Transparency

Why is transparency a principle of sustainable development? Surely I can be sustainable in my actions and keep myself to myself?

Maybe so, but how do we know what is sustainable? Surely sustainability is also a matter of interdependence? And isn’t secrecy an extra burden that detracts from our (mainly social) sustainability?

The Carbon Disclosure Project (http://www.cdproject.net/) was established for many reasons, but the most straightforward one was to find out how much carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere and how. With hundreds of companies taking part, in every sector of industry, the data gathering gets more accurate and simultaneously more straightforward every year. Once we know where we’re going wrong, and how badly, we can put it right.

The project has some interesting secondary effects, however. Having disclosed their carbon footprint, companies are immediately under pressure to reduce their emissions, despite there being no-such pledge in participating. What’s more, the exercise highlights the reporting culture and amount of transparency these companies are comfortable with: very few companies will disclose their carbon targets to the outside world. At very least, that makes it very difficult to predict overall reductions in carbon emissions.

Like BS 8900, the CDP’s quiet insistence that transparency in past, present and future activities puts pressure on the establishment to fundamentally change the way it works.

So we know how much each community, organization and average individual has to change to make our species sustainable. What’s more, most of us don’t live in isolation, so the calculations of carbon footprint, resource use, permissible pollution levels, etc. often have to be made in collaboration, making estimates of the interplay of different substances and activities. So we need to communicate about our needs as well as ‘fessing up to our messes.

In asking for transparency, we also hear objections on grounds of practicality—particularly how transparency removes commercial advantage. Disclosing your carbon targets might affect your share price or make you liable in some way, but being open about everything you do would let your competitors know your next unique selling point, and very quickly it wouldn’t be unique any more.

Although lots of time, money and effort is wasted in hiding new products, services and ad campaigns from the opposition, for very little long-term gain, I’m not going to go so far (today) as to claim that all companies and organizations should have “glass walls”. But I do believe that the best way to retain customers, clients, employees and friends is to let them feel part of what you’re doing. “Valued”, in other words.

Stewardship

At first glance, stewardship seems like the most obvious principle of sustainable behaviour. But look closer and it brings a much richer meaning.

As many have said in many ways, including Gerard Winstanley, the earth is not ours to own. We are simply its inhabitants and caretakers. This is the principle of stewardship.

What this means for any organisation or individual that intends to improve itself against the principles of sustainable development is that, not only must the future of their “property” and share of the commons be ensured, but that property must be restored to the community in some meaningful way.

If sustainable development becomes embedded throughout society, the process can only accelerate. Companies will create permanent shareholdings for their neighbours, employees and other dependants. Governments will enact stewardship legislation, which will codify the responsibility of property owners to conserve the ecological, as well as functional, value of what they own, and perhaps will go further to remove the status of property ownership altogether.

This is meaningful responsibility. And it should be reciprocated by society.

For example, stewardship of a council property should be available at little cost. In itself, the responsibility that comes with the property, to maintain it for future inhabitants, will bring enough costs, but the story shouldn’t end there. Although decorating and maintaining a house is cheaper if you do it yourself, it would be in the interests of the council to run a communal tool bank and to source bulk supplies. Similarly, providing free training in practical skills would benefit everyone.

Through a gentle push towards a benign principle, society becomes a simpler, more responsible, more far-sighted and self-supporting. Before you know it, the progress gets rooted in too deep to be dragged out easily.

Taking them on at their own game

The most daunting facet of capitalism is its ability to adapt. Essentially, the system we have created is self-sustaining because, having established a means of isolating and accumulating power, the motivation (conscious or unconscious) is also established to consolidate and defend any advantage. In other words, the world’s elites are now wealthy and will use their power (influence/authority/etc.) to shore up the system to maintain that advantage.

This does not preclude a certain amount of progress in the treatment of the under-privileged and the environment, but the fundamental flaws will remain: the division of wealth, the impossibility of full employment, and the inherent unsustainability of economic growth.

Nothing new in that observation. But I recently realised that progress is being made in bringing fundamental change to what Orwell called our “smelly little orthodoxies”. It might not be enough, in itself, to topple the dominance of neo-cons and post-modernists (or any of the rag bag of what amounts to stasis), but seeds of radical thought are being left in unexpected places.

The established order is maintained because those with power can afford to populate the committees, councils and parliaments that set the detailed rules for how we run society. The interests of the wealthy are reflected in the skew of our criminal justice system towards harsh punishment for “poor people’s crimes” like drug dealing and robbery and little or no penalty for large-scale financial mis-management or fraud. The difference doesn’t end at the sentence imposed: if you are considered dangerous or likely to escape, then you go to a prison where, sure, you are less likely to escape, but you are also more likely to be a victim of violence, including rape.

As times change and questions are asked of the ethics of our system, those acting on behalf of the powerful ensure that new legislation, policies and procedures to not make a material change to the balance of power. So, for every political movement there is an approximately equal and opposite counter-movement. They might not be labelled as such—very few of these jabs and blocks, feints and counter-feints are ever categorized—but they happen nonetheless.

What I realised recently is that the counter-culture is also becoming more effective at evolving. The system has evolved to consolidate power but its harshest critics are learning how to infiltrate it effectively. Western democracy, in the first order, gravitates to the centre-right, which impedes any progress, but that doesn’t stop radicals from getting in.

I’m not talking about the so-called Marxists who have made a fool of themselves in cosying up to ultra-conservatives and big business. Neither am I too concerned with former radicals that have mellowed with age and found a comfortable place in the post-modern centre-left (such as Danny Cohn-Bendit and Joan Ruddock), although I’m glad to have them inside their respective parliaments.

In fact, many of those making a difference were never fire-brand protestors or politicians. What has evolved is the way progressive ideas get implemented: crudely speaking, it is not protest that pushes change by reluctant conservatives, it is infiltration of motivated people and ideas that make the changes directly.

There are several examples of the old way of making progress, including the Reform Act of 1832, reluctantly supported by the Duke of Wellington, and the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, reluctantly supported by Lyndon Johnson (I’m short of evidence on the latter, I admit). But protest has to be overwhelming to make a difference on its own; it has to be perceived as the manifestation of a majority viewpoint to influence government, and even then, the legislative process will water any new requirements down.

Protest is not dead, but capitol cities see protests almost every week, which makes media coverage and the attention of parliamentarians unlikely. Hundreds of thousands protested the Iraq War in London, New York and several other cities, and it made no difference whatsoever.

But here is a prime example of counter-subversion: having had “sustainability” co-opted and de-fanged to become “sustainable development”, which includes economic growth as one of its pillars, radical ideas have begun to permeate the implementation of sustainable development.

So, the British Standard guide to implementing sustainable development, BS 8900, insists that maturity against “principles of sustainable development” is measured and continual progress made. Those principles are to include: stewardship, transparency, integrity and inclusivity.

This is more powerful than it seems at first glance. Any organisation that claims to comply with a UK sustainable development standard must not only behave more sustainably (by environmental, social and economic measures) year-on-year, but it must demonstrate better performance against principles that will embed sustainable thinking and change its way of operating for the better.

I intend to say why each of these principles matters next.

150 years On Liberty

Next year (2009) is the 150th anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s landmark “essay”, On Liberty. Much credit, perhaps the majority, should go to his wife, Harriet Taylor, so please take that as read throughout the rest of this deposit.

I have to admit to have been 149 years behind the time in reading On Liberty, but I do have the excuse of not being born for 110 of those. But this isn’t such a bad time to catch up.

The basic principle that everyone should be free to do whatever, say whatever and think whatever does no harm to others is often forgotten in politics, even and sometimes by those that call themselves liberal.

Green Party politics (in England and Wales but also in much of the world) is quite akin to traditional Liberalism and its policies are stacked with ideas that would impose the Green “opinion” (to use Mill’s vocabulary) on the rest of society. Education, healthcare and animal rights, for examples, would all have national guidelines and rules to ensure that the “right” sort of education, healthcare and animals rights were being supplied nationwide.

In fact, nationhood was something Mill never questioned, as far as I can tell, but he did have a sense that the national level was not always the most appropriate one for running society’s affairs. He was greatly impressed by the way ordinary Americans could establish order in remote townships, without help or hindrance from a central bureaucracy, and thought it a model for England.

If anything, On Liberty is more applicable today than it was on its publication. I say this because, although we have gone through a century of clashing ideologies and many would now have us believe that politics has been reduced to the perfection of societal management, opinions are still being thrust upon us and withheld from us.

The most notable opinions that it is not considered suitable to hold and express are those of Jihad and theocracy. Like Mill I am merely advocating the right to hold and express these views, or to establish consensual communities that follows their ideals, while also considering these opinions to be deeply flawed.

Again, as Mill would have it, it is only when someone’s actions negatively affect others that society has the right to react. A theocracy established by military coup is obviously not OK, let alone killing others to “promote” your cause.

Where we draw the line, however, is an important part of how we win the argument. The Terrorism Act 2006 gets it very wrong, by making it illegal to disseminate a publication which is either: a) likely to be understood as directly or indirectly encouraging terrorism; or b) includes information which is likely to be understood as being useful in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism.

The main focus at the time of the legislation was on periods of detention, which is also deplorable, but the first conviction (although subsequently successfully appealed) was on possession of records likely to be useful in terrorism. Samina Malik had, it seems, some dangerous books and wrote some dangerous poems.

In some ways this is farcical: who can handle dangerous books? A licensed librarian? Worse, it is counter-productive: removing people’s right to read, associate, discuss and disseminate as they please weakens our own position. Society, as Mill was saying, is stronger when everyone freely forms their own opinions.

Are you OK?

Was (Not Was) asked the question. As a side note, can I explain the name? The Was brothers at the heart of the group always had to explain how to say their name, much like I do. It’s pronounced “wahz”. Not “was”.

Seems like they were on a hiding to nothing.

Anyway, the question was one of concern. And people do get concerned. People care about other people. People care a lot more about some people than others, but there is an overwhelming amount of consideration going on.

How does that scale up in society? In a static society, it means that everyone knows about everyone else’s problems and the majority looks after the minority. In nomadic cultures, everyone is aware of how delicate life’s balance is and everyone looks out for everyone.

Maybe that’s a bit over-simplistic, or even rosier-then-reality, but I do think there’s more than an element of truth in it. And I also think there’s more than element of truth in the assertion that large-scale societies don’t have the same tendency to care for the vulnerable.

Like climate change, nuclear waste disposal, child labour and poverty, there is a tendency to see caring as something for others to deal with—somebody else’s problem.

If a centrally organised society will not support those in need, can a devolved one do any better? Obviously, I think it can. By taking responsibility for anyone that strays into your community, it ceases to be anyone else’s problem.

There are a couple of real-world examples that strenuously test my assertion. First, my experience of a successful “intentional community”—what would be colloquially termed a commune. Second, the way the most difficult-to-deal-with homeless people in my own neighbourhood.

One of the longest-lasting intentional communities in the United States, if not the world, is in rural Virginia and I had the privilege of staying for a night and meeting many of the members. One of the reasons it might have been so successful is a refusal to deal with members with serious mental health issues: minor problems and idiosyncrasies were almost de rigueur but the members would ask anyone that was, in their opinion, too disruptive to leave.

If the world were composed of intentional communities, where would that leave its most vulnerable? I would like to think that, like many things that require concerted effort, that resources would be pooled to help those that need specialist care, while retaining a sense of responsibility for each individual. That, I have to admit, is still a sizeable issue.

The other instance worth mentioning are the homeless, here in Shepherd’s Bush. We have a hostel (or two) in the area, in which very few local people have any involvement (me included). I like to think that most people feel that their presence is no major inconvenience. At worst, it is depressing to see people in bad shape, begging, living from one can of beer to the next, or sometimes exhibiting the behaviour typical of smack addicts. At least, we can think, they have somewhere to sleep and get some hot food.

But even these hostels cannot accommodate anyone and everyone. Like the intentional community, without extra help, some people are just too disruptive. Excluded from shelter, their situation only gets worse and their attitude more belligerent.

One particular individual, Paul, was a real nuisance to everyone. Before they started locking the gate, he was sleeping in the parking area behind my flat, usually with his girlfriend, which was no big problem in itself, except they would scream at each other at all times of the night, fight, and break anything that came to hand. During the day, they would demand money on the street, still fighting each other, and turn on random passers-by.

The result for the community was edginess and extreme discomfort. The police were often called and eventually they used the only tool available to them—an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) that excluded Paul from the area altogether. I’ve been told that ha has accommodation elsewhere, but essentially they made it clear that this was someone else’s problem.

Again, how would a world of intentional communities have dealt with Paul? And again, I can only suggest that individuals as difficult as him would have to be supported with the pooled resources of several communities, whether that meant improving the resources of the local hostel (in current terms) or having a specialist institution shared between, say, all West London.

Heroes Season Two

Having wittered on about the difference between fictional heroes and those worth giving some credit as humanity’s great achievers (might I also mention that I want to distance myself from childhood idolatry—something I don’t believe I ever really suffered from), I only had time to credit Per Gahrton as my first “hero”. This time, I won’t hang around.

Obviously, as someone calling himself a Gandhist, the Mahatma is a hero of mine. I’m not as widely read as I would like, but I deeply admire what I’ve discovered. I don’t believe in perfection, by which I don’t want to offend those who believe Gandhi achieved spiritual perfection, but I do want to acknowledge that there might be a grain of truth in accusations about his ego or sexuality. But his spiritual quest is not what makes him a hero of mine anyway.

The two things Gandhi did that I most admire are: that he professed a unity of faith with the conviction of Akbar, in which he saw common spiritual, but also highly practical, bases for all religions; and that he put his beliefs into practice with complete conviction. I think of what he did and said whenever I am trying to resolve issues of principal.

From the same country, but still very much alive and influencing people is Vandana Shiva. If anyone is the inheritor of Gandhi’s legacy, she is. She and I are also physicists first, but I have yet to see any influence on her ecological writing.

Shiva would be my hero for her chapters in Ecofeminism, which she co-wrote with Maria Mies, but she is also a leading light in the anti-globalisation movement (defending poor farmers against the grasping food multinationals). There are times when it is difficult to reconcile ideas in one area (such as feminism) with those in another (such as ecology), and it’s invaluable to have someone as lucid and sane as Shiva to guide you through.

At another point in my life, when I had joined the Green Party, read the manifesto, and a handful of books and pamphlets, I needed to make sense of how it all fitted together. If ever there was book to satisfy a need for a deeper understanding of green politics, it is Green Political Thought by Andrew Dobson.

I’ve met Andy Dobson (I’ve been in the presence of Vandana Shiva, but couldn’t find the courage or words) and he’s incredibly easy-going and approachable. Should I be surprised? After all, he’s provided an intellectual yet easily understood text contextualising almost all of ecopolitics.

My guess is that everyone in green politics has been inspired by the books or speeches of certain individuals: Henry Thoreau, John Muir, Petra Kelly, Jonathon Porritt, Ralph Nader, Al Gore, and even David Icke. These are many people’s heroes and deserve credit for the inspiration they have provided.

And I have one more to add, who I can’t quite call a hero because of a racist and sexist edge to his writing. Yet his writing is still inspirational: the original monkey-wrencher, Edward Abbey. Go read The Monkey Wrench Gang and consider blowing up a dam.

The flaws in the footprint

I have plenty more heroes to talk about, but first I’d like to address some questions I’ve been posed recently. First, how does what I’m proposing affect or apply to vulnerable places like the Arctic? Second, what makes carbon footprinting in any way right?

OK, I’ve paraphrased a little, but these are the thoughts I’ve been led to. And I think the two are the specific and general aspects of the same thing.

What carbon footprinting (auditing, backpacking, whatever) does is estimate the energy involved in any activity or product. Relativity doesn’t really apply here, but mass of one sort or another does have an equivalent energy, basically what it takes to make or replace something. For example, you can imagine the steps involved in making a wooden rafter (growing, felling, hauling, milling, treatment, etc.) and dealing with the waste.

This makes local, minimalist, low-impact operations more desirable than heavily mechanised ones that involve long-distance shipping. But is that the whole story?

Generally, one gallon of petrol is considered equivalent to any other. But one might have been extracted easily and without displacing people or animals, then refined, shipped and used carefully. Another might have been taken from a corrupt regime, by using armed might to exclude native people, and using processes that pollute and kill.

That’s where the general cynicism comes from: the suspicion that there is no right answer that we can ever approximate. Which is possibly true, except that the primary environmental problem is climate change and it is our energy use that is directly related to human carbon dioxide production.

Having said that, the environment is no our only concern and climate change is not our only environmental problem. If we are going to address sustainability as a whole, we do need other measures: for social justice and the economy. In other words, carbon footprinting is not fundamentally flawed—it does what it is meant to do—but it doesn’t provide a measure for all ills.

At the same time, carbon footprinting is a general measure of environmental impact. Our combined footprints criss-cross over the entire globe, several times over (hence the cliché that we need something like seven planets to support our lifestyle). Parts of those prints are in places that cannot take the impact.

Even the carbon in the most dainty footprint shares its effect with all the others, and parts of the world like the Pacific islands and the Arctic suffer disproportionately from the combined effect.
But there are more specific environmental problems than rising sea levels and changing and increasingly chaotic weather patterns: pollution, disrupted migration routes, imported pests and disease for example. All these have to be taken into consideration, along with the other aspects of sustainability.

Again but: but what this consideration does tell us is that our global carbon footprint has to be reduced by more than enough to save Western civilisation. It has to be reduced by enough, and fast enough, to save the most vulnerable ecosystems.