Defining Sustainability: Absolutely | Anjila Hjalsted | TEDxGoodenoughCollege
TEDx Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-dCmbViDEQ

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0:02 [Music] thank you how many times this week have you heard something referred to as sustainable
0:28 it could have been sustainable cotton sustainable coffee sustainable single-use Cutlery I've heard that
0:37 I heard another good one sustainable coal I think the best one I've heard yet is um sustainable Airship Hotel what is
0:45 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
0:54 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
1:05 addressing sustainability in one aspect take sustainable cotton usually when you dig into it sustainable cotton is organic cotton
1:16 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
1:24 but organic farming is also associated with lower yields which means we need to use more water we need to use more land
1:32 and there are higher Associated carbon emissions now the numbers problem arises when we say something is sustainable but what we
1:44 really mean is it's just more sustainable than something else take a nice hot cappuccino maybe one you had this morning
1:53 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
2:01 cappuccino this morning it would have emitted around a third of that 0.3 kilos so now that's a lot better
2:10 but is it good enough what if I told you I had done the calculations
2:16 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
2:26 allowance already I uh I read a newspaper column recently that jokingly said that it could be considered sustainable
2:38 because of recycling the same ideas I thought that was pretty good um so what is sustainability
2:48 it's so fluffy but not not an acute way though not like this unfortunately
2:57 at the moment the word sustainability is being used to mean anything and everything and when a word means everything
3:05 it means nothing throwing around the word sustainability is actually really dangerous because it
3:14 means that people like you and me we purchase things because we think they're sustainable when really they're not
3:21 this leads to misleading claims confusion around what it even means to be sustainable sustainability policies which are not
3:31 good enough and that's the numbers problem or misdirected and that's the focus problem
3:41 the closest thing we come to a broadly accepted Definition of sustainability is one that revolves around meeting the needs of the present without
3:50 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
4:01 a need mean do I need the newest iPhone this is known as the bruntland definition when do you guys think this is from
4:13 it is from 1987. this definition is literally older than me
4:22 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
4:30 able to come up with a more accurate or even quantifiable Definition of sustainability really well I say
4:39 let's change that I would like to introduce you absolute sustainability I would like to show you how we can Define
4:47 sustainability absolutely sometimes meaning can be hidden in plain sight so take the word sustainable
4:56 it is something that is able to sustain itself it is sustainable something that sustains itself into the
5:04 future now this whole thing about the future has become much more important to me
5:11 recently since becoming a parent I am the mother of a one-year-old
5:19 and now this problem is not just about me it's about my son it's about his life
5:26 about his future children and generations to come but in order to achieve sustainability we need to know what it looks like
5:37 so let's define absolute sustainability together and let's build off the notion that something is sustainable when it is able
5:45 to sustain itself into the future without putting too much strain on the planet
5:52 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
6:02 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
6:09 we then repeat that process for multiple different aspects of sustainability not just climate change but water and land biodiversity
6:18 we solve the focus problem because we broaden our Focus so through Power of calculation this means that we're actually able to answer
6:28 the question of whether something is sustainable in absolute terms or not yes or no and the idea
6:35 that it all comes down to the definition that I want to propose is this something is sustainable in absolute
6:43 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
6:54 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
7:03 sticking to your share I'll repeat that sticking to your chair to your Sierra stick you must
7:12 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
7:18 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
7:28 picture a cake well we need to know three things in order to share this cake
7:36 we need to know the size of the cake how big is it we need to know who wants to share the cake
7:44 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
7:52 I'd like you to imagine that this cake is actually the Earth so the Earth gives us things that we all
8:00 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
8:09 of resources that we have to share well thankfully some really prominent researchers have come up with this framework it's called the planetary
8:17 boundary framework and it puts numbers on how much we can strain our planet before we reach utter disaster basically
8:26 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
8:33 exceeded the limits now in one of these Focus areas it tells us exactly how much carbon we
8:42 can emit into the atmosphere before we experience unacceptable and catastrophic climate change in another
8:50 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
8:58 thing which is it answers our first question it answers how big the cake is puts numbers on how much wriggle room we have
9:05 within each of these nine environmental Focus areas so far so good the second question is pretty simple
9:15 who wants to share the cake well we all do us and future Generations the third question is where it gets really tricky
9:27 interdisciplinary even this is where engineering science meets philosophy in a wonderful swirly cocktail
9:39 this is where colleagues and I we took philosophical approaches to sharing and we turned them into mathematical equations which allowed us to calculate
9:49 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
10:01 then how far away are we so this is pretty revolutionary because you all now know
10:11 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
10:21 something referred to as sustainable is this cotton sustainable in absolute terms
10:29 we need to start designing products and services and even policies with the goal of absolute sustainability in mind
10:41 and this will force us to be really radical because better is not good enough
10:51 historically the combined efforts of the human race have proven to achieve incredible things
11:00 I believe we still can we just need to know what the goal is and the goal is absolute sustainability
11:11 can we do it yes absolutely thank you
11:19 [Applause]