Learning as Sustainability

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Learning as Sustainability

• John Foster
• Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy
• Lancaster University

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• The 2003 Energy White Paper was a watershed in
  energy policy, and was unique internationally for
  committing the UK to a 60 cut in CO2 emissions
  by 2050. Although it is now possible that this
  target will need to be increased, in order to
  meet the international obligation to avoid
  dangerous climate change, the EWP contained a
  bold vision for future energy supply and demand.
  The four primary goals were
• Putting the UK on a path to cut CO2 emissions by
  60 by 2050, with real progress by 2020
• To maintain the reliability of energy supplies
• To promote competitive markets in the UK and
  beyond
• To ensure that every home is adequately and
  affordably heated
• Since then, there has been mixed success with
  the policy measures put in place to deliver
  these goals
• Sustainable Development Commission The role of
  nuclear power in a low carbon economy, 2003

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• Businesses and individuals cant really be
  expected to care all that much about a distant
  and radically uncertain future.
• True?
• or just trailing my coat?

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• An ethico-scientistic model of sustainability
• premised on an ethical relationship between
  present and future people
• relying on science
• to do more than science can
• aka
• sustainable development

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• Whats wrong with
• ethico-scientism?
• Wildly hubristic
• Structurally ineffectual

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• Wild hubris
• Ignores indeterminacy attending all scientific
  prediction for policy
• Blanks out ignorance
• Misrepresents our epistemic capacities

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• SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY?
• AEBC member Do you think people are
  reasonable to have concerns about possible
  unknown unknowns where GM plants are concerned?
• ACRE Chair Which unknowns?
• AEBC Thats precisely the point. They arent
  possible to specify in advance. Possibly they
  could be surprises arising from unforeseen
  synergistic effects, or from unanticipated social
  interventions. All people have to go on is
  analogous experience with other technologies
• ACRE Im afraid its impossible for me to
  respond unless you can give me a clear indication
  of the unknowns you are speaking about.
• AEBC In that case dont you think you should
  add health warnings to the advice youre giving
  ministers, indicating that there may be unknown
  unknowns which you cant address?
• ACRE No, as scientists, we have to be
  specific. We cant proceed on the basis of
  imaginings from some fevered brow.
• AEBC public meeting, 2001

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Structural ineffectuality

• We have a standing temptation to float our
  standards under pressure
• A standard specifies what we should do like it or
  not
• A floating standard specifies what we should do
  according to whether we like it or not
• Sustainability decisions are always under
  pressure
• Sustainability standards are inherently liable to
  float
• They are essentially quantitative
• They are in practice indeterminate

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Future-oriented ecological responsibility

• Prediction and evaluation?
• OR
• Meaning and learning

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Contrast

• Its (now) more likely (probable) that its that
  pathway which will take us (across the future) to
  the goal we want Its more probable that that
  trajectory ends with the goal achieved than that
  this one does
• Thats the more likely pathway (cf. a likely
  lad)

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• In single-loop learning, we learn to maintain
  the field of constancy by learning to design
  actions that satisfy existing governing
  variables. In double-loop learning, we learn to
  change the field of constancy itself.
• Argyris and Schon, 1974.

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Practical sustainability

• Carbon rationing at a level which is
  scientifically respectable, and stringent enough
  to jolt us into creative change
• Ensure that the learning conditions for such
  change are in place, e.g.
• entrepreneurial freedom to pursue new solutions
  (adaptability through the iterative short-term)
• encouragement of an options / management learning
  approach in business
• encouragement of a social context in which
  ongoing adaptive learning is the norm
• greatly increased dialogical exploration and
  interpretation of the prospects and consequences
  of techno-innovation