Tag Archives: sustainability

Sustainable democracy

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The concept of a continuously growing economy does not seem compatible with the creation of a sustainable society.  It is not possible to carry on producing more and more in a world that has finite resources, see my post on an ‘Open-world Mind-set’ on 4th January 2013.

Eventually, engineers and scientists will solve the problems of providing a sustainable and high quality of life to the global population.  However, one likely consequence is a world economy that does not grow, at least not as currently measured.  Modern Western-style democracy is based ‘on the ability of competing parties to offer voters a better material future (more stuff) year by year’ [Andrew Marr, A History of the World, MacMillan, 2012].  What is going to happen when voters acknowledge this vision is unrealizable?

Perhaps it is happening already in the US and Europe.  The turnout in elections is low – between 30 and 40% in local elections in the UK last week.  The PR industry is playing a bigger role in politics and selling a brand rather than policies.  Economic growth has all but stopped, and is proving difficult to re-start.

I suspect that sustainable engineering is going to be easy to achieve compared to eliminating the dependence of our democracies on growth.  Let’s hope the patient does not die before being cured of the addiction!

Old is beautiful

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An often forgotten but key element of sustainability is the concept of repairing objects.  We are encouraged to recycle but this usually means putting your paper, plastics and aluminium in the appropriate bin so that they can be processed in a huge recycling plant.  Our modern consumer society does not encourage us to repair items because manufacturers want us to buy new ones so that they can make more money.  As reported by Edwin Heathcote in the Financial Times on 30/31 March, 2013 [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/903545ea-9612-11e2-b8dd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2QzPabqi1 ], in 1932 during the last Great Depression, Bernard London published a pamphlet entitled ‘Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence’ in which he encouraged built-in obsolescence has a way of accelerating the economy out of its recession.  However, this is not an acceptable approach today because, as was predicted by Vance Packard in 1960, it has lead to ‘wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals’ and we live in world of finite resources (see my posts entitled ‘Unavoidable Junk’ on January 14th, 2013, and Open-world Mind-set’ on January 4th, 2013).

We have learn to love old but serviceable belongings.  They are good enough and will suffice.  If they break then we should have them repaired, preferably locally in order to stimulate our economy rather than replacing them with something made abroad.  This will require engineers to think more about repairs when designing artefacts and consumers to learn to regard the patina of age and use as something of beauty.

Good enough

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Last week I stayed at the Goodenough Club in London while teaching part of a workshop on ‘Engaging Engineering Students in the Classroom’.  The Club provides accommodation for university staff and students visiting London and is attached to Goodenough College, which was founded by Sir Frederick Goodenough in 1930 to provide a collegiate residence and educational trust for international students.  It is located in a leafy square near Coram’s Field and is a tranquil environment to stay in the centre of London.

The name of the College and Club stimulated me to think about the concept of Good Enough or something that is satisfactory or sufficient without excelling.  The concept of sufficiency is one that needs to be closely connected to sustainability because to achieve sustainability we need to remove any tendency towards excess, since excess simply leads to a waste of the Earth’s finite resources [see my post on an ‘Open-world Mind-set’, 4th January, 2013].  As a society we are not very good at sufficiency or good enough.  Businesses and politicians sell us the idea that growth in the quantity and value of our material possessions is a desirable indicator of success so that we tend see self-sufficiency as a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to life.

Never ending growth of material possessions is not viable on a planet with finite resources so if there are to be any resources left for grandchildren then we had better get used to good enough.

Extraordinary technical intelligence

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In his book ‘A History of the World’, Andrew Marr identifies a recurring process in the development of societies, from an agricultural revolution that releases enough people from food production in the countryside to enable basic manufacturing in town and cities, through an industrial revolutions leading to more sophisticated manufacturing and a large, rapid rise in the standards of living.  This process happened first in Britain during the 18th and 19th century, in the US during the 19th and 20th century and then more quickly in Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the second half of the 20th century.  It is happening now and even faster in China with the same ‘grim working conditions in the factories, the raucous enjoyment of plenty by the winners in the cities and a certain recklessness about pollution’ to quote Andrew Marr [Marr, A., A History of the World, MacMillan, 2012].  It is starting in India and Africa might be next, though in the Financial Times on Friday 22nd March, 2013 Chandran Nair argues that we should reverse the flow from the countryside to the cities if we want to achieve a sustainable society.  This might just be possible in Africa, probably not in India and China seems set to follow the well-beaten path to urban industrialisation.

What comes next in the process?  Perhaps a loss of interest in manufacturing industry, followed by over-spending by individuals and governments, economic recession or collapse and stagnation of growth.  Andrew Marr suggests that the wealth based on manufacturing derives from ‘mankind’s extraordinary technical intelligence’ and that there is ‘a long lag in advancing our political and social intelligence’.  The stale-mate at the heart of US politics and the failure of successive UK governments to avert a multi-dip economic recession would suggest the need to advance our political intelligence.  In the meantime we might lose our technical intelligence if don’t train more graduates in technology [see my post on Financial crisis, 27th March, 2013].