The Future of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

You can breathe a sigh of relief, this will be my last post on Sustainability and hopefully we can return to the topic at hand - development.
The follow excerpt is from another article I wrote (for my church newsletter of all things) which tries summarize the ideas I've put forward in previous posts.

Reduce
It seems to me that the main theme in this latest era of environmentalism is “reduce”: we need to reduce what we use, our global footprint, what we pump into the atmosphere, etc. Although there are scientific reasons why we may need to protect the environment, for many people it has not hit home; environmental actions we take are done voluntarily, out of a gut feeling of altruism rather than from a real understanding of how dependent we are on the environment. As such, The Environment is often not as important to the populace as The Economy or Society issues. In the recent Ontario election debates I didn’t hear a single candidate put the environment ahead of the economy with the possible exception of Mike Schreiner of the Green Party, but even he usually went on to mention jobs and the economy in the same breath. Influential people, such as David Suzuki, have tried for years to demonstrate how inextricably linked humanity is with the natural environment, hoping to give us the ‘wake-up call’ we need to change our ways and put the environment first. They may finally get their wish.
We are now at a point where Mother Earth does not cough up her resources so freely and so, on top of reducing what we use, it is often cheaper to reuse and recycle that which we have already extracted. Increasingly we see many “green” endeavors undertaken for economic reasons. For example, I have little doubt that the recent FIT program here in Ontario (which encourages people to install solar or wind generators) was largely an economic wager to offset the cost of significant upgrades to our electrical system.

Reuse
It seems to me that we are now entering an era of ‘reuse’, a time when the ‘reduce’ no longer needs to be preached but is a natural way to protect our pocket books. We are beginning to reuse and to some extent recycle in ways previous generations never thought possible or necessary. In this age, the true value of our natural resources begins to emerge and we can no longer afford to take them for granted.

Recycle
In the future, another era may begin to emerge -one of recycling. At this time our society will be in a much different place than it is now. People will not have the resources (economic or otherwise) to extract and create what they want; reducing and reusing will be unquestionable aspects of daily life. In order to get ahead people will begin to recycle and recover resources that past generations have discarded as worthless.

Era of	System at the Forefront	Spokesperson
Reducing	Environment	David Suzuki, enough said
Reusing	Economy	Hermann Scheer has a book called “Energy Autonomy” in which he moves the case for environmentalism beyond the environment and begins to talk about the economy and society.
Recycling	Politics and Society	Thomas Homer-Dixon talks about how complex systems need energy to sustain them. He provides a convincing argument that, unless a source of energy can be found to replace fossil fuels, our economy and society are in for some big changes.

Complex Systems

Here’s another way of looking at this progression. I have attended some presentations about ‘complex systems’ and often the speaker introduces the talk about how the environment, the economy or society, are all examples of complex systems. One perspective is that in reality there is only one complex system, the natural environment, and it is the foundation for these other complex systems for which we like to take credit. If we accept that the economy and even our society and politics are simply extensions of the environment then it logically follows that if we destroy or neglect the environment, these other systems risk collapse. It may be too early to say, but possibly someday people will be able to demonstrate how the current economic crises in the United States and Europe are early indicators of damage to the natural environment - but that’s another conversation. Unfortunately, in the name of the “economy” I think governments, most notably our own, are looking to extract even more natural resources in a flailing attempt to prop up our fiscal systems.

In summary, I am not saying the end of the world is near, but rather I hope to help people (and I include myself) cross over to a solid understanding of why we need to protect the environment. If we can reach that understanding on our own, rather than having it forced upon us, we’ll be far better off.

How does this relate to development. Most people in the developing world live in fairly sustainable manner but are largely unaware of this. The irony is that we are increasingly aware of how unsustainable our lifestyle is and yet don't (or can't) do anything about it. I said it before in other ways but development work needs to include a component of helping people understand the broader implications of how they live which implies doing development work in the developed world.

Kurtis (in Waterloo)

ps I'm just starting to read Thomas Homer-Dixon's, "The Upside of Down" and I think he's going to say all that I've been trying to say in a much clearer way.

Paradox

Kurt's reference to Jevon's paradox reminds me of the paradox of carbon trading. I don't really understand carbon trading and carbon tax, etc, but working on a small hydro-electric project in Pakistan, I encountered this odd concept and began to understand something I learned a lot more about this past year. That is, how trends in development are just that and words like sustainable and low-carbon and renewable energy are often understood in very narrow or vague terms, or simply not understood at all.

Here's how I understand carbon trading in terms of renewable energy development. Industry around the world generates carbon and that carbon contributes to the stock of greenhouse gases in the environment. Say there are 100 tonnes being produced at a given time (obviously the real figure is many of orders of magnitude higher). Well, the producers of the 100 tonnes are given a choice, they can either reduce their overall output of carbon or they can pay someone else, in the form of a carbon tax, who is reducing their output of carbon, more or less. The irony of this scheme, however, is that this carbon tax can be used to fund the development of new low or zero-emissions energy generation facitilities, such as small rural hydro-electric plants in developing countries. So let's say the producers of the 100 tonnes pay $10 in carbon tax instead of reducing their outputs by 1 tonne. That $10 can be used to fund new zero emissions energy production.

But in reality, nothing is zero emissions. The development, installation and maintenance of a small hydro facility contributes to carbon emissions. So let's say the new hydro facility generates 1 tonne of carbon. The new net total production of carbon in our hypothetical world is now 101 tonnes. While this is less than if a small coal-fired plant had been built instead of the hydro facility it still represents a net increase. Not only this but the industrial producer has "offset" his carbon production not by paying for reduction somewhere else but by funding a new increase in carbon production. While I fully support the development of rural hydro electric facilities I see this aspect of the carbon tax system as illusory. It claims to do one thing but results in the opposite effect. A paradox.

While I stated in an earlier post that development studies seems to downplay issues around environmental sustainability, it does provide insight into the paradoxical nature of the climate change agenda more generally. As with so many trends in development, efforts to combat climate change often reveal an "add climate change and stir" approach. In other words it's business as usual with programs around climate change bolted on. Furthermore, mitigating against climate change is often talked about more in terms of shielding populations and geographies from the effects of climate change rather than actually taking steps to slow and ultimately reverse it.

On a personal note I should mention that I'm now living in London and have recently started a job with Crown Agents, an international development consultancy. More on that later, perhaps.

Jordan (London)