Sustainability

Tonight I am going to have dinner with a dozen or so first years at Northeastern University to discuss the concept of sustainability. This dinner was organized jointly with the RA for the Sustainability Living and Learning Community (LLC). This is a new LLC with an enthusiastic, if somewhat overworked, RA who really wants to raise the awareness of LLC residents about their environmental impacts.

As many people may be aware, sustainability is a squishy concept. In my view, there are many different forms of sustainability, all which intersect. These include social sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability. True social justice occurs at the center of these circles (if you think of it as a venn diagram). The question that I must pose to these young people tonight is, "What is your view of sustainability? What does it mean to you?"

In the general, the concept implies a number of things. There is a generational equity component. This idea focuses on the relative impacts of a decision on current versus future generations. Generational equity is achieved when there is a balance of benefits and burdens (or obligations) between current and future generations.

This isn't the only kind of equity involved here. The concept also pay some homage to the notion that people get what they need in order to live a healthy, safe, dignified life.

Sustainability also implies doing no harm, or at least no long term harm. In my view, this doesn't necessarily mean that there is no impact. It does mean that the impacts are either temporary or part of a cycle which transforms one impact into something that is either benign or beneficial. I think of animal waste when I think of this. The consumption of resources, in this case food, produces waste products. Manure (i.e. animal waste) is a waste product. If used properly, it also can become fertilizer for the production of food. If produced in quantities that does not allow it to be turned into fertilizer efficiently or otherwise be managed properly, it becomes not only a nuisance but a public and environmental health problem.

Operationalizing the concept of sustainability, however, is not as easy as pointing out the abstract elements of it. The term was popularized with the development of the idea of sustainable development, which has been criticized as nothing more than "controlled capitalism" (Lewis, 1992 as cited by Pulido, 1996). Given that capitalism depends on social inequality to sustain economic growth, critics argue, it is not likely to be an effective vehicle for addressing environmental and social inequities.

But even if we are willing to take economic growth down from the pedestal on which it currently stands, there are other issues to deal with. The first is the issue of tradeoffs. In the movie No Impact Man, the Beavan family experiment in living the truly sustainable life. This included washing their clothing by hand (or in their case, by foot). In response to someone reminding him that household chores have historically been, and for the majority of humanity still are, women's work, he simply states that this is not how it is in his household. Fair enough, but I don't think you can dismiss the fact that the reality of gendered housework in majority of humanity.

Beavan further criticizes what he views as the marketing gimmick that labeled household chores "drudgery." While there are elements of this last critique I might agree with (in terms of promoting consumerism), housework for the majority of the women of the world who do not have access to magical things like electricity or gas or supermarkets to buy cleaning supplies is, in fact, drudgery. Which, as Hans Rosling describes in his TED talk, is one of the many mechanisms that prevent women from breaking free from economic domination and gender oppression. It prevents them from going to school or reading to their children. Taken together, Beavan's response reminds me of a quote from John Galsworthy: "Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

I would also note that the Beavan family did end up going back to using the washing machine.

One of the lessons that the Beavan family took from their experiment is that, as individuals and as a society, we need to figure out how to get what we need in a sustainable way. But this is the other important tension in the concept of sustainability: who gets to determine what I need? If the concept is about balancing needs, how do we decide what the appropriate balance of benefits, burdens and obligations are between generations and within different groups in society? And, at the risk of sounding redundant, who gets to make that decision?

As you may know, I am primarily concerned about social justice in all its forms, most recently environmental justice. At the heart of social justice struggles is the idea that some people are shouldering most of the social (particularly economic and environmental) burdens that the rest of society benefits from, as well as being barred from access to social amenities. Those of us who struggle for social justice in its varied forms are seeking to change power relations and the distribution of those burdens and benefits. Given the historical record, will the socially, economically, and politically marginalized be tasked with carrying the weight of other people's sustainable lifestyles? If the past predicts the future, the Beavan's conspicuous unconsumption will become one more way to marginalize the already marginalized.

Yes, if you reduce your consumption, you will definitely relieve the burden placed on communities who host the landfills that hold your waste. Yes, if you reduce your electricity use, you will relieve the burden on those communities who suffer the air and water pollution associated with oil and coal burning power plants. But will any of this make the health, safety, well-being, quality of life, and livelihoods for those who do not have your privilege any better?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't do any of this. In fact, I want you do. I'm saying that sustainability should mean more than just reducing your carbon footprint or the amount of waste that you create. Sustainability may also mean recognizing your own privilege and being willing to give up not just the $1000 Chloe boots, but the assumption that you get to choose whether I wash my laundry by hand.


Pulido, Laura. (1994). Environmentalism and economic justice: two Chicano struggles in the Southwest. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.