Problem Reduction and Sustainable Design
Introduction
A wonderful thing has happened over the past five years. Designers and engineers have acquired a set of tools that enable a design team to create developments that take the future needs of our children in to account. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has developed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) which establishes criteria in different areas of building that earn a building a LEED Rating and Certification. The assumption is that the higher the rating the more sustainable the certified building will perform.
This offers developers the opportunity to take responsibility for reducing the impacts of a critical problem that we all face today. Or I should say, a problem that is facing us. The problem facing us, our children, and the children that they will have some day, is the problem of diminishing wealth as our resources are depleted. Buckminster Fuller once said that wealth is the ability of a species to survive. By that standard, the problem facing us is our unrestrained patterns of consumption that consume a disproportionate level of fossil fuels, to mention only one example, then that level which is sustainable. LEED and sustainable design practices reduce the disproportion. They do not solve the problem.
The question is--what is the proportionate level of consumption that will give us the ability to survive, and for that mater to prosper? Nobody knows. We have defined the problem; we are consuming our non-renewable resources too quickly. We have not defined the solution; how much reduction in consumption is enough.
We can not define the problem in isolation as an industry today because the answer in part depends upon what happens to the consumption of resources in other sectors (transportation, industry, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and so on). We do not have a drawing board that is big enough to draw a picture of the total problem. Most every sector is drawing on their own board and they have only loose ideas about how the boundaries might fit together with other sectors. I don’t believe any of the sectors of consumption has a view of all the drawing boards and therefore is not able to view the whole picture?
The reason in my opinion is three-fold:
1. We are all too busy finding solutions that measure benefits by their ability to reduce impacts. Right now that is all we can measure with any certainty (e,g, lighting that consumes 20% less energy than state standards).
2. We are working diligently on our own concerns but in professional isolation. We can solve our building problems with out having an affiliation with transportation for example, at least as long as we define our work around the problem, not the solution.
3. Those involved in sustainable design are basically passengers in a plane that has a pilot, but no navigator. Our ultimate destination is a landing field that is hopefully with in range of our fuel supply, but there is no flight plan that tells us where that is or can guarantee with any certainty that the field is with in range.
So long as this is so, there is no flight plan that allows us to measure our progress as we approach a solution; there is no way to project whether or not what we are doing as sustainability professionals is enough. It is as if we are throwing a Frisbee to our dog on the other side of the park. Our dog is seen only as a silhouette against the sunset. We can not tell how far away he is. We throw the Frisbee but with out a better view we can only hope that we have used the right amount of force and threw it in the right direction. Our responsibility is to get the Frisbee to the dog, not to depend upon the dog to correct for our own mistakes.
And that is how I see sustainability as a movement today. Throwing hard and hopefully in the right direction. The question is, how do we get a better view of our dog and throw more confidently? How do we begin to measure our achievements with sustainability in relationship to the solution and not just problem?
Bruc 11-26-04
A wonderful thing has happened over the past five years. Designers and engineers have acquired a set of tools that enable a design team to create developments that take the future needs of our children in to account. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has developed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) which establishes criteria in different areas of building that earn a building a LEED Rating and Certification. The assumption is that the higher the rating the more sustainable the certified building will perform.
This offers developers the opportunity to take responsibility for reducing the impacts of a critical problem that we all face today. Or I should say, a problem that is facing us. The problem facing us, our children, and the children that they will have some day, is the problem of diminishing wealth as our resources are depleted. Buckminster Fuller once said that wealth is the ability of a species to survive. By that standard, the problem facing us is our unrestrained patterns of consumption that consume a disproportionate level of fossil fuels, to mention only one example, then that level which is sustainable. LEED and sustainable design practices reduce the disproportion. They do not solve the problem.
The question is--what is the proportionate level of consumption that will give us the ability to survive, and for that mater to prosper? Nobody knows. We have defined the problem; we are consuming our non-renewable resources too quickly. We have not defined the solution; how much reduction in consumption is enough.
We can not define the problem in isolation as an industry today because the answer in part depends upon what happens to the consumption of resources in other sectors (transportation, industry, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and so on). We do not have a drawing board that is big enough to draw a picture of the total problem. Most every sector is drawing on their own board and they have only loose ideas about how the boundaries might fit together with other sectors. I don’t believe any of the sectors of consumption has a view of all the drawing boards and therefore is not able to view the whole picture?
The reason in my opinion is three-fold:
1. We are all too busy finding solutions that measure benefits by their ability to reduce impacts. Right now that is all we can measure with any certainty (e,g, lighting that consumes 20% less energy than state standards).
2. We are working diligently on our own concerns but in professional isolation. We can solve our building problems with out having an affiliation with transportation for example, at least as long as we define our work around the problem, not the solution.
3. Those involved in sustainable design are basically passengers in a plane that has a pilot, but no navigator. Our ultimate destination is a landing field that is hopefully with in range of our fuel supply, but there is no flight plan that tells us where that is or can guarantee with any certainty that the field is with in range.
So long as this is so, there is no flight plan that allows us to measure our progress as we approach a solution; there is no way to project whether or not what we are doing as sustainability professionals is enough. It is as if we are throwing a Frisbee to our dog on the other side of the park. Our dog is seen only as a silhouette against the sunset. We can not tell how far away he is. We throw the Frisbee but with out a better view we can only hope that we have used the right amount of force and threw it in the right direction. Our responsibility is to get the Frisbee to the dog, not to depend upon the dog to correct for our own mistakes.
And that is how I see sustainability as a movement today. Throwing hard and hopefully in the right direction. The question is, how do we get a better view of our dog and throw more confidently? How do we begin to measure our achievements with sustainability in relationship to the solution and not just problem?
Bruc 11-26-04
posted by Bruc at 11:50 PM
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