Why we don't follow a land ethic

Aldo Leopold’s discussion about the need for a land ethic, a social construct that would force people to consider land not as a resource to be exploited, but as “a citizen of it”, is a concept that has been noted for sometime (Leopold, 240). Given that Leopold wrote about this land ethic in 1949, when A Sand County Almanac was first published, it is safe to assume that Leopold may have been among the first to recognize the need for mankind to cease looking at land as an economic engine alone and begin to consider it as something beyond us, an entity that we depend upon to such a great extent that its maintenance must come before other concerns.

Whether Leopold was among the first to make such an argument, or even the question of if the argument is correct, is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that the argument has been made before. The message has come in several forms. Its defined the criticism of the American desire to “grow” discussed in Herman Daly’s Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Ian McHarg used similar arguments throughout the 1960’s in his criticisms of the urban environs of his day. Even Terrance Malick’s recent film The Tree of Life with its juxtaposition of beautiful natural processes in seemingly endless space to the urban environment of New York (actually Houston) which was represented as claustrophobic and cold, could be argued as a further extension on this theory. Clearly, with so many able to express this opinion, such views are known. The important question becomes “Why have we, as humans, failed to respond to such criticisms of our treatment of land?”

Urban planner William Rees attempted to explain this unwillingness to change in his essay The Human Nature of Unsustainability. He argues that humans have observed over time that exploiting land has benefitted survival, that the owner ship of larger lots correlates positively with the ability to live comfortably and procreate. As I have read about the history of land use, Rees points have served as one of the few practical musings on the manner in which humans view land. Treating the desire to use land as an instinct rather than a breach in morals, he places the behavior on the nature side of the nature versus nurture divide, it is a behavior that we have little control over. The learned behavior, in this instance, is the curtailment of this innate desire to grow.

Is learning to curtail an innate desire to grow possible? Personally, I believe it is possible to change this growth behavior; however, I believe that real progress will not be made until it is a necessity blind to no one. I do believe a point will be reached at which growth is no longer unsustainable, but directly detrimental. A period of time in which human innovation will not be able to mask the reality that there are not enough resources to support further growth without subsequent losses in the very sectors that we measure this growth. Unfortunately, until we reach this carrying capacity, there is little reason to believe that humans will begin to view land as people like Aldo Leopold have been suggesting for over 60 years.

For being open to strange concepts

In Ross Andersen’s March 2012 article on the possibility to engineer the human body to have a smaller carbon footprint there is discussion of pills and hormonal treatments that would fundamentally change how humans eat and the body types that consume the food. An objective approach is taken throughout, considering the merits of each concept without demonstrated judgment. This objectivity leaves how such ideas may be perceived up to debate.  While the debate opening objectivity of the article is representative of a journalistic integrity occasionally lacking in modern journalism, it made me question if the ideas argued in this article, and other radical solutions for global climate change, ever truly find a space in which there merits may be discussed.

The first reading that came to mind during this thought was the chapter read in Superfreakonomics on the climate change solutions being developed by the Washington based company Intellectual Ventures. Throughout the chapter, far flung ideas, ranging from hoses spraying carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to regulate temperatures, to ocean traveling cloud generators were discussed. While presented as logical, yet strange solutions, the class in which the ideas were discussed shed solely negative light on each, not a single person felt the urge to defend any of the concepts and ideas presented throughout the chapter.

In some cases, there were valid reasons for the class’ dismissal of the ideas. The carbon dioxide pump, despite the low cost and quick implementation that make it beneficial, would make Vitamin D supplements necessary, because less sunlight would be available. However, too many of the arguments followed the following logic: how can we solve a problem by doing more of the thing that caused it?

This is a closed minded way of looking at solutions to any problem. The process in which a solution solves a problem does not cause a problem in itself unless there are externalities to its solution. In the case of the carbon dioxide pump, the dearth in Vitamin D that it would cause is a legitimate externality that would make its utilization less than ideal. Plainly stating that a solution is not ideal, because it functions similarly to processes that caused problems is not a logical argument if the solution works.

In the case of these articles, serious moral dilemmas probably outweigh any benefit that they could bring to the environment. Modifying children’s size before they are born adds further moral ambiguity to the question of the child’s right not to be born that already exists. A pill stopping people from eating meat may result in the cancellation of cultural traditions. But even these most strange arguments deserve a forum in which they may be discussed objectively. The result could be a panacea to climate change.

The Service and Flow Economic Model

In Natural Capital: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, authors Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken discuss the concept of a “service and flow” economy as a key strategy of a transition to an economic system that accounts for the limitations of access and availability of resources. In a service and flow economy, companies liquidize a service rather than a product. To do so, manufacturers of devices, like air conditioners, loan their physical equipment to houses and other buildings, and consumers pay for the maintenance of the service rather than for the machine itself. The authors of Natural Capital suggest that this revision of the traditional producer-consumer relationship would encourage a change in how Americans view the acquisition of goods from an indicator of status to the investment in the most reliable and sustainable goods present in the market.

In encouraging companies to produce higher quality products, the concept of a service and flow is ingenious, as production of poor quality products would force companies to spend more money paying technicians to fix malfunctioning devices. However, what of the companies that respond to the incentive to, “keep their assets productive for as long as possible” (Lovins, 11)?

Innovation is a necessary component of any dramatic improvement to devices or the service of devices within a market. Essential to the promotion of innovation in any sector is the introduction of new technologies and concepts over time. If a select group of companies that respond to the service and flow economy incentive to produce quality, long lasting products, will innovation diminish?

Chances are that it might after a peak period of ingenuity. Aiming to gain a competitive advantage over other producers of similar services, a given producer would likely invest significant funds and time into the first products they would produce using a service and flow model. Depending on the relative success of each machine, certain companies would go on to dominate the market in the service that they provide. With less competition and assumed high levels of customer satisfaction with the high quality product and efficient servicing that the service and flow economic model would support, many companies could become content with the service they currently provide, creating an economic climate in which innovation is disadvantageous and advances in the efficiency of their technologies falls victim to cost benefit analyses.

A potential solution to this problem would be a mandate stipulating that companies set service contracts of a relatively short length. Using this system, companies would be forced to innovate to compete with other companies’ service improvements made over time.  Unfortunately, this solution negates one of the advantages the service and flow economy has over current economic models by it recreating a situation in which long term dependability becomes a detriment to companies that opt to offer quality service, because consumers would have an option to choose a competing service that spent more on developing improvements to their existing service than on maintenance of the survey the currently provide.

In the end, deciding between our current economic model and the service and flow model proposed by the authors of Natural Capitalism differentially support dueling desires of reliability and constant innovation. Because we cannot have one without the other, a radical shift in our economic thought to that of a service and flow economy is unlikely to produce a society of the type the authors suggest it will. It is a nice idea though.

Daly and the Poverty Question

In the introduction of the book Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, Herman E. Daly poses a simple question: “How do we lift poor people out of poverty?” (pg. 7) The question comes up in a discussion on the relationship between sustainable development and the issue of poverty. Throughout the book, Daly makes a point to distance himself from the common postmodern economic assumption that economic growth, variously defined, is a universal panacea for poverty, rather suggesting that a concentration on decreasing physical growth will result in qualitative improvement in global livelihood. While Daly ‘s point that smaller, stable populations generally provide a greater quality of life is a valid one, evidenced by the high quality of life index values for countries in like Italy (rated number 8 in quality of life index values), where the population is actually decreasing, his assertion that the poor may be lifted out of poverty through a deprioritization of physical growth and a renewed focus on qualitative improvement is flawed for one major reason:  Daly fails to define poverty in a manner that describes its sociogeographical function, and in so doing, does not account for the impact of natural forces on what is considered valuable (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=all).

Simply put, poverty, or much else for that matter, cannot exist as a concept without alternative states of being. In this example, poverty cannot exist without one of either total equality or wealth. Daly challenges such analytic logic on page 2 of the book, where he distinguishes between the “black and white” rationalization of analytic thought and the acceptance of coexistence that defines dialectic logic. While he makes an excellent point of using the distinction between analytic and dialectic thought to explain how sustainable development may be separated from the jargon of growth, his use of analytic logic to critique the 1992 World Bank sponsored Development and the Environment report’s non-stance on the question of whether the it is “better or worse for the South if the North continues to grow on its own resource use”, suggesting that answers to the question “cannot both be right”, is more apt for the consideration of the state of poverty (pg. 8).

Technically, a person, particularly one in the middle class, may find that they are considered wealthy by a lower class citizen and impoverished by a member of the upper class. This technical viewpoint is dialectic, in that it acknowledges the possibility of multiple, coexisting and interrelated states of being. However, it ignores the source of the distinction. From the beginnings of civilization, humans have sought out living locations most advantageous to their survival and the survival of their offspring. As cultural institutions have evolved, this desire to reside in advantageous locations has manifested itself differentially, from early industrial era riverside estates that excluded those who could afford them from the squalor of the city to high property values in residential areas with highly functioning schools, providing offspring with a greater chance to become successful.

In all cases, a common theme has been the impact of environmental and geographical features on settlement patterns. These environmental and geographical features give a physical definition to wealth and poverty, one that cannot be erased through any improvement to the environment. Consider the following hypothetical as an example: urban planners were able to conceive of an urban form of remarkable sameness, contained within a purely Marxist government. Would the concepts of wealth and poverty disappear? I doubt it. Why? Because this urban form would not exist in an ecological vacuum. Just as Daly describes the economy as a subsystem of the environment, our urban forms interact in endless feedback cycles with the ecosystems they reside within. These feedback loops create the attractive vistas and other natural features that have attracted the privileged to specific portions of metropolitan areas since antiquity. The same logic is what causes urban renewal projects, that beautify blighted and often impoverished neighborhoods, to result in escalated property values. Even without such environmental forces, humans naturally seek to differentiate their condition from others. This innate desire to stand out, or stand against something would be likely to manifest in certain places of residence becoming more desirable than others, despite having the similar physical condition and setting.

So to answer his question on how to “lift poor people out of poverty”, the answer is that we do not. Rather, we strive to improve our infrastructure, limit further growth, and depend less on foreign resources to limit the poor-wealthy divide as much as our physical environment and human instinct will allow.

Why Ian McHarg Makes Me Angry

I can recall many images in my life that I have considered beautiful. I have watched the colors of sunrise reflect off of the Hudson River. I have traveled to the Grand Canyon and felt small above the incomprehensibly large expanse. The most striking image I ever saw, however, I observed in New York City. It was one o’clock in the morning, and I was sitting next to a high school friend on a bench in Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The park, which is relatively small in size, contains an esplanade from which one can look down upon the East River, and beyond to Roosevelt Island and further to Astoria, Queens. Interspersed with the areas across the river are the majestic Queensboro and Triborough (now the Robert F. Kennedy) Bridges, the latter rather ironically the work of the man responsible for the highways that separate much of Manhattan from its aquatic surroundings, Robert Moses.  Sitting on this bench with my friend, with the soft light of night lamps shining down on us and the lights of Queens and the Triborough Bridge in front of us, I could not help but feel a profound sense of wonder and pride in being from the New York Metropolitan Area.

So informed by first hand experience of the potential of the urban landscape to intermingle with nature in a manner that transcends the means of its conception, I felt a mix of pity and rage directed towards noted landscape architect Ian McHarg after reading a sampling of his reflections on the “modern city”. A quote from his 1963 essay Man and Environment affords my resentment a tangible source, suggesting that the modern city, “inhibits man as an organism, man as a social being, man as a spiritual being, and that it does not even offer adequate minimum conditions for physiological man… indeed the modern city offers the least humane physical environment known to history.” Considering that the modern city, in its many manifestations, each with their own histories, forms, and relationships with the “natural” environment he champions, is extraordinarily difficult to generalize, McHarg’s dismissal of the modern city as “the least humane physical environment known to history” is much easier to dismiss as ignorant. It is clear the negative impacts of suburban living on the human psyche had not been evident to him at the time.

However, McHarg’s background in landscape architecture, and understanding of historic trends in land use evident in his writing do not beget an ignorance of the potential of the urban form. Rather, it is his distaste for the concept that man can triumph over nature. In this sense, McHarg has a point. Urbanism, as it has taken form since the Industrial Revolution, has frequently emphasized economic and physical growth over consideration of the natural environment, and its place in the city. The aforementioned Robert Moses and his use of land abutting the East River in Manhattan serves as a prime example. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt East River Drive along the eastern coast of Manhattan Island has closed New Yorkers off from the beauty of one of its major waterways since the mid 1930’s (http://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/historical-signs/listings?id=12179).

The problem with McHarg’s perception of the modern city is his unwillingness to accept that the modern city has produced areas of great beauty, anthropogenic or otherwise. Walking around New York City, and other cities around the country, I have often found myself more inspired by the alternating charms and grand statements of successful urban areas, which necessarily interact with nature at some scale, than by natural wonders that McHarg assumes are more worthwhile. Even blights in the urban form excite me, because they provide further potential for innovation, innovations that may, in time, have solutions create a better harmony between the man made and the natural. McHarg is not incorrect to suggest that the city is a form that could do more to interact synergistically with the environment. It is his pessimism and disgust for the urban form that cause me to pity him for not finding beauty in what man has been able to accomplish through the modern city.

Kunstler and Civic Art

“Does the modern profession called urban planning have anything to do with making good places anymore? Planners no longer employ the vocabulary of civic art, nor do they find the opportunity to practice it- the term civic art itself has nearly vanished in common usage.”

            -J.H. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, page 113

Throughout out his book The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler does a magnificent job of breaking down and reasoning through American’s addiction to sprawling communities. The history of architectural styles, the love-hate relationship Americans maintain with nature, and debilitating zoning codes are among the many factors Kunstler feels have contributed to the current state of American urbanism. Of the many factors in the state of American urbanism that Kunstler addresses, what he perceives as a distinctly American aversion to civic art is among the most frequently lamented.

Civic art is definable at multiple scales. Viewed from a holistic perspective, the term civic art defines the summation of urban design, architecture, and public monuments, to produce places recognizable as an art form (http://www.civicart.org/aboutus.html). Alternatively, a smaller scale approach to civic art defines it simply as art observable in public space; a use of urban form as flexible canvas from which an artist may gain recognition from a piece as large as a sculpture or as small as a subway station mural. The multiple perspectives from which civic art may be viewed agree on a common goal for the implementation of civic art, the beautification of the urban landscape.

In The Geography of Nowhere, the beautification of the urban landscape is considered paramount to creating urban spaces that Americans can care about and actively care for. Blaming the tendency for American urban land use to be dictated by the treatment of land as a resource to profit from Kunstler laments, “American cities flourished almost solely as centers for business, and they showed it. Americans omitted to build the ceremonial spaces and public structures that these other functions (other than business and profit maximization) might have called for.” (Kunstler, 33) The public structures Kunstler feels are missing from the American urban landscape and the civic art that they attract, are unquestionably influential in developing a sense of place for a city; however, it must be noted that the development of public structures and ceremonial spaces on a grand scale alone is not a panacea for the problems American cities are faced with today.

Architectural critic and professor of urbanism Witold Rybczynski, who is referenced several times in Kunstler’s text, addresses the relationship between grand architectures and vibrant communities in his book Makeshift Metropolis. Using the example of the Frank Gehry designed Bilbao extension of the Guggenheim Museum, Rybczynski attempts to answer the following question: Can an “architectural icon” act as a catalyst for urban renewal (separate from the planning trend of the mid-20^th century) (Rybczynski, 134)? The answers, Rybczynski found, were mixed. The opening of the Bilbao Guggenheim, a strikingly original structure of oddly shaped metal forms coincided with a massive upturn in the fortunes of the city of Bilbao, Spain. Long dwarfed by the larger Spanish cities of Barcelona and Madrid, the Guggenheim has aided considerably in attracting 4 million visitors since its opening, improving Bilbao’s economy, widening its tax base, and transforming it into a regional destination (Rybczynski, 134). However, the erection of the Bilbao Guggenheim did not occur in a vacuum. As Rybczynski notes, the city benefited greatly from infrastructural improvements, chiefly to the city’s subway system, and the construction of a new airport.  

The perceived success of the Bilbao Guggenheim in revitalizing a city inspired several similar efforts around the world. The majority of these efforts were failures. A pertinent example is found in the Experience Music Project (now the ESP museum). Commissioned by Microsoft executive Paul Allen, designed by Frank Gehry (again), and aiming to take advantage of Seattle’s deep association with rock and roll (Jimmy Hendrix and Nirvana are two of the most recognizable bands from the area), the rock and roll museum seemed guaranteed for success similar to that of the Bilbao Guggenheim. Alas, the project failed miserably. The building’s form was unpopular with locals and the museum struggled to maintain patronage. The situation became so dire that the museum had to lease half of the facility to a science fiction museum. Similar failures are evident in Steven Holl’s Bellevue Arts Museum and Rafael Vinoly’s Kimmel Center, where Vinoly was sued for making an insufficiently remarkable building (Rybczynski, 139).

Figure 1: Abandoned Bronx Borough Courthouse in New York City (http://www.policeny.com/bui/Abandoned%20Bronx%20Borough%20Court%202%20JJJVM.jpg)

The link between the failures of grand architecture to revive decaying neighborhoods is the absence of accompanying infrastructural investment. In each case, a big name architect was chosen to create a building of significance, a public space citizens and visitors alike could identify with, care for, and care about. Despite differences in Architectural taste, the buildings discussed represent a modern manifestation of the grand buildings Kunstler suggests are missing from the civic art starved metropolises of America. Yet, all but the Bilbao Guggenheim, where infrastructural improvement was emphasized, failed to create public places residents cared about. 

There is an argument that architectural styles may have contributed to the failure of the public places described above. Gehry’s structures aside, the Kimmel Center and Bellevue Arts Center both exhibit the post-modern architectural forms that Kunstler pans for their ignorance of street life and uninviting appearance. However, the failure of the visually impressive Experience Music Project and the sustained vacancy of more classically inspired buildings such as the old Bronx Borough Courthouse in New York City suggest grand architecture and civic art go only so far in the creation of neighborhoods and cities that people care for and about. Rather, if the example of Bilbao is to be heeded, consideration of public infrastructure, particularly related to transportation, is far more important to the formation of creation of neighborhoods that people care for and about. Kunstler reflects in The Geography of Nowhere that “Human beings love focal points.” (Kunstler, 127) In creating neighborhoods and cities that people care about, focal points are a logical necessity. They define a place for visitors and act as a source of pride for residents. However, they do not become places worth caring about by themselves. An analysis of any great place, in any city in the world will likely find that these focal points are supported by public infrastructure that makes access to these spaces not only viable, but also convenient to frequent.

Framing a Climate Policy Statement

As of the year 2012, the discourse of public policy documents related to the reversal of climate change has focused on legitimizing scientific findings that support action to reduce climate change, but provide minimal guidance describing how the process of reversing climate change should be conducted. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2009 Report Summer for Policy Makers does not provide a single recommendation, nor a discernable deliverable for policy makers around the globe to implement. Written by a similar cast of climate change scientists, the United States’ Presidential Climate Action Project Report (PCAP) of 2008, provides more detail for United States policy makers by proposing emission reductions in a variety of sectors, but neglects to provide insight on how exactly these standards might be met.

The generality and statistical focus of the aforementioned documents is understandable. The introduction of climate change and sustainability efforts in to the American political discourse owes itself to the tireless promotion of statistical information. Without aggressive promotion of the dangers mankind faces from the threat of climate change, dangers backed up by extensive scientific evidence, it is likely that less action to combat climate change would have occurred.

However, these documents were made, and they did provide evidence in support of climate change and the dangers it has and will continue to cause the global population. The push for reducing climate change survived the bevy of negative articles deriding many of the climate scientists that produced the IPCC report after the details of emails suggestive of manipulated figures on climate change became public. Though natural gas has proven a significant deterrent of progress on the reversal of climate change, climate change remains a major political issue.

The simple fact is that the process of informing politicians and the general populace of the fact that the world is getting warmer and that the world getting warmer is bad has reached a saturation point. Those that believe climate change is occurring have read similar statistics change little over the years, with more exact measurements allowed by investment in the advancement of technologies that indicate climate change exciting scientists more than the policy makers and general population that have more of a say in reversing what they are observing. Those that continue to deny the impacts of climate change are unlikely to reverse their opinions without observing its impacts first hand. Beating either side of the climate change argument over the head with new numbers every couple of years provides fodder for politians running for office and nothing else.

In order to evolve the political discourse on climate change past the release of statistics and into substantial change, the next generation of climate change policy documents will need to focus on three things:

1. Developing a standardized the risk-benefit analysis of the implementation of potentially climate change halting technologies.
2. Providing incentives and financial power to the agencies and corporations able to develop technologies deemed to have more benefit than risk.
3. Educate policy makers and the American populace about the technologies that can be implemented successfully.

In fulfilling these three tasks, future climate change policy documents will detail specific policy guidelines that could be implemented by policy makers with less than expert knowledge of the subject matter, provide logical reasoning for the implementation of the policies in question, and promote the benefits of such policy changes to the American populace, whose dollars will need to fund and support technologies and policies related to those outlined in future policy documents. The need for continued research on the extent of climate change persists. Monitoring of glacial ice caps provides invaluable information on the rate at which climate change is occurring, and the rate at which preparations for its effects need to be considered. Correlation analysis and hypothesis testing of the connection between meteorological phenomena and climate change will aid in the targeting of funds to mitigate climate change related natural disasters. But the statistics that result from this research do not provide policy makers with enough information to develop solutions to the climate change problem.