SUSTAINABILITY
This culture—devouring, degrading, and insane—cannot continue. For sustainable to mean anything, we must embrace and then defend the bare truth: the planet is primary. The life-producing work of a million species are literally the earth, air, and water we depend on. No human activity—not the vacuous, not the sublime—is worth more than life on this planet. Neither, in the end, is any human life. If we use the word sustainable and don’t mean that, then we are liars of the worst sort: the kind who let atrocities happen while we stand by and do nothing.
—LIERRE KEITH
I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly.—JOHN BURROUGHS
I’VE WRITTEN ELSEWHERE THAT the predator-prey relationship is characterized by the following deal: if I consume the flesh of another (or otherwise kill this other) I now take responsibility for the continuation of that other’s community. This deal holds morally, it holds spiritually, and it certainly holds physically. Those who do not know this—those who do not live it—do not survive. They destroy their own habitat, and in doing so, destroy themselves. It may take a while for those circles to close, to become self-made nooses around their own necks, but it happens. Every time.
I would say that the same holds true not only for what we take into our bodies, but for what comes out of them. If we leave something behind—whether it is shit or our bodies or our clothes or our shelters—we now are responsible for the well-being of this community.
The good news is that this is how humans have lived in place for most of our existence. The bad news is that almost no one in this culture lives this way now.
The questions we need to ask ourselves about every action—as we live in the midst of a culture killing the planet—are these: Is this action sustainable? Why or why not? How would this action need to be different for it to be sustainable?
Before we can answer these questions, however, we have to define sustainable . Many politicians, business people, “green” architects, land managers, foresters and other resource specialists, and so on throw that word around a lot in meaningless or deceptive ways, labeling as “sustainable” many manifestly unsustainable actions that most often make a lot of money for them or for the corporations to whom they are beholden. We hear about sustainable buildings, sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable this and sustainable that, and of course, within this culture, little or none of it is even remotely sustainable.
For an action to be sustainable you must be able to perform it indefinitely. This means that the action must either help or at the very least not materially harm the landbase. If an action materially harms the landbase, it cannot be performed indefinitely: any line sloping downward eventually reaches zero.
Central to sustainability is the landbase itself. What may be beneficial to one landbase may be harmful or lethal to another. I feel good shitting outside and dropping pieces of toilet paper willy-nilly across the rainforest floor, comfortable in the knowledge that it will all break down at most within a year. Would this be appropriate behavior in a desert? Certainly beings in deserts still have to defecate, and certainly deserts have developed ways to turn shit into something they can use. But in a desert, I might have to spread my shit and paper over a larger area, and maybe not use paper at all, to ensure I won’t negatively impact the land. A nonhuman example may help make this a little more clear. Cows did not evolve in a desert. Their poop makes big patties, which in moist climates break down into potent packages of food for scavengers and soil alike. In dry climates, however, these patties can ossify, turning into a sort of fecal asphalt that smothers and harms the soil. Antelope, bighorn sheep, and others who evolved in deserts do not poop in big mounds, but rather in tiny pellets that are more easily convertible to food the desert can use.
Here’s another way to look at sustainability’s dependence on context. I live on Tolowa land. Prior to conquest, the Tolowa lived here without materially harming the place for at least 12,500 years. By any reasonable definition they lived here sustainably. Their homes were made of wood. This means that, here in their rainforest, this particular use of wood was sustainable. But people who live where trees are sparse may not be able to sustainably use wood as a building material.
Any working definition of sustainability must emerge from and conform to a particular landbase—to what that landbase can freely give forever—and not be an abstract set of principles, or rationalizations, imposed upon the landbase. The landbase is primary, and what we do to it (or far more appropriately, with and for it) must always follow the landbase’s lead.
What actions are sustainable is determined not only by context, but also by scale. One human shitting in the forest near my home is probably a good thing. Two, three, or four might make an even bigger bonanza for slugs. But let a thousand people shit right here and the slugs will quickly say no más. Likewise, the fact that the Tolowa took out a few trees does not mean this forest (or any forest) can survive industrial (or even extractive) forestry (which should more accurately be called deforestation). And the fact that the Tolowa took salmon to eat doesn’t mean salmon can survive industrial (or even extractive) fishing (which once again should really be called de-fishing).
Similarly, I don’t shit in the pond by my home. I don’t believe the pond is big enough to take in my shit without materially harming it. If I lived near the Amazon River, on the other hand, and were the Amazon not horribly stressed by the various activities and wastes of this culture, I’d gladly defecate into it, knowing that I was helping the river. I remember years ago reading a story by Herbert R. Axelrod, an expert on tropical fish, in which he was wading waist-deep in a sluggish backwater of the Amazon when a big fish started nudging him in the butt. His native guides told him the fish was begging for food, hoping it could induce him to drop his pants and defecate.
At least my dogs have the patience to not begin their begging till I’ve removed my pants.
The land is a living entity who like any other living entity requires certain foods to survive. Certain other foods can be toxic. But even nourishing foods can be toxic out of scale.
My own shit is just one small bite for this land. But just as I might find one apple delectable and conducive to good health, and just as ten apples at once might make me sick to my stomach and give me the runs, and just as dropping ten tons of apples on my head will kill me, so too the land could find one person’s shit delicious and beneficial, more shit harmful, and more shit than that all at once lethal.
Time is as important as scale to an action’s sustainability. Indeed, they are related. The Tolowa, Yurok, Karuk, and other tribes probably killed more salmon in this region over the last 12,500 years than this culture has in the past 180. But they did it over 12,500 years (they also didn’t dam or poison rivers, deforest hillsides, murder oceans, change the climate, and so on). Killing that many salmon to eat (and dying yourself on this same land, feeding the land and thus eventually the salmon in the same manner as they are feeding you) could have continued in human terms forever. But killing as many salmon as the dominant culture has in such a short time has not been a mutual feeding, but instead a slaughter, and has decimated—and in many cases extirpated—salmon.
I asked my friend Terry Shistar for help understanding time and sustainability. She said, “I often think about why and how this culture values permanence. So often we hear this culture described as a throw-away culture, and that’s certainly true. But there’s a larger sense in which permanence is valued above all else. People want to make a mark. They want to build some monument that will last. They want to stop decay. They want to cheat death. It’s all based on that disrespect for nature you’ve written about, and worse, a fear and hatred of nature and of death.”
“Others may die, but I shall live on. Or at least what I create.”
“Yes. And this striving for permanence—or at least a form of it—happens on a less grand scale, too. Even in conversations about ‘green’ products, permanence is valued. Disposable pens/razors/diapers/cameras /whatever are not considered as good as durable products. Well, those disposable products are generally not very biodegradable, so they’re generally only less permanent in their usefulness to us while remaining waste for just as long. Nevertheless, it leads me to think about how much that ‘green’ preference for durable products affects my thinking in general. In reality, I should prefer structures that will be eaten by termites and fungi (and lived in by birds and mice along the way), and valuing that permanence interferes with my attempts to live sustainably. I think part of the problem is that civilization constantly tries to turn circles into straight lines. Ultimately, the circles will close, but it can take a long time.”
An action’s sustainability is also determined in part by what other stressors the area is suffering. Massive fish kills by dams, logging, and so on make it so far fewer fish can be sustainably caught. Likewise, if someday this culture kills all the slugs in this forest—as will undoubtedly happen if this culture keeps going the way it is—then even one person shitting here may be too much. That’s one of the great costs of living in this culture. Simple acts that previously would have been perfectly sustainable—and perfectly natural—now are not.
It’s a pretty obvious point. If you are healthy, you may be able to give a lot to others, emotionally, physically, spiritually. If you are sick, you may have less to give, and what you do give may make you sicker. If you are grievously wounded or seriously ill, any additional injuries or insults could kill you.
But of course me shitting here isn’t really sustainable anyway, because no action takes place in a vacuum. The food that I ultimately shit has to come from somewhere, and if the hunting, gathering, harvesting and/or production as well as transportation of that food—the bringing of that food to my very lips—isn’t sustainable, then my shitting isn’t sustainable, either, because if I’m going to shit I need food. No food, no shit.
No shit.
It’s a pretty basic point that’s perhaps intentionally missed by almost everyone in this culture who claims to participate in sustainable activities: an action is sustainable if and only if all necessary associated actions are sustainable. To make this more clear, let’s talk about so-called sustainable architecture.
