(Michael’s response to my question on climateadaptation.com)

Hi finaldraft!

Thanks for your kind words. I live in Massachusetts, and quite admire eastern Canada. It’s all so familiar… I must say, your new tumblr is quite thought provoking. Your fine arts background clearly imprints each of your posts - very cool! 

Regarding reading material, see my booklist. I have an undergrad in Environmental Design from UMass-Amherst with a concentration in sustainable city planning (plus two masters). I’m sure my readers will (in the least) have mixed feelings about this, but I don’t believe in sustainability, I believe in conservation 2.0. 

Putting aside for a moment sustainable design, what, exactly, is sustainability? No one knows, yet believers will defend it through and through. I’ve had some of the most bizarre conversations about the concepts, precepts, and “practices” of sustainability that you can imagine. It is vexingly both an ideology and a tangible thing. It is at once a vision of utopia and an implicit denial of reality. How, for example, does one reconcile denying every child on earth a new laptop with the concept of “leaving resources for future generations”? I do not know. And neither do sustainabilityists.

With respect to “sustainable design,” I cannot think of a more vague concept. Give me an example, and I’ll return 10 arguments against it. Sustainable forestry? How is it not a modern version of conservation? Indeed, one would have to argue that sustainability displaces conservation.

I’m arguing that where sustainability conceptually promises a guarantee, conservation is much more sober, more measurable.

I digress for a reason - What is the analog of “sustainable design” in the fields of fine arts or literature or news media? I suppose one could argue that “freedom of speech” is an equivalent concept - after all, it’s timeless, affects all peoples at all times, and requires protection and development for future generations. People die protecting freedom of expression because they understand its timelessness. It transcends many generations, many continents, many centuries. It’s both tangible and intangible. Like sustainable design, freedom of speech is hard to define and is ideological. So, I concede that, yes, in this respect - human rights - sustainable design can sorta-kinda be compared to the concept of freedom of speech. But, it seems to me, you’d have to make the case that sustainable design is also a human right. Well, is it? Can sustainable design match the manifestational requirements of freedom of speech for legal, even Constitutional protections? Good luck arguing this. 

So where is an equivalent concept in architecture, landscape architecture, or design theory generally? There are principles of conserving and caring for special materials for various reasons - the teak woods should be ever rare and always hand-crafted, for example. But, how can we be serious about cradle-to-cradle design without factoring in the impacts of materials extraction, design, ROI, advertising and marketing, board meetings, labor, transportationnetworks, accounting, regulatory standards, shifting laws, technological innovation, environmental impacts, or even species extinction? (Push this even further by asking if it’s possible that sustainable management could negatively or positively impact the evolution of species. Another nice digression for a rainy day…).

In other words, how can any one product - be it a light bulb or a green LEED-Neighborhood - be certified “sustainable” if we do not know how to measure sustainability from the perspective of any constituent future generation? The presumptions behind sustainable thinking used to hurt me wee brain. Now I think they’re just silly concepts designed to pad academia’s coffers. 

Sustainability is fool’s gold. Conservation is where it’s at. 

Best, 

Michael 

Hey Michael,

Your stance on Conservation 2.0 and Sustainability has got me thinking!

I really appreciate the book list, too. I can’t wait to start knocking them off the list.

Regards,

Daniel 


Check out Michael’s tumblr: ClimateAdaptation.

Posted 9 months ago with 12 notes
Tagged as: environment  design  conservation  sustainability