Our Sustainable Future - CSU, Chico

Setting the stage for the most successful sustainability conference held to date at California State University, Chico, this year’s kickoff keynote speaker pointed out that sustainability is primarily about human survival. And higher education must lead the way to achieve such rapid, all-embracing change.

Similarly provocative ideas about what it will take to achieve a healthy balance among economic, social equity, and environmental needs echoed throughout the remaining three days of presentations and panel discussions.

Engaging the broader community in a continuing discussion about sustainability was the primary focus of this year’s This Way to Sustainability II conference. As a result, a number of community organizations and individual presenters, as well as faculty and staff from Butte Community College and CSU, Chico, offered more than 60 unique presentations and workshops—from the fundamentals of organic pasture management to green entrepreneurship and sustainable building practices.

Sustainability as Human Survival
The global sustainability crisis, or the threatened ability of the earth to sustain life, has more to do with continued human survival than the earth’s existence, according to Dr. Anthony D. Cortese, a civil and environmental engineer, co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and president of Second Nature.

“I’m not worried about the survival of the earth. The earth has survived five extinction [cycles] already,” he said. “The issue is saving ourselves, saving civilization as we know it,” which is an “awesome ethical responsibility.”

“The challenge is finding a way for humans to live in harmony with the natural world and with each other—and it’s the defining challenge of the twenty-first century. We need an unprecedented shift in the way we think and act.”

Humanity is now at a daunting crossroads. For the first time in history, human beings are the dominant force in determining the health and welfare of the earth and its inhabitants. According to Dr. Cortese, “We do not exist separate from nature,” yet we are “the first generation capable of determining the habitability of the planet, for humans and other species.”

“Society and the economy are wholly owned subsidiaries of the biosphere, not the other way around,” he pointed out, quoting Gaylord Nelson, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and founder of Earth Day in 1970. “The ‘jobs versus the environment’ argument misses the point,” because there are no jobs without functional ecosystems.

Dr. Cortese emphasized that the scale of human impact on the earth and its resources is immense, and growing. Since 1992, the world’s population has grown from about 5 billion to 6.6 billion. And of the billions of people now on earth, 2.7 billion lack basic sanitation, 1.1 billion have no potable water, 1 billion suffer malnutrition, and another 1 billion lack adequate employment.
That these problems result from, and also perpetuate, unstable political systems further complicates all attempts to resolve them. The “huge gap” between the world’s rich and poor also limits possible solutions, with “20 percent of the world’s population now consuming 80 percent of its resources.”

We’re not adequately providing for the existing human population, in other words, so how will we manage to care for 9 billion of us by the middle of this century?

“We think these problems will all be solved by continuing the modern Western economic, technological, social, and political model. But, as Einstein once said, we can’t solve today’s problems at the level of thinking at which they were created.”

In the view of Dr. Cortese, the current sustainability crisis is not a set of environmental problems but “a de facto systems design failure,” because the predominant worldview no longer works.
“Sustainability requires that we focus simultaneously on systemic changes that improve health for current and future humans; build strong, secure, and thriving communities; and provide economic opportunity for all by restoring and preserving the integrity of the life support system.

“It’s about creating win-win-win situations all over the place.”

Making the Paradigm Shift
Although we can all be “winners” in a sustainable world, moving U.S. society toward sustainability involves “a paradigm shift of immense proportions.” Breaking away from the old paradigm “will require a great deal of energy, commitment, and perseverance.”
Yet Dr. Cortese disagreed with those who doubt that the challenge can be met. There is abundant evidence, he says, that we can and do find a way forward whenever there is sufficient will. Between our first inklings of an energy crisis in 1973 and the year 1986, for example, the U.S. economy grew by 40 percent with zero increase in energy use, due to increased energy efficiency.

“Natural capital”—the earth’s resources—will be the limiting factor in the future, not labor and technology as in the past. Making adequate use of “social capital” and being able to make “microcorrections” at the societal level, he said, are critical to making the best use of natural capital. And there is considerable improvement to be made: At present about 90 percent of our current consumption “goes to waste before we ever consume the product.”

Colleges and universities need to lead the way in making the paradigm shift required by sustainability concerns, according to Dr. Cortese. Higher education must “model” sustainability, and align itself with key principles of sustainability, to create transformative change.

The first principle of sustainability that universities must embrace and teach is that “human existence is aligned with the biosphere”—understanding that we rely on the earth for the basic resources of life as well as “ecological services” including water purification, photosynthesis and food production, soil formation, and the conversion of waste materials into useful substances.
Second, “sustainability is about human success,” and represents more of a cultural challenge than a scientific or technological one: “This is a human crisis, a question of values and culture.”

Successfully resolving this crisis calls upon the third sustainability principle, which is a commitment to designing “technological, economic, and social systems that are inspired by biological models,” systems that generate no waste, so “we can live off nature’s interest, not nature’s capital.”

And fourth, according to Dr. Cortese, we need to understand “the interdependence of humans and human activities,” including the fact that human satisfaction does not arise solely from material goods. Health and happiness are also connected to caring about other people and what happens in their lives.

Within the university community, Cortese added, the primary need is for greater connection and interaction among disciplines: “The value of knowledge is in the interconnections, just as the value of our bodies is much more than their raw materials.”

In order to achieve anew level of collaboration and cooperation, higher education will have to “dramatically improve communication, internally and externally.”

“You lose 80 percent of the value of what you’re doing if you don’t communicate effectively,” he said. “Communicate, communicate, communicate” is as essential to the success of university sustainability efforts as “location, location, location” is to business.
Dr. Anthony Cortese is president of the nonprofit group Second Nature, an organization committed to helping higher education move from “good intentions to strategic action” in creating a healthy, just, and environmentally sustainable world.

He is also a co-founder of EFS West, now the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
Dr. Cortese formerly served as commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and was also the first dean of environmental programs at Tufts University, where he spearheaded the award-winning Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute in 1989. He holds BS and MS degrees from Tufts University in civil and environmental engineering and a doctor of science degree in environmental health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

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