Dustin Larimer

Thursday, October 15, 2009

“If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution.” Albert Einstein

The most important part of solving a problem is to first define it.  Parts 1 and 2 touched on the self-destructive tendencies of unnaturally designed systems, so let’s shift gears a bit and try to extend this new perspective to the big nasty problems we are faced with today.

The great technological innovations that came out of Silicon Valley in the 1960s and 1970s, fueled in large part by the explosion of a young creative class of professionals swarming upon San Francisco, ushered in the dawn of the information technology revolution (Capra 134-135).  In response to the economic upheaval of the late 1970s, many industrialized nations began restructuring their economies to move their financial systems into more flexible, globally integrated networks (Capra 136).

Today, capital flows throughout global financial networks in a never-ending search for investment opportunities.  Global currency markets move around two trillion dollars every day, making it nearly impossible for many governments to control their own economic policies (Capra 139).  Large economies can generally handle volatile investment swings, but smaller developing economies are at the mercy of an automated system that no one is truly capable of controlling or even understanding.  Desperate for greater inclusion in global arena, developing countries eagerly scrub away decades of hard-fought social, economic and environmental regulation to entice multinational corporations to come in and set up shop.

The effects of this are often catastrophic, resulting in the blatantly racist, sexist, manipulative promotion of dangerous products to the undereducated and impoverished populations of the world (Karnani 40).  Unilever, based out of The Netherlands and responsible for popular brand names like Dove, promotes and distributes a product throughout southeast Asia called Fair & Lovely.  As part of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign, Unilever defends the product throughout the Western world as one that empowers and uplifts disadvantaged women.  The product is a skin bleaching cream made available in single-serving containers, priced to appeal to the 2.5 billion people around the world who live on less than two dollars per day (Karnani 38).  The advertisements, which were pulled from production soon after being aired, find a sad young woman of dark complexion struggling to find acceptance, romance or a respectable career.  Her salvation comes in the form of a mystical blend of herbs and extracts guaranteed to lighten her complexion and bring her the affection and wealth she has always dreamed of.  Unilever’s target audience is left to choose between basic necessities like food or medicine and the chance to realize all the perceived glory of a lighter complexion.  Sadly, this is just one product in an ever growing market geared towards exploiting the regulatory vacuum that exists in the developing world (Karnani, 42).

According to the new rules of the World Trade Organization’s free-trade model of global capitalism, a developing nation should specialize in one particular niche commodity (typically agricultural) to exchange on the open market.  With the earned revenue it will be able to import everything that its people require (Capra 147).  If everything goes as planned, demand for that niche commodity will remain stable and the nation will enjoy unprecedented prosperity.  Taking the bet, the nation solicits heaps of foreign investment capital and begins retrofitting its interior to support vast, specialized farming operations, known as monoculture, by scraping away the indigenous ecological systems that have until now supported the inhabitants of the region, and investing heavily in herbicides, pesticides, and herbicide- and pesticide-resistant bioengineered seeds. (Capra 187)

Soon the nation’s new crops are being hauled away to market and the people are actually enjoying an influx of wealth that they never could have imagined.  But before long pesticides begin showing up in drinking water, livestock and even women’s breast milk.  Cancer rates explode.  Heavy chemical application has so far done a fine job of keeping crop-eating bugs at bay but eventually a few particularly hardy pests survive, reproduce and explode upon the countryside, now unfazed by anything the farmers can spray at them (not that the farmers don’t give it their best effort, of course).  Analysts spook, and investments disappear overnight.  The nation is now chin-deep in economic crisis and is forced to increase interest rates to regain investor confidence, plunging its people into a decades-long recession (Capra, 139-140).

Unfortunately, the nation is no longer capable of satisfying its own population’s food demands since it has overhauled its infrastructure to produce only one type of crop.  Even if they had the means to reestablish a diverse agricultural program, the landscape is thoroughly ravaged by the agrochemical supplements that made monoculture possible in the first place (Capra 196).  Tough luck.  Put this example in context of the entire developing world.  Speculative investments and volatile currency swings have created a predictable trend of wealth flowing north and pollution flowing south (Capra 148).  At the same time, all regions of the globe that offer no extractable financial value are considered “economically irrelevant” and are deprived access to the basic amenities of modern life or opportunities for advancement (Capra 144-145).

The nature of our global financial networks has profoundly impacted life here in our corner of the world as well.  The transformation of capital into a virtual, intangible perception of value has entirely disconnected it from labor, which is still very much a local, tangible element (Capra 142).  Labor has become increasingly fragmented and disempowered as more companies shift jobs overseas and connect with subcontracted individuals who carry virtually zero bargaining power (Capra 143).  This makes our own communities extremely vulnerable to the whims of a global automation piloted by the singular objective of exploiting resources to make money for the sake of making money (Capra 141).

While the objective of our economic model does not have an end, our resources certainly do.  On a fundamental level, there is simply no such thing as “enough.”  Yogendra Shastri, research engineer at the Vishwamitra Research Institute in Westmont, Illinois, along with several colleagues, has developed a computer model demonstrating the causal relationships that exist between plants, herbivores, carnivores, industries, and humans, with the hope of extrapolating trends in current data to project future scenarios of resource availability.  Based on current consumption rates, all trends remaining constant, the human race will face extinction in approximately one hundred and five years (Shastri et al.).  However, the scenarios put forth by the project cannot possibly account for future technological innovations, sociopolitical intervention, or the cascading effects of global warming (Shastri et al.).  The model simply calculates the long-term availability of the planet’s natural resources and projects the impact of variations within the system (Shastri et al.).

Over-extraction of resources from any ecosystem severely cripples the system’s ability to renew itself.  Thus, what we call “resources” are actually just “sources” (Boylston).  When we shut down a living system’s ability to regenerate itself, as we mentioned earlier regarding communication, the entire system begins to collapse.  The ecological impacts of our heroine-addict economy are greatly compounded by gross inefficiencies within the system itself.  For example, the average piece of food in the United States travels approximately 1,500 miles before it is consumed, exponentially magnifying the carbon output of food production and distribution (Boylston).  To put this in context, 75% of the apples eaten in New York City come from the west coast or overseas, even though New York state produces ten times more apples than its own residents eat (Boylston).

This destructive economic system is built upon what Victor Margolin calls “the expansion model.”  Quite simply, “the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange, attracting capital which is either recycled back into more production or becomes part of the accumulation of private or corporate wealth.” (Margolin, “Expansion or Sustainability” 82).  Consequently, the success of our markets is achieved through product development, innovation, and promotion geared towards inflating consumers’ sense of urgency to upgrade and replace existing products, while institutionalizing the empty promises of limitless satisfaction that define consumer culture (Margolin, “Expansion or Sustainability” 83-84).  Value is not derived from efficiency or even practicality, but by the strategic manipulation of perception and price.  Since supply is meaningless without demand, the root of this problem lies within our own culture of consumption and the social values that are exchanged to inform and preserve our sense of well-being.

» Continue to Part 4: Redesign Well-being

References

• Boylston, Scott. “Industrial Ecology.” Sustainable Practices in Design. Savannah College of Art & Design, July. 2009.
• Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, January 2002.
• Karnani, Aneel. “Romanticizing the Poor.” Stanford Social Innovation Review Jan. 2009: 38-43.
• Margolin, Victor. “Design for a Sustainable World.” The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies. Ed. Victor Margolin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 93-105.
• —-. “Expansion or Sustainability: Two Models of Development.” The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies. Ed. Victor Margolin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 79-91.
• Shastri, Yogendra, et al. “Is Sustainability Achievable? Exploring the Limits of Sustainability with Model Systems,” Environmental Science & Technology. 2008: 42; cited in Conner, Alana. “The End of the World is Nigh (Maybe).” Stanford Social Innovation Review Jan. 2009: 14.