to do? Well, Americans are always up for a technological fix. Why not install scrubbers and clean up the smoke stacks and remove the pollutants? This can be done, and has been. What are the ecological consequences? One could increase the height of the smokestacks. This would transport the pollutants into the upper atmosphere, creating less additions locally. This was also done, but it created additions elsewhere, in the form of acid rain in the Northeast and Canada. Or, we could search for sources of coal that had lower sulfur content. Such coal can be found in Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. What are the ecological consequences of transporting low-sulfur coal to coal-fired plants in the Midwest? What are some of the economic consequences, both in Colorado and the Midwest, and as far East as Pennsylvania?

World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press (from the Brundtland Report)