Aloha Sustainability
Sustainable development: an oxymoron or a realisable dream? This question lies at the heart of environmental debate.
Certainly, 'sustainable mining' or 'sustainable fossil fuel use' cannot be achieved, but can we have continued population and economic growth and avert an environmental and ecological disaster?
The Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu firmly believes we can, at least for the time being.
This can be done through blending leadership with community empowerment, challenging attitudes and providing the correct incentives and ecological modernisation with traditional environmentalism.
This argument encompasses all that is wrong with the discourse of 'sustainable development': attempting to become all things to all people. Environmentalism without commitment; having your cake and eating it.
But it is an engaging and pragmatic vision in a nation that is beset with a developmentalist attitude where no regulation should constrain economic growth and impede the market.
Instead, Mayor Jeremy Harris demonstrates that sound environmental practices can be reconciled with sound economic practices: pollution is waste.
For an environmental scientist, the problems encountered on Oahu must have seemed terribly straightforward: An isolated island needs to take a 'systems' approach in designing its economic, social and environmental policies. One cannot continue to produce waste without making the intellectual leap to accept the fact that there is no 'away' to throw to.
In contrast to the linear route paradigm of 'resource - use - sink', 'waste' must be seen as seen as part of a cycle that somewhere feeds back into the island system: as either a recyclate, a bio-fuel or through reuse.
This is, of course, true for all societies. But on an island of just 1,560km2, this balancing of inputs with outputs achieves huge rhetorical significance. He mentioned it only once, but 'finite' is not a word commonly deployed by politicians. It suggests that there are certain constraints and limits to the growing wealth that they promise. But on an island where you can see the entire coastline from the highest point, finite is quite an easy concept to come to terms with.
For an island that depended for so long on visitors bringing in cash, using up imported goods whilst they were there and then disposing of most of them before they left, diversifying the economy was a priority issue.
The Mayor's vision was to transform the economic structure from a holidaymaker's playground into a more sustainable island 'system'. It has resulted in the region becoming an environmental innovator and industry cluster of global significance: now exporting its knowledge and expertise to other cities that wish to go along for the ride.
This is ironically reminiscent of the US post-war 'Military-Industrial Complex' characterised by Chomsky et al: a system of massive public subsidy to achieve a specific policy goal (in this case military superiority over the USSR) that stimulates innovation in technology and spawns whole generations of products and ideas that percolate into the consumer market. This brought us velcro and the internet. In Oahu, the City-County have subsidised and cajoled innovative sustainable processes, ideas and products by providing a ready market for the outputs, creating an 'Environmental-Industrial Complex' that now leads the world.
For a politician on the rounds of selling his vision he doesn't dwell long on the sticks but instead focuses on the carrots, designed to incentivise sustainability. Such highlights include:
- Two significant aspirational targets: Achieving a 'zero-waste society' and eliminating the use of fossil fuels (all of which must be imported).
- Investment in developing innovative pathways to renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- Work towards achieving a sustainable community and transport vision to challenge demand for non-renewable energy transport.
- Discounts and incentives for users of electric hybrid cars that are large enough to make the additional investment pay off in the lifetime of the vehicle.
- A program of urban and peri-urban renewal to encourage an outdoor, healthy lifestyle. This includes a significant tribute to Hawaiian culture.
- Waste water recycling and sustainable water usage.
- Sufficient investment in technology to achieve efficient public works, public services and transport management.
And it is not just in archetypical 'green' issues that Mayor Jeremy Harris has led the way. The City-County has also divested itself of nearly 9% of its annual spending - allocating it instead to community groups who can directly spend up to $2 million (US) each year on locally decided initiatives, projects and ideas. While this is not a 'pure' democracy and community groups can be more susceptible to vested interest than more representative and accountable structures, Harris defines democracy in 'means' based processes - not focusing on the output, but empowering the community to spend wisely and sustainability by allowing them to evolve their own decision making structures.
This is a far cry from the carefully designed US Constitution with its intricate layers of checks and balances. But then if such a well-sculptured piece of political science can be compromised, perhaps the time has come to get radical.
Institutional arrangements are also on his side. US Mayors, once elected, are like autocratic demigods - heading up both the political and bureaucratic administrations through being both Mayor and CEO. Remaining Councillors are restricted to being scrutineers and amenders.
This is fine, as far as it goes. The man is an environmental scientist by profession and sought entry to politics to further his environmental agenda. But he could, just as easily have been an oilman, a housing developer or an ex-Chrysler executive. In this case, the island could well have followed a different path, like so many on the mainland. Cutting out the traditional politics and moving towards a 'Mayor and the people' model could be construed as a radical and perilous route to follow. It could deliver either a model society such as Honolulu, or a dictatorial fiefdom, a la Queensland of the Joh era - with just a fine line separating the two.
Leadership towards this sustainable future has been in place in Honolulu for a sufficient time to allow the significant investments made by the City-County to start to pay-off. With a still rising population growth (but still well short of 1 million), the island now boasts more coppers, more firefighters, stable numbers of council officers and waterboard staff, all on a stable annual budget.
Only once this vision has been lived for a certain period does it become a self-perpetuating polity where sound environmental practice is equated with sound economic management and this becomes an assumption of the community (or to use his phrase 'the paradigm'). The benefits of continuing along this path can be simply demonstrated through cleaner air, less congestion, less waste and a stable local tax base.
Mayor Harris is a city man and firmly believes that cities can become our route to salvation. Driving environmental policies through is often a laborious process: battling the vested interest of oil companies (who, he said, now realise they are in the 'end-game') on the one hand and public apathy or sceptism on the other. But he has done enough to force through the change to beat the latter and to create a political base to move along this pathway to greater sustainability and economic efficiency. In a world where increasing urbanisation has pushed half the world's citizens into cities, it is not before time.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
I want my SUV
Land Rover have launched two new models in their ‘Land Rover Discovery’ range. We have the ‘Town’ version (with leather seats, coffee cup holders, CD interchanger, front and rear carpet mats, probably something for the kids in the back seat and 18 inch alloy wheels) and the ‘Country’ version (with waterproof seats, GPS, probably an inclinometer and various water filled gadgets that give the driver the pitch, yaw and roll of the vehicle and 16 inch alloys).
Now we are all aware of the well-trodden arguments behind the absolute need for a ‘Town’ version. After all, an SUV is just a necessity for the modern day urban dweller.
For example, many primary schools and shopping malls are down some ridiculously impossible roads that require a 4WD just to get there. Once you do get there, SUVs are exactly the right size for those tight little parking spaces – as long as you take up two of them. Also, many urban and suburban roads are terribly bumpy and you certainly need the ground clearance to get in to some people’s driveways.
Besides, SUVs are perfect for urban living. They give an excellent view out the ‘cab’, they have plenty of room for the kids and/or golf clubs in the back, the bull bars on the front are great for ploughing your way through the crowds of kids that mill about around school gates and the power steering is just terrific for visiting vineyards at weekends - sometimes they are up some quite impossibly twisting mountain roads.
You also need the raw power that a 4.8L SUV engine can give you when you are stuck in traffic and where the speed limit is 60km/h - when going out to get the shopping, you need a big engine to get you, the groceries and 2½ tons of metal to and from the mall.
But, why?But I can’t understand the need for a ‘Country’ version of the Land Rover Discovery.
Surely, a nice 5-door hatchback Hyundai electric-hybrid is the best thing for living in the bush? These beasts comfortably seat 5, have a fair amount of space in the boot for the bales of hay, sheepdog and shopping, have power steering and air conditioning, they can do up to 55km per litre of petrol (perfect for those long distances), when in traffic they are virtually emission free as they rely on the electric motor and they don’t murder kids when they get hit at 40km/h.
The advertisers have it all wrong: Leave the SUVs for the middle class suburbanites; they need them. Country folk don’t – SUVs are simply an unsustainable, wasteful, selfish, dangerous, pointless and expensive status symbol to them.
I apologise to any readers offended by my references to these vehicles as 'SUV's; very American, I know. This is not any regression to americanisation on my behalf. They are referred to as SUVs in Australia and besides, I like the irony of the acronym: I mean, ‘SPORTS UTILITY VEHICLE’ – what ‘sport’ do these vehicles actually play, ‘utility’ makes it sound like some bashed up army truck and why refer to it as a ‘vehicle’? What’s wrong with ‘car’? Then they could call it an ‘SUC’.
(Australia has the third highest rate of SUV ownership in the world. It is also the most urbanised country in the world.)
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Commonwealth Press Release
Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has claimed "We don't need rainforests; they are of no commercial value."
This announcement comes on the back of a decision by the Commonwealth Government to scrap funding for the Rainforest CRC (Co-operative Research Centre) and the Great Barrier Reef CRC in Queensland, favouring instead to fund research into better techniques to extract coal.
The Cooperative Research Centres were set up by the Hawke government twelve years ago to improve collaboration between research and development in academic and industry circles. An additional goal was to aid in the development of products for commercial use.
"The criteria against which this year's applications are being considered have been tightened up," said Australian Government Science Minister Peter McGauran.
"Where the work of a CRC is shown to have only a tenuous industrial application, funding has not been renewed."
"Its all about giving the taxpayer value for money."
"Research into rainforests provides no economic or consumer benefit. So what's the point of it?" He concluded.
Supporters claim that the Rainforest CRC is one of the world's top three research institutes into rainforest ecology, management and sustainability. It has completed important work in tourism management, feral pigs, invasive weeds and the impact of climate change on the forest ecosystems.
Among the winners this year is the mining industry with the establishment of a $129 million CRC for Mining. The government itself will be pumping in $27 million over the next 7 years; industry providing the rest.
This decision surprised many analysts. Although the Chairman of the CRC Committee (that makes funding recommendations to the Government) is an employee of the Rio Tinto Mining conglomerate, it was not expected that he would recommend funding for a CRC from which his company would directly benefit.
Among the projects that the Mining CRC will be developing is a new dragline system to get coal and minerals out the ground faster.
"This investment in mining technology demonstrates this government's commitment to developing non-renewable energy sources." Claimed John Howard, with pride.
"We got a cushy deal at Kyoto, and we have said that we will allowed ourselves an 8% increase in emissions by 2010, and Queensland has said it is going to stop chopping down trees. Really all we need to do now is bung a few wood chips in with the coke at our power stations and we are in the clear."
"The reductions in emissions made by Europe will more than cover up for our mess."
"We will probably we able to bring the burning of oil shale on line too. And continue to steal oil from the poorest nation in Asia, East Timor." He added.
When challenged on whether the continued expansion of the non-renewable energy market and open cast mining was a sustainable policy, he replied,
"We may have the sunniest climate in the world and are surrounded by windy ocean breezes, but it turns out we live on an island that is virtually made of fossil fuels, bauxite and uranium. It is our duty to dig it up, sell them and burn them. It's a good wheeze."
The loss of funding to the Rainforest CRC (due now to expire in 2006) will be a great loss to the scientific establishment that seeks to uncover the process and effects of global climate change. With a better understanding of the impacts of forests on the carbon cycle we will get more accurate data for future carbon accounting and a fuller picture of the likely reductions in CO2 emissions that will be required to arrest economic expansionion's impact on global warming.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Look North
This was from bbc.co.uk ‘have your say’:
Wow, for just £8bn the journey time from London to Edinburgh will be cut by 25 minutes (Billions cut from West Coast Mainline costs, 27 April). But surely for £8bn we could have just demolished Edinburgh and rebuilt it 250 miles further south, thus cutting the journey time in half.
ed note: But I’d say that for half that figure, they could rebuild London and move that north instead.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
Only neo-liberals had the answer!
Read this first:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24957/story.htm
Whilst my own conservationist values have a different philosophical starting point*, sometimes you have to admire the audacity and imagination of neo-liberal responses to ecological problems.In ‘The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses’ (1997) in describing a neo-liberal approach to environmental protection, John Dryzek theorises (though not advocates) the privatisation of whales. Each whale would be privately owned (by whalers, tourists or whale philanthropists), each with a vested interested in their protection for future use. The value of each individual whale would, of course, be decided by the market.
Thus, a rosy future is promised for whales.
Environmental destruction is characterised as being a problem of ownership. Where private property rights do not exist, even public protection (through government regulation) cannot protect heritage, animals and ecosystems. Public parks, for example, are never tended to as well as private gardens.
This theory can be extended. It is not just a question of ownership, but one of interest. Where an individual has a private interest in the protection of a natural object, the implications of that interest overlap as if it was owned.
Thus, we can all look forward to a rosy future for the Wandering Albatross. Now that Ladbrookes and punters worldwide have an interest in them (and this is not the same as ownership) they have a vested and financial interest in their long-term protection.
One can envisage millions of gamblers, placing bets online, watching to see if ‘their’ bird gets to Antarctica first. And what’s more, you have generated further economic growth. This concept can be extended to wildebeest, bison, Arctic terns, seals, you name it.
Hey presto ! You’ve got environmental protection
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| I am employed by Brisbane City Council. All views expressed in this blog are my own and in no way reflect the views of my employer. |
From WeaselWords.com.au