Well, as a starter for ten, anyone’s list of the biggest, most important challenges will surely include (in no particular order):

- Communication and Education for resilience, conservation, restoration, durability… all those things that have real traction, definition, meaning, beyond the now almost hollow, totally overused, misunderstood and increasingly meaningless idea of ‘sustainability’.

- Addressing our untenable lifestyles, our waste and consumption, in terms of Resource, Material, Energy, and most importantly, Meaning.

- Developing/promoting/implementing Economic and Business operations based on 1) prosperity and shared wealth, not limitless growth and profit, 2) restorative, regenerative, sustainable use of all resources, particularly energy and natural resource, 3) business models that incorporate the true, full-lifecycle environmental cost within the product or service price.

- Resolving the disparity between wealthy and poor, alleviating suffering of the masses. Not just in physical and monetary wealth, but specifically in terms of sustenance, shelter, safety/security, education, technology, social society and it’s institutions, positive life experiences and meaning.

- Developing nations sustainably, holding developed nations accountable for unsustainable actions and their pollution, sustaining a universal prosperity versus unlimited and unbalanced growth.

- Remaining within Planetary Boundaries, preventing their transgression, creating conditions for their conservation and restoration.

Flaring off. Kuwait Oil Company.

Favelas and ‘home-made’ electricity. A.C.E Dent.

In Paul Hawken’s words, “What are the obstacles preventing us from doing the right thing? What can we do to change or remove those barriers?” Some initial thoughts for a start:

- Weak, ineffective and insufficient legislation and enforcement within the urgent timescales necessary to promote and maintain resilience, conservation, restoration, durability… Resolving the political mechanism behind this issue: weak and ineffective government.

- Poor communication, lack of understanding, lack of interest. In the issues, the timescale, relevance, importance, of the individual’s impact, of the available alternatives, of ones own responsibilities and their interrelationships. The ‘what, where, when, why and how’. The ‘we’ is just the starting point.

- Lack of economically/financially viable alternatives and solutions for both the average Joe and those billion humans with insufficient basic amenity

So, sir, if you can, sir please put down the remote, turn off our computers, and act; act in favour of a positive, equitable, just and interlinked system of nature and humanity.

Above image, HEAP – Hutan environmental awareness program at local schools, courtesy of TheShiningHopeFoundation.

Is technology a safety net, or does it just get in the way of what’s really important?

Safety net for what? What is the problem we are trying to solve with technology? Hunger and food shortages? Profit or equitable wealth distribution? Climate change? Fossil fuel depletion and alternative energies? Natural resource depletion and sustainable production and consumption? Bad government? Faulty economies and failed economic systems based on growth in favour of prosperity?

Well, surely it will depend on which of these questions we are trying to answer, and the conditions in which the question is being asked. If an all-encompassing, broad scope answer is required, one would naturally consider all the known and foreseeable issues at the time and design a best-possible outcome taking into consideration and weighing all the issues and possible impacts.

As far as resources are concerned, is there any sense in total resource abstinence? Is there such thing as sustainable resource use in current and new technologies? Are there any other solutions to our problems than technological ones? Perhaps there isn’t enough time to sufficiently cover these issues, but one can attempt an initial response.

In ‘The Culture of the New Capitalism’, Richard Sennett writes, “The craftsman is proud of what he has made, and cherishes it, while the consumer discards things that are perfectly serviceable in his restless pursuit of the new”. Whilst on the surface this sounds like a war cry in the battle between the makers and the takers, the problem runs much deeper.

Taken from the website of the seemingly harmless social enterprise, Technology Will Save Us, despite its mandate in social sustainability, this quote shows the magnitude of the problem: attempts to solve problems in one area of sustainability may well have unknown and unintended consequences in others, sometimes serious. Looking at all the photos of happy people making electronic whirlimagigers, one must turn a blind eye to all the stuff that’s being consumed and wasted in the process of masterpiece-making.

The trouble is, as Paul Hawken comments, that any action to reduce resource or energy use, any activity that helps bring people together, any move that tends toward financial efficiency, can be labeled as ‘sustainable’ regardless of impact on the environment or either of the two remaining pillars of sustainability.

The crux of the matter here remains in our balancing levels of consumption and waste (assuming reduction, reuse, recycling and renewal everywhere possible) against the skills that are being transmitted and acquired, and the social processes in action, through the process of learning illustrated in those photos. (A tricky question remains whether those happy chappies are just middle-class tech-nerds out in search of their weekly dose self-gratification, or if they are genuine skill-seekers, retraining in order to improve their lot and make their world a better place in whatever way they can.)

An appropriate, sustainable approach to the production and use of technology will include a thorough understanding of the human place in our interrelated, planet-wide ecosystem. Anthropomorphic cause-and-effect must factor into any philosophy of technology use, in which we understand the extent of the problem we are trying to solve and its environmental components.

So, in addressing resource use, we might… permanently couple it with RRRR… balance it against benefits and true cost in the widest scope of both (i.e. an extensive, remodelled form of Cost-Benefit Analysis)… then possibly arrive at a “whole-systems life-cycle cost” reflective of an appropriate respect and accounting for all relevant systems, including anthropomorphic and ecological.

An alternative view might also question our relationship with stuff, regardless of whether we make it or consume it (take it, license it, buy it, or otherwise). Makers are not the only people that express this affliction of pride in stuff, of cherishing stuff. Stuff can make people happy, but for how long? Stuff breaks, gets stolen, forgotten about, goes out of style, becomes outdated or obsolete, loses value, so on and so forth. Technology, whilst as a genre of ‘tool’, is incredibly useful and undeniably helpful to us as a species, it remains a subcategory of stuff (and yet still retains it’s environmental baggage).

Should we be investing so much of ourselves in stuff? What about our relationships with each other, what about the experiences we have in life? Stuff will undoubtedly play a role in these, but not the primary, principal role, not the central focus, the raison d’être for our existence. Much research has shown happiness and longevity linked directly to positive, supporting, lasting human relationships. Not stuff, consumption, excessive wealth.

And this is just skimming the very first microscopic layer off the top…

Image courtesy of and with Thanks to toban black and americansarebrainwashed.com.

However you look at it, either as sustainability, protection, stewardship, or just old fashioned respect, unless the overwhelming majority of us begin to take responsibility for the environment on multiple levels, we are facing the previously unthinkable, once confined to the realms of imaginative science fiction Nostradamians.

Social, environmental, political, economic and commercial, academic, professional. There will be no aspect of life on this earth that is left unharmed, from the phytoplankton to the cockroaches, once thought to be resilient enough to survive a nuclear (‘newcular’, according GW Bush Jnr.) holocaust.

Photo courtesy of and with thanks to los alamos national lab: http://www.flickr.com/photos/losalamosnatlab/

The OECD ties Natural Resource Depletion and Environmental Degredation directly to human well-being.

In order to properly respect the environment and our biosphere to ensure it remains in tact for the benefit of all species now and for the life of the planet, our human race must seek to reduce and restrict our use of natural resources to those coming from sustainable, renewable sources.

Isn’t it simply unfair for us to use up all the finite natural resources now, so that no one in the future will have any? Imagine a world where nothing natural is left for anyone because everyone before them used it all for themselves?

Top Image courtesy of and with thanks to Net_efekt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/

Mount up! The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is 150 days away. Follow it here.

In advance of the Conference, the Secretary-General has announced the release of a ‘Zero draft’ of the outcome document, entitled: The Future We Want. See more info here and here and the report here.

Greenpeace writers have penned this offering as a summary / assessment (against their agendas, of course).

Image courtesy of and with thanks to wikimedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/UN_building.jpg

According to the Buddhist faith, this passage contained within their cannon outlines the Buddha’s thoughts about believing:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Granted this is more to do with spiritual beliefs, but for me the first and last sentence remind me that we mustn’t take as fact the word of the media or lobbyists.

When it comes to the Environment, Climate Change and the future of our species and the planet we inhabit, only fact and proven science is good enough. Not speculation, conjecture or my favourite, ‘consensus’. Consensus is not science, science is science – either our climate scientists have proven anthropogenic climate change or they haven’t.

Thanks to the ‘Buddha Quote of the Day’ widget for this poignant and worthwhile advice.

Image courtesy of and with thanks to BTSIDERS: http://www.flickr.com/photos/btsiders/

Whether you buy into the premise of the 10:10 campaign, e.g. the notion of climate change and pledging to reduce your carbon emissions by 10%, the campaign founder and die-hard environmentalist Franny Armstrong offers a powerful message for us all:

“I just believe if you’re not fighting against climate change and you’re not doing a job – like a teacher or a doctor – that is about improving the world, then you’re wasting your life.”

Directing such hard-hitting documentaries as ‘The Age of Stupid’ and ‘Baked Alaska’, Franny has won critical acclaim and millions of viewers for these and other interesting, thought-provoking titles.

Check out Stuart Jeffries’ good introduction article here.

Image courtesy of and with thanks to Henrik Johanssen http://www.flickr.com/photos/henrikj/

We all need stuff to live. Seems simple. We need food, shelter, clothing, education, representative government, healthcare and employment. But our contemporary culture, and more importantly the people around us, would have us believe that we need more stuff than we actually require for day to day living. Why? To look good, to feel good, to identify ourselves with others with whom we share a common interest, be it fashion, music, sport, or a particular part of life that appeals to us. For many, this need to identify has somehow turned into a self-perpetuating circle of continuous consumption which has become unsustainable.

Like Annie Leonard, many people don’t have an issue with stuff per se. The problem is how much we consume, what we consume, and why.

Check out this article, and her two videos, here and here.

Image courtesy of and with thanks to colodio: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colodio/

First of all, Canada, an area of magnificent unspoilt wilderness, continues to support their environmentally detrimental and carbon intensive tar sands mining in favour of, you guessed it, money (i.e their ‘economy’).

Known widely for their tolerance, now Canada has decided to use a rarely implemented clause and have backed out of their obligations to the Kyoto Protocol. Despite national and international outcry, there is no turning back; their reputation as the more pleasant and sophisticated North American country is now decimated.

This act of desperation and environmental hara-kiri was surely motivated by the one true mark of weakness and selfishness, you guessed it, money, financial greed.

If you are Canadian, or know any Canadians, please be sure to do what you can to help save our ailing planet from being raped unwillingly by greedy and power-hungry politicians and the companies that are bankrolling them and committing these environmental atrocities.

Au revoir, mon vieil ami.

Photo courtesy of and with thanks to SkyTruth: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skytruth/

Talk about raping the planet?!? Yeah, you can get oil out of the bitumen that is eked out of tar stands extraction, but holy Moses is it a bastard on the environment!

Come on people! Surely we should all be blind with rage at the destruction reported – and sure the companies at it will tell it’s ok for the environment, and all that river pollution in Alberta isn’t from them…

The solution? We all stop consuming so much, use public transport, turn down your heat two degrees, try to live a less energy-intensive life.

Image courtesy of and with thanks to jonathan mcintosh http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmcintosh/