Climate Change, Sustainability, and Community

I’ve been thinking about behavioral change in response to environmental issues for a long time now.  Forty years ago I wrote a freshman college paper entitled, The Need for an Attitudinal Change wherein I characterized consumerism as a disease that society needed to cure for humanity to survive.  Seven years later for my MS thesis, I evaluated the potential for economic incentives to alter patterns of electricity consumption and the resulting power plant air pollution levels.  Soon after that I embarked on a career as an environmental consultant with the naive expectation that we’d clean up the environment while society got its house in order and quit making such a mess.  In the 1990s as editor of the Slippery Rock University newsletter founded by my father, The Alternator, I explored the concept of sustainability and, among other things, advocated for consumers to use their purchasing clout to help redirect social priorities toward sustainable systems.  Several years ago, I devised a “Philosophy of Sustainability” that was posted here (http://hermitorhero.blogspot.com/2012/02/a-philosophy-of-sustainability.html) wherein I identified six behaviors I feel are key to society achieving sustainable lifestyles: harmony with natural processes, reverence and respect for all things, moderation, cooperation, conservation, and taking responsibility.

I feel like my personal choices and actions have been consistent with the principles I’ve espoused for all these years, but that they have not been as impactful as I wish they’d been.  Intellectually, I embrace my Philosophy of Sustainability, but I’m not satisfied that my actions speak as loudly as my words.  My wife and I have taken many steps over the years to lessen our environmental footprint but as it becomes more and more apparent that society’s consumption of fossil fuels and production of plastic junk is far from abating, I’m asking myself how I can do more.

In the fall of 2017 I attended Al Gore’s Climate Reality training with the hope of stimulating not only myself, but other people as well.  While I’m on track to complete the requisite number of leadership activities I committed to perform this year and those actions may have inspired some others to take action, I’m looking to do more.

With that challenge in mind, I helped to create a Green Team at my office of 350 environmental engineers and scientists this year.  With the interest of a core group, the support of office management, and the guidance of an excellent Playbook produced for the Sustainable Pittsburgh Challenge (https://www.spchallenge.org/) we are working through a variety of self-selected goals such as reducing our use of plastic and Styrofoam, more effective paper recycling, and establishing baselines of energy use and transportation choices with accompanying improvement targets.

These are all good things and it’s rewarding to be working with young folks who are enthusiastic about sustainability.  But, at the same time I’m reminded of articles I published in The Alternator decades ago that listed simple things that people can do at home to be more sustainable.  Item 2 from a list published in Volume 8, No. 4 (Summer 1994) was “buy in bulk and take your own shopping bag.”  While some people recognized that single-use plastic bags were unsustainable way back then, it took thirteen years for San Francisco to become the first jurisdiction in California to ban their use.  Then, nine years later in 2016, California became the first state to prohibit stores from providing them to customers.  So, while individually we often know what is better, societally it can take a long time to move the needle on a large scale.  And that’s just one example.  So, as I start my 60^th year I’ve been asking myself why it is that I haven’t made more substantial changes in behavior, even if my attitude has been in a sustainable frame of mind for 40 years. 

It’s definitely not a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.”  Media coverage brings wild fires, melting ice caps, and plastic waste into our homes nightly.  I don’t have to live in a coastal area like Miami where routine high tides now flood city streets or in northern California where hotter weather has led to longer fire seasons, to know we have problems.  And even though western Pennsylvania has been largely unscathed by climate change so far, the prevalence of flash flooding has noticeably increased and the deep winter snows of my youth are long gone.

It’s also not a matter of thinking my individual actions (positive or negative) don’t matter.  I realize that the problems are the consequence of many individual decisions and that the solutions will similarly require the collective effort of many individual actions.

And, it’s not that I don’t know what to do (or what not to do)?  The things we can do lessen our environmental impacts have been known about since environmental awareness started. There have been numerous guides published over the last few decades with tips on “how to save the planet.”  But making these choices part of one’s daily lifestyles does take effort and when society makes it easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing (like using plastic straws instead of paper), it takes a conscious effort to avoid being part of the problem.  When we can make sustainability easy, more people will make those choices.  And, when society decides as a whole, like the California’s proposition on one-use bags, the decision about how to do the right thing is made for us.

Fundamentally, I think it’s a matter of insufficient incentives and disincentives.  Besides ethical and moral reasons to do the right thing environmentally, the value proposition isn’t always obvious.  Economists like Susan Meeker-Lowry (Economics as If the Earth Really Mattered, New Society Publishers, 1988); Robert Costanza (Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability, Columbia University Press, 1991); and Hazel Henderson (Building a Win-Win World, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995) have helped us understand the value of protecting the environment, not just the costs.  Fundamentally, if the value proposition is between survival and incurring higher costs, then clearly it’s worth the higher cost to be sustainable.  Fortunately for now, the urgency of survival hasn’t been clear.  At the same time, it often takes a crisis for society to take significant corrective actions.

Recognizing that problems exist and that there are solutions in hand, what prevents me from implementing more positive change in my day-to-day actions?  Bad habits can be hard to change.  It’s human nature to get into patterns that are comfortable and familiar even if they’re self-destructive.  But we can break those patterns by connecting with others who share our convictions.  Working together, we can achieve a critical mass of like-minded voters who can influence the political process.  We can be influenced to make positive changes in behavior by peer pressure.

My family got me a Fitbit^® watch for my birthday.  They’ve all been using the devices for some time and have encouraged me to join the “community.”  I’ve resisted since I haven’t needed a community to help me make good choices about my exercise routines and I thought it’d be intrusive.  But now we’re all linked and I can see their daily activity levels and they can see mine.  I guess the idea is that the peer pressure helps encourage us all to do more and stay fit.  I can see some value in that.

Similarly, I can see value in being part of a Sustainability community.  That’s why the Green Team at work was formed and why Sustainable Pittsburgh developed their challenge as a fun way for businesses to work together toward common and mutually beneficial goals.  Through a points system, we’re rewarded for performing individual tasks that have been defined in the Playbook.  While the actual benefits aren’t quantified, the significance of each activity is ranked so that participants can gauge the relative value of each action.

This type of cooperative effort is exactly the type of process I’ve been looking for to feel motivated, energized, and integrated with others to make more meaningful changes in my individual, family, workplace, and community.  Maybe the next step is to develop a “Sustain-Bit” to help us all monitor and track the individual actions we take every day and how those actions really impact or benefit the environment.

Earth Day 2018

I’ve always thought of myself as an optimist. I generally “look on the bright side of life” and I seek silver linings after hardship and loss. Whether through the love of family and friends, the wisdom of ancient sages, or the solace of Nature, I find reasons to be hopeful.

Those close to me might argue that I’m more of a “neutralist.” They might point to my objective and analytical “Mr. Spock” nature around which I’ve built a science and engineering-based career. Or, they may point to my gravitation toward Eastern philosophy and my normally calm non-judgmental attitude. I tend to accept what is and adapt to situations as needed. I don’t worry much about what may be but rather attend to the things I want and need to do as best as I’m able.  Sure, I plan for the future, have hopes and dreams, and have a vision for a healthy world, but I don’t dwell on failures, shortcomings, and dead ends. The pragmatic MacGyver in me has dealt with unexpected situations enough times to have confidence that things will work out.

As this Earth Day neared, I considered how my perspective as a neutralist leaning towards optimism has shaped my reaction to environmental concerns of the day. I realized that I’m being apolitical.  Besides the typical reasons like parental and familial responsibilities, professional duties, and competing personal interests, life affords plenty of opportunities to be disengaged from the big problems like climate change, gun violence, gender rights, immigration, and a misguided Presidency. Life presents plenty of distractions and valid reasons not to be political.

What’s politics have to do with it?” you might ask.  That’s what I thought so I grabbed my copy of the wonderful Politics for Human Beings (Hummel and Isaak, Duxbury Press, 1980). There, I was reminded that “Politics is a social act to resolve the tension between human needs and social facts.”  Hummel and Isaac explain:

Social facts are old social acts that have become conditions. Social facts often frustrate human needs. For example, although people set up a corporation to satisfy their own needs and wants, as soon as their act becomes a condition, it frustrates the needs of others who share more in the pollution than in the profits created by the firm. Thus the social acts of one group of people to satisfy their own needs often frustrate the fulfillment of needs perceived by other groups. As soon as such tension between social facts and human needs is perceived, political consciousness comes into being.

So the question may be, how intense does the tension between one’s human needs and the social facts of the day have to become to inspire an individual to become politically engaged?  For a neutralist leaning toward optimism, there have been plenty of ways to rationalize inaction – the easiest being to be ignorant of what is happening. One might avoid the social facts by turning off the Twitter feed and the nightly news. Some may choose to binge on Netflix, focus on their physical health, or find peace of mind in Nature. Political leaders who advocate building walls and closing borders, isolating ourselves and being suspicious of strangers, and bullying those who present inconvenient facts encourage the hermits among us to find a quiet places to avoid being engulfed in the pervasive and stupefying societal miasma being spewed.

But by avoiding the situation, we allow it continue unchecked.  We accept and endorse through our silence.  We keep the virtue and honor of our higher ideals to ourselves and neglect to call out the shameful and indecent behavior of others.

That’s why lately I’ve become a pessimist.

It seems to me that it’s the pessimists who push the envelope and force others out of their accepting complacency by challenging the status quo.  By definition, it’s the pessimists who see the worst in things.  By extension, I think they are less content, less accepting, less forgiving, and less agreeable than their counterparts.  They complain more, they want change, they speak up, they get pissed, and they make trouble.  I don’t see pessimists as being constantly scowling and bitter, but I do see them as being more likely to get upset about injustices and inequities than a neutralist or optimist.  My long-gone dear friend Karen Lundegaard impressed upon me the lesson that “it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease” as she struggled with health coverage that was insufficient to offer adequate care in her short battle with cancer.  And, while fighting for her life against a bureaucratic health-care system didn’t tarnish her positive outlook on life, it left me with a lasting awareness that if people don’t complain, systems won’t change on their own. An excellent current example of what it takes to change a system can be found in Cecile Richards’ new book, Make Trouble (Touchstone, 2018).

Changing implies that something else will be “better” for those whose needs aren’t being met. Better is a judgment call – who’s to say what is better? Society needs to make that call through political action. I agree with Michael J. Sandel who in his 4/8/18 New York Time Book Review piece on Robert Reich’s The Common Good points out that, “Against the grain of much liberal thinking, Reich acknowledges that promoting civic virtue requires being judgmental about what moral attitudes and qualities of character our public life should affirm and promote.”

But for the rare exceptions, individuals, no matter how charismatic, virtuous, sincere, well-intentioned, and honorable, have an insignificant impact on the momentum of society unless they band together in with a common cause.  The winter 2017 #Resist movement in the U.S. that emerged in response to the Trump presidency can be viewed as non-violent action in accordance with fundamental principles of what is right and fair in America. The Me Too movement, March for Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter are other recent examples of people organizing to resolve tensions between needs and social facts. Building on Reich’s point the, I’ll suggest that current conditions justify being judgmental about what behaviors and actions we need to take for the well-being of us all: whether that involves social equity, women’s rights, gun safety, racial equality, or the environment.

Another such organization is Climate Reality: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/

Having attended Al Gore’s October 2017 training in Pittsburgh with 1,400 other enthusiastic leaders, I felt some optimism that society was recognizing that current conditions and trends were leading us to an undesirable future. The 11,000+ members of Climate Reality are working to help us recognize that:

1.     Yes – we must change what energy we consume and how we consume it;

2.     Yes – we can and are changing past conditions through energy conservation, renewable energy, and the phasing out of coal-burning technologies; and

3.     Yes - we will eventually change. Change is occurring but is the pace sufficient enough? I think not and it’s for that reason that I became a Climate Reality Leader.

The reality of climate change has been accepted worldwide. Actions from the individual who chooses the most fuel-efficient modes of transportation available to the nation-states who are working to implement renewable energy economies, span a wide range of morally-driven actions aimed at resolving the tension between perceived needs and current conditions. I’m pessimistic that the Trump presidency will do anything good about Climate Change.  My objective for the year ahead is to help fuel the awareness that politically engaged people can lead our political leaders in morally virtuous directions: one critical direction being toward the societal acceptance of the realities of climate change.

Happy Earth Day!