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Sunray has asked us to think about the outline before we get thoroughly under way – he said “How about each of us takes a look and see what improvements we can suggest.”
Needless to say I have taken him up on this challenge and this is what I have come up with for your comment. I think after history we need a clear structure. I also think that in what follows we are talking a lot about environmental sustainability in the face of human activity – what we called before human global sustainability. In terms of intuitive headings my inclination would be to answer two “simple” questions – 1. What is the problem? 2. How do we fix it? In the former we make a statement mostly about the state of biological and Earth systems - the title could be something quite different from the simple one here. The latter I suggest has two components: the evidence on which management must be based – which I like to call “Sustainability accounting” but there is plenty of choice here (also called “Measuring sustainability” or “Sustainability metrics”, “Sustainability reporting” etc.). The second component is the management “action” method, the way decisions about sustainability are implemented. This will clearly entail the usual political process of legislation etc, but it also involves a whole range of informal decision-making, like me deciding to cycle to work. The word often used to cover both formal and informal decision-making is “governance” so that is my preference. I will try and reorganize the present outline into these broad headings if you think this approach has legs. On Nicks comments above - Nick I agree about the complexity and messiness - all this is conceptually extremely difficult to deal with and present in a simple, clear way. In a sense we are covering "everything". Trouble is I think invasive species and peace and security (and all the other stuff) although seeming in a way well off the mark cannot be ignored: they are vital to the story. Although Wikipedia does not allow original research I do not think it is too arrogant to suggest that in devising a "way of presenting this story "we are actually doing pioneering original research that it would allow.I have not seen anything quite like it anywhere (alright I can hear you chuckle ;-) at that one) - but I think it is perfectly valid and, frankly, also a valuable contribution to the history of ideas, if we can make it gel. The following builds on what I said above - still plenty of massaging to do but see what you think: if it is broadly accepted then we have a lot of summarising to do.
Granitethighs ( talk) 01:55, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Granitethighs ( talk) 04:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I am not at all happy with the way this page has developed or the way it is apparently going.
It is heavily overloaded with detailed evidence whereas a short summary of the state of the planet ... including many economic, social, and other issues which do not appear to be mentioned ... would suffice.
More seriously, there appears to be no systematic discussion of the barriers to doing something about the situation.
It is easy to make a list of thngs "Governments" should do.
But the reality is that they can not and wil not do them.
One has somehow to understand the sociocybernetic processes which are so inexorably heading us in a direction which vast segments of the population have for decades known to be a disaster course.
It is necessary to devise knowledge-based, systems-oriented, interventions ... not recommend system wide changes based on "common sense" ... to remedy the situation.
In short there is no discussion of the issues it is most important to discuss, or even easily discerned links to such discussions within the Wikipedia.
Quester67 ( talk) 21:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Granitethighs. You are right. That section did exist. I added to it, then it was whittled away and finally deleted completely. There are still signs of its onetime existence in the list of further readings that are no longer even mentioned in the main entry. I am tempted to resort to conspiracy theory to explain what has happened. But the current entry is so overloaded with evidence for what "everyone" knows that it is impossible to see the wood behind the foliage. The main pillars that drive this whole system are just not visible. The fundamental writings of Vandana Shiva, for example, who shows how the growth of this non sustainable superstructure are embedded in reductionist science, are reduced to a statement about her role in advancing feministic issues. Equally, Bookchin, whose work shows that this process has been advancing at an exponetially increasing rate for milennia ... regardless of apparent social form .. is again reduced to an entry in "further reading". The work of people like Nic Marks and Lane ... who show that, even in the present day, it is possible for societies to offer long high quality life almost within a sustainable ecological footprint provided one abandons the myths of materialsim (which are responsible for so much detruction), suffers the same fate. Rees's conclusion ... which should hit readers between the eyes .. that it would require 3 to 5 back up planets engaged in nothing but agriculture for everyone alive today to live as we do ... is essentially dismissd in a numbered note which says it has been contested! The whole artivle seems grounded in an assumption ... oh so convenient for those who hold power ... that if one simply and endlessly documents all this stuff (which, despite reassuring words in the opening paragraphs, acutally relate to only one aspect of the problem) benign governments will do something about it. Write a report and someone will do something! We studied 8 to 11 year old children working on environmental projects in schools: most of them already knew that that was just rubbish. Yet here we have a report in an enclopedia which fails to chart the rocks in a way which makes them clearly visible, analyses the forces driving us against them, and examines the barriers whch have, for milennia, prevented the observations of many acute observers of society having any impact.
Given what has happened to what WAS there and my own experience of having my own reviews of available evidence eliminated as "personal essays" I am afraid I am most reluctant at this point to set about trying to remedy the entry ... which I certainly do not think is "near completion". However, if anyone cares to trawl through "history" and ressurect some of what was there I will add my tuppence worth. But I currently have no idea when next I will be able to re-visit the site. Quester67 ( talk) 16:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
There was a time when I was quite hopeful of the Wikipedia. But it has turned out to be as susceptible to wishful thinking as, for example, the Bruntland report. Like court jesters ... reports like these demoonstrate the horror of the situation and then lead their audiences to audience assume that the problems, now public, will be fixed. I am away from home at present and have read and re-read the main entry several times. Frankly, apart from the opening paras, which stem from an earlier era (ie more than 3 years ago) it strikes me as superficial and popularistic. The pics are merely gloss and add nothing. A few well chosen graphs (like the population one) would make the case much more forcefully. There is virtually no discussion of other huge non-sustainabilties ... like the non-sustainability of the financial system itself or the way in which the ever increasing divisions in wealth and well-being within and between societies are heading us into a nuclear war scenario. Contrary to the assumptions behind the current entry, the problem is not a lack of knowledge of the situation, it is an inability to see any way of doing anything about it. "Everyone" can see that there is no point in doing anything because they are dealing with a system (in the technical sense) in which common-sense based attempts at change in single variables are negated by the reactions of the rest of the system. Current formulations of social science are inadequate to the task ... and despite portrayal in the film "Lions for Lambs" and Seddon's "Systems thinking in the public service"... we have been unable to trace s single significant work on the reform of public management since the writings of Adam Smith and John Stuar Mill. Another Bookchin quote makes the point clearly: the changes that are needed ... and quickly ... must be so great that the resulting society will not even be recogisable as a "political economy" at all. Likewise, in the entry as it stands, there is virtually no discussion of the drivers that are heading us in a direction in which none of us wants to go ... And have been do so for millennia ..not just 2,000 years ... despite the protest of endless acute observers of society. Just as understanding the forces which crash sailing boats against the rocks was dependent on the work of one or two scientists, so understanding these social forces is not going to emerge from more tracts from conventional political scientists (still less economists) but from the work of one or two people. In that context I have to say that Bookchin's Herculean study of the role and inexorable emergence of hierarchy ... with its associated insistence on the creation of "work" to occupy the masses (and thus destroy the planet) and legitimise hierarchy ... viz division which compels participation in a destructive system ... and Shiva's work on the role of reductionist science and monocultures ... seem to me to be the only two contenders for nomination for that position in the context of understanding our plunge toward self-extinction as a species. But no doubt their views would be regarded as "personal points of view" ... (I should perhaps make clear that I am refering to the first two thirds of Bookchin's "Ecology of Freedom" ... not to his other excellent, but more popular, works). So. To conclude. To complete this entry properly, it would be necessary to generate and have links to a series of other entries such as the unimaginable (and much less well known) horrors embedded in the workins of the financial system, to the failures of current forms of public management whether through the "market" or current forms of bureaucracy and democracy and so on. This would be a Herculean task ... with each of the entries being easily dismissed as "too negative" or PPV (ie unamerican point of view).
OK. So. Sorry, Wikipedia. I fear that the current editorial process is not facilitating the advance in understanding that is needed. Antipation of the effort required to generate the necessary network of cross-linked entries associated with awareness of the likelihood that they would be neutralised or eliminated does not lead me to feel that I should make it my top priority to contributing to their creation.
But, just incase there are a few readers who read this comment before it is eliminated, I would urge you to read Bookchin's "Ecology of Freedom". So far as I know it is the only book that documents just how deeply embedded are the processes currently driving us toward our extinction as s species, carrying the planet as we know it with us. Quester67 ( talk) 14:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
I keep trying to stop thinking about this entry. But can't.
Maybe I will work up the energy to suggest a revised structure.
But I do have a number of problems with Wikipedia policy.
I would like just to mention one of them, but when I start writing about that several others surface.
As I see it, what should be in this entry is a clear statement re the non sustainability of chemical intensive and energy intensive agriculture ... and the impact of those things on a whole series of other things like the food chain cycle and the seas etc etc.
The detail should not be in here but in a linked back up entry.
But here one encounters problem no. 1. The end statement will be treated as a political statement. Reason: it offends those who believe in The American Dream. But, in reality, in the Marks Happy Planet study, the USA comes 140th in the list. It does not offer particularly high quality of life and what it does offer is bought at enormous cost. In reality it is one of the leaset efficient and most destructive countries on the planet. But the dream over-rides logic. Hence Bruntland.
THE BRUNTLAND ENTRY IN THE WIKIPEDIA CONTAINS NO REFERENCES TO THE CRITICISMS (which are actually devastating).
OK. Maybe you can sell that one.
But, if we are to do anything about this situation one needs to understand some of the drivers.
Then one gets back to the writings of one or two people ... and, in my poking around, that takes one to Bookchin and Shiva.
So one would like those entries to summarise what these authors actually say.
But, no, Wikipedia policy seems to be to sanitise entries by listing eg degrees, positions held etc.
Just look at the Carsons/Silent Spring entry. It is reduced to 3 lines about pesticides. And ... I don't have it in front of me ... perhaps 12 lines saying it was criticised by eg Monsanto.
The Vanana Shiva entry should say something about her basic work on reductionist science and monocultures ... of mind and culture as well as agricultures. The cultural one is highly relevant in that the monoculture of what might be called Americanization drives out other thinking. It is perhaps easier to see the relevance of reductionist science. One of the major drivers to our extinction is the way we embrace single-variable "science". So it is thought to be perfectly OK to study the short term effects of fertilizers and pesticides on crop yields and ignore effects even 10 years down the line, never mind the effects on birds and the food chain and on rivers and the seas etc. etc. etc. But this embrace of reductionist science is deeply embedded in our thinking. So, sorry, granitethighs, if you really do want to do something, the target is not quite where you thought it was.
But my point is that there is no summary of Shiva's work in her Wikipedia entry. There is no discussion of Bookchin's work in his entry. Perhaps even more amazing is the absence of any discussion of Kinsey's work in the Kinsey entry - although, in that case, there IS a way round ... by going to "Kinsey report".
Now that's interesting from the point of view of this sustainability entry.
OK If it is not possible to include summaries of people's work in their biography pages ... perhaps it would be possible to generate some kind of back up pages to do so.
This is very important.
If you do get onto the imminent collapse of our financial system ... which has huge implications ... you will need to describe the role of eg the IMF, the World Bank, and the Federal Reserve bank from a very negative point of view.
One might avoid the accusation of offering a political and personal viewpoint by citing eg Susan George ... but I wonder what her biographical entry says.
I do/did know what the entry on Adam Smith says/said. It no where explained what the basic market theory he was advocating was meant to do. It was not about making money. It was about public management. It was a design for a society which would innovate and learn without central direction (note the link to Bookchin and Deming). But it has been picked up and used to promote its opposite in exactly the same way as, as Bookchin shows, has the writing of influential philosophers over milennia.
Yeahbut. Of course. That's a personal point of view! But how is anyone reading the sustainability entry going to get to a point beyond shouting at politicians and expecting them to do something (cf "Lions for Lambs") unless one can somehow get back to what these key writers were saying and then engage in some criticism of them.
Hence my earlier comment about the need to set up a network of linked entries and find some way round some of the more simplistic interpretations of Wikipedia policy.
By the way, there ARE ways round. Some really good entries on some really controversial issues. But I don't want to mention them incase someone takes a hatchet to them!
But I do feel that moving THIS entry forward requires some basic thought about what heeds to be said in THIS page and link back to background pages which in turn lead still further back.
Best wishes,
Quester67 ( talk) 16:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
In an attempt to be a little more specific about the developments that are needed and embedded in the comments I made a few days ago, I have prepared the following network of suggestions.
It seems to me that the current “sustainability” entry should be dramatically reduced in content and made much more hard hitting.
It should more or less be reduced to the following:
Collapse of Biosphere
(Due to CO2, CFCs, destruction of rain forests etc.)
Collapse of Food Base
(Due to destruction of the soils, seas, atmosphere and population growth. Note the role of both chemical and energy intensive agriculture and inability to dispose of both the products and by-products of industrial production. )
Collapse of World Order
(Due to treatment of Third World (including activities of World Bank, IMF etc)
Collapse of Financial System
(Due to the fact that prices no longer mean anything, usurous lending of money created out of thin air, inequity in incomes within and between countries, and irresponsibility of bankers)
Collapse of everything
(Due to nuclear winter as countries fight over diminishing resources and seek to impose partis icular ideologies on a world-wide scale, but in the end triggering release of stockpiles of nuclear material currently held in armaments and power stations.)
Editorial comment: Each of these entries requires a link back to a major page reviewing the, often surprising, evidence supporting it. Much of the material needed to support the first and second of these statements is, to judge from the current page, well known to at least some members of the current editorial team. However, even here, more needs to be made of Wakernegel and Rees’s summary statement that 3 or 5 back up planets would be required to enable everyone alive today to live as we live; it can’t be done, but those concerned are determined to try … and that will be the end of us all. It is less clear that the non sustainability of the financial and world government system is well known to the current editorial team. Reference may need to be made to the work of Susan George (Fate worse than debt), James Robertson (Future Work), John Raven (New Wealth of Nations), and Ann Pettifor (Coming First World Debt Crisis) among others.
Then there is a need for a clear summary statement:
It follows from what we have seen that radical transformation in our way of life is inevitable.
We are currently set on a disaster course of immense proportions. A disaster course which is becoming exponentially worse.
The only'option we have is whether we will act in time to get control of the situation or whether we will wait to be pushed around - and probably eliminated as a species - by forces beyond our control.
Editorial comment. Note that these are neither political statements nor personal points of view in anything other than the sense in which Galileo’s and Newton’s conclusions were political and personal points of view.
Then the entry needs to move toward analysis and explanation.
It is clear that the forms of public management that have emerged over millennia have failed to devise ways of acting on information in an innovative way in the long term public interest.
Again, such a statement needs to be linked to a detailed entry on the objectives and failures of the main forms of public management advocated or pursued today. Unfortunately, such an entry is even more open to the accusation of being political and personal than the statements made above.
En route, the simplistic notion that what is required is a change of values needs to be addressed.
Having got to that point, one has to ask what are the drivers which have, for millennia, headed society in a direction in which the most thoughtful people alive at the time have known to be a mistake … and have, from time to time, sought to devise alternative public management arrangements to avoid.
At this point one comes up against the cutting edge of advancing science.
Very few people have noted that the processes listed above form a system, in the technical sense, and cannot be tackled independently. That is, the attempt to tackle any one component on its own is negated by the reactions of the rest of the system. The name that comes to mind here is Stafford Beer … but there are a few others who ought to be mentioned. So the need is for a link to Systems thinking and sociocybernetics. And the sociocybernetics entry needs to be considerably (re)developed.
At this point the field of citable authors narrows still further.
On the one hand there is Bookchin’s demonstration (in “The Ecology of Freedom” that the social forces promoting these developments have been continuously and inexorably at work (despite the protestations of thoughtful people) over millennia. They cannot be vaguely attributed to “capitalism”.
On the other hand there is Vandana Shiva’s observation that the roots of these developments in modern society are deeply embedded in … not the “science” of popular critique … but in the thoughtways of reductionist science.
Finally, and here one really has to do battle with the question of whether Newton’s was a personal or an objective point of view (and most of his work was initially rejected by the scientific community). For, in the end, one has to ask “What are the sociocybernetic forces that are responsible for the autopoietic march of hierarchy, dominance, and destruction?” Unless we quickly set about understanding and intervening in them as a system we are destined for extinction in the near future, carrying the planet as we know it with us.
This is not a conclusion to be dismissed as “personal” or “too negative”. It describes an objective reality which more people need to recognise and act upon.
Quester67 ( talk) 20:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
Sustainability measurement assists sustainability management by providing and improving evidence-based quantitative measurements. Sustainability measurement indicators may include benchmarks, audits, indexes and other metrics connected to sustainability. ref Hak, T. et al. Sustainability Indicators, SCOPE 67. Island Press, London.
Sustainability accounting uses physical resource theory dealing with physical resources and their conversion in various systems. Sustainable development and environmental science as well as ecological economics contributes to those concepts. The systems can be societal (e.g., technical, such as energy conversion systems ( thermoeconomics) or an industrial process), geophysical (e.g., the atmosphere or a mineral deposit), or ecological (e.g., an ecosystem or an organism). The conversion of physical resources in societal systems is studied with reference to human needs, availability of resources and the possibilities of incorporating these conversions in the natural system. Another important task for resource theory is to develop methods to optimize resource conversion processes. The systems are described and analyzed by means of the methods of mathematics and the natural sciences. ref http://exergy.se/goran/thesis/
Something like this gets at the issues pretty well. skip sievert ( talk) 22:13, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/environ/charter/report.htm I dont know that this solves anything but it covers a lot of our ground - worth a look. Granitethighs ( talk) 09:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
This is coming together brilliantly. Having not helped much for a few weeks already, I am not going to be able to help at all for a few weeks more, you may not notice a lot of difference. On the 25th I'll be watching my extended family show off their near-religious devotion to conspicuous consumption, and straight after that I'm off here with kayaks, children and partner - and the laptop is definitely not coming.
I'll be back at the start of February and really look forward to seeing what is achieved, if there's any work left to do I'll happily pitch in.
Good luck and go well, -- Travelplanner ( talk) 10:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Have moved the Lead and the History section to the main article. The Definition/Scope section look very odd currently, and seems in flux. Is a section called that really needed? I would like to caution main players again about over weighing the U.N. material and related material in the Sustainability article. It does no one any favor to do this. The U.N. material is going to be presented, so it does not have to be repeated in every section over and over and continually used in ref/citations over and over. This approach is antithetical to a good article and also is not neutral and is pov editing. That material is going to be covered, but to force it through out various sections of the article seems like a really bad idea. skip sievert ( talk) 03:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The so called team which is not something I have signed on to... and if there is one, is just part of the editing process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DEMOCRACY#Wikipedia_is_not_a_democracy - Please no longer revert/edit war on the main page user Sunray. It is pointless.
I have made improvements in the article. You can make them also. That is how wikipedia works. I am not a part of a team except I follow guidelines to my best ability and obviously consensus should be tried to be gotten at. The Sumerians sustained themselves for several thousand years and created much of society as we know it with large scale farming and hydrology and lots of other inventions. Does that say something? I cut the material already. I suggest that if you have a problem with editing, request for comment... instead of edit warring as you have recently done... since many eyes are following it and you seem to have a case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OWN - No comments on getting rid of the unneeded definition/scope section.?.. that I can see here. Please do not refer to this editor as a member of a team beyond normal guideline aspects. Thanks. skip sievert ( talk) 04:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
I think the Sumer stuff is important because they documented their culture. We have records of their hydrology, they were the first large scale agriculturists, they developed the first large scale trading mechanisms based on commodity money, which is something they grew literally barley. They did manage to maintain a very homogeneous culture as to the basics for over 3.000 years in the same area despite problematic aspects of the soil there and a lot of pointless warfare. As to why they are not still around? In a sense they are. Saddam raised all kinds of environmental hell by draining the ecosystem related there... swamps... and the war has wrecked the country... but many of the original Marsh Arabs are still around though http://www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2004/01/24-0001.html skip sievert ( talk) 17:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
Sunray has asked us to think about the outline before we get thoroughly under way – he said “How about each of us takes a look and see what improvements we can suggest.”
Needless to say I have taken him up on this challenge and this is what I have come up with for your comment. I think after history we need a clear structure. I also think that in what follows we are talking a lot about environmental sustainability in the face of human activity – what we called before human global sustainability. In terms of intuitive headings my inclination would be to answer two “simple” questions – 1. What is the problem? 2. How do we fix it? In the former we make a statement mostly about the state of biological and Earth systems - the title could be something quite different from the simple one here. The latter I suggest has two components: the evidence on which management must be based – which I like to call “Sustainability accounting” but there is plenty of choice here (also called “Measuring sustainability” or “Sustainability metrics”, “Sustainability reporting” etc.). The second component is the management “action” method, the way decisions about sustainability are implemented. This will clearly entail the usual political process of legislation etc, but it also involves a whole range of informal decision-making, like me deciding to cycle to work. The word often used to cover both formal and informal decision-making is “governance” so that is my preference. I will try and reorganize the present outline into these broad headings if you think this approach has legs. On Nicks comments above - Nick I agree about the complexity and messiness - all this is conceptually extremely difficult to deal with and present in a simple, clear way. In a sense we are covering "everything". Trouble is I think invasive species and peace and security (and all the other stuff) although seeming in a way well off the mark cannot be ignored: they are vital to the story. Although Wikipedia does not allow original research I do not think it is too arrogant to suggest that in devising a "way of presenting this story "we are actually doing pioneering original research that it would allow.I have not seen anything quite like it anywhere (alright I can hear you chuckle ;-) at that one) - but I think it is perfectly valid and, frankly, also a valuable contribution to the history of ideas, if we can make it gel. The following builds on what I said above - still plenty of massaging to do but see what you think: if it is broadly accepted then we have a lot of summarising to do.
Granitethighs ( talk) 01:55, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Granitethighs ( talk) 04:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I am not at all happy with the way this page has developed or the way it is apparently going.
It is heavily overloaded with detailed evidence whereas a short summary of the state of the planet ... including many economic, social, and other issues which do not appear to be mentioned ... would suffice.
More seriously, there appears to be no systematic discussion of the barriers to doing something about the situation.
It is easy to make a list of thngs "Governments" should do.
But the reality is that they can not and wil not do them.
One has somehow to understand the sociocybernetic processes which are so inexorably heading us in a direction which vast segments of the population have for decades known to be a disaster course.
It is necessary to devise knowledge-based, systems-oriented, interventions ... not recommend system wide changes based on "common sense" ... to remedy the situation.
In short there is no discussion of the issues it is most important to discuss, or even easily discerned links to such discussions within the Wikipedia.
Quester67 ( talk) 21:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Granitethighs. You are right. That section did exist. I added to it, then it was whittled away and finally deleted completely. There are still signs of its onetime existence in the list of further readings that are no longer even mentioned in the main entry. I am tempted to resort to conspiracy theory to explain what has happened. But the current entry is so overloaded with evidence for what "everyone" knows that it is impossible to see the wood behind the foliage. The main pillars that drive this whole system are just not visible. The fundamental writings of Vandana Shiva, for example, who shows how the growth of this non sustainable superstructure are embedded in reductionist science, are reduced to a statement about her role in advancing feministic issues. Equally, Bookchin, whose work shows that this process has been advancing at an exponetially increasing rate for milennia ... regardless of apparent social form .. is again reduced to an entry in "further reading". The work of people like Nic Marks and Lane ... who show that, even in the present day, it is possible for societies to offer long high quality life almost within a sustainable ecological footprint provided one abandons the myths of materialsim (which are responsible for so much detruction), suffers the same fate. Rees's conclusion ... which should hit readers between the eyes .. that it would require 3 to 5 back up planets engaged in nothing but agriculture for everyone alive today to live as we do ... is essentially dismissd in a numbered note which says it has been contested! The whole artivle seems grounded in an assumption ... oh so convenient for those who hold power ... that if one simply and endlessly documents all this stuff (which, despite reassuring words in the opening paragraphs, acutally relate to only one aspect of the problem) benign governments will do something about it. Write a report and someone will do something! We studied 8 to 11 year old children working on environmental projects in schools: most of them already knew that that was just rubbish. Yet here we have a report in an enclopedia which fails to chart the rocks in a way which makes them clearly visible, analyses the forces driving us against them, and examines the barriers whch have, for milennia, prevented the observations of many acute observers of society having any impact.
Given what has happened to what WAS there and my own experience of having my own reviews of available evidence eliminated as "personal essays" I am afraid I am most reluctant at this point to set about trying to remedy the entry ... which I certainly do not think is "near completion". However, if anyone cares to trawl through "history" and ressurect some of what was there I will add my tuppence worth. But I currently have no idea when next I will be able to re-visit the site. Quester67 ( talk) 16:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
There was a time when I was quite hopeful of the Wikipedia. But it has turned out to be as susceptible to wishful thinking as, for example, the Bruntland report. Like court jesters ... reports like these demoonstrate the horror of the situation and then lead their audiences to audience assume that the problems, now public, will be fixed. I am away from home at present and have read and re-read the main entry several times. Frankly, apart from the opening paras, which stem from an earlier era (ie more than 3 years ago) it strikes me as superficial and popularistic. The pics are merely gloss and add nothing. A few well chosen graphs (like the population one) would make the case much more forcefully. There is virtually no discussion of other huge non-sustainabilties ... like the non-sustainability of the financial system itself or the way in which the ever increasing divisions in wealth and well-being within and between societies are heading us into a nuclear war scenario. Contrary to the assumptions behind the current entry, the problem is not a lack of knowledge of the situation, it is an inability to see any way of doing anything about it. "Everyone" can see that there is no point in doing anything because they are dealing with a system (in the technical sense) in which common-sense based attempts at change in single variables are negated by the reactions of the rest of the system. Current formulations of social science are inadequate to the task ... and despite portrayal in the film "Lions for Lambs" and Seddon's "Systems thinking in the public service"... we have been unable to trace s single significant work on the reform of public management since the writings of Adam Smith and John Stuar Mill. Another Bookchin quote makes the point clearly: the changes that are needed ... and quickly ... must be so great that the resulting society will not even be recogisable as a "political economy" at all. Likewise, in the entry as it stands, there is virtually no discussion of the drivers that are heading us in a direction in which none of us wants to go ... And have been do so for millennia ..not just 2,000 years ... despite the protest of endless acute observers of society. Just as understanding the forces which crash sailing boats against the rocks was dependent on the work of one or two scientists, so understanding these social forces is not going to emerge from more tracts from conventional political scientists (still less economists) but from the work of one or two people. In that context I have to say that Bookchin's Herculean study of the role and inexorable emergence of hierarchy ... with its associated insistence on the creation of "work" to occupy the masses (and thus destroy the planet) and legitimise hierarchy ... viz division which compels participation in a destructive system ... and Shiva's work on the role of reductionist science and monocultures ... seem to me to be the only two contenders for nomination for that position in the context of understanding our plunge toward self-extinction as a species. But no doubt their views would be regarded as "personal points of view" ... (I should perhaps make clear that I am refering to the first two thirds of Bookchin's "Ecology of Freedom" ... not to his other excellent, but more popular, works). So. To conclude. To complete this entry properly, it would be necessary to generate and have links to a series of other entries such as the unimaginable (and much less well known) horrors embedded in the workins of the financial system, to the failures of current forms of public management whether through the "market" or current forms of bureaucracy and democracy and so on. This would be a Herculean task ... with each of the entries being easily dismissed as "too negative" or PPV (ie unamerican point of view).
OK. So. Sorry, Wikipedia. I fear that the current editorial process is not facilitating the advance in understanding that is needed. Antipation of the effort required to generate the necessary network of cross-linked entries associated with awareness of the likelihood that they would be neutralised or eliminated does not lead me to feel that I should make it my top priority to contributing to their creation.
But, just incase there are a few readers who read this comment before it is eliminated, I would urge you to read Bookchin's "Ecology of Freedom". So far as I know it is the only book that documents just how deeply embedded are the processes currently driving us toward our extinction as s species, carrying the planet as we know it with us. Quester67 ( talk) 14:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
I keep trying to stop thinking about this entry. But can't.
Maybe I will work up the energy to suggest a revised structure.
But I do have a number of problems with Wikipedia policy.
I would like just to mention one of them, but when I start writing about that several others surface.
As I see it, what should be in this entry is a clear statement re the non sustainability of chemical intensive and energy intensive agriculture ... and the impact of those things on a whole series of other things like the food chain cycle and the seas etc etc.
The detail should not be in here but in a linked back up entry.
But here one encounters problem no. 1. The end statement will be treated as a political statement. Reason: it offends those who believe in The American Dream. But, in reality, in the Marks Happy Planet study, the USA comes 140th in the list. It does not offer particularly high quality of life and what it does offer is bought at enormous cost. In reality it is one of the leaset efficient and most destructive countries on the planet. But the dream over-rides logic. Hence Bruntland.
THE BRUNTLAND ENTRY IN THE WIKIPEDIA CONTAINS NO REFERENCES TO THE CRITICISMS (which are actually devastating).
OK. Maybe you can sell that one.
But, if we are to do anything about this situation one needs to understand some of the drivers.
Then one gets back to the writings of one or two people ... and, in my poking around, that takes one to Bookchin and Shiva.
So one would like those entries to summarise what these authors actually say.
But, no, Wikipedia policy seems to be to sanitise entries by listing eg degrees, positions held etc.
Just look at the Carsons/Silent Spring entry. It is reduced to 3 lines about pesticides. And ... I don't have it in front of me ... perhaps 12 lines saying it was criticised by eg Monsanto.
The Vanana Shiva entry should say something about her basic work on reductionist science and monocultures ... of mind and culture as well as agricultures. The cultural one is highly relevant in that the monoculture of what might be called Americanization drives out other thinking. It is perhaps easier to see the relevance of reductionist science. One of the major drivers to our extinction is the way we embrace single-variable "science". So it is thought to be perfectly OK to study the short term effects of fertilizers and pesticides on crop yields and ignore effects even 10 years down the line, never mind the effects on birds and the food chain and on rivers and the seas etc. etc. etc. But this embrace of reductionist science is deeply embedded in our thinking. So, sorry, granitethighs, if you really do want to do something, the target is not quite where you thought it was.
But my point is that there is no summary of Shiva's work in her Wikipedia entry. There is no discussion of Bookchin's work in his entry. Perhaps even more amazing is the absence of any discussion of Kinsey's work in the Kinsey entry - although, in that case, there IS a way round ... by going to "Kinsey report".
Now that's interesting from the point of view of this sustainability entry.
OK If it is not possible to include summaries of people's work in their biography pages ... perhaps it would be possible to generate some kind of back up pages to do so.
This is very important.
If you do get onto the imminent collapse of our financial system ... which has huge implications ... you will need to describe the role of eg the IMF, the World Bank, and the Federal Reserve bank from a very negative point of view.
One might avoid the accusation of offering a political and personal viewpoint by citing eg Susan George ... but I wonder what her biographical entry says.
I do/did know what the entry on Adam Smith says/said. It no where explained what the basic market theory he was advocating was meant to do. It was not about making money. It was about public management. It was a design for a society which would innovate and learn without central direction (note the link to Bookchin and Deming). But it has been picked up and used to promote its opposite in exactly the same way as, as Bookchin shows, has the writing of influential philosophers over milennia.
Yeahbut. Of course. That's a personal point of view! But how is anyone reading the sustainability entry going to get to a point beyond shouting at politicians and expecting them to do something (cf "Lions for Lambs") unless one can somehow get back to what these key writers were saying and then engage in some criticism of them.
Hence my earlier comment about the need to set up a network of linked entries and find some way round some of the more simplistic interpretations of Wikipedia policy.
By the way, there ARE ways round. Some really good entries on some really controversial issues. But I don't want to mention them incase someone takes a hatchet to them!
But I do feel that moving THIS entry forward requires some basic thought about what heeds to be said in THIS page and link back to background pages which in turn lead still further back.
Best wishes,
Quester67 ( talk) 16:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
In an attempt to be a little more specific about the developments that are needed and embedded in the comments I made a few days ago, I have prepared the following network of suggestions.
It seems to me that the current “sustainability” entry should be dramatically reduced in content and made much more hard hitting.
It should more or less be reduced to the following:
Collapse of Biosphere
(Due to CO2, CFCs, destruction of rain forests etc.)
Collapse of Food Base
(Due to destruction of the soils, seas, atmosphere and population growth. Note the role of both chemical and energy intensive agriculture and inability to dispose of both the products and by-products of industrial production. )
Collapse of World Order
(Due to treatment of Third World (including activities of World Bank, IMF etc)
Collapse of Financial System
(Due to the fact that prices no longer mean anything, usurous lending of money created out of thin air, inequity in incomes within and between countries, and irresponsibility of bankers)
Collapse of everything
(Due to nuclear winter as countries fight over diminishing resources and seek to impose partis icular ideologies on a world-wide scale, but in the end triggering release of stockpiles of nuclear material currently held in armaments and power stations.)
Editorial comment: Each of these entries requires a link back to a major page reviewing the, often surprising, evidence supporting it. Much of the material needed to support the first and second of these statements is, to judge from the current page, well known to at least some members of the current editorial team. However, even here, more needs to be made of Wakernegel and Rees’s summary statement that 3 or 5 back up planets would be required to enable everyone alive today to live as we live; it can’t be done, but those concerned are determined to try … and that will be the end of us all. It is less clear that the non sustainability of the financial and world government system is well known to the current editorial team. Reference may need to be made to the work of Susan George (Fate worse than debt), James Robertson (Future Work), John Raven (New Wealth of Nations), and Ann Pettifor (Coming First World Debt Crisis) among others.
Then there is a need for a clear summary statement:
It follows from what we have seen that radical transformation in our way of life is inevitable.
We are currently set on a disaster course of immense proportions. A disaster course which is becoming exponentially worse.
The only'option we have is whether we will act in time to get control of the situation or whether we will wait to be pushed around - and probably eliminated as a species - by forces beyond our control.
Editorial comment. Note that these are neither political statements nor personal points of view in anything other than the sense in which Galileo’s and Newton’s conclusions were political and personal points of view.
Then the entry needs to move toward analysis and explanation.
It is clear that the forms of public management that have emerged over millennia have failed to devise ways of acting on information in an innovative way in the long term public interest.
Again, such a statement needs to be linked to a detailed entry on the objectives and failures of the main forms of public management advocated or pursued today. Unfortunately, such an entry is even more open to the accusation of being political and personal than the statements made above.
En route, the simplistic notion that what is required is a change of values needs to be addressed.
Having got to that point, one has to ask what are the drivers which have, for millennia, headed society in a direction in which the most thoughtful people alive at the time have known to be a mistake … and have, from time to time, sought to devise alternative public management arrangements to avoid.
At this point one comes up against the cutting edge of advancing science.
Very few people have noted that the processes listed above form a system, in the technical sense, and cannot be tackled independently. That is, the attempt to tackle any one component on its own is negated by the reactions of the rest of the system. The name that comes to mind here is Stafford Beer … but there are a few others who ought to be mentioned. So the need is for a link to Systems thinking and sociocybernetics. And the sociocybernetics entry needs to be considerably (re)developed.
At this point the field of citable authors narrows still further.
On the one hand there is Bookchin’s demonstration (in “The Ecology of Freedom” that the social forces promoting these developments have been continuously and inexorably at work (despite the protestations of thoughtful people) over millennia. They cannot be vaguely attributed to “capitalism”.
On the other hand there is Vandana Shiva’s observation that the roots of these developments in modern society are deeply embedded in … not the “science” of popular critique … but in the thoughtways of reductionist science.
Finally, and here one really has to do battle with the question of whether Newton’s was a personal or an objective point of view (and most of his work was initially rejected by the scientific community). For, in the end, one has to ask “What are the sociocybernetic forces that are responsible for the autopoietic march of hierarchy, dominance, and destruction?” Unless we quickly set about understanding and intervening in them as a system we are destined for extinction in the near future, carrying the planet as we know it with us.
This is not a conclusion to be dismissed as “personal” or “too negative”. It describes an objective reality which more people need to recognise and act upon.
Quester67 ( talk) 20:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
Sustainability measurement assists sustainability management by providing and improving evidence-based quantitative measurements. Sustainability measurement indicators may include benchmarks, audits, indexes and other metrics connected to sustainability. ref Hak, T. et al. Sustainability Indicators, SCOPE 67. Island Press, London.
Sustainability accounting uses physical resource theory dealing with physical resources and their conversion in various systems. Sustainable development and environmental science as well as ecological economics contributes to those concepts. The systems can be societal (e.g., technical, such as energy conversion systems ( thermoeconomics) or an industrial process), geophysical (e.g., the atmosphere or a mineral deposit), or ecological (e.g., an ecosystem or an organism). The conversion of physical resources in societal systems is studied with reference to human needs, availability of resources and the possibilities of incorporating these conversions in the natural system. Another important task for resource theory is to develop methods to optimize resource conversion processes. The systems are described and analyzed by means of the methods of mathematics and the natural sciences. ref http://exergy.se/goran/thesis/
Something like this gets at the issues pretty well. skip sievert ( talk) 22:13, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/environ/charter/report.htm I dont know that this solves anything but it covers a lot of our ground - worth a look. Granitethighs ( talk) 09:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
This is coming together brilliantly. Having not helped much for a few weeks already, I am not going to be able to help at all for a few weeks more, you may not notice a lot of difference. On the 25th I'll be watching my extended family show off their near-religious devotion to conspicuous consumption, and straight after that I'm off here with kayaks, children and partner - and the laptop is definitely not coming.
I'll be back at the start of February and really look forward to seeing what is achieved, if there's any work left to do I'll happily pitch in.
Good luck and go well, -- Travelplanner ( talk) 10:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Have moved the Lead and the History section to the main article. The Definition/Scope section look very odd currently, and seems in flux. Is a section called that really needed? I would like to caution main players again about over weighing the U.N. material and related material in the Sustainability article. It does no one any favor to do this. The U.N. material is going to be presented, so it does not have to be repeated in every section over and over and continually used in ref/citations over and over. This approach is antithetical to a good article and also is not neutral and is pov editing. That material is going to be covered, but to force it through out various sections of the article seems like a really bad idea. skip sievert ( talk) 03:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The so called team which is not something I have signed on to... and if there is one, is just part of the editing process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DEMOCRACY#Wikipedia_is_not_a_democracy - Please no longer revert/edit war on the main page user Sunray. It is pointless.
I have made improvements in the article. You can make them also. That is how wikipedia works. I am not a part of a team except I follow guidelines to my best ability and obviously consensus should be tried to be gotten at. The Sumerians sustained themselves for several thousand years and created much of society as we know it with large scale farming and hydrology and lots of other inventions. Does that say something? I cut the material already. I suggest that if you have a problem with editing, request for comment... instead of edit warring as you have recently done... since many eyes are following it and you seem to have a case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OWN - No comments on getting rid of the unneeded definition/scope section.?.. that I can see here. Please do not refer to this editor as a member of a team beyond normal guideline aspects. Thanks. skip sievert ( talk) 04:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
I think the Sumer stuff is important because they documented their culture. We have records of their hydrology, they were the first large scale agriculturists, they developed the first large scale trading mechanisms based on commodity money, which is something they grew literally barley. They did manage to maintain a very homogeneous culture as to the basics for over 3.000 years in the same area despite problematic aspects of the soil there and a lot of pointless warfare. As to why they are not still around? In a sense they are. Saddam raised all kinds of environmental hell by draining the ecosystem related there... swamps... and the war has wrecked the country... but many of the original Marsh Arabs are still around though http://www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2004/01/24-0001.html skip sievert ( talk) 17:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)