Mark Twain and Sustainability

My fellow Missourian made the observation - "Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities." Many observers in the run-up to the current financial crisis recognized that the American appetite for multiplying unnecessary necessities - like houses consumers bought but could not afford, and that developers built but could not sell - was creating a financial house of cards that could only spell trouble over the long run. The creation of a financial system that was unsustainable.

Jay Forrester of MIT provides a systems thinker's view of Twain's observation as it relates to our environmental systems:

"The sustainability argument exists because there is indeed a problem of overpopulation, shortages of water, shortages of resources of all kinds in varying degrees, shortages of land, which leads to wars . . . But the reaction to it is largely to deal with the symptoms, not the causes, do deal with how to get more power, how to refine salt water. And these are things that make the problems worse rather than better, because they create the illusion that we don't have to deal with the growing population or growing industrialization - which are the two powerful driving forces underneath it all.

In initiative after initiative on creating a sustainable Earth, on trying to understand, restore and manage the environment, I find nothing about studying how to limit population growth or how to stop industrialization growth. Everything in these initiatives will tend to increase the problem because they take [the] emphasis off the real issues."

The complexity of sustainability need not breed mystery - however, it is difficult to solve large and complex problems with lots of little ideas. More importantly, engineers must articulate the view that every problem has a solution - but painful problems do not often have painless solutions.