Towards a Sustainable Culture

Brian hosted a retreat here last weekend for some members of the "wine before breakfast" and Graduate Christian Fellowship communities at the University of Toronto, where he is a chaplain. I gave a short presentation on sustainability: a definition, a history of the subject, sustainability in an agricultural context and how that translates into the health of our culture as a whole. I'll be mining some of this material for entries in the coming days as a way of tying into reflections on what I see as the core "principles of sustainability," a theme I began working on last year, although I didn't get very far with it.

A definition of sustainability:

sustain: provide with the basic necessities required to support or preserve life livelihood, or existence; maintain or keep (an action or process) going continuously

sustainable: “Ecology” (esp. of development) that conserves an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources; that may be maintained, esp. at a particular level

- Oxford Canadian Dictionary

The concept was introduced in the late 1970s and was emphasized strongly in the ‘World Conservation Strategy,’ published in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme and the World Wildlife Fund (now the Worldwide Fund for Nature). "Our Common Future," published in 1983 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), defined it as development that “seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.”

- Oxford Concise Dictionary of Ecology

Generally speaking, sustainable activities use materials in continuous cycles. They use continuously reliable sources of energy and arise mainly from the qualities of being human (i.e. creativity, communication, spiritual and intellectual development). Non-sustainable activities require continual inputs of non-renewable resources, use renewable resources faster than their rate of renewal, cause cumulative degradation of the environment, require resources in quantities that undermine other people’s well-being, and lead to the extinction of other life forms and cultures.

One of the most elegant models of sustainability for me is the birch-bark canoe. Its materials were harvested in such a way that they did not damage the source. It was a method of transportation perfectly adapted to its environment, and it was 100% locally produced and biodegradable.

When the first white man arrived to North America, he looked out over the land and called it ‘a pristine, untouched wilderness.’ That’s got to be the greatest compliment that anybody could pay to Native people, who have lived here for thousands of years.

- Bill Mason, Waterwalker

As a culture, we are nowhere near this level of sustainability, even those of us who are paying a good deal of attention to the problem. It is helpful to me to think of sustainability as a continuum -- a goal to which we are advancing. In every situation we can ask ourselves, of several choices, which one is sustainable over the long term.

I spent several days in February cutting a new trail in our hardwood forest, harvesting trees that will serve us for stovewood next winter. The most sustainable way to pull felled trees out of the woods is with draft horses, and there are operations in this area that do use them for this purpose, including, but not limited to, our Amish neighbours.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the time, money, or barn space to invest in a team of draft horses for the small amount of logging we currently do. So I used our tractor. This makes us more dependent on fossil fuel consumption, but the biggest problem is that the tractor does not participate in the same cycle of material use and disposal that the horses do. At one point the hydraulic system on the tractor developed a leak, and I didn’t notice right away that this had happened. I had left a trail of hydraulic fluid on the snow behind me for quite a distance. This is not going to have a big impact on the health of the forest, but it will have some, whereas a birch-bark canoe or a team of draft horses, well-managed, can have no negative impact on an ecosystem because they participate entirely in the growth and decay cycle of materials and energy. There is no cumulative ecological degradation involved in their use.

This example, for me, begins to get at the fallacy of technological solutions to ecological problems or threats. Our faith in our technology and our own ability to limit our ecological impact without limiting our appetite has been shown consistently to fail. It is for this reason that I will never believe that oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge can be pursued without compromising the viability of the ecosystems the refuge is intended to protect. We haven’t learned the lesson of the Titanic which is, really, the lesson of the tower of Babel. Our faith in our own ability to be god is entirely misplaced. Our infallible towers fall, our unsinkable ships sink, and our unspillable systems for transporting oil spill.

It is no thought or word that called culture into being, but a tool or a weapon. After the stone axe we needed song and story to remember innocence, to record effect – and so to describe the limits, to say what can be done without damage… a man with a machine and inadequate culture… is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.

- Wendell Berry, “Damage” What Are People For?