Well put :) - Here is my goal:

Whereas a business is structured to optimize the utilization of capital, I envision a structure to optimize the utilization of labor. The primary advantage of that change in structure is the ability to produce an abundance of basic goods and services. Therefore, all those who choose to participate in one of these new structures will enjoy the following advantages:

• Every child born to participating parents will be held, spoken and sung to, and otherwise receive the stimulation they need as infants and toddlers to allow them to learn at capacity.
• Every participant will have access to preventive medical care.
• Every participant will have adequate nutrition, clothing and shelter.
• Crime and violence will be reduced because potential criminals will have the option of participating and because the participants will be less vulnerable to victimization.
• There will be a flowering of art, music, story, and entreprenurial spirit, because participants will not be forced to work long hours at menial jobs - they can choose to pursue their passions while they participate.
• Every such new structure will, in part, achieve abundance in food by instituting production systems that align with biological processes - increasing biological diversity - meaning that participants will live in cleaner and more biologically diverse environments - that are both healthy and beautiful.

Here’s a paper describing sustainability and its metrics in terms of systems theory.

Bonus: lots of models of flows

And here’s something similar from those happy folks at dieoff.org.

What do you think?

Jean ~Nurture Girl~ Russell said:

Where do you stand on the thrivability/sustainability spectrum?

Jean, my thriver is always right!!

;P nmw

CM M~a~g~o~w~a~n said:

Here’s a paper describing sustainability and its metrics in terms of systems theory.

Bonus: lots of models of flows

And here’s something similar from those happy folks at dieoff.org.

What do you think?

Emergy is an interesting calculation. In the paper on calculating buffer zones it seems that the authors consider natural ecosystems one thing and human developments a separate category and then calculate the impact of development on the environment over distance. I wonder if the calculation would change if we thought in terms of integrating the two systems by looking for ways to diminish the impact of development on ecosystems and increasing the impact of ecosystems on development.

It is also interesting that, in emergy terms, exchanging shrimp for dollars is a net loss. Have you done the calculations for the REED program? (I didn't follow all the math) Does the calculation generally support local production for local consumption?

CM, I'll have to dig into those papers. To Jean, who asked:

I have two issues with the hype around sustainability. One, that if I am being sustainable and my friends are being sustainable, but my enemies are not, what is the net of our actions?

I think you have put your finger on a classic problem with any commons-based system - what are known as "free riders." Outside of strict regulations, I am not sure there is an answer to this problem at scale. Smaller political units might be able to accomplish greater stewardship of resources held in common, though history and models demonstrate that the conditions for them to hold are pretty tenuous.

My second issue with it is that I don't really want to live in a sustainable world. On a scale of -10 to 0 to +10 our current situation might be a -7 and 0 would be sustainable. Why go to 0? Why not aim for a +5 or better? Why not work toward a thrivable world?

You might have to describe "thrivable" in better terms so I understand what you are getting at. The earth, when "balanced," is a very thriving place - subject as it is to "shocks." Right now, we are at a place where the accumulated effects of industrialism across the planet could be seen as a "shock." Not sure that "thrivability" helps me understand the buffers to such shocks.

Sustainability, in its most simple terms, seeks to bring a balance to human consumption and production such that an equal or greater share of resources exists for future generations. This means, we are not consuming resources (fresh air, water, trees) faster than they are able to replenish. Thus, the ecological balance of the world is sustained.

I hope that clarifies a bit...?

Lars,

I can't speak for Jean but, to me, sustainability as a term has come to mean that which we cannot do without doing damage to nature. The work by such groups as the Bioneers, Permaculturalists, ZERI, and Brian's REED program are about what we can do if we understand and cooperate with nature's processes. If I am right and sustainability does carry the connotation of limits for most people then a new term like thrivability would seem appropriate to describe what we really want to do.

I think that is one part of the definition. Another part certainly is about what we can do to live well and within the limits to growth. I tend to view that there are limits. The production possibilities frontier cannot be pushed outward endlessly. We must account for externalities. This is the big lesson of the last century in my opinion.

That said, I don't want to get into a war over words. Choose the language that gives you the necessary agency to accomplish the change you want to see in the world. Invent new ones! I have no problem with either, i just don't know what thrivability means to anyone else. That's the glory of invention :)

What is interesting is how we tend to invent new language, then point backward and say, "And thats what *they* meant too!"

I agree that production based on fossil fuels and the externalities, such as mercury poisoning whole aquatic systems, must be limited. Given that, it is still possible to produce anything anyone might need or want without negative externalities and probably less expensive once the production systems are in place. That is ZERIs focus. Governmental incentives and knowledgable consumer choice can help move us in that directions.

Once we stop spreading poisons and otherwise restricting biological diversity, it is my feeling that the biological potential of the planet is much greater than any of us realize.

Part of the problem here David is about context. For example, if I just took your statement above,

Production based on fossil fuels and the externalities, such as mercury poisoning whole aquatic systems, must be limited. Given that, it is still possible to produce anything anyone might need or want without negative externalities.

Would you still say holds true if I added, say:

...for a city of 12 million?

Perhaps if I added:

... for a country of 12 million living on marginal, semi-arid land?

I have a hunch there are, in fact, limits to growth that do not rely upon the energy source(s) alone. These limits would be the context - perhaps the conditions - required for such systems as you describe to exist.

I don't mean to argue with you Lars. We can agree to disagree. But my answer in both context/conditions is yes it holds true.

For purposes of this thread, I believe we can make a lot more progress on social justice and the environment if more people where focused on what we can do rather than what we can't do.

Yes, we shall have to :) I believe what you write nicely sums up the engine of the enlightenment, renaissance, industrialization etc: tremendous hope and excitement about what man can do.

I think the trick to thrivability is to co-create a pattern for living that offers greater essential human satisfaction within a sustainable ecological/economic/social/cultural model.

In fact I doubt that any ecological sustainable system could be sustainable politically if it did not offer the opportunity for personal, familial, and community thriving. Could one coerce adherence to sustainable practices in the long run? What kind of world would that be?

I'm not saying that governmental interventions are not helpful -- we need to change the terrain of decision making and government can effect that. But what will really make the difference is if new socio-cultural platforms for production - exchange - consumption can be grafted on to existing forms and over time come to supplant them. These new forms need to offer greater more thriving joyful lives for people who are part of them, not sackcloth and virtue. Design, culture, access, dynamism, these are elements of this I guess...

Great comments everyone. Thanks for adding so much value to the conversation. Rory, I really enjoy your take on thriving.

Remember the stuff Tom talked about with the problem-centric model that we tend toward? To me, sustainability falls within the problem-centric model--we have a problem, and the solution to that problem is to mitigate the impacts and be sustainable so that problem isn't so much of a problem anymore. To me, thiving goes beyond that and asks not only what can we do to continue to exist, but what can we do to have a thriving existence.

Lars, I hear your point about nature's tendency to thrive given the right conditions. I agree. And I also agree the there needs to be a balance in nature. I call that balance thriving.

Deeply grateful for your sharing. JR

You might be interested in Gary Gunderson's "Leading Causes of Life" http://www.lulu.com/content/4872 80 He's a minister, writing to a religious audience, but you can also extract a lot of very interesting points about flourishing. He makes some good points about flourishing and languishing are not polar opposites... to "delanguish" something doesn't mean that it will flourish. I talked a little about "Transformational Ensembles" www.munnecke.com/papers/D16.doc that would allow folks to form groups around transformations rather than structurally in a centralized model (such as o.net).

Gary is also author of Deeply Woven Roots: Improving the Quality of Life in Your Community.

This is all the kind of thinking and activity that I had hoped would have been supported by Omidyar, but I am afraid is spirally into the dustbin of history.

Where can I get me a good definition of thrivability? The irony is that this discussion is premised on deficit discourse, the shortcomings of the term sustainability, not the strengths of the term thrivability - unless I missed it somewhere...!

David,

Yeah, I try to follow the emergy logic, too. I have some serious reservations since the assumptions in the paper aren't treating a shrimp farm as the highly random house of often fantastically profitable horrors that it truly is. Whil eI've read a lot of Odum (indicating more than passing respect) it's four kinds of silly to use one plug number for each input, yield, price and value of a foreign currency. No farms works like that. For example, if you just grow the shrimp into the next larger count grade you get a lot more than a linear increase in price per kg.

I never put any such accounting into REED. I did go after chlorine pretty hard, with in situ electrochlorination I could cut the chlorine quantity down to 4% of what was used formerly for less than 10% of the prior cost of chlorination.

I also was able to prove that using the aerators when the oxygen concentration was above 5 ppm in tropical conditions would always result in stripping oxygen out of the water. Stopping that nonsense cut the electricity bill by about 1/3rd. That wasn't all that hard: there's a natural law that makes it work out that way. Farmers ignore natural law? Yup.

I did a lot of work on optimizing yields, both cutting maximum loads by about a 1/3rd for a given yield and then using pipelining techniques to blow the yield back up to 3-4X of what was normally done.

I developed some water recycling technology, too.

So... I do try to green the place up but when a person works too hard to align themselves with "sustainability" I listen to them and I also enjoy the cool breeze of their arm waving too.

Personally, I think the trick to achieving sustainability or thrivability for that matter, is to realise that we are creating a world of scarcity.

I don't mean "we" as in, "other people". I mean "we" as in "me".

As a kid, I could never seem to get enough candy. Then on Halloween, when I got more candy than I could possibly eat, I sorted and organised my candy into categories, snickers were better than milky way which were better than 3 musketeers bars. In any huge pile of random candy, there were usually a few pieces that stood out as being the best, and there was never enough of those.

It wouldn't have mattered if I had a whole candy store, I would have created scarcity out of it.

Now, my instinct when I hear something like that is to say immediately "Oh, I'm over that, I'm more mature now, I don't do that anymore." And that statement is coming from being embarrassed and ashamed and thinking I'm going to get in trouble if I create scarcity.

Scarcity is OK! We can create all the scarcity we want, and there's nothing wrong with that.

When we realise and accept that, then other choices will magically appear.

Are you suggesting that there is an abundance of scarcity David?

There is an abundance of everything, Jean :)

see also http://abundance.com/

;D nmw

Then again -- who needs commercial sites?

There is an abundance of TLDs!!!

see also http://abundance.in/

And an abundance of ringtones!!!

>> >> http://abundance.eu/ <<

Holy cow, nmw-man: an abundance of abundance!

That's it, Lars!

All we have to do now is to head over to ICANN and convince them we need .ABD -- and I can definitely sing a song of "ABD abundance"

;D nmw

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