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At the beginning of issue #5, I defined what I mean when I use the phrase “sustainability.” It’s obviously different from what many people mean, so I wanted to open the floor on that question here.
What do you think sustainability means? Is it an appropriate goal for human civilization?
I think you've got a decent working definition of sustainability there in the abstract, but I think it can be too limiting depending on how you extrapolate and consider different time periods. As you say, the only true "new" input on Earth is sunlight, so a strict reading of that definition implies that we need to get to the point where our economy is ONLY consuming energy (either harnessed directly through, e.g. solar panels, or through derivatives of solar energy like wind or micro hydro). While that's an admirable goal and a good thing to work for, I worry about the potential to conflate dramatically different problem timeframes/urgency with the sole focus on "enabling civilization to survive indefinitely". In particular, I think we HAVE to assume that civilization is going to change in difficult-to-impossible to predict ways in the future, and that those changes are going to have potentially dramatic effects on resource consumption. To me this means that in considerations of sustainability you should probably consider some kind of time decay on "relative sustainability" of a resource based on how far out in the future our known supplies are projected to last at current/near-term projected rates - a resource that we know is theoretically limited, but known supplies are projected to last for 100s of years should probably be considered more sustainable than one that's projected to run out in 10 years (of course, supply can't be the only measure of sustainability - externalities need to be included as well, since a plentiful resource that causes massive harm - e.g. coal - still needs to be considered unsustainable).
I think it's an important concept to work into your definition though, because I don't see any realistic solutions to climate change at this point other than a fairly large mix of new technologies and infrastructure to accomplish the emissions reductions/replacement and CO2 removal that need to happen, and I think almost all of those technologies are going to have some degree of "unsustainable" (in the "to eternity" sense) trade-offs or resource use involved in some portion of their life cycles. At this point, we're pretty close to needing a "try everything" approach, especially on the research side (I feel like at this point we should basically be pumping $ into almost anything that shows any promise at all in the realm of net zero energy production and CO2 removal), but in the alternative universe where this stuff was actually being taken seriously by well-meaning policy-makers and funded appropriately, I think that measures of relative sustainability that incorporate time discounting become a very important metric for choosing between technologies and allocating money.
Thanks Ben! I agree with everything you're saying, but I'm not sure that it warrants a broader definition. You're right that me saying, "The only resource that's regularly added to the earth system from outside is solar energy" kind of obscures the point -- it wasn't really part of my definition, but it seemed relevant, and it's an important -- yet surprisingly easily missed -- thing to understand. But, as you point out, at this stage, we can and must use non-renewable resources -- heavy metals are the obvious example though there are likely others. I don't think that need means that we have to qualify the definition of sustainability as a guiding principle though. For a civilization to extend indefinitely, it needs to extend in the very short term -- meaning, we need to "solve" climate change to whatever extent possible, which as you point out, means acting as quickly as possible, and in some cases, consuming resources that we can't replace. But the ultimate / long-term goal still has to be *not* depending on that consumption, or reconfiguring it so that "used" resources are never actually discarded -- their use continues indefinitely (i.e. circular economy). Does the definition of sustainability really have to include triage, or can that just be an implied piece of working towards sustainability as a goal?
I think you've got a decent working definition of sustainability there in the abstract, but I think it can be too limiting depending on how you extrapolate and consider different time periods. As you say, the only true "new" input on Earth is sunlight, so a strict reading of that definition implies that we need to get to the point where our economy is ONLY consuming energy (either harnessed directly through, e.g. solar panels, or through derivatives of solar energy like wind or micro hydro). While that's an admirable goal and a good thing to work for, I worry about the potential to conflate dramatically different problem timeframes/urgency with the sole focus on "enabling civilization to survive indefinitely". In particular, I think we HAVE to assume that civilization is going to change in difficult-to-impossible to predict ways in the future, and that those changes are going to have potentially dramatic effects on resource consumption. To me this means that in considerations of sustainability you should probably consider some kind of time decay on "relative sustainability" of a resource based on how far out in the future our known supplies are projected to last at current/near-term projected rates - a resource that we know is theoretically limited, but known supplies are projected to last for 100s of years should probably be considered more sustainable than one that's projected to run out in 10 years (of course, supply can't be the only measure of sustainability - externalities need to be included as well, since a plentiful resource that causes massive harm - e.g. coal - still needs to be considered unsustainable).
I think it's an important concept to work into your definition though, because I don't see any realistic solutions to climate change at this point other than a fairly large mix of new technologies and infrastructure to accomplish the emissions reductions/replacement and CO2 removal that need to happen, and I think almost all of those technologies are going to have some degree of "unsustainable" (in the "to eternity" sense) trade-offs or resource use involved in some portion of their life cycles. At this point, we're pretty close to needing a "try everything" approach, especially on the research side (I feel like at this point we should basically be pumping $ into almost anything that shows any promise at all in the realm of net zero energy production and CO2 removal), but in the alternative universe where this stuff was actually being taken seriously by well-meaning policy-makers and funded appropriately, I think that measures of relative sustainability that incorporate time discounting become a very important metric for choosing between technologies and allocating money.
Thanks Ben! I agree with everything you're saying, but I'm not sure that it warrants a broader definition. You're right that me saying, "The only resource that's regularly added to the earth system from outside is solar energy" kind of obscures the point -- it wasn't really part of my definition, but it seemed relevant, and it's an important -- yet surprisingly easily missed -- thing to understand. But, as you point out, at this stage, we can and must use non-renewable resources -- heavy metals are the obvious example though there are likely others. I don't think that need means that we have to qualify the definition of sustainability as a guiding principle though. For a civilization to extend indefinitely, it needs to extend in the very short term -- meaning, we need to "solve" climate change to whatever extent possible, which as you point out, means acting as quickly as possible, and in some cases, consuming resources that we can't replace. But the ultimate / long-term goal still has to be *not* depending on that consumption, or reconfiguring it so that "used" resources are never actually discarded -- their use continues indefinitely (i.e. circular economy). Does the definition of sustainability really have to include triage, or can that just be an implied piece of working towards sustainability as a goal?