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  • The Zeitgeist Movement ZDay 2016 Los Angeles CA

  • Defining Sustainability Jason Lord

  • This year, I chose the topic of sustainability.

  • I wanted to spend some time on this word because

  • we hear about it a lot these days.

  • Even our own mission statement as a movement

  • is that we are a “sustainability advocacy organization."

  • And if you jump online and you type in the word sustainability,

  • you're going to find many ideas on the subject,

  • on how to achieve a sustainable world:

  • thousands of groups, organizations,

  • everyone with their own idea and their calls-to-action. So,

  • there are a lot people wanting to move in a positive direction

  • towards a world that works, and that's healthy.

  • How we think about sustainability is shaped

  • by the frame of reference that we use.

  • Whether it's economic or environmental,

  • political or spiritual, whichever frame you align with

  • when thinking about a sustainable world

  • shapes your personal values and beliefs.

  • Ask yourself: What does a "sustainable world" mean to you?

  • Depending on what your personal values are,

  • the answer will likely look different.

  • For example,

  • what I find with the monetary value-set

  • is that it externalizes structural problems,

  • such as pollution, deforestation, homelessness, and unemployment.

  • And it rationalizes these problems as sourced from a person, place or thing.

  • Such as unemployment

  • because oflazypeople,

  • theft and harm as an action by the corrupt,

  • or supply and demand imbalances of the market

  • asotherthan the market itself.

  • There is no conversation within the monetary framework

  • that examines itself as a root-cause generator of negative social outcomes.

  • And when talking about sustainability,

  • what we get inside of the monetary framework is that

  • Everything is OK.”

  • I see this from the debris of abandoned political promises,

  • the constant promotion of consumption in our TV and news outlets,

  • and the glossing over of issues from world organizations.

  • An example of this kind of economic window-dressing that we get

  • from monetary-faithful institutions are reports such as this one.

  • This is one of the first hits from a general online search

  • for the world's most sustainable cities.

  • And the fact that this is a top hit comes as no surprise to me.

  • This report references the UN's definition of sustainability

  • asCities that work well for their citizens in the present

  • without causing problems for themselves

  • and for the rest of the world in the future.”

  • That's their definition of sustainability.

  • And they use a tagline ofplanet, people and profit

  • as the three pillars of their sustainability index.

  • Ranking 51 of the world's major cities for overall sustainability,

  • it places Frankfurt, Germany and London at the top of the list,

  • and it goes down: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Seoul,

  • Hong Kong, Madrid, all the way down- I couldn't fit them all on here,

  • and at the bottom of this frame is Los Angeles at #28,

  • as the most sustainable city out of the 51 they surveyed.

  • Now while this report includes social measures

  • like crime rates and education levels,

  • it is largely based on economic measures such as per-capita GDP,

  • energy use, and the purchase of goods and services.

  • Now also along with The World Bank

  • (I'm sure people are familiar with the World Bank)

  • they rank each country's “regulatory regime

  • in terms of theease of doing business” -

  • which is the biggest euphemism of this whole sustainable city index,

  • because that is a glossy way of saying that if you don't play ball

  • with global banking power, then your sustainability is downgraded.

  • Now I'm sure many good people believe publications like this

  • will help pave the way for the future.

  • But to imply in a color brochure that these cities

  • represent some level of sustainability is absurd.

  • As someone that lives in Los Angeles (I know most of you do),

  • it's one of the dirtiest, most traffic-congested

  • and socially stratified places that I've ever been.

  • And the American Lung association ranks Los Angeles as #5

  • in the US for most polluted air.

  • Now how does oneindexthat

  • as some measure of being sustainable?

  • The reality that we need to face

  • is that there is very little that is sustainable

  • the way our current cities are designed,

  • or the monetary-driven social values that people have adopted.

  • Out here on the west coast,

  • at best, we are scrambling to implement forms

  • of resource-saving technology by passing laws,

  • voting for public bonds to cover costs,

  • but then end up bankrupting California in the process.

  • And all the while we're still draining water resources because of our drought,

  • we're burning a lot of coal for our power,

  • and we're dumping our pollution into the Pacific Ocean.

  • Yet we're on the world city index at #28 asmost sustainable.”

  • It doesn't make any sense.

  • To touch upon another major framework

  • moving society forward, is our political institutions.

  • And with the circus of US elections going on right now,

  • I won't spend much time here.

  • But both past and present

  • show how this most-prized aspect of our political process

  • has become nothing more than a reality TV show.

  • And to be completely honest,

  • I think we're all better off if we just get a little Rick-rolled this election.

  • Because as we all know hewill never let you down."

  • (I threw that in for you.)

  • Media portrayals aside,

  • there is a more telling symptom in the political establishment

  • as to howunsustainablecurrent practices are for solving problems.

  • These are figures from last year's campaign donation records,

  • by lobbying firms and their corporate clients.

  • I don't know if you can read that,

  • but at the top, US Chamber of Commerce ... $85 million.

  • You've got Boeing on there, General Electric, you've got

  • lots of-… AT&T, Comcast, CVS.

  • And if you click through the top hit

  • it consists of think tanks, lawyer firms,

  • telecomm companies and such, all classified under

  • Chamber of Commerce.

  • Anyway, these are the

  • last year's campaign donations to lobby

  • the government and influence our elected officials.

  • The political power of this annual expenditure

  • to influence our government, and to allow the donors

  • a profit advantage for themselves

  • is one of the driving forces that erodes social health.

  • Or as Adam Smith stated in the Wealth of Nations:

  • “…but to narrow the competition must always be against [the market],

  • and can serve only to enable the dealers by raising their profits

  • above what they naturally would be,

  • to levy, for their own benefit, [is] an absurd tax

  • upon the rest of their fellow citizens.“

  • This is from, what people consider the father of our economic system.

  • Hopefully these examples give you

  • an idea of where I'm gonna go with all this.

  • There are numerous methods we could examine

  • to discuss their measure of sustainability,

  • but I want to turn the conversation

  • towards examples of what is sustainable,

  • because identifying a problem without talking about

  • the direction you can go in, leaves you nowhere.

  • A wonderful example of a sustainable system,

  • or more accurately, a collection of integrated systems, is our natural world.

  • If we understand sustainability

  • in terms of the endurance of natural processes,

  • then we look around our world every day

  • and we see evidence of these processes and their longevity.

  • And it is only by respecting our natural habitat

  • within our economic philosophies that we will transition

  • to a higher state of equilibrium with our home,

  • such as is expressed in

  • the Natural Law Resource Based model the Zeitgeist Movement talks about.

  • From an atom all the way out to super-massive black holes,

  • all of these systems are connected.

  • Just as our earth system is dependent on the solar system,

  • and we are dependent on the Earth.

  • And as you may have heard us say before, we are all connected

  • by this natural and technical reality.

  • So, using the example of our city systems,

  • what does sustainability look like in practice

  • if the goal is to have cities that work well for us in the present,

  • without causing problems for ourselves

  • and the rest of the world in the future?

  • What methods do you implement

  • if sustainability is the goal?

  • Well with that broadly stated,

  • the method to employ that we advocate

  • is the method of science.

  • When unadulterated by the need to gain some kind of market advantage

  • over a competitor, or simply for the sake of profit,

  • this method works as a feedback mechanism

  • for improving our understandings of the world around us

  • through testing ideas through observation,

  • and adjusting what we know based on the results of experiment.

  • What would be a core attribute

  • if our design strategy is sustainability? -

  • not the only attribute but a core attribute.

  • It would be Efficiency,

  • in the methods employed to meet human needs.

  • Food, energy, transport, production:

  • all such needs would have efficiency

  • as a core priority in their design.

  • And in a monetary system, this is generally too expensive.

  • What kind of approach could be used for organizing all of this?

  • Well it's known as a systems approach,

  • which is an interdisciplinary method of problem solving,

  • that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems,

  • because our systems are complex.

  • This approach concerns itself with both component parts -

  • could be individuals, communication, everything

  • that a system contains - and also with the whole system being studied.

  • Therefore, it's sometimes referred to as a holistic approach

  • because it considers the whole.

  • So what is the most sustainable city on earth that you can think of?

  • The commercial approach

  • to sustainability has produced results like Masdar City;

  • this is an artist's rendering.

  • This is a planned city project in the United Arab Emirates.

  • Its intention is to be a fully self-sufficient city system

  • in energy and resource use,

  • employing the best that money can buy,

  • in both technology and design.

  • I've been keeping an eye on this project since I heard about it in 2008.

  • Estimated to cost $22 billion,

  • the first phase of only 6 buildings was supposed to be completed in 2010.

  • To date, phase 1 has not been finished,

  • and the project has pushed its completion estimates to 2025.

  • This is an example of the problem

  • of trying to create sustainability inside a for-profit paradigm.

  • The cost is just too high.

  • Another approach, taking the independent route,

  • has been for people to engage in

  • what is known as intentional communities.

  • Especially in the '60s and '70s after the book

  • 'Walden Two' gained in popularity,

  • these initiatives often share similar characteristics

  • such as beingLo-Fi” (or lo-tech) in design,

  • they're very labor intensive for their members

  • and they're internally based generally on a labor-for-credit system.

  • Joining such communities is not always, but it's often driven by

  • the desire to escape problems of society.

  • And while I find that they do begin with good intentions,

  • they all suffer from the inevitability that

  • they are not immune from the problems of the world at large.

  • And I know some TZM advocates find such initiatives appealing,

  • and as a long-time volunteer and activist for the Movement

  • it's worth mentioning that this is not what we're about,

  • because what we are interested in is a root-cause understanding

  • of persistent problems, which points to the problems being systemic.

  • Therefore, the system of economy is what needs to be addressed

  • or our problems will simply worsen.

  • The transition consists of impacting social values through our activism efforts,

  • along with the fact that the economic model that we're talking about -

  • a Natural Law Resource Based model - is holistic and therefore it is global,

  • since the Earth is the largest order system in meeting human needs.

  • Now this brings me to my next point:

  • finding the best example I could,

  • which I feel expresses TZM's train of thought.

  • And I think I did find a good example of a city

  • that employs the scientific method,

  • prioritizes efficiency throughout its design,

  • has a cooperative vs. competitive social structure,

  • it's very hi-tech, it's highly automated,

  • and as a result of a systems approach

  • in managing its complexity.

  • And it's not on earth.

  • The International Space Station (or ISS for short)

  • is a cooperative effort of 15 nations,

  • headed up by 5 major Space Agencies including

  • the US, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada.

  • Commenced in 1998,

  • the International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece

  • and gradually built in orbit.

  • It is currently a city of 6 people.

  • Designed as a low-earth orbit, microgravity laboratory

  • in which the international crew lives and works

  • while orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes.

  • The ISS is a research facility about the size of a football field,

  • with the living space of about a 5-bedroom house.

  • It is the most complex scientific engineering project in history,

  • and the largest structure humans have ever put into space.

  • Orbiting about 220 miles above the ground,

  • it is a solar-powered laboratory for new technologies

  • and a world-benefiting platform for environmental,

  • medical and geological research.

  • Life is not what we would call easy in microgravity -

  • or people would say is weightlessness.

  • They have workout requirements

  • beyond what we're used to in the Earth's gravity to maintain physical health,

  • muscle mass, and their immune system.

  • They have to work out between 2 - 4 hours per day

  • just to compensate for what gravity does for us here on the ground.

  • But the space program is the first initiative we've undertaken

  • that had to answer the questionWhat does it take for us to survive?”

  • Where we had to scientifically understand

  • what we call the Lifeground of human need:

  • such as air, water, power, food, nutrition and health,

  • since there is no life capacity in space.

  • I've been fascinated by astronomy since I was a little boy,

  • looking through a telescope over many nights in my parents' back yard,

  • discovering objects in the night sky,

  • also following our explorations into space.

  • And sometimes it felt like science fiction had become real.

  • Today I understand the profound impact

  • these explorations have had on human civilization.

  • And with that in mind, I wish to share an audio clip

  • that has had a lasting impression on me since I first heard it,

  • and it was also the inspiration for my ZDay presentation this year.

  • [R. Buckminster Fuller] All I'm saying is that

  • when we found out how to keep man alive

  • in space, out of the biosphere,

  • for the first time we found out

  • how to take care of him anywhere in Universe.

  • This is the first really important research on

  • what the human beings need that we have never known because

  • we never went into that because of [the Earth's] excess.

  • We've never looked at that. We've looked into repairing them medically

  • but we never saidWhat do you need to make them a success? ”

  • Only in the space program have we ever done that.

  • That was a clip of Buckminster Fuller in 1975,

  • giving a lecture, concerning his entire life's work.

  • These sessions were thankfully recorded on tape,

  • and I dug through 42 hours

  • of these recordings to find this clip because it was important to me.

  • You can find the full transcript at bfi.org.

  • But I thought this statement really woke me up to the impact

  • of our explorations, and to moving outside of our biosphere

  • because we have to answer these questions.

  • What does it take for us to survive?

  • So a part of this long transition from way back in the Dark Ages,

  • to post-industrial era, to some future form of a resource-based model,

  • it is marked by our ability to manage complexity,

  • and understand how complex systems exhibit behavior, just as we do.

  • From human relationships all the way to our economic theories.

  • To conclude,

  • it is important to remember that our values and beliefs

  • precede all technical applications of sustainability.

  • Therefore we need our cultural awareness

  • to be based on a valid recognition of the laws of nature to which we are all bound.

  • When it comes to a sustainable world,

  • it is not about right and wrong,

  • but it's about what works or doesn't work.

  • The integrity of our values and beliefs is only as good

  • as how aligned they are with the Lifeground of human need,

  • which is the common ground that we all share.

  • Thanks.

  • [Applause]

  • The Zeitgeist Movement LA Chapter presents Z-Day 2016

The Zeitgeist Movement ZDay 2016 Los Angeles CA

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