Sustainability dilemmas require thinking out of the box

The road to sustainability is not straight. It may even hold diversions and impasses that we have to travel and travel back. This is annoying in itself and even more so when we have to do it at some speed. In the debate some of the dilemmas have been highlighted, dilemmas where our hearts and emotions may say one thing but where our brains and acts may say another. Do we have to choose between Food or Biofuel, Local Production or Global Trade, Consume or Save? Can the instruments we use to analyse and create sustainable systems help us solve, or at least navigate among, these dilemmas?

Food or Fuel?

This dilemma is often phrased as:
·         “Should poor people starve because rich people want to travel?” or
·         “Should we put edible products in our cars?”

The first phrasing has a room (land-use) aspect and the other an inter-temporal aspect.
It may not have to be food or fuel - it could be food and fuel - but it will require a careful consideration of related policies. It is not only for a laissez-faire market to solve, as has been well outlined by the director of International Food Policy Research Institute. There are many things depending on each other in a complex system, but the main components seem to be that:

·         Biofuel feedstock can/should be grown on other soils than those used for food crops
·         The huge potential for Biofuel is not in the most sensitive famine areas
·         Biofuel production can add value to the land use for poor farmers and attract capital to improve productivity in  the food production
 

However, one risk is that the added value will still not reach the poor, but remain with the land-owners and the companies. Another is that they will to reap as much as they can quickly, which could result in huge mono-cultures.

The inter-temporal aspect is also important. It is true that ethanol produced from e.g. corn is a waste in many respects and that there is an urgent need to develop the methods to make use of cellulosic feedstock, but it is also true that a technology development is closely linked to the building of markets that can motivate new (and initially) more expensive technologies. It is therefore encouraging to see that some of the U.S. candidates for President as, for example, Barack Obama makes it perfectly clear that the present production methods should be replaced by second generation biofuels in spite of the fact that the U.S. farmers are quite pleased with status quo.

So, this dilemma requires that we can handle a problem not as a simple issue of either/or, but as a complex both/and and now/then.
 

Local production or Global trade?

Transportation of products requires energy. Especially in food production, there is a strong trend to choose locally produced food over such that has been transported over a distance, sometimes over continents. When done for reasons of quality, taste, freshness there is hardly any argument, but when done for concern over energy and greenhouse gases there could be an argument against the counting of so called “food miles”.
 

The concern for food miles may lead us astray, not the least since food production in a northern climate requires quite a bit of energy for heating and lighting in the winter.

One interesting simple rule to solve it could be “buy local when you can, import when you must.” Then it is up to each and everyone to find out when we “must.”

For this dilemma, we are quite well equipped analytically by considerations over the balance of primary energy and of energy quality. Do not focus on one part of the distribution chain only. Be aware that what is right in one situation may be wrong in another.

Consume or Save?

A more traditional discussion that has returned is the one about our growing consumption. Is it good to consume (and waste) or should we be more careful with what we have already got – save and recycle? The argument for a growing consumption is that more and more people can get involved in economic activities that allow a higher welfare in terms of access to goods that make life easier, not the least in developing countries.

The argument against is an argument about the quality in the consumption rather than about consumption itself. Are all goods equal? Are not some goods more important, e.g. food and clothing over DVDs, fashion and drugs? Are not some qualities more important, for example durable over short-life goods.

A special case is the one argued from the appliance manufacturers that claim that it could be useful to scrap old functioning appliances to be replaced with new ones that use less energy in operation. A natural conclusion of the fact that much equipment has a greater impact on environment in operation than in production, e.g. white-goods, motors, transformers, lighting equipment etc. A surge of quality consumptions (= investment), a general up-grading could be useful for the climate.

The tool to use for the analysis is basically a Life-Cycle Calculation, LCC.

Conclusions - Think out of the box

To transform our society into sustainability requires thinking out of the box. Much of the traditional thinking and the analytical tools is about incremental changes. Sustainability is not achieved by increments– It is about fundamental changes. So, we need to sharpen our ability to deal with:

·         Political simplicity, the either/or questions might be more facetted
·         Economic calculation, that do not take the full scope of changes into account
·         Systems and the identification of their proper borders