Sustainability History Project

This post is in response to the same student comments and questions spurred by the assignment outlined in On Sustainability, Summer 2010 (pt. 1 of 2). I found myself writing more and more in reply to this particular issue, so I opted to make a stand-alone post.

I’ve seen a pattern, both in these courses I teach and in our broader culture, that suggests to me that a great many (most?) people seem first to think of environmental issues when they hear the word “sustainability.” Members of the Brundtland Commission perceived this pattern as early as 1982, when they began their work on Our Common Future, so my relatively limited sample size seems more than anecdotal.[1]

One student’s reading response this quarter flipped on the light bulb for me. This student found that her/his definition of sustainability focused on environmental concerns, and, when comparing this definition to the Brundtland Commission’s definition, suggested that this was “mainly because that’s what everyone hears in the media or news.”

Aha!

It struck me that there are an array of possible reasons why this environmental focus is what tends to dominate in mainstream media coverage of sustainability-related issues. My interpretation is that in many ways the environment is a much less complex issue for the mass media to address. This is due, in part, to the following:

** Environmental degradation often does negatively impact economically and socially disadvantaged populations more than more privileged groups, but, considered broadly, many environmental issues transcend boundaries. For example, relatively disadvantaged populations may tend to live closer to polluting industries, but the effluent from these industries often pollute air and water resources that tend to travel well outside the bounds of these disadvantaged communities. Therefore, some environmental issues are more likely to effect groups who tend to have more time and financial resources to organize and, once organized, who will be more likely to be heard by politicians and mainstream media outlets.

** Environmental degradation often provides various “poster-species” or touchstone events to rally around, thereby associating an environmental issue with a tangible example of potential threat. One might recall the spotted owl controversy in Oregon in the early 1990s, ongoing efforts to curtail whale harvesting, or the ongoing BP gulf oil catastrophe. The news media can turn images of these events into iconographic examples that resonate far and wide because inherent complexity can be simplified into soundbites and iconic images.

** Environmental degradation does not necessarily require much in the way of critiquing the current capitalist system. There are a number of organizations that do actively critique capitalism, and a long lineage of philosophical critiques of capitalism based on environmental values, but mainstream media reports tend not to marginalize those who advocate such fundamental change.[2] It is yet to be seen whether or not our cultural response to the BP gulf oil catastrophe leads to any fundamental strengthening of regulatory oversight or provides impetus for increased investment in alternate energy sources. For a host of other environmental concerns that do not command attention on the scale of the gulf oil catastrophe, mainstream society is often content to recycle a bit more, buy a plastic compost bin, or purchase organic products. Because we perceive that environmental degradation can be addressed without seriously critiquing our current capitalist system, mainstream media, corporations, and others can focus our attention on specific, small-scale environmental concerns and offer us products, services, and a limited range of legislative actions that claim to address the particular concern.

** Environmental degradation can seem much less complex than equity-related issues. In part, this is surely related to our culture’s faith in science and technology to solve problems, and also related to the item above, the disconnect between environmental issues and critiques of our economic system. As an example of the former, if engineers can build double-hulled tankers, then there’s no need to ask ourselves if our oil consumption has gotten out of hand; on the latter, as complex as it is, it’s much simpler to mop-up oil tar from Gulf Coast beaches than it is to address endemic poverty that leads communities to recycle computers in an appallingly toxic manner.

I imagine there are other reasons why a focus on environmental matters is what “everyone hears in the media or news,” but what I’ve outlined above seems a start.

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[1] See Oluf Langhelle. “Sustainable Development: Exploring the Ethics of Our Common Future.” International Political Science Review 20: 2 (April 1999), 131-132.

[2] As one place to begin research on environmentalist critiques of capitalism, see “Green anarchism,” Wikipedia, accessed July 2, 2010.

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