Dr. Daniel B. Botkin, 64, a professor of biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the president of the Center for the Study of the Environment there, is one of the world's leading environmental researchers and has done much to popularize the concept of using yet maintaining the world's natural resources.
"Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the 21st Century," his 1990 book, published by the Oxford University Press, is considered by many ecologists to be the classic text of the movement.
Few societies have ever restrained
their use of resources if
they had the means to
overexploit them.
Q. It's been a decade since the United Nations' Earth Summit meeting
in Rio de Janeiro, where the term sustainability was heard early and often. In
the 10 years since Rio, have you seen much movement toward that
"sustainable world" that was heralded so hopefully there?
A. The good news is there is a lot more talk about sustainability than
ever. The bad news is about people doing things sustainably: nothing much has
improved. What's also discouraging is that a lot of concern has wandered away
from a solid scientific basis for sustainability and toward empty verbiage. The
term has become so overused that it means vastly different things to different
people.
Q. Give us Daniel Botkin's definition of sustainability.
A. First, we have to look at sustainability of a product — for
instance, timber. That's different from sustainability of an ecosystem. A
natural resource like a forest is sustainable if it can regrow at the same rate
that you harvest it, for a defined time period. An ecosystem is sustainable if
when you affect it — perhaps through harvesting or humans' hiking through it
— it can still sustain itself through a defined time period.
Q. Despite the increased discussion of sustainability, material
consumption in the United States has escalated. The trend in new houses and cars
is the bigger the better. Is it your view that Americans are in a kind of denial
about nature's finiteness?
A. It's deeper than that. Few human societies have ever restrained their
use of resources if they had the technology to overexploit them. But a lot of
pro-sustainability efforts are still possible in America without reducing the
standard of living. Let's talk specifics here. If Americans want trophy houses
and big cars, you have to talk to them about energy policy. There are
sustainable solutions to the energy problem. There's plenty of solar and wind
energy right now. The technology exists. It's ready. You can buy it off the
shelf.
Q. So why do we see so little use of sustainable energy like the sun and
wind?
A. Well, I can tell you in California, where there's push to do this, the
power companies lobby and get little riders on bills that make it unprofitable
for people to use solar energy or to go into businesses that would make solar
energy devices. There's a lot of industrial and political inertia based on a
fossil fuel economy.
You have to break through that fossil fuel mind-set. When I talk to my friends
in economics, they tell me that the conventional wisdom has it that solar and
wind power are way off in the future and that nuclear is something we can use
now. The facts are the opposite. So we have a cultural mind-set that drags us
down.
Q. Do you see Americans as too affluent to incorporate principles of
sustainability into their everyday lives?
A. I don't think that affluence necessarily leads to nonsustainable
practices. Nor is the converse necessarily true. There are poor aquaculture
farmers in Malaysia, who destroy mangrove swamps to make shrimp ponds that will
last only two or three years. It's human nature to think of the immediate need
first. On the other hand, in a developed country like Norway, people there are
very sustainability-conscious.
In terms of the United States, there's never been a movement for
sustainability. You can't name a major political or cultural leader who has
emerged as a spokesman for it. Sustainability is a much more fashionable word in
international circles, in Europe, at worldwide centers like the United Nations
Environment Program.
Q. How do you rate the record of the Clinton-Gore administration on
issues of sustainability?
A. A big disappointment. There were so many ways they could have worked
toward sustainability. They didn't.
Q. And would you give us your view of the performance of the Bush
administration on sustainability?
A. I wish they understood global warming. I wish they had an
understanding of the energy situation. They don't understand that the technology
for renewables is here now, that nuclear is no solution, that we must stop
depending on foreign oil and that we can solve energy problems by going to solar
and wind power.
Also, I think they are totally underestimating the importance of global warming
as a risk. It has to be looked at in the same way you look at earthquakes and
hurricanes. The question should not be, "Is global warming happening?"
but rather, "What is the risk of global warming happening, and what are the
consequences if it does?" You should act like you're buying an insurance
policy against something you hope won't happen. The insurance premium would
include reduction of greenhouse gases.
Q. During the last 10 years, globalization brought wealth to corners of
the world previously considered underdeveloped. Will these newly affluent
countries be as profligate with resources as the United States and the rest of
the industrialized world has been?
A. People have always been profligate with resources. But the facts here
are clear. There aren't enough resources to go around for everybody to live at
the level we in America live at. Somebody's going to have to give up something.
But that's where we get into sustainable development in a meaningful way. One of
the big questions of our time is, How can you have a good quality of human life,
physically and spiritually that uses fewer resources per person?
Q. You speak of people needing a new mind-set. What exactly do you mean
by that?
A. My belief is that we will not attain sustainability until we learn to
love both nature and people. To love nature, you have to find a way to make a
deep connection with it. If more Americans felt more connected to nature, they
would feel a bigger stake in policies that cut resource consumption. They
wouldn't be as defensive about scaling back on big cars or other wasteful
consumer items; they'd want to do it.
Q. As the delegates to the World Summit on Sustainable Development begin
their deliberations, what advice would you offer?
A. In the past, sustainability advocates have mostly talked about
sustaining one product or resource. In these new times, I would hope that they
turn their attention toward creating sustainable livelihoods in a context with
ecosystems that are also sustained. We have to think about people and nature as
one.
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