Sustainability and Change: A Practical Manifesto

A very hot topic, these days, is sustainability, yet it is one people have trouble defining and explaining. There’s nothing wrong with feeling stymied trying to define hard subject matters, but let’s face it—most of us lack the patience to delve too deeply into environmental matters, which often seem both depressing and overwhelming. Take global warming. Yes, take it, please!

Some prominent leaders in academia, government, and business still prescribe to the notion that global warming is a myth, or at best exaggerated. I attended a presentation recently at a private club in Charlotte whose lecturer, Dr. Richard Lindzen, a noted meteorology professor at MIT, dismissed 99% of his fellow scientists as being over the top in their concerns about climate change. These PhD Pollyannas, he implied, were more interested in creating a lucrative industry of fear around global warming than actually examining the data closely and realizing that human-generated air pollution really had little impact on climate change. Yes, the real fault was all those volcanoes and rain forest trees emitting volatile organic compounds.

I practiced controlled seething during most of the professor’s presentation; I knew that his chair at MIT was endowed by Exxon-Mobil. By the expressions on others’ faces, including the woman next to me, I could tell that others were angry and incredulous as well.

One of the issues surrounding any discussion about pressing environmental issues, such as climate change, involves creating sustainable communities by helping everyone concerned get beyond this kind of divisive nonsense. No one benefits in the long run except for overpaid pundits, demagogues, and the paid hacks of the fossil fuel industry, and he was a highly paid hack, indeed.

Creating a “green is good” ethos within a “greed is good” climate in proto-conservative America would have been impracticable fifteen years ago, but ever since “An Inconvenient Truth” went mainstream, the average US resident is finally paying attention. A hugely expensive, protracted war in Iraq has also inspired conservation from a national security standpoint. It has taken more than affordable, fuel-efficient hybrids and compact fluorescents to change behavior in this regard.

The laws of physics dictate that we can only grow so much. Perpetuating traditional patterns of growth based on the bottom line, meaning rapid, poorly planned development that profits only a few, will eventually degrade the earth and lead to our extinction. Why is it, then, that we still construct residences with 1950s building techniques? Why do Europeans use stainless steel utensils at their events and we still use plastic disposable ones? How come Brazil and France are beating our pants off in bio-fuel technology and usage? Regarding ethanol, the U.S. imposes trade restrictions on Brazilian ethanol to encourage domestic ethanol production, most of which is based on processing corn rather than sugar cane or soybeans. Our ethanol production methods remain expensive, inefficient, and reliant on fossil fuels to produce.

Moreover, why is it that the Japanese can successfully build and sell a million hybrid cars and not one of our auto manufacturers can?

For one thing, the Japanese have been forced by the laws of physics into living communally and harmoniously with each other. We have not. As a result, we have been far more selfish in the way we treat land, water, air, and other resources. It is part of our pioneer, property rights-inflamed heritage.

Japanese society, by contrast, has a rigorous conservation tradition based on deprivation. They dug out from their fire-bombed cities and resurrected themselves into the world’s second strongest economy in only 40 years. The country prizes its natural beauty and classifies 1,000 year-old trees as gods. It’s not about to start mining its cherished mountains for iron ore, preferring rather to import steel from countries who don’t mind strip mining theirs. The Japanese are also very communal and don’t mind living in close quarters. Forty-four percent of Japan’s population is concentrated within three metropolitan zones, each spanning a 31-mile radius from a city center, and together comprising only 5.9 percent of the nation's total land mass. The Kansai and Kanto Basin regions have 35 million each. Japan has 336 people per sq mile while the U.S. has 29.7. Charlotte’s population density is 2543 people per square mile; Tokyo’s, by contrast, is 18,245 people per square mile or seven times higher, and that’s in a city with big parks.

Americans are not about to start modeling their consumption habits after the Japanese, or after the Spaniards or Indians for that matter. What we can do, however, is figure out how to become better informed about the benefits of sustainable design and practice. This will require trained experts getting the word out to corporations, communities, and individuals. Americans are innovative and entrepreneurial, and the smartest ones learn to embrace change even when it may initially aggravate and inconvenience them.

To be uninformed, then, is to be left behind. We need to reclaim our collective reasoning skills and focus on things that benefit both our pocketbooks and our communities. People with little influence tend to get distracted by mainstream media and its obsessions (e.g., Paris Hilton’s antics). They feel impotent to fight global warming or change the course of the Iraq War, so they regress into learned behaviors that help them “just get by.” Getting the majority of citizens to understand the importance of sustainable development is a real challenge, but it’s absolutely essential for our survival.

One of my favorite quotes about sustainability originates with an icon of American conservation, Teddy Roosevelt: "The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired in value." In other words, don’t screw up the environment or your children will never forgive you. That has impact. It is much more effective than the most popular statement on the matter, issued by the World Commission on Environment and Development twenty years ago: Sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It’s an example of how definition by committee can make potential sustainability converts turn into pessimists and reactionaries.

So, how exactly does a region such as the central Carolinas, a microcosm of America, get on the sustainability bandwagon and stop committing sins against nature, so to speak?

One method rests upon convincing business and organization leaders that “green is good” should be part of their policy. Greed may still be good to many uber-capitalists, but natural capitalists like to go to bed with a clear conscience. Guiding organizations through the process of becoming more sustainable, economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally, is actually invigorating because it’s relatively new territory and brings out the pioneer spirit in people. Coaching a group of leaders on sustainable materials, products, or best practices first requires transforming their behavior, convincing them that superior project management, precise data, and corporate altruism result in excellent business decisions that create healthier communities. The process is far more manageable if we concentrate on fostering sustainable change within regional communities such as the Central Carolina Piedmont rather than attempt to correct an entire nation’s consumption patterns.

In addition to proving the benefits of green products and services to a potential organization, especially one without deep pockets, it’s crucial to promote sustainable change within both the organization itself and the community it serves in order to achieve clear results. This is the real key to making the sustainability gospel a reality. Organizational leaders demand strategies and tools that enable them to transcend often unproductive meetings with few or negligible results, certainly nothing that can be measured as a benefit.

Most Americans tend to be pragmatists at heart, so emphasizing practical measures and solutions that consider four major factors—cultural, social, economic, and environmental equity--opens up a dialogue between visionaries and reactionaries who normally wouldn’t talk to each other. The great challenge remains overcoming perceptions that are often grounded in conventional wisdom, or in the case of many Southern locales, the established social order. This attitude must change or local companies will fail to thrive. Online magazines such as green@work and the articles of The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman are full of this philosophy.

Many of the residents of Charlotte are non-natives. Charlotteans come from all over the world, and the ethnic mix gets more diverse daily. How we succeed with becoming more sustainable, then, will depend on socio-economic and cultural factors, not just on how we interpret demographic data. There’s recent environmental research indicating that education, cultural diversity, and adaptability are more crucial than raw demographic data in determining our quality of life and how to improve it. If we ignore what other progressive nations and enlightened American cities are doing with regard to sustainable design and development, our air quality will improve little to none at all, our forests will continue to diminish, our water tables will shrink, and the heat index of Central Piedmont urban areas will increase. We must change.

But change is painful, and we must eliminate some of the barriers to make it easier for people. What are the biggest barriers we face? What are the benefits and incentives that will help people practice more sustainable behaviors?

Going from Good Intentions to Actions

If there is one thing that helps create tangible benefits, it is getting a group to sign off on a commitment to change. This form of change occurs when you get people together and make the abstract real. Many people in cities such as Charlotte feel powerless to have any positive impact on climate change even though changing small, daily habits en masse would have significant impact. An Inconvenient Truth presented an overabundance of desultory information and data points that left quite a few people feeling hopeless. The movie Killowatt Ours, by contrast, gave viewers tangible, practical steps and examples to reduce their energy consumption. It is far more effective to have a pediatrician who specializes in asthma tell citizens that SUV’s idling in carpool lanes will increase their kids’ risk of contracting asthma than to have a politician preach at us about global warming. The method is especially effective when sustainability advocates go neighborhood to neighborhood. The impersonal mechanism of large government determining compliance rules and regulations turns potential “true believers” off as well. People hate having things shoved down their throats, specifically people running businesses whose gross profits margins are, well, marginal.

Making Sustainable Action Easy for People

How do we get busy, overwhelmed people to act sustainably? Here’s one way. IKEA NA has developed a "Bag the Plastic Bag” program. Each IKEA plastic bag costs a store customer five cents. IKEA has partnered with American Forests to use all proceeds from this campaign to fund tree planting and forest restoration to offset CO2 emissions. What this program does is make it easy for consumers to alter their customer behavior and endorse environmentally responsible habits. IKEA also sells its reusable “Big Blue Bag” for 59 cents, a cost the company reduced from 99 cents. Shoppers now use far fewer plastic bags, which has a positive effect on the environment since fewer of them end up along our freeways and landfills. The slight downside is that American Forests isn’t generating as much income from this campaign since it expected consumers to be less diligent about changing their behavior, but that forces American Forests to create other ways to get people to conserve. The innovation loop continues.

Building Community Support

Successful, vibrant towns and cities have successful organizations taking pride in maintaining and preserving their environment. Think of Chicago. In the 1960s and 70s, Chicago was one of the most polluted and violent cities in the United States. It still has problems with crime, but not in areas where communities are getting directly involved with economic, social, and environmental development. Citizens groups and small businesses alike need to know how integrating the natural environment into their lives helps them long term. Modeling behavior seems to work best in this regard. Any community, no matter what its social or economic class is, can take the lead and drive the change. Older Charlotte neighborhood organizations such as Dilworth, Myers Park, and Plaza-Midwood should meet with Optimist Park, Biddleville, and Derita leaders and share information on water conservation, carpooling, green building, and renewable energy tax credits, just to mention a few topics. This city ranks near last in America for dialogue between races, and that hurdle must overcome if Charlotte is to remain more than a patchwork quilt of traditional versus sustainable development.

Getting the Message Out Effectively

Listed below are recommendations on how to create effective messages about sustainable action steps. They are gleaned from Fostering Sustainable Change, by Canadian environmental psychologist, Douglas McKenzie-Mohr, and would be well-suited to a Writing 101 class:

• Know your audience

• Use credible sources

• Frame your message carefully

• Make your message specific

• Make your message memorable

• Provide Goals the community understands and that are measurable

Two other vital components of effective messaging are modeling the sustainable behavior oneself, either by driving a hybrid, buying a solar hot water heating system, building a certifiably green home, or providing feedback on how sustainable change practices are changing recycling practices within an organization. Posting signs above recycling containers that indicate how many aluminum cans have been recycled in the past weeks or months increases capture rates by 65%. According to McKenzie-Mohr, Canadian households that received weekly feedback on the total pounds of paper they recycled increased their recycling amount by 26% over ones that didn’t.

On a larger scale, Bank of America has employed Six Sigma, a statistics-driven quality and productivity system coupled with sound project management, to save the bank over $2.5 billion since its inception this century. Banks love to save money, and this program is all about cutting waste and costs and helping the bottom line. Why not measure outcomes on a much more micro and understandable basis within our own personal and professional communities?

Providing Incentives that Motivate People and Organizations

Economic incentives are crucial to securing buy-in from the business community. The Charlotte Tree Advisory Commission was tasked about ten years ago with rewriting its Urban Tree Ordinance. The pushback from developers and the Manufacturing Council was fierce. They were both in defense mode. The Number One obstacle, they argued, was that the Commission and City of Charlotte were not giving them good incentives. There was no clear economic benefit to them; in fact, they would have to spend additional money to protect or replant trees, a cost they would have to pass along to new home buyers.When economic data proved that properties with mature or attractive native hardwoods commanded higher prices and maintained better property values, however, the developers started listening. One thing that turned them around was letting them decide which part of the property could have tree saves. An area zoned R-8 could have a nice shady buffer between another part of the development, or it could have maples planted symmetrically in every front yard for blocks. The Tree Commission originally wanted 25% existing or replanted tree canopy, but the compromise resulted in 10%, not including right-of-ways, which the city maintained and planted. When developers realized the economic and environmental benefits, they agreed that 10% was a good resolution. The Tree Commission will invariably want to revise and get more land preserved, but that will take a more enlightened development community.

Removing External Barriers to Change

Here are some common barriers to changing people’s sustainability behavior and some proposed solutions:

1. Waste reduction. It’s much easier to throw away plastic utensils than to recycle them. Solution: Replace existing ones with metal ones. Virtually no town in the U.S. offers recycling for utensils made from oil-based polymers. This lack of infrastructure makes it prohibitive to separate all the various kinds of plastics. People aren’t going to gather collectively to start washing all those dirty forks and knives at their myriad functions. Electing a metal utensil-only program that emphasizes reuse rather than recycling overcomes the barrier and saves money.

2. Energy Conservation: It’s too expensive to upgrade insulation or install energy efficient windows. Now that affordable energy-efficient materials and products are available to consumers, people can offset renovation costs through savings in energy use. One small business employing four people will save over $2,000 a year simply by converting from incandescent light bulbs to CFs. That factors in the cost of the new bulbs as well.

3. Water Conservation: It’s inconvenient for property owners to buy and installfaucet aerators, low-flow shower heads, and other energy-saving devices in commercial condo units. Solution: Have an energy efficiency specialist do the job. New condo developments can have an energy efficiency specialist install them as a matter of best practice and make the customers happy with lower water bills.

Transportation: It’s too much trouble to take the bus or light rail compared to driving a car. The solution here will probably fall into the bailiwick of the municipality’s transportation director. Altering the relative convenience of driving by making driving less convenient, something tantamount to sacrilege in this culture, is what has worked in Canada and abroad. Introducing speed bumps and roundabouts is also effective, as is keeping existing one-way streets just that.

Designing Effective Programs for This Region

Many well-intentioned groups have convened and discussed what needs to get done to maintain a healthy environment and economy. Nevertheless, many of these groups, which are comprised mostly of well-educated white people, failed to listen to people from lower economic and social classes, both minorities and poor whites. Any sustainability program needs to incorporate the voice of people who have traditionally been excluded from planning discussions. Planning committees need more inclusion, they need to engaged informed representatives from diverse groups. At the same time, we need to fill a major gap. The Latino community in the South has exploded because of the new housing boom. Middle-tier home builders, who are responsible for huge amount of construction, are major contributors to reducing natural space by 40 to 50 acres a day. Many of the people building homes for them are from south of the U.S. border. There seems to be no end in sight for cookie-cutter, non-sustainable built houses and commercial structures built by cheap labor, and this labor force and their employers need to get on board with sustainability or it could be incredibly harmful.

A well-designed community is sustainable, and most of the ones going up today aren’t. Witness the tremendous increase in teardowns and the discord this is creating in urban environments. This kind of architectural and energy gluttony is ruinous and has got to stop. It’ll take gutsy leadership on many levels to accomplish the desired effect, which is a far healthier community.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

As we move forward, we must replace old ways of thinking with new ones. People leading the change must be well-versed in many areas; energy, architecture, planning, commerce, construction, biology, local cultures, native environments, finance and economics, and systems design, among others. Moreover, they must be willing to listen and weigh counter-arguments and validate people’s concerns. It’s much easier to advocate sustainable change, for instance, in architectural communities as opposed to home construction industry. Architects are more comfortable with design and theory, whereas builders usually want clear, concrete outcomes. The age old debate between vitalism and mechanism comes to mind. Sustainability advocates are perceived to be vitalists along the line of chiropractors and acupuncturists, whereas the traditionalists are the AMA-approved physicians and surgeons. This dichotomy is no longer valid, and we need a new way of interpreting the synergies that result from divergent fields collaborating for the good of society.

Conclusion

Businesspeople and environmentalists are now meeting at the same table. Look at the good work that Environmental Defense is doing across the nation. More and more people are demanding tangible results that lead to an improved quality of life. Organizations seeking to incorporate sustainability into their policies and practices are therefore leaders who ultimately benefit the greater community, environmentally, socially, economically, and culturally.