Sustainability is Dead

I was at a function the other day on the future of energy in Australia. One of the speakers made the point that energy provision, specifically electricity, requires reliability, security, energy quality, affordability and sustainability. The last one, he said, was really at the consumer end of things. It's not so important so can be deferred.

At first I was put out and tempted to heckle but decorum got the better of me and gave me time to think. And I think I see his point.

'Sustainability' is one of those words that means everything and therefore nothing. If we take it to mean triple bottom line reporting, or being inclusive of others, or using recycled carpet in the office, then sure, defer it: it's not core to the mission of delivering electricity. I can see how ensuring reliable, high quality energy to keep society running takes precedence over touchy-feely initiatives that assuage consumer guilt over boiling the kettle with too much water in it.

But if the fifth requirement of energy provision was changed from ‘sustainability’ to ‘do not destabilise the biosphere to the point that civilisation starts to fail’, then perspectives shift. This is not a consumer-end, nice-to-have add-on for some social licence. It's preconditional to everything else. This is absolutely a consideration for the generators, as well as the consumers.

The point, I guess, is that we use these shorthand words, usually badly, and lose sight of what really matters. ‘Sustainability’ is now loaded with so much baggage that some people are actively trying to roll back decent initiatives that make the world slightly better.

Looking back on my own career, most of what we called ‘sustainable’ was really just 'efficiency' or 'doing less bad'. The journey was still to hell in a handbasket, but we'd be travelling a little slower. Sure, we'll concrete over this wetland, but we'll use recycled aggregate. That kind of thing.

While efficiency is still good, the focus now needs to shift to resilience: how can we make the systems of civilisation able to withstand extreme weather and supply chain disruptions, and how can the built form support the social structures we need to connect with and help each other?

One of the most effective ways to promote resilience is through regeneration of nature. It's easy to forget, living in a city where water comes from the tap and food from the supermarket, that we exist only because of the natural processes that give us clean air, fresh water and nutritious food. These processes need the interconnected complexity of nature to work properly and, with our activities increasingly encroaching on nature, it is time to lend a hand.

(Returning to my lunchtime speaker, if he saw a stable biosphere as fundamental to society, (even more so than energy supply), then he'd see that energy provision needs to have low emissions and low ecological impact, as well as being reliable, secure, high quality, and affordable. Since this list rules out fossil fuels, renewables, hydro and nuclear, it might be time to question some of the assumptions. More on that another time.)

So rather than 'sustainability', I will now be talking about:

Resilience. Designs in the built environment that can withstand or bounce back from extreme weather events are better than the alternative and will hold value.

Efficiency. Using less of something to do the same job is sensible and saves money.

Restoration or renewal. A healthy biosphere isn't an optional extra, it's preconditional to complex life, including yours.

Will this be enough to help us thrive in the future? Maybe. We owe it to ourselves to give it a red hot go, though.