Sustainability and Resource Use

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Sustainability and Resource Use
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TechnologySome Preliminary Considerations

• 1. Environmental damage and environmental
  injustice
• caused by developing technologies, using them,
  and
• disposing of their by-products, their
  pollutants, and
• ultimately the technologies themselves.
• 2. Social, political, and economic consequences
  of
• technology development, use, and disposal.
• 3. Measuring progress by our ability to develop
  and
• consume technologies.

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The Technological Vision

• Progress is defined as acquiring
• 1. the most numerous,
• 2. the widest variety,
• 3. and the very latest or most refined
  commodities
• that are
• a. easier to use,
• b. more instantaneous,
• c. more pervasive,
• d. and safer than what you
• presently own.

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More of the Technological Vision

• The entire world can be reduced to
• 1. People who seek out
• 2. natural resources
• 3. fashioned into commodities for
  human use.
• The goal of life becomes Maximize possession of
  devices and consumption of commodities!
• Those who possess and consume the most are the
  most affluent, and affluence becomes the goal and
  blueprint of the technological society.

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Technological Subversion

• 1. Commitment to affluence commitment to high
  and
• rising standards of living and economic
  growth.
• 2. Economic activity (in terms of maximizing
  technology
• and consumption) becomes more important than
  and
• subverts politics, ethics, and our own personal
  
• conceptions of the good life.
• 3. Is this technological good life compatible
  with respect
• for nature (environmental ethics) and respect
  for other
• people (environmental justice)?

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Technology in a Global North-South World

• Technology transfer from the North to the South
  and the Souths emulation of the North might lead
  to
• 1. Seductively rising consumption.
• 2. More technology developments with more
  negative
• impacts.
• 3. More environmental degradation.
• 4. More environmental injustice.
• Is this sustainable?

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So what is sustainability?

• The ability in which something can be preserved.
• Living in a way in which the environment may last
  for an infinite time and many generations may
  enjoy it.
• The effort to use minimally the resources of our
  world, as they are necessary to support life,
  without compromising the future of said resources
  for future generations.
• To maintain continuously.

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Future Generations of People

• What is a future generation?
• Do we have any moral responsibilities to future
  generations? Why or why not?
• What will future generations need and want?

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Why we might not have moral responsibilities to
future generations

• 1. Argument from Ignorance
• 2. Argument from Disappearing Beneficiaries
• 3. Argument from Temporal Location

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Why we might have responsibilities to future
generations

• 1. Future people might be owed a reasonable
• hope of ? (Utilitarianism)
• 2. Future people might have rights that need to
  be
• respected (Human Rights)
• 3. We might care about who future people are
  (Care
• Ethic)

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Five Central Problems

• 1. Ignorance Problem How can we know what
  future people will really
• need and want, what rights they might insist
  upon, and what they
• will blame us for doing right and wrong?
• 2. Typology of Effects Problem How can we
  determine which of our
• actions will really have moral implications for
  the future?
• 3. Problem of Intergenerational Trade-Offs How
  should a particular
• generation balance concern for its own moral
  and prudential
• concerns with concern for future generations?

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Five Central Problems continued

• 4. Distance Problem How far into the future do
• our moral obligations extend?
• 5. Saving Stuff Problem What should we save
  for
• future generationsactual natural resources or
  monetary investments?

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Two Kinds of Sustainability

• Substitutability Are natural resourcesfrom the
  more-than-human worldinterchangeable with
  human-produced goods and monetary assets?
• Weak Sustainability Yes! All we need to
  sustain are non-declining stocks of utility for
  people.
• Strong Sustainability No! We need to sustain
  (at least some of) the more-than-human world.

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Some people you might know

• Energy
  The Ethics of
• Water
  Sustainable Resources
• Bjorn Lomborg
  Donald Scherer
• Strong or Weak S?
  Strong or Weak S?

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Some Preliminary Considerations about Sustainable
Resources

• Population growth, increasing affluence, and the
  creation of new technologies usually increase the
  energy supply needed to sustain people.
• The scale of the operation of maintaining and
  increasing energy supplies for people leads to
  moral demands for increasing efficiency and
  curtailing pollution.
• The complex interplay of economics, politics, and
  other social factors, combined with biophysical
  and ecological considerations, results in much
  uncertainty about the future consequences of our
  actions and decisions today.

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Scherer on Sustainability

• To sustain using something is to use it
  continually and indefinitely.
• We can think of sustainability in terms of
• 1. Choice
• 2. Lifestyle
• 3. Resources
• 4. Reusability
• 5. Substitutability

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Sustainability of Choice

• We can make the same energy choices continually
  and indefinitely.
• Is this a good way to think about sustainability?

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What is problematic about conceiving of
sustainability as sustainability of choice

• 1. The sustainability of a choice to use a
  particular energy
• source is relative to the size of a population
  and the
• efficiency of its energy conversion.
• 2. A plurality of purposes can make a given
  choice to use
• a particular energy source both sustainable and
  
• unsustainable.
• 3. Choices of energy use have unintended
  consequences.
• 4. Choices of energy use can lead to synergistic
  effects.

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Sustainability of Lifestyle

• Given our social organization and patterns of
  practice, we can maintain the same lifestyle
  continually and indefinitely.
• Is this a good way to think about sustainability?

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What is problematic about conceiving of
sustainability as sustainability of lifestyle

• 1. Environmental impacts caused by a particular
  lifestyle are not
• independent of the size of the population.
• 2. A desirable affluent lifestyle centrally
  might rely upon nonrenewable
• energy sources or unsustainable rates of
  renewable energy
• sources.
• 3. Lifestyle maintenance might obscure
  substitutions of natural resources
• and modifications of natural processes.
• 4. How do we define the lifestyle of a
  particular society?
• 5. Given the diversity of people with a
  particular society, does the
• lifestyle of the society privilege certain
  groups of people?

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Sustainability of Resources

• We can use particular resources continually and
  indefinitely.
• Is this a good way to think about sustainability?

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What is problematic about conceiving of
sustainability as sustainability of resources

• 1. Inefficiency of energy use is a considerable
  obstacle to the
• sustainability of resources.
• 2. Use of public resources that are not or
  cannot be privatized can
• lead to a tragedy of the commons.
• 3. While we can manipulate the supplies of
  recourses, there are
• biophysical limits to total number and use of
  resources.
• 4. Even if we think about resources in terms of
  the services they
• provide, the services are not independent of
  the rates of total
• consumption of particular materials.

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Sustainability as Reusability

• We can reuse resources continually and
  indefinitely.
• Is this a good way to think about sustainability?
  

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What is problematic about conceiving of
sustainability as reusable resources

• 1. Reusability of resources is not independent
  of their possible initial
• scarcity.
• 2. Actual conditions of use can significantly
  compromise theoretical
• reusability.
• 3. Proven technologies for reuse might not be
  cost-effective and/or
• not available to various populations of people.
• 4. Theoretical reuse has biophysical limits,
  including entropy.

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Sustainability as Substitutability

• We can substitute resources continually and
  indefinitely.
• Is this a good way to think about sustainability?

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What is problematic about conceiving of
sustainability in terms of substitutability

• 1. We do not have substitutions for a number of
  natural resources.
• 2. Theoretical substitutability will still be
  constrained by biophysical
• and quantifiable limits of what is available
  for substitution.
• 3. Substituting human-produced goods and
  monetary assets for
• natural resources will be problematic for those
  who adhere to
• strong sustainability.

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Sustainability and Environmental Justice

• We should not imperil the availability for
  future generations of what we have available to
  us now. But when is now and who are us?
• Who gets to make decisions about our sustainable
  use of resources?
• How is our concern for environmental justice
  related to our environmental ethics concern for
  nature?

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Scherer on Sustainability

• Sustainability, then, if understood
  ecosystemically, includes the recognition of
  goods other than human well-being and the
  resources that conduce thereto. Once these other
  goods are recognized, conditions of their stable
  maintenance exist. The recognition of these
  goods expands the meaning of sustainability to
  include the conditions that assure that stable
  maintenance. Respect for those goods, along
  perhaps with prudence as well, requires aiming to
  maintain the conditions that those goods require.
  Accordingly, human actions thought right or at
  least permissible, on the grounds that they
  promote or at least do not harm human well-being,
  are arguably wrong if and when they contravene
  broadened, ecosystemic conditions of
  sustainability.
• (The Ethics of Sustainable Resources pp.
  343-344)

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Lomborg on Sustainability

• We must take care of the problems, prioritize
  reasonably, but not worry unduly. We are
  actually leaving the world a better place than
  when we got it and this is the really fantastic
  point about the real state of the world that
  mankinds lot has improved in every significant
  measurable field and that it is likely to
  continue to do so. Children born todayin
  both the industrialized world and developing
  countrieswill live longer and be healthier, they
  will get more food, a better education, a higher
  standard of living, more leisure time and far
  more possibilitieswithout the global environment
  being destroyed. And that is a beautiful world.
• (The Skeptical Environmentalist Measuring the
  Real State of the World pp. 351-352)

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• So what is sustainability?