A Pillar Short of Sustainability - Matthew Epperson, Blog Author

A major hurdle for sustainability is connecting the equity elements of sustainability with the environmental and the economical. Those three E’s are the “triple bottom line” that groups like Reliable Prosperity and Triple Pundit, and more broadly the sustainability movement, have come to rely on. (Put another way the three are called People, Planet, and Profit.) But assonance and consonance aside, it’s all-too-easy to ignore that the equity (and people) part of that equation generally goes under-appreciated. The quest to “Go green” or become sustainable rarely seems to involve steps to feed the hungry or make sure education is affordable.
It’s perhaps just easier to suggest turning off lights and running your laundry with cold water instead of hot. Or perhaps it’s the fact that concern for global warming tends to focus upon carbon (and its equivalent) emissions, which are directly contributed to by things like burning fossil fuels. It takes more of a leap of abstraction to see how poverty and human rights violations exacerbate global warming, and thus environmental groups have largely borne the Atlas-weight of curbing carbon consumption (I admit I like consonance as much as anyone). I don’t really know the reason and it’s immaterial why, but this truth seems the elephant in the room for sustainability as I write this article: the human factor is left in the cold more often than not.
What is material is seeing that hunger, poverty, sickness, living wages and other human rights are a valid and necessary part of sustainability. It may be less of an abstraction to put it this way: global warming exacerbates existing social problems in the most climate vulnerable regions, in what Christian Parenti calls the “tropic of chaos” . We saw the same thing in our own backyard during the Hurricane Katrina disaster as mostly poor black people fled their homes due to a natural disaster exacerbated by global warming. Thus if the re-structuring of the Mississippi River and consequent destruction to coastal wetlands, oyster and barrier reefs, were considered a social issue, an issue of the safety of everyone living in Louisiana, then the chaos wouldn’t have been nearly so bad.
It’s not my intention to wave the finger at any one person or group in particular. I’d much rather be arguing to embrace the social aspects of sustainability than trying to prove that there’s a social element at all within sustainability. People like me working in the field already know that the human factor is there and has a rightful place. I think we all need a little kick in the rear that says “Hey, don’t forget!” As UGA’s Director of Sustainability Kevin Kirsche was just discussing with us, the interns, there should be a community service aspect to our internships. His saying that to me is an inspiration, as it means we are making progress here toward embracing that red-headed-stepchild of sustainability.
The “lesson” then is not to leave those old incandescent bulbs generating waste heat ad infinitum, but rather as we become sustainable to remember to help out at your local homeless shelter, and ask the hard questions like “Are you getting enough to eat?” and “Is your job paying you a living wage?”. (If you’re unsure of the latter question the Economic Policy Institute’s “Basic Family Budget Calculator” can give you an estimate based on where you live and how many parents and children live in your household .) Consider when buying organic produce if pesticides are truly the end of the hard questions to be asked; for example, what about the labor practices on those organic farms? A study by the University of California’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program found “Most employers in the study do not (and perceive that they cannot afford to) provide things like living wages and health insurance” to farm laborers.
Remember that if we don’t redistribute wealth in a more equitable manner, that all the environmental action in the world won’t make us a sustainable species. Vulnerable populations around the world are truly affected not only by our carbon footprint but our policy footprint as well, which is why we have to go green at the ballots as much as in the garden. This will be a difficult transition for many as there’s a comfort zone in environmental action as institutions like UGA simply look at the savings associated with greater recycling by targeting the convenience factor for students on campus, and would rather not ask if some of our staff are or are not receiving adequate compensation. I give kudos to our own UGA Campus Kitchens for taking potentially wasted food and giving it to the Athens Community Council on Aging’s Grandparents Raising Grandchildren .
Ultimately the challenge is not only worthwhile but necessary, as we continue to think globally, and act locally. I cannot say which assembly of the United Nations it is that truly solidified these three “pillars” of sustainability (though it seems like Stockholm 1972 got the ball rolling), I can say that there is a great wisdom behind it. A wisdom oft-neglected and to our collective chagrin as all three pillars are necessary to hold up the house of cards that is our modern world, and the worlds to come.