Beth Neff's Blog - Posts Tagged "ecology"
Sustaina ... what?
The short bio included on the cover of my book and in all the publicity material says I have worked, among other things, as a sustainability activist. Not surprisingly, a few people I’ve met at bookstores and schools have asked me what this means.
At first, I felt a little uncomfortable talking about it, not because I’m not proud of my previous accomplishments or have anything to hide. It’s simply that I felt it had little to do with who I am now, the author persona I’m presently wearing, the novel I have written.
And then I realized that none of that is really true. Sustainability IS what I’m doing now. Less than I would have expected has really changed in the transition from activism to fiction writing. I’m still talking about many of the same things, still making the same points.
Let me explain. First, I need to say that sustainability is not just about lasting a long time as in ‘it’s not sustainable to spend more than you earn’ or ‘it’s not sustainable to keep burning fossil fuels.’ These things may very well be true and the concept of sustainability does require that actions and behaviors are able to be sustained over the long haul. But it goes a little further than that.
Sustainability is often described (among those of us who actually find a need to describe it) as a three-legged stool. A stool needs three legs to stand on and can’t function without all of them. This interconnectedness is critical. And, specifically, each leg of the stool stands for something. One is environmental responsibility. A second is economic justice (not suprisingly often mistaken, particularly in business jargon, to mean anything that helps a product or service promote itself.) And the third is social equity. Without all three, the stool can’t stand.
The idea is, of couse, that the ‘yardstick’ of sustainability can be used as a criterea for how we determine our actions, both personally and as a society. It’s a measured accounting – not just financial – of the both short and long-term impact and benefit resulting from decisions. No decision can proceed unless the stool stands balanced and steady.
When I think about the book I’ve written, I realize that sustainability exists, for me, as a core belief system that I use to measure not only the social contract all of us are a part of (whether we wish to be or not) but also as a tool to evaluate emotional and psychological well-being. This is simply another way of saying that what we often refer to as a social ‘safety net’ is a big part of sustainability. The people who have fallen through the net, or stretched its limits, the people who are stressed emotionally, pressed economically, the places that are crumbling structurally, are a symptom of a wobbling stool where one or more of the legs have broken down.
What we’re really talking about is resources, tangible and intangible, how we access them (fairly,) how we utilize them, our relationships with them. Sustainable culture attends to the distribution of resources in all its manifestations – environmental resources like land and fuel, food and conserved spaces, ecological diversity; economic resources (which instantly echo those of the first list;) and social resources such as families and communities, education, mental and physical health.
It turns out that, in caring for and about Sarah, Cassie, Lauren and Jenna, however fictional they may be, I am doing much the same work I have always done.
At first, I felt a little uncomfortable talking about it, not because I’m not proud of my previous accomplishments or have anything to hide. It’s simply that I felt it had little to do with who I am now, the author persona I’m presently wearing, the novel I have written.
And then I realized that none of that is really true. Sustainability IS what I’m doing now. Less than I would have expected has really changed in the transition from activism to fiction writing. I’m still talking about many of the same things, still making the same points.
Let me explain. First, I need to say that sustainability is not just about lasting a long time as in ‘it’s not sustainable to spend more than you earn’ or ‘it’s not sustainable to keep burning fossil fuels.’ These things may very well be true and the concept of sustainability does require that actions and behaviors are able to be sustained over the long haul. But it goes a little further than that.
Sustainability is often described (among those of us who actually find a need to describe it) as a three-legged stool. A stool needs three legs to stand on and can’t function without all of them. This interconnectedness is critical. And, specifically, each leg of the stool stands for something. One is environmental responsibility. A second is economic justice (not suprisingly often mistaken, particularly in business jargon, to mean anything that helps a product or service promote itself.) And the third is social equity. Without all three, the stool can’t stand.
The idea is, of couse, that the ‘yardstick’ of sustainability can be used as a criterea for how we determine our actions, both personally and as a society. It’s a measured accounting – not just financial – of the both short and long-term impact and benefit resulting from decisions. No decision can proceed unless the stool stands balanced and steady.
When I think about the book I’ve written, I realize that sustainability exists, for me, as a core belief system that I use to measure not only the social contract all of us are a part of (whether we wish to be or not) but also as a tool to evaluate emotional and psychological well-being. This is simply another way of saying that what we often refer to as a social ‘safety net’ is a big part of sustainability. The people who have fallen through the net, or stretched its limits, the people who are stressed emotionally, pressed economically, the places that are crumbling structurally, are a symptom of a wobbling stool where one or more of the legs have broken down.
What we’re really talking about is resources, tangible and intangible, how we access them (fairly,) how we utilize them, our relationships with them. Sustainable culture attends to the distribution of resources in all its manifestations – environmental resources like land and fuel, food and conserved spaces, ecological diversity; economic resources (which instantly echo those of the first list;) and social resources such as families and communities, education, mental and physical health.
It turns out that, in caring for and about Sarah, Cassie, Lauren and Jenna, however fictional they may be, I am doing much the same work I have always done.
