SUBHEAD: The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan falls short, and yet the public thinks it too radical.
By Doug Hinrichs on 4 January 2010 in KPAA -
(http://www.kauainetwork.org/energysustainabilityplan.asp)
Image above: Fake backyard decorative windmill is about all a Kauai resident can install. From (http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2785817870085634031dRkvZz)
[IB Publisher's note: On Friday the Garden Island News had two story headlines above the fold that demonstrate the dysfunctional view of our leaders (and the public opinion they represent) regarding out energy future: "Council Kills Windmill Bill" that would have allowed homeowners to erect residential wind powered electric generators and "Council Members Criticize 'Ridiculous' 50-cent Fuel Tax Proposal", that would have invested money in a alternative energy future. So much for the KESP and our energy future.]
Review the Draft Plan! (uploaded on 1/4/10) Due to large file size, the document is broken up into four parts (you will need Adobe Reader, PDF): # Part 1 (Executive Summary, Vision/Goals - 1.9 MB) # Part 2 (Ground Transportation - 2.4 MB) # Part 3 (Electricity - 2.8 MB) # Part 4 (Waste to Energy, Wind, Implementation - .7 MB)
By Henry Curtis on 11 January 2010 in Disappeared News
(http://disappearednews.com/2010/01/sustainability-on-kauai.html)
The Draft Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan, written by SENTECH, under contract to Kauai County, has just been released (www.kauainetwork.org/energysustainabilityplan.asp). The Preface states: “The Kaua`i Energy Sustainability Plan is an energy sustainability plan for the island of Kaua`i, not an energy sustainability plan for Kaua`i County government ... [nor] is not an energy sustainability plan for KIUC [Kauai Island Utility Co-op].” That is weird: the County is paying for a plan that is not their plan.
The Vision for Kauai is that the island will “have achieved 100% local energy sustainability” in 2030.
Aviation “is outside the scope of this analysis” and marine transportation is not mentioned. With the exception of citing one federal task force, climate change and global warming are also not mentioned. Life cycle analysis is restricted to financial costs only. Not mentioned are environmental and/or climate life cycle impacts and analysis. The focus of the Study is primarily, but not exclusively, on large central station generation.
Kauai has a “peak demand is projected to increase from 82.0 MW in 2009 to 126.0 MW in 2028.” A Black & Veatch study (“Renewable Energy Technology Assessments,” 2005) found that there is theoretically more than 1000 MW of renewable energy available on Kauai.
The theoretical levels of renewable energy include (a) Solar Photovoltaic (over 250 MW); (b) Wind (over 150 MW); (c) Wave (over 100 MW); (d) Solar Thermal (over 100 MW); (e) Biomass (nearly 100 MW) ; (f) Ocean Thermal (nearly 100 MW) ; (g) Ethanol (nearly 100 MW) ; (h) Hydropower (over 50 MW); and (i) Biodiesel (over 50 MW).
While the theoretical units “don’t include any technical, economic, land-use, environmental or other limitations on the resource” they are also low estimates. Thus Kauai has far more renewables than it could ever use.
The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for transportation is to build a combined ethanol/biodiesel plant using bioenergy crops such as Jatropha, Banagrass, Leucaena and Soy. The county fuel tax would be increased from 13¢/gallon to 50¢/gallon. Gasoline would cost “$4.00/gallon, a price at which gasoline demand was greatly reduced during the oil price run-up of 2008 where consumers started to reduce consumption of gasoline.” This would encourage the use of biofuel and electric vehicles.
The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for electricity is energy efficiency, building codes, and a mix of renewable energy: hydropower (45MW), concentrated solar power (30 MW), biomass/biodiesel (30 MW), Photovoltaic Electric (15 MW), and landfill gas (1.6 MW).
The hydropower estimate is high, considering the environmental and cultural impacts likely to be raised for any proposal. Excluded as solutions are garbage-to-energy and wind energy. While Kauai is home to large numbers of endangered and threatened birds which makes siting any large-scale wind farm problematic, micro-wind systems on rooftops using vertical or horizontal blades can be designed not to pose threats to birds and should be included as part of the solution.
“Based on estimates for the total cost to install, maintain, and operate the proposed mix of renewable energy systems, SENTECH Hawai’i projects that a total of $1.51 billion of private capital will be needed over 20 years.” Kauai has a population of 64,000. Thus this cost represents a little more than $1000/person/year.
New Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan
By Jan TenBruggencate on 10 January 2010 in Raising Islands -
(http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-county-energy-sustainability-plan.html)
Our quality of life, both collectively and individually, is more dependent on how we use our energy than on how much of it we use. This hypothesis continues that we can better influence our quality of life through improving technics than through increasing energy consumption.
Poor or Rich
Image: The island of Panarea Is this a picture of a “poor” fishing village or one of the world’s most exclusive resort islands? Actually, it’s both: the idyllic island of Panarea (just north of Sicily). What is it about Tuscany or the South of France?
What is it about Kauai, or a sleepy Costa Rican fishing village? These are often held up as the ideals of quality of life, yet they are certainly not exemplars of conspicuous energy consumption. Sure, the visiting tourists may be expending copious quantities of energy, but the locals - the objects of our jealousy - are generally not. Powerdown concepts such as localized farming, vernacular architecture, and strong community ties are on display.
These features are, generally, not the result of conscious design, but does that mean that they cannot be consciously designed? This seems to be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improving technics as a means of addressing quality of life after peak energy. If we choose to pursue technics as a means of maintaining or improving our quality of life, how should we organize this pursuit? Here are three suggestions: decentralized, open source, and vernacular.
What makes a great quality of life? All this may seem very abstract and theoretical... what does it actually mean? Jeff Vail has discussed the issue at length in several articles, which can be accessed via his Rhizome Theory Directory, but here is an example. Let’s start by taking discrete examples of places that produce a quality of life seemingly disproportionate to their energy consumption. There are countless examples, but we’ll choose the Tuscan village.
How is the Tuscan village decentralized? Production is localized. Admittedly, everything isn’t local. Not by a long shot. But compared to American suburbia, a great percentage of food and building materials are produced and consumed in a highly local network. A high percentage of people garden and shop at local farmer’s markets.
How is the Tuscan village open source? Tuscan culture historically taps into a shared community pool of technics in recognition that a sustainable society is a non-zero-sum game. Most farming communities are this way - advice, knowledge, and innovation is shared, not guarded. Beyond a certain threshold of size and centralization, the motivation to protect and exploit intellectual property seems to take over (another argument for decentralization). There is no reason why we cannot share innovation in technics globally, while acting locally - in fact, the internet now truly makes this possible, leveraging our opportunity to use technics to improve quality of life. How is the Tuscan village vernacular?
You don’t see many “Colonial-Style” houses in Tuscany. Yet strangely, in Denver they are everywhere. Why? They make no more sense in Denver than in Tuscany. The difference is that the Tuscans recognize (mostly) that locally-appropriate, locally-sourced architecture improves quality of life. The architecture is suited to their climate and culture, and the materials are available locally. Same thing with their food - they celebrate what is available locally, and what is in season. Nearly every Tuscan with the space has a vegetable garden.
And finally (though the pressures of globalization are challenging this), their culture is vernacular. They celebrate local festivals, local harvests, and don’t rely on manufactured, mass-marketed, and global trends for their culture nearly as much as disassociated suburbanites - their strong sense of community gives prominence to whatever “their” celebration is over what the global economy tells them it should be.
Improving technics is, of course, the flip side of the conservation coin. If our quality of life is dependent on levels of energy consumption, then conservation must decrease quality of life. For that reason, the conservation measures that work are those that are based on technics - ways of using energy more efficiently to achieve the same quality of life.
All of these technics - localized food production, increased self-sufficiency, vernacular architecture, strong sense of community - seem to improve quality of life. Causation can never be proven, but the anecdotal experience above tells us that the correlation between these factors and seemingly disproportionate quality of life to energy use is very high.
These factors - borrowed from extant examples - are only the tip of the iceberg in the field of possible ways to improve quality of life in the face of peak energy. There seem to be infinite possibilities - most of which do not have historical exemplars - for new and exciting technics. The resurgence and development of ideas such as Permaculture, Vernacular Architecture, and Slow Food seem to support the possibilities here. This is what might be called a “Design Imperative”: a globally cooperative, open-source effort to create and continuously improve a library of technics to improve quality of life in the face of peak energy. No concrete solutions have been presented in this essay. Even the notion of focusing on technics, not energy availability, is not new — see Richard Heinberg’s “Powerdown,” the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, or Transition Town Totnes for just a few examples of pioneers in this area. This idea must be open source, just like the solutions it may provide.
What we can hope is to help convince people to consider this as a worthwhile method of addressing our energy crisis. It seems unlikely that the “way of thinking” that got us into this crisis will also get us out. That old “way of thinking” is the same one that is currently trying to solve the energy crisis through efficiency and “alternatives.” The Design Imperative is the suggestion that we should focus instead on the conscious development of technics - a new way of thinking.
See also:
From Madison Avenue to Mad Max?
By Worldwatch Institute on 12 January 2010 Share The World's Resources
(http://www.stwr.org/economic-sharing-alternatives/state-of-the-world-2010-transforming-cultures.htm)
Without an intentional cultural shift that values sustainability over consumerism, no government pledges or technological advances will be enough to rescue humanity from unacceptably hazardous environmental and climate risks, concludes the Worldwatch Institute in the latest edition of its flagship annual report, State of the World 2010. The book, subtitled Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability, defines "consumerism" as a cultural orientation that leads people to find meaning, contentment, and acceptance primarily through what they consume.
"We've seen some encouraging efforts to combat the world's climate crisis in the past few years," says project director Erik Assadourian. "But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centered on consumerism and growth can only go so far. To thrive long into the future, human societies will need to shift their cultures so that sustainability becomes the norm and excessive consumption becomes taboo."
In 2006, people consumed $30.5 trillion worth of goods and services, up 28 percent from just 10 years earlier. This rise in consumption has resulted in a dramatic increase in resource extraction; the world digs up the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings worth of materials each day, with the typical American consuming an average of 88 kilograms (194 pounds) of stuff daily-more than most Americans weigh. If the whole world lived like this, Earth could sustain only 1.4 billion people, or just a fifth of the current population, the report notes.
"Cultural patterns are the root cause of an unprecedented convergence of ecological and social problems, including a changing climate, an obesity epidemic, a major decline in biodiversity, loss of agricultural land, and production of hazardous waste," says Assadourian.
The report's 60 authors present strategies for reorienting cultures that range from "choice editing"-deliberately striking options from consumer menus-to harnessing the power of religious groups and rituals to internalize sustainability values. Some examples from State of the World 2010 include:
Government has also promoted consumerism as a lynchpin of policy, often making it synonymous with national well-being and job creation. As the global economic recession accelerated in 2009, wealthy countries primed national economies with $2.8 trillion of new government stimulus packages, only a small percentage of which focused on green initiatives.
Today, an intentional shift is necessary and is already taking root thanks to cultural pioneers around the world who are starting to use six culture-shaping institutions-education, business, the media, government, traditions, and social movements-to reorient cultures toward sustainability.
In 26 articles and 23 short text boxes, the report details dozens of innovative efforts that are tapping these key institutions, from changing business cultures and starting social enterprises to cultivating social marketing efforts, shifting family-planning norms, and tapping the power of primary schools, universities, and even school menus.
"As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism," says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. "In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost."
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Energy Sustainability 2030 1/7/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 1/5/10
Ea O Ka Aina: KIUC's Energy Future 1/5/10
Island Breath: Sugar Plantation Plans Ethanol Plant 7/11/07
Island Breath: Windmill Siting on Kauai 7/17/06
Island Breath: Windmills in Limbo 6/5/06
By Doug Hinrichs on 4 January 2010 in KPAA -
(http://www.kauainetwork.org/energysustainabilityplan.asp)
Image above: Fake backyard decorative windmill is about all a Kauai resident can install. From (http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2785817870085634031dRkvZz)
[IB Publisher's note: On Friday the Garden Island News had two story headlines above the fold that demonstrate the dysfunctional view of our leaders (and the public opinion they represent) regarding out energy future: "Council Kills Windmill Bill" that would have allowed homeowners to erect residential wind powered electric generators and "Council Members Criticize 'Ridiculous' 50-cent Fuel Tax Proposal", that would have invested money in a alternative energy future. So much for the KESP and our energy future.]
Review the Draft Plan! (uploaded on 1/4/10) Due to large file size, the document is broken up into four parts (you will need Adobe Reader, PDF): # Part 1 (Executive Summary, Vision/Goals - 1.9 MB) # Part 2 (Ground Transportation - 2.4 MB) # Part 3 (Electricity - 2.8 MB) # Part 4 (Waste to Energy, Wind, Implementation - .7 MB)
By Henry Curtis on 11 January 2010 in Disappeared News
(http://disappearednews.com/2010/01/sustainability-on-kauai.html)
The Draft Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan, written by SENTECH, under contract to Kauai County, has just been released (www.kauainetwork.org/energysustainabilityplan.asp). The Preface states: “The Kaua`i Energy Sustainability Plan is an energy sustainability plan for the island of Kaua`i, not an energy sustainability plan for Kaua`i County government ... [nor] is not an energy sustainability plan for KIUC [Kauai Island Utility Co-op].” That is weird: the County is paying for a plan that is not their plan.
The Vision for Kauai is that the island will “have achieved 100% local energy sustainability” in 2030.
Aviation “is outside the scope of this analysis” and marine transportation is not mentioned. With the exception of citing one federal task force, climate change and global warming are also not mentioned. Life cycle analysis is restricted to financial costs only. Not mentioned are environmental and/or climate life cycle impacts and analysis. The focus of the Study is primarily, but not exclusively, on large central station generation.
Kauai has a “peak demand is projected to increase from 82.0 MW in 2009 to 126.0 MW in 2028.” A Black & Veatch study (“Renewable Energy Technology Assessments,” 2005) found that there is theoretically more than 1000 MW of renewable energy available on Kauai.
The theoretical levels of renewable energy include (a) Solar Photovoltaic (over 250 MW); (b) Wind (over 150 MW); (c) Wave (over 100 MW); (d) Solar Thermal (over 100 MW); (e) Biomass (nearly 100 MW) ; (f) Ocean Thermal (nearly 100 MW) ; (g) Ethanol (nearly 100 MW) ; (h) Hydropower (over 50 MW); and (i) Biodiesel (over 50 MW).
While the theoretical units “don’t include any technical, economic, land-use, environmental or other limitations on the resource” they are also low estimates. Thus Kauai has far more renewables than it could ever use.
The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for transportation is to build a combined ethanol/biodiesel plant using bioenergy crops such as Jatropha, Banagrass, Leucaena and Soy. The county fuel tax would be increased from 13¢/gallon to 50¢/gallon. Gasoline would cost “$4.00/gallon, a price at which gasoline demand was greatly reduced during the oil price run-up of 2008 where consumers started to reduce consumption of gasoline.” This would encourage the use of biofuel and electric vehicles.
The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for electricity is energy efficiency, building codes, and a mix of renewable energy: hydropower (45MW), concentrated solar power (30 MW), biomass/biodiesel (30 MW), Photovoltaic Electric (15 MW), and landfill gas (1.6 MW).
The hydropower estimate is high, considering the environmental and cultural impacts likely to be raised for any proposal. Excluded as solutions are garbage-to-energy and wind energy. While Kauai is home to large numbers of endangered and threatened birds which makes siting any large-scale wind farm problematic, micro-wind systems on rooftops using vertical or horizontal blades can be designed not to pose threats to birds and should be included as part of the solution.
“Based on estimates for the total cost to install, maintain, and operate the proposed mix of renewable energy systems, SENTECH Hawai’i projects that a total of $1.51 billion of private capital will be needed over 20 years.” Kauai has a population of 64,000. Thus this cost represents a little more than $1000/person/year.
New Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan
By Jan TenBruggencate on 10 January 2010 in Raising Islands -
(http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-county-energy-sustainability-plan.html)
The County of Kaua'i has a new draft plan designed to guide us to a sustainable energy future.
Of course, it's got some issues.
There are the things that are going to make it hard to adopt—like a proposed $.50-per-gallon county gas tax. That's designed to promote energy efficient cars, drive people to buses, and fund energy solutions.
And there are things that seem overly hopeful—like producing 45 megawatts from hydroelectric power. It'll be tough to find enough streams without endangered freshwater creatures and waterfowl in them to meet that goal.
And the draft plan seems to miss the boat on several pieces of the energy puzzle. It walks away from wind power and waste-to-energy, and, for some folks who talked at a recent public meeting, it doesn't spent near enough time on energy conservation and efficiency.
But it's a draft, and it should be and will be tweaked before it's final.
The draft Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan's most controversial proposal, based on testimony at a public meeting last week, is this one: “The Kaua`i County Fuel Tax should be raised an additional 50¢/gallon on gasoline and diesel to disincentivize their consumption, while building a Sustainable Ground Transportation Fund to provide incentives for alternative transportation, more efficient vehicles, and an integrated refinery for the Island, etc.”
(As a writer, I can't pass up the opportunity to comment on the use of the horrific word disincentivize. We all occasionally make an unfortunate choice of words or use a word in an unfortunate way. But, I think what the author means here is discourage, which would have been a much better choice.
Disincentivize, an ugly word and a waste of syllables, suggests that you're removing a previously existing incentive—and it's not clear here what that incentive is. So much for this neoantidisestablishmentarianistic rant.)
The plan promotes hybrids and electric cars, and is a big, big supporter of biofuels—growing crops for energy production, through biomass conversion to electricity and the development of liquid fuels like ethanol and biodiesel.
Its assessment about the amount of hydropower available on Kauai is likely to be cut, we would think by as much as half.
The plan assumes the island has such great potential for renewable fuels that it will have a glut of power at low-usage hours—the middle of the night—and that hydro and biomass could then conveniently charge up thousands of plug-in hybrid electric cars.
It recommends the county adopt Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for commercial buildings and the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for new homes. It recommends the county hire three new experts to promote efficiency in government and commercial buildings. They would be a County Energy Efficiency Manager, a County Facilities Energy Manager and a County Policy Manager.
And the draft plan strongly promotes feed-in tariffs for the local utility, the Kaua'i Island Utility Cooperative. This system, which provides higher-than-normal prices for alternative energy production, is designed to promote renewable energy development.
The plan downplays waste-to-energy as a power source like O'ahu's HPOWER plant, saying there are questions about its potential on Kaua'i. It also dismisses wind power, asserting that wind development is on hold due to bird strike issues, even though small wind plants are actively being developed, and developers are working hard on finding technological and regulatory ways to get wind projects approved.
To help ensure that the plan moves forward, it identifies a sponsor: a new energy panel charged with enacting its recommendations. The Sustainable Energy Coordination Team (SECT) would include representatives of: Kaua'i County, the energy utility, the Kaua'i Economic Development Board, state Department of Business, Economic development and Tourism, energy investors, environmental groups, and members of the committee that helped develop the energy sustainability plan itself.
Improving Technics
By Jeff Vail on unknown date in Appropedia -
(http://www.appropedia.org/Quality_of_life_through_design_and_%22technics%22)
Our quality of life, both collectively and individually, is more dependent on how we use our energy than on how much of it we use. This hypothesis continues that we can better influence our quality of life through improving technics than through increasing energy consumption.
Poor or Rich
Image: The island of Panarea Is this a picture of a “poor” fishing village or one of the world’s most exclusive resort islands? Actually, it’s both: the idyllic island of Panarea (just north of Sicily). What is it about Tuscany or the South of France?
What is it about Kauai, or a sleepy Costa Rican fishing village? These are often held up as the ideals of quality of life, yet they are certainly not exemplars of conspicuous energy consumption. Sure, the visiting tourists may be expending copious quantities of energy, but the locals - the objects of our jealousy - are generally not. Powerdown concepts such as localized farming, vernacular architecture, and strong community ties are on display.
These features are, generally, not the result of conscious design, but does that mean that they cannot be consciously designed? This seems to be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improving technics as a means of addressing quality of life after peak energy. If we choose to pursue technics as a means of maintaining or improving our quality of life, how should we organize this pursuit? Here are three suggestions: decentralized, open source, and vernacular.
What makes a great quality of life? All this may seem very abstract and theoretical... what does it actually mean? Jeff Vail has discussed the issue at length in several articles, which can be accessed via his Rhizome Theory Directory, but here is an example. Let’s start by taking discrete examples of places that produce a quality of life seemingly disproportionate to their energy consumption. There are countless examples, but we’ll choose the Tuscan village.
How is the Tuscan village decentralized? Production is localized. Admittedly, everything isn’t local. Not by a long shot. But compared to American suburbia, a great percentage of food and building materials are produced and consumed in a highly local network. A high percentage of people garden and shop at local farmer’s markets.
How is the Tuscan village open source? Tuscan culture historically taps into a shared community pool of technics in recognition that a sustainable society is a non-zero-sum game. Most farming communities are this way - advice, knowledge, and innovation is shared, not guarded. Beyond a certain threshold of size and centralization, the motivation to protect and exploit intellectual property seems to take over (another argument for decentralization). There is no reason why we cannot share innovation in technics globally, while acting locally - in fact, the internet now truly makes this possible, leveraging our opportunity to use technics to improve quality of life. How is the Tuscan village vernacular?
You don’t see many “Colonial-Style” houses in Tuscany. Yet strangely, in Denver they are everywhere. Why? They make no more sense in Denver than in Tuscany. The difference is that the Tuscans recognize (mostly) that locally-appropriate, locally-sourced architecture improves quality of life. The architecture is suited to their climate and culture, and the materials are available locally. Same thing with their food - they celebrate what is available locally, and what is in season. Nearly every Tuscan with the space has a vegetable garden.
And finally (though the pressures of globalization are challenging this), their culture is vernacular. They celebrate local festivals, local harvests, and don’t rely on manufactured, mass-marketed, and global trends for their culture nearly as much as disassociated suburbanites - their strong sense of community gives prominence to whatever “their” celebration is over what the global economy tells them it should be.
Improving technics is, of course, the flip side of the conservation coin. If our quality of life is dependent on levels of energy consumption, then conservation must decrease quality of life. For that reason, the conservation measures that work are those that are based on technics - ways of using energy more efficiently to achieve the same quality of life.
All of these technics - localized food production, increased self-sufficiency, vernacular architecture, strong sense of community - seem to improve quality of life. Causation can never be proven, but the anecdotal experience above tells us that the correlation between these factors and seemingly disproportionate quality of life to energy use is very high.
These factors - borrowed from extant examples - are only the tip of the iceberg in the field of possible ways to improve quality of life in the face of peak energy. There seem to be infinite possibilities - most of which do not have historical exemplars - for new and exciting technics. The resurgence and development of ideas such as Permaculture, Vernacular Architecture, and Slow Food seem to support the possibilities here. This is what might be called a “Design Imperative”: a globally cooperative, open-source effort to create and continuously improve a library of technics to improve quality of life in the face of peak energy. No concrete solutions have been presented in this essay. Even the notion of focusing on technics, not energy availability, is not new — see Richard Heinberg’s “Powerdown,” the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, or Transition Town Totnes for just a few examples of pioneers in this area. This idea must be open source, just like the solutions it may provide.
What we can hope is to help convince people to consider this as a worthwhile method of addressing our energy crisis. It seems unlikely that the “way of thinking” that got us into this crisis will also get us out. That old “way of thinking” is the same one that is currently trying to solve the energy crisis through efficiency and “alternatives.” The Design Imperative is the suggestion that we should focus instead on the conscious development of technics - a new way of thinking.
See also:
From Madison Avenue to Mad Max?
By Worldwatch Institute on 12 January 2010 Share The World's Resources
(http://www.stwr.org/economic-sharing-alternatives/state-of-the-world-2010-transforming-cultures.htm)
Without an intentional cultural shift that values sustainability over consumerism, no government pledges or technological advances will be enough to rescue humanity from unacceptably hazardous environmental and climate risks, concludes the Worldwatch Institute in the latest edition of its flagship annual report, State of the World 2010. The book, subtitled Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability, defines "consumerism" as a cultural orientation that leads people to find meaning, contentment, and acceptance primarily through what they consume.
"We've seen some encouraging efforts to combat the world's climate crisis in the past few years," says project director Erik Assadourian. "But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centered on consumerism and growth can only go so far. To thrive long into the future, human societies will need to shift their cultures so that sustainability becomes the norm and excessive consumption becomes taboo."
In 2006, people consumed $30.5 trillion worth of goods and services, up 28 percent from just 10 years earlier. This rise in consumption has resulted in a dramatic increase in resource extraction; the world digs up the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings worth of materials each day, with the typical American consuming an average of 88 kilograms (194 pounds) of stuff daily-more than most Americans weigh. If the whole world lived like this, Earth could sustain only 1.4 billion people, or just a fifth of the current population, the report notes.
"Cultural patterns are the root cause of an unprecedented convergence of ecological and social problems, including a changing climate, an obesity epidemic, a major decline in biodiversity, loss of agricultural land, and production of hazardous waste," says Assadourian.
The report's 60 authors present strategies for reorienting cultures that range from "choice editing"-deliberately striking options from consumer menus-to harnessing the power of religious groups and rituals to internalize sustainability values. Some examples from State of the World 2010 include:
- School menus in Italy and elsewhere are being reformulated to use healthy, local, and environmentally sound foods, transforming children's dietary norms in the process.
- In suburbs such as Vauban, Germany, bike paths, wind turbines, and farmers' markets are not only making it easy to live sustainably, but are making it hard not to.
- At the U.S.-based carpet company Interface Inc., CEO Ray Anderson radicalized a business culture by setting the goal of taking nothing from the Earth that cannot be replaced by the Earth.
- In Ecuador, rights for "Pachamama" (Mother Earth) have entered into the Constitution.
Government has also promoted consumerism as a lynchpin of policy, often making it synonymous with national well-being and job creation. As the global economic recession accelerated in 2009, wealthy countries primed national economies with $2.8 trillion of new government stimulus packages, only a small percentage of which focused on green initiatives.
Today, an intentional shift is necessary and is already taking root thanks to cultural pioneers around the world who are starting to use six culture-shaping institutions-education, business, the media, government, traditions, and social movements-to reorient cultures toward sustainability.
In 26 articles and 23 short text boxes, the report details dozens of innovative efforts that are tapping these key institutions, from changing business cultures and starting social enterprises to cultivating social marketing efforts, shifting family-planning norms, and tapping the power of primary schools, universities, and even school menus.
"As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism," says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. "In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost."
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Energy Sustainability 2030 1/7/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 1/5/10
Ea O Ka Aina: KIUC's Energy Future 1/5/10
Island Breath: Sugar Plantation Plans Ethanol Plant 7/11/07
Island Breath: Windmill Siting on Kauai 7/17/06
Island Breath: Windmills in Limbo 6/5/06
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