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Sustainability means recognizing trade-offs & “the tragedy of the commons”

October 12, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

[This post written by Jonathan F., Paul Quiring, Danny S., and Angelo S.]

Goat Lake, Lewis County, Washington, from Washington Trails Association, http://www.wta.org.

As our class begins the journey into the world of sustainability, we started the course by reading a couple of broad articles looking at sustainability in the big picture. After discussing the articles in class, we have started to gain a better grasp on how large the concept of sustainability actually is. Defining the word sustainability is something that is always changing and nearly impossible to fit into one sentence. One of the definitions we found that seemed to cover the majority of sustainability can be found on The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online (see “Sustainability“).

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Posted in SHP Fall 2010, Student work, What is Sustainability? | 2 Comments »

Social sustainability co-equal to economics & ecology

October 12, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

[The post below was written by students Ian C., Natalie T. Z., and Brian H.]

    Enhancing human capitol (through education) and strengthening social values and institutions (like trust and behavioral norms) are important tools to increase the resilience of social systems and improve governance. (Intergovernmental panel on climate change, 2000)

Sustainability simply means being able to sustain something for some period of time. When we speak of sustainability, what we aim to sustain are those things which are required for humanity to thrive. The three pillars of sustainable development have been defined as economy, ecology, and equity. Of those three, equity seems to be furthest from the spotlight. While protecting rainforests and wetlands can be the first thought that comes to mind when the concept of sustainability is raised, developing social justice and sustainability could have a greater impact on the ability of future generations to thrive. Stable social environments are a crucial building block in developing sustainable growth, Oluf Langhelle reinforces this concept saying “the environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs” (Langhelle, 131).

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Posted in SHP Fall 2010, Student work, What is Sustainability? | 2 Comments »

Student-written blog posts

October 12, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

Beginning with the Fall 2010 quarter, I’m trying a new exercise with my students. The previous two quarters I’ve taken highlights of student reading responses and, from these highlights, created blog posts. The two primary reasons I wanted to do this were to make student insights and questions available to the broader public; I also wanted to disseminate some of my replies to individual student work to the whole class, rather than have my replies be just a dialogue between the individual student and I.

Examples of these posts include:

This quarter, I thought it would be more engaging & thought-provoking to both students and the community if the students wrote the blog posts themselves, based upon their own understanding and interpretation of the readings. This week, I’ll post the first round of student blog posts. Stay tuned!

** Update Oct. 12, 2010**
The three posts are:

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Posted in About the SHP, SHP Fall 2010 | 1 Comment »

What role should guilt play in sustainability?

October 8, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

There was a thought-provoking article in the New York Times recently asserting that “Guilt Becomes a Burden for Fallible Greenies”[1]. The article showcased three people who actively project their “green” credentials by writing books and running companies that assert to foster one or another version of environmentally sustainable practices. Even considering the work these people do, they all have aspects of their lives that would seem to fall far outside of the bounds of what another observer might consider “sustainable.”

Should these people feel guilty because they aren’t living up to their own standards? What role, if any, should guilt play in sustainability efforts? Is it a variant of “greenwashing” if someone claims to be sustainable in one regard yet falls far short in another — or, does a high “sustainability score” in one area make up for shortcomings in other areas? Is sustainability a work-in-progress, or are there definitive, absolute measures that can be implemented today and last for all time?

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[1] Joyce Wadler, “Green, but Still Feeling Guilty,” New York Times, Sep. 29, 2010. The quote is from the article’s title as printed in the Oregonian, Oct. 8, 2010, p. D6.

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Posted in Implementing Sustainability, What is Sustainability? | Leave a Comment »

Revised Federal Green Guides

October 7, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

Along the lines of the recent post Quantifying “sustainability” using certification systems, the Oregonian today featured an article originally from the New York Times News Service about the Federal Trade Commission’s revised “Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims,” or “Green Guides“[1]:

    Manufacturers of products that claim to be environmentally friendly will face tighter rules on how they are advertised to consumers under changes proposed Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission.

    The commission’s revised “Green Guides,” last updated in 1998, warn marketers against using labels that make broad claims that cannot be substantiated, like “eco-friendly.” Marketers must qualify their claims on the product packaging and limit them to a specific benefit, such as how much of the product is recycled.

For more about the Green Guides, see “Reporter Resources: The FTC’s Green Guides .”
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[1] Oregonian article: Tanzina Vega, “Environmental Claims on Products Will Have To Be Cleaner,” Oct. 7, 2010, pp. B1, B4. Original NYT article: Tanzina Vega, “Agency Seeks to Tighten Rules for ‘Green’ Labeling,” Oct. 6, 2010.

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Posted in Quantifying Sustainability, What is Sustainability? | Leave a Comment »

Some context for sustainability-related projects in and around Portland, Oregon

September 28, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

Below is a selection of a few online videos relating directly and explicitly to sustainability efforts in Portland. Of all the videos available, I chose the ones that had the best audio, video, and informational characteristics while also representing as diverse a range of topics as possible.

For a more complete list of video works, including documentaries and films only available on DVD, see the SHP’s Film & Video page.

Suggestions are most welcome, in the comments section.

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Posted in Implementing Sustainability, Media, Organizations, Uncovering & Evaluating Sources | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

Quantifying “sustainability” using certification systems

September 15, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

A program on National Public Radio’s (NPR) Talk of the Nation program the other day has provided me a useful opportunity to compose a brief post about various certification systems that attempt to (or purport to) quantify “sustainability.” This particular program asked “Does The ‘Energy Star’ Label Need An Update?“:

    A review in Consumer Reports says it’s good news so many products have become energy efficient but calls for strengthening Energy Star standards to guide consumers to truly efficient products.

(This article is summarized here and recommends five important measures to improve the program.)

The NPR program got me thinking about a recurrent set of questions in the Sustainability History Project courses: How is sustainability quantified, tracked, and evaluated? Who sets the standards? How are standards applied and modified? What is the difference between measurable attempts to become sustainable and “greenwashing?”

There are many for-profit, non-profit, and governmental organizations attempting to establish quantitative credentialing and certification programs for various aspects of environmental, economic, and equity-based sustainability. I recently created a new link category in the side bar titled “Quantifying Sustainability” in which I’ve begun to list these efforts. I also link to a few programs and discussions below, and welcome any other links and references in the comments section of this post so that I can add them to this website.

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Posted in Quantifying Sustainability, What is Sustainability? | 2 Comments »

“Native Perspectives on Sustainability: Voices from Salmon Nation”

August 17, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

I recently discovered a fascinating online project, “Native Perspectives on Sustainability: Voices from Salmon Nation,” run by Dr. David Edward Hall, professor of psychology at Portland State.[1] The website is an off-shoot of his PhD research.[2]

As indicated on the project website,

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Posted in Equity, History of Sustainability, Oral History, Uncovering & Evaluating Sources, What is Sustainability? | Leave a Comment »

“The planet’s poor need sustainable expansion”

August 10, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

Patrick Emerson wrote a reply in the Oregonian on Aug. 8, 2010, in response to Jack Hart’s OpEd on the “fallacy of growth,” titled “Economic growth: The planet’s poor need sustainable expansion.”

Emerson has three primary crititiques of Hart’s assertion that growth is a fallacy:

    1) “Hart’s views reveal a wealthy-country bias about what growth means and fail to appreciate the perspective of poor countries.”
    2) “His characterization of growth is also inaccurate and perpetuates a common misconception about economic growth — that it necessarily means resource depletion.”
    3) “Finally, his anti-growth agenda would leave the world more imperiled: Economic growth represents the world’s best hope to meet the challenges of the future.”

Emerson provides examples supporting his three contentions that show how Hart’s definition of “growth” is overly simplified. With this over-simplification, Hart is then able to characterize growth, in general, as fallacious. However, with an over-simplified definition of growth, Hart has actually engaged in a fallacy himself — the “straw man” fallacy, whereby a contrasting point of view is misrepresented so that it can be refuted more readily.

In contrast to Hart, Emerson sees “sustainable growth” as a solution to poverty and inequality:

    Developing countries present a key challenge to a sustainable future because their growth often comes at a high environmental cost. When more than one in every 10 children dies in infancy, it is hard to prioritize the environment. It behooves the developed world, then, to create the proper incentives — through carbon taxes, technology transfers, grants and aid — so the poor countries of the world can achieve growth through sustainable practices.

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Posted in Economics, Equity, Uncovering & Evaluating Sources, What is Sustainability? | 1 Comment »

Community service at Portland Sunday Parkways, May 16 2010

August 5, 2010 by jvhillegas-elting

One important part of student work in the course Documenting Sustainability in the Pacific Northwest is to do five hours of community service. Below the fold is Sean Cochran’s write-up after he volunteered for Portland Sunday Parkways.

Portland Sunday Parkways, May 16, 2010. Photo Sean Cochran.

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Posted in Community Service, Events, Implementing Sustainability, SHP Spring 2010, Student work | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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