The Power of Sustainable Thinking

How to Create a Positive Future for the Climate, the Planet, Your Organization and Your Life

Bob Doppelt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136552441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Prise de décision

The future will be powered by sustainable thinking in business, organizations, governments and everyday life.

This revolutionary book tackles climate change, sustainability and life success by starting with your mind. It provides proven 'staged-based methods for transforming thinking and behaviour, beginning first with the reader's own cognitive patterns, then moving to how individuals can motivate other people to change, and finally to how teams and organizations can be motivated to change.

Part I The Imperatives of Change

1
The Gift

To most of the world, especially those of us living in the West, this seems like a particularly troubled time. From global warming to terrorism, growing poverty, war in the Middle East and uncertainties over the supply and affordability of oil, it sometimes feels as though the wheels of our civilization are all coming off at once.

At some point, every society finds itself confronted by forces that the reigning worldview cannot successfully address. Some forces arise from uncontrollable natural events. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the US Gulf Coast in 2005, many people were forced to re-examine their perspectives about the role of government in overseeing construction, land use and emergency management systems. Others are self-inflicted, such as when a nation overextends itself in war and, as a result, must alter its entire foreign policy. Still other forces result from purposeful acts of enquiry that lead to entirely new understandings. The discovery of coal-driven steam power that triggered the Industrial Revolution comes to mind.

No matter what the cause, when societies come face to face with these core inflection points, the successful practices of the past quickly become failures because ideas and solutions that seemed pertinent under previous circumstances lead to disaster under new conditions.

It is at this point that societies rise or fall. Human history is filled with defining moments when, faced with new conditions that only altered perspectives could surmount, people were forced to make fundamental choices that determined their fate. Grasping the significance of such moments and making the deep shifts in thinking, perception and behaviour required in order to succeed in the new reality is what historian Thomas Berry (1999) calls The Great Work of a people.

Seen from this perspective, human history is the story of how societies responded to their defining moments. Occasionally in the past, tragedy resulted when a society failed to rise to the challenge. Archaeologists believe the Mayan culture in Mesoamerica collapsed, in large part, because they failed to heed the warning of depleted soils, silted lakes and declining water supply in dry years. Geographer Jarred Diamond (2005, p248) suggests that the Norse culture in Greenland collapsed predominantly because they did not adapt their thinking and perspectives to cooler weather conditions.

Yet, at other times, when societies altered their core beliefs and thought processes, greatness resulted. New perspectives opened the floodgates of inspiration, creativity and possibility. The Renaissance, which followed the Middle Ages, a time described as a period of darkness and ignorance, unleashed a flourishing of European artistic and scientific achievement, starting in Italy during the mid 1300s. Many historians today view the roots of the Renaissance as an intellectual and ideological change, rather than a substantive one.

One of the most important solutions to global warming is a deep-seated shift in the type and way in which energy is used. Transformations in the energy regimes that power societies have long been at the heart of many of history’s defining moments. Every major economic revolution throughout time, for example, has been driven by a fundamental shift in energy regimes because energy powers every aspect of human activity. The transition to new forms of energy inevitably alters a society’s beliefs and thought patterns in a fundamental way. With new thinking comes a shake-up of the prevailing economic, social and political power structure. The upheaval and stress that accompany these transformations typically marshal in legions of doomsayers and end-of-times religious revivals. Yet, looking back, one can see that each major energy transition offered the gifts of increased prosperity and well-being.

The first major energy shift came about 230,000 years ago when humans discovered how to control fire. The ability to kill germs by cooking food and to provide warmth in cold and damp weather dramatically reduced illness and death. The change from wood and organic material – for most of human history the dominant source of energy – to coal over 200 years ago launched the Industrial Revolution. In the first four decades of the 20th century, the transition from coal to oil, and then from the direct to the indirect use of fuel through electricity for commercial and residential uses, and from horses and coal-fired trains to electricity and oil-fuelled cars and tractors in the transportation sector, triggered wealth creation in the West on a scale never before seen in human history.

Despite the turmoil and difficulty involved in each of these transitions, changing conditions provided an offering that, with a suitable response, not only avoided the social calamity predicted by the pessimists, but dramatically improved human well-being.

Today, through circumstances only partly our doing, it is our turn. We have been offered a gift. We must decide if we will accept it. The offering has come about due to the profound risks posed to us and future generations by global climate change and many other interlinked environmental and social problems. These perils are the result of humankind’s failure to align our thinking and behaviours with the fundamental laws of ecological and human systems.

Human-induced global warming is perhaps the most serious threat that the whole of humanity has ever faced. It is the result of the most profound failure of perception and reason in the history of humanity. Climate change is not really new. Since time began, living beings have had to adapt to changing climatic conditions. However, most of the adjustments humans have made in the past were in response to short-term regionalized climate variations caused by natural events, such as volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in solar radiation. Today, for the first time in history, climate change threatens the entire world and humans are the dominant cause.

Global warming is the ultimate issue of sustainability. Although few people, as of yet, seem to grasp this, it will be the defining issue for all of humanity for decades to come.

In their Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2007) the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that it is unequivocal that global warming is happening now and that the consequences will be serious even if worldwide greenhouse gas emissions can be immediately reduced. For example, a global mean warming of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) is almost unavoidable due to the greenhouse gases already emitted into the atmosphere. Sea-level rise of up to 1.4m (4.6 feet) may now be inevitable. If global temperatures rise high enough to cause a partial deglaciation of the polar ice sheets, over a time frame of centuries or less sea levels may rise an additional 3.7m to 6m (12 to 20 feet).

Even a little less than a 2°C (3.6°F) warming would put millions of human beings at risk from coastal flooding, drought-induced famine and other effects. Up to 30 per cent of species on the planet could be pushed to the brink of extinction (IPCC, 2007). Temperature increases much above 2°C (3.6°F) compared to pre-industrial levels are very likely to force the climate beyond a point where dangerous risk to human societies and ecosystems rises substantially. Limiting warming to 2°C (3.6°F) must therefore be the goal for mankind.

James Hansen, head of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the first imminent scientists to warn the public about global warming, suggested in March 2008 that to limit temperature increases to 2°C, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases must be stabilized at no more than 350 parts per million (ppm). Climate models had previously suggested that keeping emission levels to between 450ppm and 550ppm would be sufficient, and the European Union and many of the big environmental groups had advocated for the lower end of this target. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has already reached 385ppm, which means that if Hansen is correct, emission levels may already be above the range that could trigger dangerous climate change.¹ This may explain why Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than climate models first predicted.

Time is therefore of the essence. To keep warming below 2°C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) chairman, Rachandra Pachuari, said in 2007 that changes instituted in the next two to three years must halt global emission increases in less than ten years (by 2015 was the date given) in order to avoid tragedies of an almost unimaginable scale. This must be followed by an unbending effort to reduce emissions by 50 to 80 per cent or more by mid century or earlier.

The need for dramatic emission reductions means we now live in a carbon-constrained world. For the next 100 years, and more likely for centuries, humanity will be forced to meet its needs while generating significantly less – and some would say almost zero – greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Accord, the world’s first international treaty aimed at controlling global warming, requires industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gases by 5 to 8 per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012 (targets and due dates are nation specific). Most of the nations that signed the accord are struggling to meet even these modest targets. A 50 to 80 per cent or more reduction seems especially daunting.

The ecological impacts of uncontrolled climate change, such as increased droughts, floods, wildfires, heat waves, disease, storm intensity and sea-level rise, will cause damage to the global economy on the scale of the great depression of the 1920s and 1930s or either World War. This was the conclusion of a major study released in 2006 by Nicholas Stern, head of the UK’s Government Economic Service and former chief economist for the World Bank. The report found that the economic impacts are likely to be between 5 and 20 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (Stern, 2006).

The main culprit is our use of fossil fuels. However, deforestation and land-use changes also contribute to the problem. Since the early 1800s, fossil fuels have powered the growth of Western industrial economies. More recently, coal and other fossil fuels have also powered the expansion of economies in nations such as China and India, processes that have elevated millions of people out of poverty. Whether burned in industrial or developing nations, however, fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide (CO₂) that accumulates in the atmosphere. Too much CO₂ heats up the Earth and unbalances the global climate. The climate crisis resulted from economic development that drives energy production and use in industrialized economies; but some developing nations, such as China and India, have now become major contributors as well.

So far, much of the attention on reducing greenhouse gas emissions has focused on power plants and large manufacturing facilities. Big energy producers and industrial plants, however, are not the sole problems. They generate energy and manufacture products for consumers. This means the problem is all of us. Ordinary people like you and me are the ultimate drivers of global warming through the greenhouse gases that we directly generate through our transportation choices, the way in which we power and manage our buildings and homes, and the waste that we generate. Consumers are also responsible for emissions that we indirectly influence through the type and amount of goods and services we purchase and use. One study found that consumers in the UK are directly or indirectly responsible for 60 per cent of that nation’s greenhouse gases (CBI, 2007). Another study in the UK found that at least a third of the carbon savings achievable from households result from behavioural changes as opposed to new technologies (Boardman, 2007). Almost two-thirds of the energy used in the US today comes from consumer-driven industries, including residential energy use and vehicle transportation (McKinsey and Company, 2008).

Solving global warming will therefore involve much more than modest efficiency improvements or cap-and-trade policies. Although they are absolutely essential, new legislation and market-based tools represent just a few of the tools needed to fight the climate crisis. Successful solutions will require altogether new perspectives and ways of thinking that produce behavioural changes, as well as technological and policy changes at every level of society: individual, household, organizational, community, state, national and international.

Climate change may be humanity’s most pressing environmental problem today, but it is far from the only challenge. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international study of the status of the world’s environment, found in 2005 that two-thirds of the globe’s ecological services, such as the clean air and water provided by nature, are degraded or are used unsustainably (United Nations Environment Program, www.millenniumassessment.org/en/About.aspx). A separate study by a dozen academic institutions in five countries predicted that due to overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors, all of the world’s fishing stocks will likely collapse by mid century unless major changes are made (Worm et al, 2006, 2007). Given the unanticipated emergence of many recent environmental concerns, we should also expect new and, as yet, unforeseen risks to suddenly appear.

These issues influence the global climate, and the way in which global warming unfolds will exacerbate existing environmental problems. Environmental degradation also aggravates and, in turn, is aggravated by poverty and other forms of social distress. Poverty has many faces. It is hunger. It is lack of adequate shelter. It is being sick and not having access to healthcare. Poverty is the death of a child due to illness caused by polluted air or water. The World Bank estimates that in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below US$1 a day – one fifth of the world’s population – and 2.7 billion lived on less than US$2 a day (Chen and Ravallion, 2004). A 2007 study by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that approximately 40 per cent of deaths worldwide today are caused by water, air and soil pollution. Furthermore, of the world population of about 6.5 billion, 57 per cent are malnourished, compared with 20 per cent of a world population of 2.5 billion in 1950, with most of the increase concentrated in non-industrialized nations.²

In addition to the human suffering that these figures represent, the interplay between environmental degradation, poverty and disease increases social and ethnic tensions and produces political instability, which reinforces the cycle. The severe drought caused by a shifting climate, coupled with unsound environmental practices, led to social chaos and violence in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and across the Sahel in sub-Saharan Africa, forcing millions of subsistence farmers and herders to become refugees. A similar explanation has been given for the guerrilla war in Mexico’s Chiapas Province, where more than half the farmers cultivate steep hillsides. Seventy per cent of Mexico’s agricultural land is affected by erosion, which could be one of the reasons for the steady migration northward into the US.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• I The Imperatives of Change##
• II The Path Forward##
• Index