The phrase, “think globally, act locally,” has been used by many proponents of environmentalism since the 1970’s. Attributed variously to David Brower, Rene Dubos and others, it was a rallying cry to consider the whole Earth when acting in one’s own milieu. With the growth of the global economy, it has become very difficult to follow this advice. A large proportion of the goods of all kinds, including food, found in retail outlets comes from long distances. Virtually all consumer electronics come from abroad. Estimates of the average distance (food miles) travelled in the US range from 1500-2000 miles. Whether foods from afar are worse for the environment is arguable. Out-of-season produce that is flown in is almost always worse, but imported meat may be produce less impact than that regionally produced. So even when buying in a local store, one is essentially acting in a global sense. Globalization has led to the near extinction of locally produced goods and services. Consumer electronics and other devices are difficult or even impossible to service. Big box stores, with commodified goods from abroad, tend to drive out locally produced crafts.

One consequences of this mode of satisfaction is that consumption is driven more by conformance to societal pressures than by authentic choice. We live in a context of “needs” that never goes away. Relationships get just as commodified as the goods. I have argued in my book that this pattern tends to become addictive. The consumption conforms to social norms, but not to the real concerns of the consumer. So things that matter remain unsatisfied. Even with the growing number of green goods and services becoming available, this pattern will persist, perhaps even getting worse as many consumers will now believe that they are doing their bit for the globe.

One way out of this pattern is to reverse the slogan and focus on local community as the source for more of the commerce. This idea is not new. The idea of local economies has been around for a while. So has the idea of a local currency to support that economy and differentiate it from the global system. Writing for IPS News, Matthew Cardinale highlights communities that have issued a local currency. The need to import is lessened. Local currencies can support an economy that does not need to grow. But the feature that I find most interesting is the possibility of breaking the addictive consumption pattern.

A second way in which community currencies support environmental sustainability is that they can lead to reduced consumption, Ms. Witt argued. She believes people purchase more and more “stuff,” not because they need it, but to fill a void that community currency can satisfy.

“You know the full story about the goods you purchase. You know how they were produced. You know the carpenter who made the table. You know who her children are. You realize buying the table is supporting that family,” Ms. Witt said.

The products bought with local currency “link you to your neighborhood, your place, the people of your place. They're not just stuff ... they enrich your life the way that stuff would not. So you need less.”

This is probably an idea that the Federal Reserve bankers would raise their collective eyebrows at, but deserves serious consideration. The existing growth-dependent political economy has produced the present unsustainable conditions. Maybe this is a way to re-invent Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage in support of sustainability.

Matt May's "In Pursuit of Elegance" blog is one I check regularly. The latest entry is terrific. It's about learning and how ideas should be rewarded. His view will probably surprise you.

The story repeats itself all the time. Companies treat employees like a rat in a maze after cheese, by paying for approved ideas and accepted suggestions. They then wonder why they get such low participation. They give no thought to the notion that in order to get a good idea, you need a lot of ideas.

Teachers at my daughter's school are notorious for the practice, and I take them to task regularly. They want students to read more books, so they reward the completion of books. Maybe with a homework exemption. Or extra credit. Or even vouchers to the local Taco Bell. So the quick and easy books get read. The superficial books get read. Even the good readers, the ones who love to read, get swept up in the program. They stop reading the classics, turning to the quick reads to score points. Then the program is discontinued, and everyone stops reading. Even the best readers lose their love of words. And that’s a true shame.

More instances of stressing the measurable (book count) over emergent qualities (love of words). What really counts in life is, ironically, those qualities you can't count or measure.

As it often happens, I get triggered by something I read in the news or on the web. Today it was a column in the Boston Globe by Yvonne Abraham responding to the current debate in Massachusetts about making slot machines legitimate. After general opposition to such developments in the past, the current interest is being pushed as a means to raise state revenues in these tough times. Abraham paints a sorry picture of the addictive effects of slots on exactly those who can afford it least.

Like scratch tickets, slots are gaming’s crack. Just like the instant games that bring in 70 percent of the state lottery’s take, they’re the province of poorer players. The part of Sydney where I grew up has the lowest average household incomes in the city and the highest average rates of spending on slot machines.

Slot machines and scratch cards are just another form of technology that produces addictive results. They show up in the larger milieu of consumption in general which also has turned into a more ubiquitous form of addiction.

We are addicted to many other substances and the products that contain them--alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, cocaine, oxycontin, and many more. Some are regulated or are illegal, others are heavily taxed, not so much to provide a disincentive but rather to raise revenues. So much for free choice in the market place. The debate in Massachusetts exposes the hypocrisy of the political players who claim to be protectors of people and the state.

I get the argument that the state needs money. I understand firsthand the value of the jobs that would be created. I know that people should be able to spend their money as they please.

But let’s not kid ourselves that we’re creating a new Monte Carlo here. The state, which is supposed to protect its citizens, is going to encourage some of them to harm themselves.

At least, these forms of addiction receive lip service and occasional action by the state. But the most serious form of addiction, consumption itself, is never debated. Consumption is held to be the carrier of freedom of choice. In many cases, market purchases are made freely, reflecting some authentic intention to satisfy some concern or to contribute to the satisfaction of a conscious intention. But many goods and services are bought out of an unconscious conformance to societal pressures brought to bear through advertising or popular culture--television, iPods, electronic games, smart phones, and on and on. Satisfaction here is inauthentic; it is fleeting and calls for more and more. Having built a political economy based on ever increasing consumption, it should not come as a surprise that the addictive, that is non-satisfying, inauthentic, patterns of consumption are not questioned except at the margins.

The absence of debate, especially in the United States is now exacerbated by the increasingly intense discussions of climate change, pro or con, and by concerns over the economy. Life style issues related to sustainability have been part of the public conversations in much of Europe for a while. But not here. President Obama rode to his office partly on his book, The Audacity of Hope. His view of hope is a vision of a better life, not the empty hope that a pile of coins will come tumbling out the next time I pull the lever.

After about ten days in Europe, I am on my way home. I have about three hours to spend in Montreal before getting my flight to Boston. I have missed quite a few posts so I will use this time to compose something about my time away.

I have been quite occupied with my International Society for Industrial Ecology conference and then spending time with friends, but have been looking around and listening to activities and thoughts about sustainability. A few things are very evident. At least in the two countries I visited, Portugal and Switzerland, recycling is taken very seriously. In Lisbon, I found sparkling new collection stations sited throughout the city. Each station or ecoponto had three or four attractive metal containers for glass, plastics and metal, and paper and cardboard packaging. The areas around the containers were clean. Older stations used large plastic collectors as in the photo. The national waste management law requires one ecoponto for every 500 inhabitants.

The same is true in Geneva. They have been recycling for quite a while. Our friends even live in a recycled house. The main beam over the kitchen has the date, 1569, inscribed on the face. Some of the house may still go back that far. They live in a small village about 20 kilometers from the center, amidst many working farms. Most were growing wheat and were just starting to harvest it. Against great pressure to develop land around Geneva, the zoning restrictions are very strict. Within the villages, it is still possible to build, but it is very difficult to convert agricultural land to housing development. The setting itself certainly influences my state of mind. One can see Mont Blanc from their home and from many vantage points in Geneva, even as one stands by the edge of Lake Leman.

I can’t help but think how different our practices and attitudes are in the US. Recycling is certainly around, but not so much as something everyone does and understands why. Land is used for the highest use value the market will bear. Development can proceed almost without any serious obstacle. Public pressure can be brought to bear to protect land for its amenity value or to maintain agriculture, but only with great effort.

I sense a greater sense of the environment as part of one’s home. Being home is more than just living in a structure. The idea of the American Dream runs against the current of European attitudes. Both cultures have their good and their bad points. But the endless vistas that have been the engine empowering the US culture no longer seem quite so close at hand. They are physically disappearing as the environment becomes less able to support unceasing development, and cannot be a place to escape even in that Dream. We have much to learn from Europe where historical needs to adapt to life in cramped areas and to husband scarce lands have left the people with a heightened sense of the perils of unsustainability.

Still in Lisbon, but winding down. Our industrial ecology conference has to be scored as a success, at least based on all the wonderful Portuguese hospitality and food and wine. Lots of the latter substance. For all of you that attend professional society meetings, you know how they go. A few gems that make attending worthwhile. Making new and seeing old friends, as usual, turns out to have the highest value.

As I mentioned, the theme of the conference is transitions to sustainability. The keynoters have been very interesting. The meeting opened with a report by Leith Sharp, who, until very recently, managed the Harvard University sustainability program. This program has many noteworthy accomplishments, but the most interesting part for me was her discussion of her experience in introducing new ideas and practices into a very conservative culture. Judged by my knowledge of what is going on at other campuses, she was extremely successful, in large part due to her sensitivity to the change process itself. Most program managers believe that if something will reduce environmental loads and save money at the same time, getting it implemented should be a breeze. Not so. Cultures are resistant to change, even to change that is positive. And academic cultures are among the most hardened.

The following plenary was given by Jan Rotmans, a Dutch academic expert on complexity and transition management. I don’t exactly believe you can “manage” transitions in complex systems. In fact this kind of indeterminacy is part of what defines a complex system. You cannot predict the response to any perturbation, so how can you manage the system. It’s possible to use standard management techniques, but one gets easily fooled. You can measure what you do to adjust the system, and also what happens, but if you try to connect the two in an analytic fashion, you are likely to be fooled when you make the next adjustment based on the prior analysis. Rotmans stressed, however, that one did have to approach the changes slowly, and, in a form of adaptive management, learn and adjust continually. My main disagreement is that he believes you can model the process of transition more analytically than I think possible. But the basic ideas are very useful to anyone thinking about how to make a transition to sustainability.

The third plenary was presented to us in Lisbon by Rob Socolow sitting in his office in Princeton, using some very good teleconferencing technology. Reducing carbon footprint is a subject of central concern to the industrial ecology community. Socolow gave us a lot of stark facts about carbon and global warming, and the need to drastically reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide equivalents being emitted to the atmosphere. The need for reduction is not so new to the audience, but the strategy that Socolow proposed is quite novel. He argues that attempting to allocate carbon quotas or targets among nations has been ineffective and will continue to be ineffective due to the politics involved. Instead he put forth an allocation plan based on what he calls cosmopolitan ethics focusing on individuals, not nations. In the name of fairness, akin to John Rawls’s theory of justice, high-emitting (high-living) individuals would have to reduce their contributions so that those now living in dire poverty would be able to increase their use of energy. It sounds very good in principle, but such a strategy will face the same political pressures that any attempt to redistribute wealth has always had to deal with. In any case, he got the intellectual juices running. It is most interesting that this concept was introduced some 15 years ago in the first book focused on industrial ecology.

Today was my turn. The occasion was my swan song as I am stepping down as Executive Director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology after about ten years. I have held this office since the Society began. I did more than my usual preparation of a set of overheads and a minimal script, and wrote the lecture and seasoned it with what I thought would be humorous slides. The message to this group of mostly scientists and engineers was that sustainability will not come through technology. Just the opposite--continuing to rely on technology and technocratic policies will, at best, only postpone the continuing degradation of the Earth and its cultural foundations. Only a deep-seated change in cultural beliefs and values will change the present trajectory. I am told that a video of the talk will be available in a little while, and I will post a link to it. I’ll post my lecture script shortly after I clean it up a bit. The response was overwhelming and moved me greatly. I am not sure it came from what I said or was a thank you for my past service. I promised I would stay involved in the community that has spread to the four corners of the world, but I know that this will be difficult in the future. Our community has grown younger and more international over the 10 years we have existed. The energy and commitment to make the world a better place coming from this cohort lends an optimistic tone to what otherwise might be a depressing vision of the future.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I am spending some time in Lisbon at a conference of the International Society for International Ecology. My wife and I added a few days at both ends to reacquaint ourselves with Lisbon where we spent 6 months back in 1999. I had a Fulbright to teach here.

Much of the City seems the same, including the pickpockets that lifted a camera and wallet from my wife's purse yesterday. I like that sameness, except for the aforementioned incident, as I always found the life here closer to flourishing than that back home. The streets are always full of people, shopping, working, or just having a coffee or drink at a sidewalk stop. There seems to be an acceptance of the world as it is without a constant complaint about how it should be or about what is missing from one's life. That positive attitude is often accompanied by a sometimes frustrating procrastination of doing something about it.

Today we walked up the back side of the Alfama, one of the two hills that bracket the commercial center. It's full of tiny winding alley-like streets like the one in the photo. To our delight we were able to find the tiny fado place we often went frequented. The same woman was running the place, now much older. Her English had gotten no better than before, but we managed to find out what had transpired. Sadly, the musicians we thought were the best around had died.

There is certainly something important about recalling past good times. The visions that come forth are almost always about doing and of relationships, like that with the proprietress, not about the trinkets we acquired. I will admit to thoughts about eating wonderful cheese and wine, although maybe also in the sense of my relationship with them. (Disclosure: I went back to arguably the best source of Port in the world and bought a bottle to bring home. The bottles still have the same dust on them)

The next few days are to be spent talking about transitions to sustainability from the perspectives of those in the industrial ecology community. I will address the meeting on Wednesday, giving the closing plenary. Much of what I expect to hear here will be directed to what I have been calling reducing unsustainability. I hope to convince the group that their future lies more in creating sustainability.

After weeks of hiding behind the clouds, the sun has decided to show up. Just as we are about to leave for Portugal. This trip will give me a good chance to catch up with my colleagues from Europe, Asia and elsewhere in the world. Their concerns about the state of the world tend to be much the same as what I hear in the US, but their responses tend to be different. Industrial ecology, the subject of the conference I will be attending, has had more influence in the rest of the world. The concept of extended producer responsibility, a form of the polluter pays principle, is rooted in European Union policy and practice. Closing material loops is not left to volunteers, and has become a central feature of European Union environmental policy. Starting with packaging a few years ago, the doctrine covers automobiles, electronic goods and will include more categories in the future.

I will be hearing reports at the meeting from European workgroups that have been focused on finding policies that will close the gap between sustainable production and sustainable consumption. Their whole effort towards greening seems, from my place in the US, to be more serious. I should be able to get a more accurate picture through direct contact. I plan to write the new few blog posts to reflect how sustainability is being addressed from a non-US perspective. The theme of our conference is on transitions toward sustainability.

I will be away for about two weeks, traveling in Europe. I will try to blog from there, but am not sure I will have access to the internet.

I am going to the 5th biennial International Conference of the International Society for Industrial Ecology in Lisbon, and then a side trip to visit friends in Switzerland. I have been the Executive Director of the Society since its inception and am stepping down from this position at the meeting. Industrial ecology is founded on the idea that industrial systems resemble ecosystems in terms of the flows of energy and materials from organisms (firms), but with one big difference. The material flow patterns in ecosystems are mostly closed contrasted to the open flows in industrial systems. Most everything we would call wastes in an industrial system become feedstock in a natural system. The field began with the premise that, if product and production cycles could be designed to resemble the networks in nature, the production of goods and services would reduce its damaging effects on the environment.

Sloan Management Review, the magazine of the MIT Sloan School of Business, has a new editor and a new format. Sustainability is one of the primary topics they now cover. Some months ago, they began to publish extended interviews with MIT-related people who have been engaged in this topic. (Disclosure: I was one of these people, and expect to see my interview come out shortly.) The latest one is with Peter Senge, with whom I collaborate on several projects. The subject, based on Senge's recent book, The Necessary Revolution, is focused on how firms are adjusting to the demands that sustainability, not their customers, is forcing them to rethink their strategies.

Let me start at the end and work back from there.

(SMR) You’ve been working this field for a long time. How you think attitudes toward sustainability have changed within organizations?

(Senge) In the last year or two, everything has changed. People are starting to suspect that these are really strategic issues that they will shape the future of our businesses. The specifics are all different depending on industry and context, but we’re in the beginning of an historic wakeup.

Undoubtedly, climate change has been the straw breaking the camel’s back. A lot of people think of climate change as a technical problem, something that’s going to be fixed by technical solutions. But more and more people are starting to realize that it’s not going to be fixed except as a byproduct of a real shift in how the whole industrial system operates.

I’m guessing that in the next six months people will have an even better handle on that. We’re right in a moment when the issue is moving from something marginal, something that we think somebody else needs to worry about, to something more personal.

The leading companies he talks about in the interview and in his book, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Alcoa, and others depend on natural resources, in these cases, water. They have begun to rethink their future based on models of scarcity rather than assuming that there will always be enough for limitless growth. I completely agree with Senge that there is a wake-up call being heard for the first time. My concerns are that the firms listening to this trumpet continue to think about the new set of problems basically in terms of how their firm would be impacted, without understanding the effects on the whole global system. Senge writes:

We don’t see the system because we’re habituated not to see the system. We’re organized not to see the system and we’re intellectually organized not to see the system. So it starts there.

Senge's is not a fan of the word, sustainability, and would rather use something that more clearly reflects the aspirational character he finds behind successful projects. He tries on, “All about the future.” I don't agree with his negative assessment of sustainability. Sustainability means, as I wrote a few days ago, the ability of any system to produce whatever you envision over a long time. It's that vision that pulls us forward. I talk about it as flourishing, but many other words will do. It's not enough simply to talk about the future that will face our children, without adding the qualities that future would bring. The same reasons we don't think in systems context, make thinking about the future largely constrained to how the past has worked. Yes, it's critical to look at ways to operate without using up the world, but it is just as critical to come to understand and change the cultural roots that have been driving the system. I am yet to hear this kind of argument in virtually all the recent assessments of the direction business is moving. The best efforts of individual firms, even in association with their peers, is not enough. It's the system, as Senge writes, that's in trouble.

Sorry for the premature publishing of this post. I clicked the wrong button in my haste to get on the water and do a little fishing. The weather has been terrible for nearly a week and I have sat inside waiting for the skies to clear. Well, today the sun came out. But best of all, I hooked a couple of keeper-size striped bass, my first of the summer. I use barbless hooks and always release my catch.

Today, I offer up a couple of stories playing a different tune than the usual economic news, that of well-being without economic growth. It is interesting to me that both come from English cousins in Canada and in England. The first appeared in a Toronto newspaper, written by Peter Victor, a professor of environmental studies at York University. Here is the central image of the flourishing world he projects.

In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy.

Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.

Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth.

Victor, like many others, offers up a vision, but not the path to get there. His solutions are too much fixes to the present economic model of the West. I do not think Victor and others with visions of sustainability fully understand the depth of the change in beliefs and values that must precede the radical change they foresee. Getting the prices right, that is, to reflect the true cost of everything, is a critical step towards stabilizing the unsustainable conditions of the present. But flourishing requires more than fixing the economic system.

Another excellent study, Prosperity without Growth, by the British Sustainable Development Commission questions the growth paradigm in great detail. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about sustainability. The language is often stark as befits the situation.

The truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of nine billion people.

In this context, simplistic assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will allow us to stabilise the climate and protect against resource scarcity are nothing short of delusional. Those who promote decoupling as an escape route from the dilemma of growth need to take a closer look at the historical evidence - and at the basic arithmetic of growth.

The report names prosperity as the normative end of societal functioning. For me this still sends a primarily economic message even though the authors do relate it to flourishing.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings - within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.