Sustainability and Resource Use Technology Some Preliminary Considerations

Sustainability and Resource Use

Technology: Some 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.

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.

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.

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)?

Technology in a Global North-South World Technology transfer from the North to the South and the South’s 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?

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.

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?

Why we might not have moral responsibilities to future generations 1. Argument from Ignorance 2. Argument from Disappearing Beneficiaries 3. Argument from Temporal Location

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)

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?

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 generations—actual natural resources or monetary investments?

Two Kinds of Sustainability Substitutability: Are natural resources—from the more-than-human world—interchangeable 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.

Some people you might know: “Energy” “Water” Bjorn Lomborg Strong or Weak S? “The Ethics of Sustainable Resources” Donald Scherer Strong or Weak S?

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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)

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 mankind’s lot has improved in every significant measurable field and that it is likely to continue to do so. … [C]hildren born today—in both the industrialized world and developing countries—will live longer and be healthier, they will get more food, a better education, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities—without the global environment being destroyed. And that is a beautiful world. ” (The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World pp. 351 -352)

So what is sustainability?