Discussions+and+Debates+Fall+2011


 * Discussions and Debates Fall 2011**


 * 1. False Hopes and Sustainable Solutions?**
 * 2. Why do Societies Collapse?**
 * 3. What is a Resilient City?**


 * 1. False Hopes and Sustainable Solutions?**
 * Posted by Michael Youth**

So I've been thinking about two things discussed during our meeting:

(1) Several times, in our discussion people had mentioned that they were hopeful about the future. It made me think about an article titled "Beyond Hope" by Derrick Jensen, quoted extensively below:

"More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn’t believe—or maybe you would—how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless. I’m not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don’t hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn’t crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world. By saying that, they’ve assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they’ve stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it. I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct. If coho want to leave us because they don’t like how they’re being treated—and who could blame them?—I will say goodbye, and I will miss them, but if they do not want to leave, I will not allow civilization to kill them off. When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to “hope” at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes."

Full article at []. I encourage you to read it and other articles he's written for Orion. (2) There was a bit of discussion about whether to focus on problems or solutions to problems. While focusing on problems may seem hopeless or morbid and may understandably discourage some, this is really how we're going to arrive at an acceptable solution. We need to focus on the problems and really understand them and then communicate them simply so that others can understand them as problems. Right now, outside our little room and a scattering of other little rooms around the world, no one perceives the problems we see as high priority. Case in point: A few years ago the Copenhagen Consensus got a number of big economists together, including a number of nobel laureates, and presented them with 10 global problems and asked them how they'd spend $75 billion over 4 years given various proposals addressing the 10 problems. Global warming was one of the 10 problems. Follow this link to see how it fared in the ranking of global problems worth addressing: [] (hint: it did not even make the top 10!). If people don't see the depletion of our natural capital as a high priority problem, they are going to find ways to devote resources elsewhere.


 * 2. Why do Societies Collapse?**
 * Posted by Kevin Bigsby (11/1/2011)**

Reading list: (1) Anonymous (1972) - Old Cities, New Cities, No Cities (2) Batty (2008) – The Size, Scale, and Shape of Cities (3) Diamond – Collapse, Chapter 11, One Island, Two People, Two Histories: The Dominican - Republic and Haiti (4) Foley (2011) – Solutions for a Cultivated Planet

Our discussion focused on the theme of collapse and how this played out in Haiti. Collapse in Haiti, at least my opinion of it, is that a small portion seemed environmental at first, but a lot if it is that Haiti was simply a victim of chance. Had France arrived on their side of Hispaniola would things be different? If the Dominican Republic did not have an iron-fisted president who happened to be an environmentalist would the Dominican Republic look like Haiti? If hegemonic countries did not rely on hinterlands and colonies for resources what would Hispaniola look like? What is certain is that, and this is a running theme of the book, that Haiti failed to do anything. From the top down and the bottom up no or ineffective action was taken to prevent their current condition. Haiti adopted a privatized land system where families relied on subsistence agriculture, growing basic crops on small plots of land. Thus, at a later point in time all historic alterations to natural systems and underlying environmental conditions have kept Haiti in a dismal situation. Today Haiti remains in a state of collapse, the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

The Foley paper points out the demand increasing populations will place on the current agriculture system. Had Haiti adopted the below main points from Foley would it be in better condition today? "Most agriculture paradigms have focused on improving production, often to the detriment of the environment. Many environmental conservation strategies have sought to improve food production. To achieve global food security and environmental stability, agriculture systems must be transformed to address both challenges." It seems likely. However, of critical importance is the social system and governmental institutions that are in place that allow ideas like this to spread. Haiti seems to lack one or the other or both.

Old cities, new cities, no cities? Cities, similar to hegemonic countries, rely on resources from the hinterlands. A lot of people seem to think cities can be sustainable, providing economies of scale for the distribution of goods and services that make them efficient. Historically and presently, however, cities do not fit this mold. A good example comes from the Foley paper. Though he does not directly point to cities as the culprit, nearly 40% of all food produced is wasted. It seems likely that a lot of food waste does occur in cities simply because of the sheer volume of food heading their way. Can cities solve this? Can they set up networks and institutions that ensure much less food is wasted? Can they repeat this for similar problems, really provide economies of scale that make the sustainable? Would more sustainable cities help Haiti somehow? Its uncertain, but folks are starting to have a better understanding of cities, how they form, how they grow, and what their footprints are. Maybe one day we'll answer the question old cities, new cities, not cities?


 * 3. What is a Resilient City? Does Resilience = Sustainability?**
 * Posted by Neal Wisenbaker**

Reading list: (1) Holling, C.S. 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. //Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics//, 4:1-23. (2) Montenegra, M. 2011. Urban Resilience Frontier. SEED Magazine [] (3)Revisiting Urban Resilience, Stockholm Resilience Center, []

This discussion introduced the concept of resiliency, attempted to apply it to urban systems, and tried to reconcile resilience with sustainability using examples from the scientific and popular literature. The discussion centered on the questions: are sustainable systems resilient, or are resilient systems sustainable? Are these two ideas compatible or contradictory? The literature, for example, establishes sustainability as state of equilibrium, whereas resiliency rejects equilibrium in favor of cyclical change within alternative stable states. At first the two approaches appear contradictory.

Resiliency is the capacity of a system to absorb change before changing to a different state (Holling 1973). A system that is highly unstable can also have enormous resilience. We identified an example of a resilient forest system wherein a patch is disturbed and through interaction from the surrounding matrix is restored. As the matrix becomes more fragmented its capacity to remain in that resilient state is diminished. Another helpful example was slash and burn agriculture in the rainforest. At a small scale slash and burn is in a resilient state if not sustainable. Then as more people also conduct slash and burn the forest state loses its resiliency and it transforms into another system dominated by grass.

We then applied the resiliency perspective to cities. We used the example of Constantinople and New Orleans to describe how disturbance occurs within the city system and the city either has the capacity or not to absorb the disturbance or flip to another state. We stressed that the relationships among people are essential to developing adaptive capacity; also natural resources, luck and location play an important role. Another point of interest was the work by Glaeser, who advocates the success of the city, depends on innovation and collaboration of its inhabitants. We easily agreed entrenched political systems and perverse subsidies do not support our capacity for change.

We stressed the importance of adaptive management to manage change at multiple scales. We also wrestled with the idea that the concept of resilience is not necessarily a good thing. Dictatorships and eutrophicated lakes are also resilient systems. Nature is indifferent; as a result we reminded ourselves that the state we choose among other alternative stable states is determined in large part by our values. And it is within this framework that sustainable development comes into play as a vision for the resilient state we wish to become.