The Three Pillars Vs. The Three Rings
Mar. 24th, 2013 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorJust stumbled upon a New York Times article concerning sustainable development that posits a problem with a popular model, that of the Three Pillars of Sustainable Development. Those pillars are the Environment, Society, and the Economy. Here's a National Council for Science and the Environment page discussing the issue, and an image from the same page depicting the pillars in question:
Seems pretty clear, doesn't it? I am concerned, though, about the source page. It's pretty slick, and the graphic design of the above image the same. No surprise then that the left sidebar of that page is littered with sponsorship logos. Where you find sponsors, you find people trying to encourage change, sure, whatever . . . but only as long as it does not affect business. After all, I'm sure the only reason the Economic Prosperity pillar was listed first was because it's also first alphabetically.
By contrast, the NYT's piece frames the question in an entirely new way. Instead of individual pillars (Ionic ones at that, for what it's worth), a few working on the problem of sustainable development have developed the nested model:
That's quite a change. No more can societal issues be separated from environmental ones, any more than economic issues be considered separate from either societal or environmental. I especially like this model because it allows for the destruction of the center; our economy can disappear, but our society survive, albeit in a different configuration, and probably quite a bit more simply. Likewise, affect the environment too much and the society can be in serious trouble, or not even there at all. This is what might happen slowly or quickly under a catabolic collapse scenario, where society simplifies first by abandoning its accreted economic traditions, then its accreted technological traditions, then its accreted cultural traditions.
I say "accreted" because for any of the later "developments" in technology or economy to be embraced, there must be a floor, a base that supports them. One cannot, for example, have much of an internet and communications industry without a robust communications network already in place; one cannot either have a computer industry without a robust electrical grid. Lose either and there might be some patchwork semblance of the original surviving perhaps years into the future, but only temporarily, and never at a level anyone could define as "industrial."
Sadly, the original pillar model suggested in the National Council for Science and the Environment page fails because it evades this catabolic reality. From the NYT's page (which embraces the concept of the "Anthropocene", the era of humans and their technology affecting the earth:
Why? Returning to the sponsorship logo parade in the sidebar, if the problem is not redefined you get thinking that allows sponsorship of think tanks and papers from entities that have as their financial bottom line the protection not of the overall life support system the planet provides, but rather activities that might hasten the arrival of collapse itself. Shell Oil comes to mind, and within its interests that of UPS (which depends upon Shell's product), and within that Pepsico (which depends upon deliveries of its products from companies like UPS fueled by Shell to retail outlets and its many fast food installations pushing its products). Essentially, you get a cockeyed and unbalanced pillar system most correctly envisioned by the folks behind a global day of protest about the entire issue:
Ooh, look, there's Shell's logo again!
Coincidence? Maybe. . . .
Seems pretty clear, doesn't it? I am concerned, though, about the source page. It's pretty slick, and the graphic design of the above image the same. No surprise then that the left sidebar of that page is littered with sponsorship logos. Where you find sponsors, you find people trying to encourage change, sure, whatever . . . but only as long as it does not affect business. After all, I'm sure the only reason the Economic Prosperity pillar was listed first was because it's also first alphabetically.
By contrast, the NYT's piece frames the question in an entirely new way. Instead of individual pillars (Ionic ones at that, for what it's worth), a few working on the problem of sustainable development have developed the nested model:
That's quite a change. No more can societal issues be separated from environmental ones, any more than economic issues be considered separate from either societal or environmental. I especially like this model because it allows for the destruction of the center; our economy can disappear, but our society survive, albeit in a different configuration, and probably quite a bit more simply. Likewise, affect the environment too much and the society can be in serious trouble, or not even there at all. This is what might happen slowly or quickly under a catabolic collapse scenario, where society simplifies first by abandoning its accreted economic traditions, then its accreted technological traditions, then its accreted cultural traditions.
I say "accreted" because for any of the later "developments" in technology or economy to be embraced, there must be a floor, a base that supports them. One cannot, for example, have much of an internet and communications industry without a robust communications network already in place; one cannot either have a computer industry without a robust electrical grid. Lose either and there might be some patchwork semblance of the original surviving perhaps years into the future, but only temporarily, and never at a level anyone could define as "industrial."
Sadly, the original pillar model suggested in the National Council for Science and the Environment page fails because it evades this catabolic reality. From the NYT's page (which embraces the concept of the "Anthropocene", the era of humans and their technology affecting the earth:
For the past 26 years, a single definition of sustainable development has ruled: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” And a single concept has shaped international policy: the three pillars of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental.
In the Anthropocene we must abandon old thinking.
We need to redefine the problem.
Why? Returning to the sponsorship logo parade in the sidebar, if the problem is not redefined you get thinking that allows sponsorship of think tanks and papers from entities that have as their financial bottom line the protection not of the overall life support system the planet provides, but rather activities that might hasten the arrival of collapse itself. Shell Oil comes to mind, and within its interests that of UPS (which depends upon Shell's product), and within that Pepsico (which depends upon deliveries of its products from companies like UPS fueled by Shell to retail outlets and its many fast food installations pushing its products). Essentially, you get a cockeyed and unbalanced pillar system most correctly envisioned by the folks behind a global day of protest about the entire issue:
Ooh, look, there's Shell's logo again!
Coincidence? Maybe. . . .