A month ago, at the end of October 2022, I gave a presentation at Cranfield University that critiqued the existing policy approach to achieving sustainability. Here is the essence of my argument, which is based on my work over many years on the concept of industrial ecology and sustainability as future-oriented responses to the environmental crisis:
Organizations of all kinds are now urgently prioritising sustainability, but it is not clear that they have properly understood the objective they are aiming to achieve. For the most part they are desperately trying to avoid a disastrous future rather than trying to achieve a rationally-defined desirable future condition. Even if the motive is to avoid a bad outcome, having an effective strategy still depends on setting a clear, actively desirable objective. Merely acting out of fear is likely to mean adopting a strategy agenda set by someone else, without considering where it might lead until it is too late.
The essential idea of sustainability is that human society should be able to continue on a path of prosperity and development, while nature – the natural environment – is simultaneously able to thrive and flourish indefinitely into the future. The primary way this can be possible is for technology and infrastructure design to be adapted to match the patterns and processes of the natural ecosystem. This does not require any new technological breakthroughs, helpful as that might be, because it can be done through the redesign of existing technology – given an understanding of what is needed and a willingness to act.
Existing programs and policies for sustainability pay lip service to this idea, but are unlikely to achieve it in practice. For example, focusing almost exclusively on reducing the flow of carbon by curtailing energy use will only address a small part of the design requirement for environmental sustainability, and will impoverish the economy so much that the necessary technologies will never be affordable. If our economic prosperity is unsustainable because it is under threat from environmental catastrophe, shutting down the economy is hardly a way to sustainably preserve it. Our only plausible aim as human beings would be to save both our economy and nature, bearing in mind that “saving” means achieving a condition of sustainability, in which both thrive indefinitely.
Business is fond of the adage that “you cannot cut your way to growth”, yet many businesses are doing just this by blindly following fossil fuel abandonment targets without knowing how the energy required for prosperity will be supplied in the future. It seems they have been mesmerised by the publicity onslaught focused on a single type of scenario depicting the end of the world from climate change. Like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, they are not behaving rationally. Other futures are possible.
The rational response would be to use currently available energy to create the technology base for a fully circular economy, which would close the loop of materials usage, eliminating all waste and pollution, including out-of-balance carbon. Existing carbon-focused energy reduction policies are not going to achieve this.
At root, there are three policy levers available to deal with our environmental challenge. Three big variables are at work: the size of the population, the level of affluence, and the type of technology being used to achieve affluence. One theoretical policy option would be to reduce the human population, but this would not meet the sustainability criterion of enabling continued human development, rather it would involve the exact opposite – the retrogressive and unacceptable politics of eco-totalitarianism and genocide. Self-induced population reduction may work for lemmings (although this is actually a popular misconception), but definitely not for human beings. Another possible policy option would be to reduce affluence, by imposing eco-austerity – for example by cutting the energy people need to heat homes and power businesses. This would run counter to the aim of continued prosperity and development, and it could only look like a reasonable option if the third lever, technology, is ignored or rejected. The third option, technology, is the obvious choice and is eminently feasible since we have all the necessary technological know-how, and it primarily needs only the use of design skills to reconfigure technological infrastructure.
But this does not mean having an obsessive and one-track-minded focus on reducing carbon use. It means transforming the way technology enables prosperity. All the elements, not just carbon, need to be configured into a closed-loop flow. Furthermore, this does not mean reducing use to zero, but reducing leaks (aka waste) from the circular flow to zero. The only possible, flawed, justification for reducing actual usage towards zero would be if the flow of all materials remained linear – as it is now – rather than becoming circular. Our existing pattern of resource use is linear or straight-line – “take, make, waste”. This pattern is what creates resource scarcity and unsustainability. Circular means “make, use, recycle, make, use, recycle…” a virtuous circle that can continue indefinitely while allowing an adequate level of materials usage for prosperity but without depleting resources or putting pressure on the environment.
At the moment governments are setting “sustainability” policy by abandoning the technology policy lever and pushing for affluence reduction. This will not lead to true sustainability, it will lead to impoverishment. Businesses and governments would do better to ignore the PR siren song of “zero use” and instead focus their efforts on building a circular economy. Our future would then be both sustainable and prosperous.
Do business and government leaders have the courage to focus on this constructive path instead of the fear-driven path of affluence reduction?
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For more background on closing the loop as a path to sustainability, see details of my work in this area at: https://www.synthstrat.com/cyclic-economy
The presentation I gave in October on this topic at Cranfield University is here https://well-1011.wistia.com/medias/0o2xjj3pug (1 hour 2 minutes) – with a five minute introduction here: https://youtu.be/7-i2xCpLiss