We need sustainability by design

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/07/2022 (1152 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few years ago, I spoke to a group of engineers about ethics and sustainability. I began by observing that an engineering job required both design parameters and specific steps to complete them. Thankfully, we build bridges by design, not by accident.

The same is also true of engineering education. Necessary skills are taught and performance evaluated — all intentionally — before that iron pinkie ring is awarded. No one learns how to build bridges by accident, either.

I then asked why engineering ethics was treated so differently. If ethics is not specifically taught and evaluated, then students are learning ethics by accident, not by design. In the 21st century, that’s just not good enough. The accidental ethicist is just as dangerous as the accidental engineer.

Having softened up the crowd, then came the punchline — this is also how we treat sustainability. I’m tired of being told a concern for sustainability is reflected everywhere in all our decision-making processes, at all levels — government, industry, business, education. Or, specifically, that sustainability is in all our courses, so we don’t need to focus on sustainability as a subject by itself.

This is not just a problem for engineers or engineering schools. Every educational program should be intentionally teaching sustainability — by design, not by accident.

We are in the midst of a rapidly growing and accelerating climate crisis. Yet, listening to our leaders, there is apparently no reason to panic — we get lip service, and occasional pronouncements, but nothing much of substance: a green appetizer, but no main course.

By “our leaders,” I also don’t just mean our politicians, who cater and defer to their bases to stay in power. Their craven behaviour is at least understandable, even if still inexcusable. I am thinking about those leaders in business and industry, the ones with the power, wealth and leverage to effect real change for sustainability in the world, but who don’t.

Corporate social responsibility profiles tend to be little more than greenwashing, as companies hide behind anemic government environmental regulation and claim to be “doing our part” for a greener future.

I am especially thinking about the leaders of our educational institutions, who have even more latitude to make decisions about what students should learn, and why, without either the political or economic constraints of the other institutions. And yet, work your way through the curriculum of either the K-12 system or (especially) the post-secondary system, and you will find that green is little more than a colour.

If our world is truly in a crisis, then we should be focused on nothing else: there is no supply-chain management, or hair styling, or political economy on a dead planet.

Thinking is free; the consequences of not thinking are frightfully expensive, however, both today and in whatever future is going to unfold. We should be designing a sustainable future right now, but instead we are teaching, learning and practicing sustainability by accident, not by intention.

We are not dedicating the time, money or people resources to make that kind of difference for generations to come.

Sadly, if how we spend our time and money reflects our priorities as a society, then even our own survival is apparently of little concern. The salary expenses of just one professional sports team in the NHL would fund an explosion of research, teaching and action on a sustainable future for everyone in Canada — but we would rather spend that money (and a chunk of the shrinking carbon budget we have left) on yet another yearly pursuit of Lord Stanley’s mug instead.

To be crystal clear, there is also no hockey on a dead planet.

(By the way, to those who object to me talking about a “dead planet,” because the Earth will still be here, I find no comfort in telling children there will always be cockroaches!)

There will be no real sustainability by accident. We will not change course toward a sustainable future by accident, either. We need to take immediate, intentional steps toward a different outcome than the one that is inexorably unfolding in front of us — starting today.

Sustainability is not a scientific or technological problem; it is a social and cultural problem, requiring social and cultural changes at all levels, from individual behaviours to the institutions that shape our options and our lives. As my colleague John Ehrenfeld wrote in his 2008 book that focused my own thoughts on the transitions required, we need — as the book’s title declares — “sustainability by design.”

Currently, we have sustainability by accident — tenuous, fleeting and easily upended by shifts in the political currents of our world. It’s just not good enough.

We now have a baseball-team roster of mayoral candidates for the October civic election — but we need a mayor who will solve problems, not merely dodge or recycle them. The old ways haven’t worked. We need a new approach, bringing people together for intentional solutions for sustainability — by design — before it is too late.

Batter up!

Peter Denton’s latest book is The End of Technology.