It is clear to any objective observer that our planets resources and ecological well-being are under assault by the actions of the nearly eight billion people living here on earth. Those of us in the developed world have a far greater environmental impact than people in the developing world, but there is great political pressure in the developing world to increase material wealth. And that political pressure will lead to increased environmental impacts. Our political stability and security depend on the maintenance of material wealth where it exists and economic growth where people are poor. But to achieve those goals, we must learn how to construct a high throughput economy that does not destroy our planets ecosystems. This is the topic of a book I have begun writing, and this piece summarizes the books main themes.
To achieve the transition to environmental sustainability, we must undertake the following five actions:
Our current focus on climate change is essential, but it must not be allowed to crowd other critical environmental issues off the limited bandwidth of our political agenda. COVID-19 demonstrates that issues such as invasive species can disrupt our way of life and demonstrates that climate is not our only sustainability challenge. Since the United States Environmental Protection Agency was created back in 1970, we have made enormous progress in using new technologies to reduce our impact on the environment while allowing economic growth to continue. This suggests that we have the capacity to develop methods of production and consumption that are less damaging to the planet. We simply need to up our game and increase the amount of effort we devote to this task.
It all begins with understanding the current state of environmental degradation. We need to do more research on:
Next, we need to increase our understanding of the specific causes of environmental degradation. These include:
This ideological opposition to science is growing and deeply problematic. People are willing to accept the benefits of science and technology as if they are made from magic but resist science that identifies costs and proposes methods for mitigating those costs.
Once we understand the environmental conditions we have created and how and why theyve been created, we then need a realistic, non-ideological strategy for reducing pollution and growing a renewable resource-based economy. Key elements of the strategy are providing public incentives for clean production and consumption. Of course, first, we need to clearly define a clean economy by developing generally accepted sustainability metrics. Once we know how to define and measure environmental success, we then need to:
In addition to these public incentives, we must turn away from the self-defeating message that sustainability requires sacrifice by articulating a positive vision of the transition to environmental sustainability. This would:
Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden have both connected environmental sustainability and economic growth. A sustainability-centered economic strategy must explain how it works in detail and use hard data to demonstrate the jobs created and the equity and environmental justice goals achieved. We need to communicate the opportunities created by a transition to a green economy. While many governments have set ambitious decarbonization targets, we need to move beyond this rhetoric to a focus on improving current levels of performance. We need to move away from symbols to operational reality. Government regulation should focus on rigorous and audited measurement of environmental sustainability indicators. Once baselines are established, decades-long efforts should be undertaken to improve and measure performance. Tax benefits should be provided for specific levels of environmental improvement. Tax penalties should be assessed on organizations not improving or allowing the deterioration of environmental performance.
The transition I am describing will mainly take place in the private sector. However, just as government built or partnered with the private sector to build the infrastructure needed to support the 20th-century economy, we need a massive infrastructure rebuild to ensure an environmentally sound 21st-century economy. We need public sector-funded infrastructure to support environmental sustainability. This begins with energy: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro generation, microgrids, distributed electricity generation and high voltage long-distance distribution.
Next, we need a water system built for a warming planet. We need investment in desalination and in the construction of new water filtration and distribution systems. Next, we need to reimagine our waste system to mine it for resources. This requires investment in waste-to-energy facilities, automatic methods of sorting waste, recycling, waste reduction and developing advanced anaerobic digestion technologies to take food waste and return it to farms as fertilizer. We need to do the same with sewage treatment: develop and utilize sewage as a resource for growing food.
In addition to energy and waste, we need infrastructure for transportation. This includes traditional roads and bridges but also includes mass transit construction, operation, and maintenance. We need public and private electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We also need research and development of environmentally sound air and high-speed rail travel.
Another key area of infrastructure is communications technology- rural broadband, urban wireless and advanced cellular communication must be encouraged and subsidized when necessary. These technologies enable the consumption of ideas, entertainment, and social interaction with very low environmental impacts.
Finally, as the COVID crisis has taught us, public health institutions must be rebuilt at the local, national, and global level. We will see additional pandemics if we do not act now. We need:
Unfortunately, none of this will happen unless we change the politics and communication of environmental sustainability. The negativity and arrogance of some environmental advocates contribute to a cultural and ideological divide that reduces support for environmental protection. We need to articulate a positive vision of an environmentally sustainable lifestyle and promote these images through the media, culture, and entertainment. Environmental sustainability advocates need to create and disseminate positive role models and reduce the focus on environmental symbolism and the emphasis on enemies. People that work for fossil fuel companies are not evil. They are simply trying to support their families. We need to persuade and cultivate rather than shame those holding different views.
Our focus should be on sustainability successes rather than on evil polluters. Advocates should articulate the attraction of wellness and the health benefits of a clean environment rather than the dangers of illness from toxics. Scare tactics get attention, and the media loves them, but they are ultimately negative and divisive. Our goal should be to build a wide political consensus rather than insist on a single view of the causes of damage to the planet. Urban environmentalists should restore the traditional alliances with people who hunt and fish. We should also provide natural experiences and images to our increasingly urban population. Some natural experiences should be outside the city, but some should be in restored urban parks and wetlands.
We should work to promote environmental values and ethics. Alliances with religious groups can be used to connect environmental quality to religion and religious institutions. Even if we differ on other issues, everyone likes to breathe clean air, drink safe water, and eat food free of poison.
A realistic transition to environmental sustainability will be a long and gradual process where we change the definition of the political center and anti-pollution policies will be as accepted as policies that seek to prevent violence. Its speed will resemble the slow pace of change as we transitioned from cities that traded natural resources to manufacturing cities and from industrial cities to the service-oriented urban places we now call home. The floods, winds and fires of climate change and the horrific health and economic impacts of COVID have caused many people to question our ability to dominate nature. This makes a new environmental politics possible. We need to understand nature better to both live within its boundaries and maintain our current way of life. As I often say, our species is ingenious and is not suicidal, so I suspect we will somehow manage the difficult transition to environmental sustainability.
Read more here:
A Realistic Transition to Environmental Sustainability - State of the Planet
- QazInnovations: Kazakhstan seeks to bring volume of innovative ... - inform.kz/en - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- World Earth Day: What is green finance, and why do we need it so much? - The Economic Times - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Netarts Bay cleanup scheduled for Earth Day with SOLVE and ... - Tillamook Headlight-Herald - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Shaping humanitarian and ethical governance in Pakistan - The Express Tribune - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen on the U.S. ... - Treasury - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Investing in nature: Building local economies through conservation - McKinsey - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Lalith's economic vision for Lanka: Export or perish - The Sunday Times Sri Lanka - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy to help A.P. govt. implement energy-efficiency projects - The Hindu - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and ... - The White House - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- A Restraint Approach to U.S.China Relations: Reversing the Slide ... - Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Carrollton Mayor and City Council Election Preview 2023: Meet your ... - Star Local Media - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Governor Kelly Signs Bipartisan Bill to Expand Teacher Workforce in ... - Kansas Governor - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Indigenous Peoples Must Have Full Representation, Participation in ... - United Nations - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- The EPA Region 6 Announces a Total of $23 Million to ... - U.S. EPA.gov - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Kansas governor strikes funding for anti-abortion pregnancy centers ... - Kansas Reflector - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Can You Fight for Climate Justice Without Being Antiwar? - Common Dreams - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Sustainable Tourism: A World leading to the road of Environment consciousness - Nomad Lawyer - NomadLawyer - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Atlanta's Cop City and the Struggle for Climate Justice - Resilience - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Jaishankars visit to Uganda, Mozambique went almost unnoticed but it indicated Indias bold gambit in Africa - Firstpost - April 23rd, 2023 [April 23rd, 2023]
- Natural resource - Wikipedia - October 30th, 2022 [October 30th, 2022]
- Non-renewable resource - Wikipedia - October 30th, 2022 [October 30th, 2022]
- Minister Wilkinson Launches Phase 2 of the Regional Energy and Resource Tables - Canada NewsWire - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Executive Secretary participates in Russian Energy Week to advocate for decarbonization in the UNECE region ahead of COP27 - UNECE - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Renault Group: The Future Is NEUTRAL: The circular economy is stepping into a new era! - Yahoo Finance - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Economy Expected to Contract Further in 2023, as the Fed Appears Resolved to Tame Inflation - PR Newswire - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Brazils Runoff Election Will Have Enormous Effects on the Global Climate Crisis - Truthout - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Health disparities and health inequalities: applying All Our Health - GOV.UK - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Opinion: Biopolitics is the invisible hand shaping mental health - The Connecticut Mirror - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Avaaz urges Georgieva and Trudeau to lasso-in commitments from IMF to attend December's vital UN Biodiversity Talks in Montreal - GlobeNewswire - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Kochi as a global city? Why not, asks the man behind Ahmedabads mega city story | Manorama English - Onmanorama - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Hennessy and Thurgood Marshall College Fund Announce partnership with Group Black and The Bishop Gallery to make "America's Most Influential... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Pollution Prevention Week highlights ways to reduce, reuse and recycle waste - Michigan (.gov) - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- England headed for incineration overcapacity, warns UKWIN - Resource Magazine - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- 3 years of the Principles for Responsible Banking: our vision for change United Nations Environment Finance Initiative - UNEP Finance Initiative - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Isn't It Time To Challenge The Growth Paradigm? OpEd - Eurasia Review - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Coalition of Nearly 50 Organizations Launches 'Tear the Paper Ceiling' Campaign to Raise Awareness Around the 70+ Million Workers in the U.S. Skilled... - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Remote work can actually be more productive: More Hub readers respond to the work-from-home phenomenon - The Hub - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Mendocino Public Health on record-setting Sept. heat: We can't just treat this as a once-in-15-years occurrence - The Mendocino Voice - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Carbon Ridge Secures $6 Million Investment from Leading Climate Investors and Maritime Industry Leaders - Business Wire - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Regenerative Travel Is the Next Phase of Responsible Tourism - Outside Online - Outside - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- NNPC: Between rebranding and reforms, By Tijah Bolton-Akpan - Premium Times - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Embodying the spirit of Malaysia - The Edge Markets MY - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Nonprofit executive takes on state-appointed economic development role - MiBiz: West Michigan Business News - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- Noble Mineral Exploration Signs Exploration Agreement with the Constance Lake First Nation - Junior Mining Network - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Progressively Deepening Bilateral Partnership - The Geopolitics - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- Oil money is flooding into Guyana. Who will benefit? - Reuters - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- Remote-work revolution exposes need for better data, tracking tools to evaluate workforce, pay and economy - The Spokesman Review - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- We need rare earth elements for a greener future, but there's a catch - CBC.ca - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- BRNHA the steward of the living traditions of WNC: Opinion - Citizen Times - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- The Fiji Times Back in history: Future of forestry sector - Fiji Times - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- Hochul announces grand opening of Capital Region BOCES Career and Technical Education Center - Troy Record - August 29th, 2022 [August 29th, 2022]
- Predicting the Future of Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Columbia University - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- JD.com Ranks 46th on 2022 Fortune Global 500 - Yahoo Finance - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- Minister Wilkinson Releases New Report Showing the Impacts of Climate Change and Necessity of Climate Adaptation in Ontario - Canada NewsWire - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- Do Armenians have a future as an independent nation? Part 4 - Armenian Weekly - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- Getting the diagnostics right 2 - BusinessWorld Online - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- GrammaTech and T.E.N. Announce Call for Nominations for Product Security Executive of the Year Awards - Business Wire - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- Energy Vault and Jupiter Power Announce Agreement for Battery Energy Storage Projects in Texas and California Totaling 220 MWh - Business Wire - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- The North East LEP: Thinking bigger and planning together for the future - Bdaily - August 15th, 2022 [August 15th, 2022]
- It's not enough to buy American. You also need to sell American all around the world. - The Ripon Society - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Bid to designate 50k acres in UP as wilderness highlights tension over public lands - MLive.com - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- A 'Living Wall' At Texas A&M Could Be The Key To Smarter Cities - Texas A&M University Today - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Architects and designers must embrace the circular economy - Project Scotland - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Strategic Minerals increases Tin and Tantalum production in June and Q2 2022 at its Penouta Mine - Yahoo Finance - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Issues of the Environment: Improving recycling rates and quality of recycling materials in Washtenaw County - WEMU - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Joe Oliver: The Liberal Cabinet Needs an Intervention - The Epoch Times - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- SDG&E and Cajon Valley Union School District Flip the Switch on Region's First Vehicle-to-Grid Project Featuring Local Electric School Buses Capable... - July 27th, 2022 [July 27th, 2022]
- Reimagining business: The greatest debt of all time - Newsroom - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Moody's affirms A1 rating of Newfoundland and Labrador, changes outlook to stable - Moody's - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- New Mexico's oil and gas revenues are breaking records and complicating budgets - New Mexico Political Report - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- FACT SHEET: White House Announces over $40 Billion in American Rescue Plan Investments in Our Workforce With More Coming - The White House - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- The Class of 2022 Is Ready to Workon Their Terms - SHRM - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Faraday Copper Announces Updated Mineral Resource Estimate for the Copper Creek Project in Arizona; Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources Exceed... - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Inside the Triangle's latest job opening data: What boards are showing and who's hiring - WRAL TechWire - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Reserve Bank keeps blinkers on inflation, raising OCR to 2.5% - Stuff - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Abe's drive to bring back Japan | The Interpreter - The Interpreter - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- UCF Hospitality Researchers Expertise Is Tapped for Global Sustainable Tourism Report - UCF - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- Feminist Economics and the Fight for Human Rights - OHCHR - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- Biden Administration announces historic coastal and climate resilience funding - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]
- Why green ammonia will be the workhorse of EU's future hydrogen economy - EURACTIV - June 30th, 2022 [June 30th, 2022]