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Defining Sustainability: Absolutely | Anjila Hjalsted | TEDxGoodenoughCollege

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  1. [Music] thank you how many times this week have you heard something referred to as sustainable
  2. it could have been sustainable cotton sustainable coffee sustainable single-use Cutlery I've heard that
  3. I heard another good one sustainable coal I think the best one I've heard yet is um sustainable Airship Hotel what is
  4. that even I don't know yeah people use the word sustainability to mean a lot of things and the vagueness of the word can be put
  5. into two different groups one of focus and one of numbers now the focus problem arises when we say something is sustainable but we're only
  6. addressing sustainability in one aspect take sustainable cotton usually when you dig into it sustainable cotton is organic cotton
  7. and organic cotton is great if you want to reduce the amount of pesticides you use and the toxic pollutants that you emit into the environment
  8. but organic farming is also associated with lower yields which means we need to use more water we need to use more land
  9. and there are higher Associated carbon emissions now the numbers problem arises when we say something is sustainable but what we
  10. really mean is it's just more sustainable than something else take a nice hot cappuccino maybe one you had this morning
  11. if you had a cow milk cappuccino this morning it would have emitted around one kilo of carbon if on the other hand you had an oat milk
  12. cappuccino this morning it would have emitted around a third of that 0.3 kilos so now that's a lot better
  13. but is it good enough what if I told you I had done the calculations
  14. to find out that a cappuccino is allowed to emit only 0.1 kilos of carbon that means that your oatmeal cappuccino is actually emitting three times its
  15. allowance already I uh I read a newspaper column recently that jokingly said that it could be considered sustainable
  16. because of recycling the same ideas I thought that was pretty good um so what is sustainability
  17. it's so fluffy but not not an acute way though not like this unfortunately
  18. at the moment the word sustainability is being used to mean anything and everything and when a word means everything
  19. it means nothing throwing around the word sustainability is actually really dangerous because it
  20. means that people like you and me we purchase things because we think they're sustainable when really they're not
  21. this leads to misleading claims confusion around what it even means to be sustainable sustainability policies which are not
  22. good enough and that's the numbers problem or misdirected and that's the focus problem
  23. the closest thing we come to a broadly accepted Definition of sustainability is one that revolves around meeting the needs of the present without
  24. compromising the ability of future generations to also meet their needs now this is good it's a good start but it's also pretty vague because what does
  25. a need mean do I need the newest iPhone this is known as the bruntland definition when do you guys think this is from
  26. it is from 1987. this definition is literally older than me
  27. so it still isn't working because we don't know we can't agree on what sustainability looks like and in my entire lifetime we've not been
  28. able to come up with a more accurate or even quantifiable Definition of sustainability really well I say
  29. let's change that I would like to introduce you absolute sustainability I would like to show you how we can Define
  30. sustainability absolutely sometimes meaning can be hidden in plain sight so take the word sustainable
  31. it is something that is able to sustain itself it is sustainable something that sustains itself into the
  32. future now this whole thing about the future has become much more important to me
  33. recently since becoming a parent I am the mother of a one-year-old
  34. and now this problem is not just about me it's about my son it's about his life
  35. about his future children and generations to come but in order to achieve sustainability we need to know what it looks like
  36. so let's define absolute sustainability together and let's build off the notion that something is sustainable when it is able
  37. to sustain itself into the future without putting too much strain on the planet
  38. but how do we know if it can or cannot that's the question right well like this we determine how much something is allowed to impact the Earth
  39. and we then compare it to how much it does impact the earth now these are two numbers that we can compare solving the numbers problem
  40. we then repeat that process for multiple different aspects of sustainability not just climate change but water and land biodiversity
  41. we solve the focus problem because we broaden our Focus so through Power of calculation this means that we're actually able to answer
  42. the question of whether something is sustainable in absolute terms or not yes or no and the idea
  43. that it all comes down to the definition that I want to propose is this something is sustainable in absolute
  44. terms if it stays within its allowance so sticking to your share that's it uh I was told that I couldn't put the
  45. mathematical equations on these slides because it would scare people off that's fine but um these are the words that the mathematical framework boiled down to
  46. sticking to your share I'll repeat that sticking to your chair to your Sierra stick you must
  47. yeah I think you're getting it it's great but now all of you are left with a question which is Angela that's great
  48. but how do I know how big my share is and that's an excellent question it all starts with asking the right questions so to answer this I would like you to
  49. picture a cake well we need to know three things in order to share this cake
  50. we need to know the size of the cake how big is it we need to know who wants to share the cake
  51. and we need to know how to share the cake between the people who want it so now for the next step here I'd like you to do a little mind exercise with me
  52. I'd like you to imagine that this cake is actually the Earth so the Earth gives us things that we all
  53. want to share such as air and water and land now let's tackle the first question how big is the cake how big is this pool
  54. of resources that we have to share well thankfully some really prominent researchers have come up with this framework it's called the planetary
  55. boundary framework and it puts numbers on how much we can strain our planet before we reach utter disaster basically
  56. so the green area in the middle there that's where we want to be within the limits and the red is where we've already
  57. exceeded the limits now in one of these Focus areas it tells us exactly how much carbon we
  58. can emit into the atmosphere before we experience unacceptable and catastrophic climate change in another
  59. how much fresh water we can use before we don't have enough now I know this is some pretty Grim stuff but um it does one really good
  60. thing which is it answers our first question it answers how big the cake is puts numbers on how much wriggle room we have
  61. within each of these nine environmental Focus areas so far so good the second question is pretty simple
  62. who wants to share the cake well we all do us and future Generations the third question is where it gets really tricky
  63. interdisciplinary even this is where engineering science meets philosophy in a wonderful swirly cocktail
  64. this is where colleagues and I we took philosophical approaches to sharing and we turned them into mathematical equations which allowed us to calculate
  65. an exact answer as to whether something is sustainable or not in absolute terms yes or no it's as simple as that and if no which it will often be
  66. then how far away are we so this is pretty revolutionary because you all now know
  67. that the question of whether something is sustainable or not is a scientific question with a simple answer yes or no so be critical next time you hear
  68. something referred to as sustainable is this cotton sustainable in absolute terms
  69. we need to start designing products and services and even policies with the goal of absolute sustainability in mind
  70. and this will force us to be really radical because better is not good enough
  71. historically the combined efforts of the human race have proven to achieve incredible things
  72. I believe we still can we just need to know what the goal is and the goal is absolute sustainability
  73. can we do it yes absolutely thank you
  74. [Applause]

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