Could we ever really achieve sustainability?

I've been reading a new book "Hot, Flat & Crowded" (Friedman, 2008). I'm not all that far into the book - only a couple of chapters - but I'm am slowly starting to integrate what Friedman is trying to say (thus far). In Chapter 2, he's been showing how cities all over the world are growing up - countries like China and Qatar who now have very large cities (China has several over 1 million people) and how much more energy these new cities are taking.

It's all from the rise of their populations from poverty levels to middle class. Now, he defines the middle class as households with more than $15,000 annual income. These countries - especially China and India are elevating households at the rate of 200 million (combined) each decade. That's more than adding the whole country of Germany every 10 years - with all of their middle class consumerism and luxuries (and power and resource consumption).

He's been arguing that it's not for any politician of these countries to deny their populations this right of passage. For nearly every country has the desire to see it's citizens grow and wealth accumulate (more to tax!). But for so long, Europe and America have had the table all to ourselves and with populations of "Americas" adding every ten years, we are on an exponential consumption rate of all of our resources.

This part of the book made me think - part of the problem we had was just that we got to gorge at the "table" for so long with only western Europe as our dining partner. Now that others are showing up to eat with us - invited or not - we're starting to realize that the cornucopia is getting smaller and smaller and that it really isn't an "all you can eat buffet".

For a lot of reasons, our country's prosperity was fueled because of the seemingly endless resources. Oil was cheap, food was cheap - we built our entire infrastructure around this inexpensive system. Just look at our cities that came of age post 1950. Boston and Los Angeles couldn't be farther apart on their take on population density and infrastructure design (note - not that Boston hasn't also adapted and had it's own share of suburban sprawl).

Since most of the countries that are now coming of age in the early 21st century, those were either suppressed by national governments (China/Russia with communism) or were regarded as 3rd world and were just too poor to take advantage.

Now that technology has spread so far and interconnectedness is nearly ubiquitous, they're showing up. I suppose that if China, Russia and India were in a place to take advantage of the resources in 1950 as North America and Europe were, then our "table" of resources would look a whole lot different now.

It's pretty obvious that we (the world population) can not continue on this rampant race for the use of our resources and think that we can consume all we wish. Build energy hogging buildings and use our available land for McMansions to house all of our stuff. Something has to give - either we learn about sustainability so that all can share or we run off the cliff and nature will do the sorting for us (mass starvation, disease, death).

Sustainability doesn't mean that those of us who have been sitting at the table of plenty still get to hang out at the table and we don't admit new members because we feel that we've got seniority. It is not our right to dictate who gets to succeed and who gets to wallow in poverty. It means we need to find ways to make the cost impacts - both financial and on our resources (energy, water, land, etc) - more palatable and cost effective for the middle class. In effect, making a new determination of what it means to be middle class.

I'm not sure what that really looks like. It may mean defining levels of luxury that the middle class (worldwide) would consider fair and reasonable and that allow for the freedoms of expression and travel that have a much more frugal use of our collective natural resources. It means finding ways to make cleaner energy cheaply. Transportation that is clean and efficient and inexpensive. Housing that is reasonable, efficient and durable. And the overall use of potable water and our waste management. These are fast becoming worldwide issues that will have to be addressed or collapse will happen.

A wonderful book is "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. He takes the reader through various examples of societies that collapsed from their own management of natural resources. The most famous example is on Easter Island where, being 2,500 miles from anything else, the islanders deforested the landscape and had a complete collapse of it's population due to ineffective use of their very limited resources. Even now, most people can casually observe that history and could obviously see the writing on the wall and make the arm chair quarterback call to make a difference. Who knows if the islanders had some faction of their populace that were giving warning signs (I suppose) or as Dr. Diamond suggested what the islanders thought as they cut down the last tree on the island.

It's not much of a leap to see that our planet is quickly becoming small and what our thoughts will be when we cut down the last of the tropical rain forests or large mammals start to die off in rapidly increasing amounts. Or if there will be a point when we collectively realize the danger only when it is actually far too late and that our only option will be to consume to the end and let our own world population crash.

Is that enough a cause to take steps now and redesign our foundational systems of believe so that our infrastructure could be tweaked so that we can still enjoy a comfortable lifestyle without destroying it for everyone else? I don't know. In my experience, people rarely think that much past what impacts them directly and usually only when it's too late - kind of like calling the fire department only after you've watched the small fire grow to engulf half the house.

This isn't just about green living. This is about implementing a tour de force of cultural and foundational ideology that (unfortunately) our country and Europe have come to regard as a right.