David Wann Interviews Lester Brown

How do we reasonably measure sustainable civilization (by which I would include sustainable development, sustainable resource management, sustainable business, sustainable life-styles, etc.)? Climate change maybe one such indicator as to how we are doing. There could be others: how much of a population is living below the poverty level? How "friendly" are the neighborhoods and communities?

Rather than focusing upon Gross Domestic Product would focusing upon Genuine Progress Indicator be better? GDPs tend to only focus upon the bottom line. It has been suggested that GPIs tally both the good and the bad to better monitor how a society is up holding it's cultural values, caring for one another, true quality of life, rather than just how much money a societies economy is producing at year end.

While reading David Wann's book (below) I came across this interview he relates having with Lester Brown. By the way, you may recognize David Wann as one of the authors of Affluenza.

What strikes me as interesting is how fast change can happen. And in my interactions with others I see change starting to take place on grass roots levels, too.

Be of good cheer, how we are living on our own boats - often with much less of an environmental footprint than the per capita average - does start to add up.

Interview with Lester Brown:

How come we are unable to take action against climate change?

"We're monitoring false signals," [Brown] says. "The price of a gallon of gas, for example, includes the cost of production but not the expenses of treating respiratory illnesses from polluted air; or the repair bill from acid rain damage to lakes, forests, crops, and buildings; or the costs of rising global temperatures, melting glaciers, hurricanes, and relocation of environmental refugees." His words put the problem in a nutshell: As currently structured, the world's economies are consuming not just the products but the living systems they come from.

China's economic growth and consumption is now surpassing the United States' with all but the exception of oil. However, if China continues to grow or surpass the eight percent growth per year, "in 2031 income per capita in china would be same as the United States today. They would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars - well beyond the current world fleet of 795 million. Their paper consumption would be double the world's current production - there go the world's forests," he says.

"Certainly, China's 'progress,' like America's, puts the rest of the world at risk. China is now by far the world's biggest driver of rainforest destruction, says a recent Greenpeace report. Nearly one-half of the tropical hardwood logs shipped from the world's threatened rain forests are headed for China. And the footprints from those rainforests lead trough China right to America's doorstep; as fast as China manufactures products made from wood, American consumers buy them" (251).

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by Brown's comments, I ask him for a bit of good news. I'm sure he gets that question a lot, and he quickly replies, "With each wind farm, rooftop solar panel, paper-recycling facility, bicycle path, and reforestation program, we move closer to an economy that can sustain economic progress," he says. "Change can happen very quickly. For example, the Berlin Wall coming down was essentially a bloodless political revolution; there were no articles in political science journals in the 1980's that said, 'Hey, keep an eye on Eastern Europe, big change is coming there.' But one morning people woke up and realized the great communist experiment was over. ..."

He gives me a long list of reasons to be hopeful: "Iceland is experimenting with what it might mean to be a 'hydrogen economy,' where energy would be generated with fuel cells and by direct combustion of hydrogen, that produces water vapor as a by-product. Denmark, Germany, and Spain are world leaders in wind-generated electricity, with Denmark now meeting eighteen percent of its electrical needs from wind. Ontario, Canada, is emerging as a leader in phasing out coal; the province plans to replace its five coal-powered plants with natural gas-fired turbines, wind farms, and gains in efficiency. The resulting reduction in CO2 emissions in Ontario will be equivalent to taking four million cars off the road."

"Israel leads the world in the efficient use of water," he explains; "the United States is expert at stabilizing soil, reducing soil erosion by 40 percent in less than two decades. Japan is a world leader in the production of solar cells; and, in the Netherlands, 40 percents of all trips are on bicycles, demonstrating that, with good planning and design, bikes can be a viable alternative to cars" (252).

Wann, David. Simple Prosperity: Finding Read Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle. St. Martin's Griffin: New York, 2007. 250ff.