Sustainability

William Ogle

SUSTAINABILITY

The book Natural Capitalism discusses sustainability as a necessary idiom of the future that can be achieved through an intelligent dovetailing of our desires into new processes. The beginning of the chapter lays out a cogent analysis by Donella Meadows of society’s view of sustainability into four categories of blue, red, green and white. These categories represent the free marketers, socialist, environmentalist, and finally the synthesizers. Interestingly we find out that the four positions taken are all correct, however are simply studying the problem through different lenses. This holistic understanding becomes the major framework for the chapters thesis of natural capitalism. The book goes on to show how simplistic problems consist of hidden variables that require a broader understanding such as the fall of the Soviet Empire correlating with the fall of the California’s economy. Essentially the authors recognize the multitude of problems facing the sustainability of the worlds future and have an optimistic view that, through the collaboration of many unlike parties, natural solutions will come to be. This is made apparent in their statement of what might be said in the future as historians look back that stating that “the private sector has taken its proper place as the main implementer of sustainable practices, simply because they wok better and cost less.”

While the authors of Natural Capitalism looked at an approach that would be a synthesis of many opposing parties, Richard Rogers in his book Cities for a small planet feels that the sustainability of a our future will rely on intelligent urban design planning. Both books acknowledge that the worlds finite resources will eventually be consumed at an exponential rate by a mushrooming population unless a completely new intelligent paradigm is established. Rogers believes that our world is not sustainable because of the inefficiency of our swelling cities which are a result of poor planning choices. He goes on to describe cities as the “parasites on the landscape-huge organisms draining the world for their sustenance and energy: relentless consumers, relentless polluters.” The people are no longer guilty of the mass consumption of resources, but rather it is the mega-city. Later he describes the sources of the poor planning as stemming from developers working in zones rather than what Rogers describes as a “compact and overlapping approach.” Finally he blames the automobile for the largest inefficiency of our cities and advocates his compact overlapping approach to increase foot traffic and curb car use. Much of Rogers argument for sustainability deals with reestablishing the urban community and efficiencies of cities.