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“A new and distinctive definition of sustainability.”[1]
How do you feel about how the Health Care Debate and health care reform have been handled so far? Personally, I’m fed up with, and a bit confused by, the “public conversation” over Health Care Reform. Personally, I can’t help but believe that the public is being too confused to decide, and the roots of the confusion were the words chosen by certain groups in order to make their point. The next public debate is going to be about creating a sustainable future. The multiple threads of the conversation are already glistening, popping out for examination. Among the threads we can already identify: global warming, carbon emissions, cap and trade, waste, water, soil, food, and so on. And so, as with many people, I am trying to wrap my head around the term “sustainability”.
I do not want to fall victim to lobbyists, or industry positioning, or vitriolic posturing by a faction with an axe to grind. I’ve seen how damaged the public conversation can be after witnessing the debacle over Health Care Reform. Believing that, if I read enough and talk to enough people, I can come away from these educational moments with a more balanced, more rounded, and a more thoroughly informed understanding, I set out to investigate the challenges that accompany the theme of sustainability, and how to guarantee a safe, prosperous world for our children and their grandchildren.
My educational journey has permitted me to experience the poetry of Wendell Berry and the anti-Capitalist rantings of Vandana Shiva. I’ve allowed myself to be captivated by Al Gore’s visuals; and, I discovered that I don’t have patience for the alarmists who produced Food Inc. I found E.O. Wilson too ephemeral, too “airy-fairy” for action; and I found Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution challenging me (and each of us) to make a difference and to help the wave move out from its center.
I was drawn to John Ehrenfeld’s deeply philosophical book, Sustainability by Design, for his definition of “sustainability. Ehrenfeld is an industrial ecologist, a systems thinker, and, philosopher. Throughout the book he makes use of the now-familiar-to-many causal loop diagrams, system archetypes, and mental maps made popular in Senge’s phenomenally successful book, The Fifth Discipline.
Ehrenfeld throws down the gauntlet by offering provocative assertions, while continuously using Senge’ Causal Archetypes as framing images, metaphors, and mental maps: Fixes that Fail, Shifting the Burden, & Limits to Growth in this profound questioning of our current situation, which he labels “the global crisis”.
“To create sustainability, we must first adopt new meanings for the words we use to tell our stories.” I certainly agree that language and the metaphors by which we live (write and speak) are more powerful than we normally realize. And, in our use of language we do have the power to shape the future. Just think for a few minutes about the language sales and marketing uses to talk about the people who buy and use your products and services. “Campaigns”, “account penetration”, - we display our cultural values through the language we choose.
Storytelling will have an important role in the public debate. We will have to decide as “The People” how we want to, and will, shape the future of our planet. Ehrenfeld points out “in the environmentalist’s conversation, we almost always speak only in terms of problems to solve, and rarely in terms of nurturing possibility.” He goes on to say: “Something is missing here. Better, many things are missing here.” Using words and causal loop diagrams, Ehrenfeld’s mantra is we need to create a new future (italics mine) because what we have been calling “sustainable development” is just painting the pig, dressing up a problem with a fix but never solving the problem with a creative solution.
His definition of “sustainability” is “the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever”. He then goes on to add that “flourishing is the key to a vision of a sustainable future, and this way of conceptualizing sustainability connects to every kind of audience.” In other words, this definition works for marketing, for sales, for scientists, etc. as well as for solving such issues as creating a sustainable future. Does it connect with you?
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