Sustainability: What it's all about
By Thomas K. Rohrer
Director of CMU’s environmental studies program
You may have seen that poignant bumper sticker that says, “What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it’s all about?” It is a somewhat humorous and perhaps depressing assessment of the ultimate value of the lives that we lead and the work that we do.
We live in a world that does little to encourage, reward, or recognize those who live and work for the common good of all of the planet. Instead, our culture and the global economy seem to focus our energies on personal gain, short-term profits, and a careless disregard for the long-term effects of our actions on our global ecosystem. There is little regard for how sustainable our economic and social systems are over the long term.
Concerns about this situation are not new. Once mankind began to recognize that our planetary resources were finite and that growth of the human population was accelerating geometrically, writings appeared which outlined the inevitable conclusion that growth could not continue to be supported at this pace indefinitely.
The “limits to growth” were first discussed by English mathematician Thomas R. Malthus as far back as the early 1800s. Scholars in the latter half of the 20th century began to talk more and more about the need to refocus our efforts toward developing sustainable systems so that population growth and increasingly consumptive lifestyles did not overwhelm the planetary capacity to support us.
In recent years some of the more foresighted leaders in business and academia have promoted the concept of “sustainability” in their work. Sustainability is defined as a process or system that can be maintained at a certain level of production indefinitely. In the environmental arena, it is most commonly linked to the longevity of vital human and ecological support systems such as the hydrologic cycle, mineral and petroleum resources, the planetary climate system, and our food and forestry resources.
The issue was brought to the political forefront in 1987 with the issuance of a major report by the World Commission on Environment and Development of the United Nations titled, Our Common Future. This report, edited by Gro Harlem Bruntland, a former prime minister of Norway, brought the term “sustainability” into the political vernacular. The Bruntland report served as the outline for many nations to begin adopting more sustainable policies involving energy use, transportation, food production, and conservation of natural resources.
At about the same time, some of our more progressive business leaders began to integrate sustainability into the world of commerce by focusing on what they called the “Triple Bottom Line” or TBL. This school of thought said that it was important to assess the impact of business practices not only on economic profits, the traditional bottom line, but also on communities (people) and on the environment. By focusing on a TBL system of management, reducing energy use and materials consumption became integral parts of a company’s strategic plan.
Managers recognized that only sustainable business practices would assure the long-term viability of their enterprises. As business implemented more sustainable practices, they discovered the synergistic effect of seeing improvements in all three of the areas being assessed. In many cases, instituting practices that reduced waste, encouraged recycling, and promoted use of more “sustainable” products resulted in dramatic improvements in business profit.
This dispelled the myth that economic development and environmental stewardship were mutually exclusive.
Sustainability is now becoming a mainstream issue. Communities and universities, including CMU, are taking seriously the challenge to develop more sustainable systems to lessen our impact on planetary resources and assure our long-term survival. Much can be accomplished by simple conservation measures such as turning off lights and appliances when they are not needed. Other changes, such as improving mass transit and weaning us off our addiction to fossil fuels, will be more challenging. Changes from our overly consumptive lifestyles are necessary to secure our common future and to prevent global environmental catastrophes.
Working toward a sustainable future puts us all on a higher path toward a common good. It may require some sacrifices on our part, but that will save us from environmental and economic collapse over the long haul.
Columnist Robert J. Samuelson recently wrote, “We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common good or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits.” This protection of self-interests and unsustainable lifestyles puts us on a path toward continued domestic and international strife and, ultimately, ecological collapse.
Living a more sustainable lifestyle, developing a more sustainable campus, and promoting more sustainable communities will assure that our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren will prosper in the future. In the long run, sustainability is what it’s all about. •
