Sustainability – the revolution of impossibility

Lately I have been thinking about the transition to a low carbon economy in terms of it being a “sustainability revolution”. Although I am guilty of being slightly lax with my terminology by equating these two concepts, I find it a useful position to think from.

The sustainability revolution, should it come to pass, is comparable in scale to previous revolutions, like the industrial revolution, the green (agricultural) revolution, and the communications/internet revolution. However there is a very important distinction. These past revolutions were not driven by coherent visions of a better future being forced on a world that was reluctant to change. Perhaps visions did exist of how the world would be transformed by these technologies, but the visions were predictions, not blueprints. The revolutions were driven by new technologies and ideas that opened up new opportunities – more often than not, the driver was the potential for profit more than anything else.

So why should sustainability need a vision? Will it not just grow organically, riding on the back of a wave of new opportunities? Unfortunately no. Sustainability is not a revolution of possibility, but of impossibility. It is impossible to continue on our current path for much longer. Climate change, the stretching of natural limits and the availability of non-renewable resources mean that business as usual is no longer an option – one way or another, things are going to change. The sustainability & low carbon transition is driven but what is not possible.

That’s why this revolution, unlike previous ones, needs a coherent and credible vision of a sustainable future as a starting point.

Although if that statement is true, we have already fallen at the first hurdle. There seems to be as many conceptions of sustainability as there advocates. In general, such vision are caught between the pessimism that the world is coming to an end and the optimism of a brighter future. The schizophrenic nature of the debate has contributed to the ambiguous definition of the word “sustainable”, which can mean anything from the happy continuation of the status quo (e.g. “sustainable profits”, “sustainable growth”), to a complete transformation and downsizing of all of our human systems and impacts so that we can live in harmony with the earth.

Is this an impossible contradiction? Is sustainability, then, an impossible revolution, as well as being a revolution of impossibility?

Australia shuns the low carbon transition

Update: the government has released a number of amendments that have turned me around on this issue.

The Australian government is conducting a senate inquiry into climate policy, focusing on the recent draft legislation to set up an emissions trading system, called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. For me, the government’s climate policy increasingly looks like an exercise in avoiding change.

I added my 2 cents worth here (permanent link here) – submission number 391 out of 415 unique submissions posted so far and reportedly over 13,500 total submissions (including standard form letters from activist organisations). Probably it will just be lost in the noise, but there is no harm in trying.

On the “environmental” side of the argument, the criticisms of the scheme mostly fall into these categories:

• targets too weak (5% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020, or 15% if a comprensive global agreement is reached)
• excessive compensation to the big polluters
• “voluntary” emissions reductions not counted – household energy efficiency, for example, will only reduce the obligation of industry to reduce emissions

In the “big business” corner (if that is a fair categorisation), the arguments are mostly:

• targets are excessive
• insufficient compensation to industry X
• there is no climate change / there is climate change but its not anthropogenic / there is anthropogenic climate change but Australia is not the primary cause and shouldn’t be acting alone

That’s a very broad generalisation, and there are many exceptions on both sides, but that seems to be roughly how the argument is playing out.

I took a slightly different angle. To me, the biggest problem with the current draft is that the focus is on meeting our international obligations on emissions reduction at the lowest cost to the economy. There are two glaring problems with that. Firstly, the post-Kyoto negotiations are happening later this year, so why set these below-par national targets in stone now, other than to play the disruptive and self-serving role of – “Oh, we can’t possibly agree to that target because we’re already defined our national target in legislation”.

The second problem, which I concentrated on in my submission, is that the focus should really be on transitioning to a low carbon economy, rather than simply meeting targets. It is possible for us to meet our targets by buying all of our permits internationally, effectively outsourcing our emissions reductions by paying others to do it. This would impose a cost, without the attendant benefits of creating new jobs and industries. The world economy is changing – we simply have no choice – and the change brings with it enormous opportunities to the early movers. If we try to minimise the damage by minimising the extent of the change, we will be left behind. This point seems to be lost in the current debate.

For the record, here are my recommendations:

1. Implement a stronger conditional target of 25% by 2020 (in the event of a substantial international agreement)
2. Explicitly state the importance of the transition to a low carbon economy
3. Place a limit on the proportion of credits that can be purchased internationally
4. Establish a price floor in the permit market
5. Establish a broader innovation framework.

For details see my full submission. For a laugh, also see the sentence before my recommendations: “Four recommendations are addressed in this submission”. I threw that in to make sure they were paying attention.