Sustainability Isn’t Easy
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
A recent study by TransLink, Vancouver’s public transit agency, showed that 35 percent of the greenhouse gases in its region came from automobiles and that the agency would need to more than double their ridership by 2020 to meet government mandated clean air numbers by then.
This got me to thinking about the enormous effort it will take for them to get more than 200 million people to ride their system by then. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that a major key in this effort would have to be sustainability and transit-oriented development.
We’ve got a big focus on sustainability this year with Mass Transit, so I have a couple of news feeds set up to look for sustainability stories. Little did I know that seemingly everyone else is looking into this as well, and not in a good way. Sustainability has seemingly overnight become the new watchword for companies looking for good PR. Everyone is talking about sustainability this and sustainability that. It looks like almost every company has some plan for sustainability.
Don’t get me wrong. Sustainability isn’t a good thing, it’s a great thing. And with its increased popularity, the presence of sustainability in the media has increased exponentially — and therein lies the problem.
Sustainability has gotten too much press, too quickly. Sure, we can say it’s not getting enough play, but while it’s not reaching the average joe, the corporations they all work for are being bombarded with a steady stream of material advocating the benefits of sustainability.
See, the thing here is that most people given too much of a good thing too soon will just tune it out. Take political correctness from the 1990s. It’s a simple concept in principle: take other people’s feelings into consideration when you do things. But that concept got so mired down in the application that it became its own worst enemy. Being PC became a derogatory term, even to the point a satirical film (PCU) was created using the concept’s own worst ideas against it.
Now take a look at this definition of sustainability I took from its listing on Wikipedia:
“Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.”
Yeah, that really speaks to most people. Now about half way down in the listing I found this definition:
“Sustainability - The ability to meet present needs without compromising those of future generations.”
That’s a much better definition. This I can get behind. It comes down to something a friend once told me and I try to teach my kids, think in terms of what you need, not what you want (unfortunately, they’re kids and this is a tough sell to them).
Here is where sustainability becomes a tough sell. In this culture of instant gratification we find ourselves in, teaching the public to think in terms of need instead of want is like speaking in a dead language to them.
To steal a movie reference, sustainability is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it. You can’t just do lip service to it. Doing that will just push sustainability down the road of good intentions that political correctness traveled a decade ago. And you know what they say about the road paved with good intentions….
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.
March 8th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Sustainability…..hummmm. Thanks for the definition. I would like to think that I am trying to reach sustainability in our transportation company, but since I am on the bottom of the food chain, it is nearly impossible, for I am at the mercy of whatever vehicles are chosen for me to do our service, for I am only a contractor. We face the same challenges that everyone else does, with one exception, we are rural. Also, maybe we could call it accountability, not as cool of a word, but nevertheless, if we all just do a part, it might slow down the bleeding and buy us some time and blue skies a little longer, while catching up on the ridership.
Enjoyed your article,
Cathy Hutton
Ajo Transportation
1248 N. 2nd. Ave.
Ajo, AZ 85321
520 387-6559
March 9th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Sustainability was a primary consideration in military science once upon a time. That is, the various factors: men, materiel, transport & logistics (keeping the equipment and buildings & supplies & repair depots that moves the materiel & keeps personnel going) consumables (food, fuel, parts, ammunition, care of wounded & dead. POW’s, communications, this is a beginning of making a commanders campaign or task force sustainability list. Moshe’ Dayan, a feared & revered Israeli General, put it all into a sentence: “The minimum required effort to achieve the minimum acceptable result.”
Excuse the lengthy preamble, public transportation is in fact a very multifaceted, multi disciplinary enterprise. The concern with sustainability is currently shifting from sustainability of money- fares, grants, subsidies, etc.; -to energy sources and choices of cleaner over dirtier. The military doctrine of earlier wars bears on transit in an important way: sustainability now must take account of energy efficiencies more than ever before, in order to use the least fuel to get there with the mostest!
This writer has a life history of railway mode study and finds many observations of the USA transportation experience of the 1941 war years to be valuable in sustainability discussion three score & 6 years later. Now, the USA is not facing a fuel squeeze to export fuel overseas plus keep ourselves going, we are coming up short at the get-go, forget about having something to send to distant shores. We must save transportation fuel as a matter of course simply to prevent collapse of our allied nations like Japan, the EU Nations, Mexico & Canada. Try to understand- this cannot be an everyone for themselves game anymore, whether it be our private guzzler, or at a national level. Mexico approaches inability to export, and Canada cannot & will not be the USA fall guy for oil & gas indefinitely. Deal with it.
Most signicantly, we are in a diminishing returns scenario, competing with a possible adversary for oil supply(China), and depending upon other possibly adversarial regimes for other portions of our supply. This new Post 911DAY operating theatre makes application of renewable energy sources to public transportation more than just politically correct.
Some authorities, ex-CIA Director James R. Woolsey, and Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MA) for two- have gone on record, with great substantiation, stating the likelyhood that we will eventually see agricultural demands on diesel fuel impacting the transportation sector. This sends waves thru the trucking industry, obviously. Bear with us here- freight load on the railways grows accordingly, and this means now is the appointed time to surely & with due haste vastly expand the capacity & reach of the railway network & local warehousing rail/delivery truck interface.
Watch the great Panama- Canada freeway morph into a railway project as as the ramifications of Peaking Oil sinks in with the NAFTA transportation planning establishment. There must be an awakening of our entire community of transit planning and executive level personnel to the gravity of this new & exceedingly dangerous situation we find ourselves confronting. To quote another leader from the 1940’s emergency, “There is something extraordinary afoot here”, thus saith Winston Churchill.
Elsewhere suggestions of railway re-emphasis can be found; the pure ability of railway- “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform” -to perform on any known fuel source, this certainly makes railway corridor, dead or alive, candidate for renewable energy links. Thus, an important part of the transportation sustainability list in any locale. In USA cities & towns where the railway has shrunk to one or two -or none- mainlines without direct passenger & or freight interface it falls on transit responsibles to begin inquiry as to what it will take to reconnect to rail at their respective locations.
Minimum rail connection, freight & passenger. “The minimum required effort to achieve the minimum acceptable result.” But not a minimum level as national policy. We are not going to be able to be shy about declaring to the Federal Government the need to stop playing political games with Oil Interregnum transportation policy. Every single APTA member, public & private enterprise listed member organization, must cram, over the next few months, on this Peaking Oil homework assignment. Get your computer whiz children to help you- they will, and then they will encourage you to speak up to the governing boards- local- State & Federal. Lookout Washington!!
April 26th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I was presented with an opportunity to participate in a project recently that was to be included in the “State of the County” annual luncheon and the theme was “Sustaining a Livable Community”. I work in the Health Industry. Then I come home to the weekly grocery fliers in my mail box and in the text of the begin to read about “sustainably sourced” fish and why biodynamic wine is so great because it is developed in a sustainable environment and I get to thinking, Is sustainability the new watchword of the time? And just exactly what is sustainability any way? So I was happy to have come across your blog and happen to agree with what you are saying about the word being overexposed and used too frequently in the media. It truely is a great concept but as you mentioned, it does run the risk of being ignored because of its overuse.