The Battle of Bunker Hill

Under Wessels' complex-systems framework, sustainability is analogous to dynamic equilibrium. In his vision of progress, our cultural economic system “matures” and divorces itself from the unnatural concepts of unlimited growth and unlimited substitutability. At this point, ideally, society becomes like the old growth forest he returns to in each chapter: the amount of energy we absorb is exactly the same as the energy we release. Wessels presents a concise yet thoroughly considered explanation not only of the fact that such an arrangement is at odds with our current paradigm, but of how that came to be so. His broadly systemic approach to the urgent problems of unchecked economic expansion and concomitant environmental degradation was both refreshing and reassuring to me for the perspective it provided.
Suzuki and Boyd, on the other hand, had a nervous energy to their writing that left me unconvinced of the efficacy of their approach to the same problems. In fairness, they are proposing much more concrete measures to combat environmental degradation than Wessels; given that, I think that while their conceptualization of the problem's ultimate causes are in line with that author's, their approach to implementation of solutions is a bridge too far. Certainly, being more thoughtful about how we house and feed ourselves and how and when we travel will be integral to mitigating our cumulative environmental impact – my concern is that such considerations focus on specific parts of the extant economic system, rather than fundamental change.
This seems to me to be the greatest challenge faced in averting environmental degradation to the point of bifurcation. Wessels writes that “large-scale change in complex systems never comes from the top down; it always bubbles up from the bottom,” and to that end the Green Guide is a useful book to have been published. Unfortunately, I think the potential exists for people to soothe themselves with the suggestions made in that book and others like it. Even of the people who buy the book (which is ranked only around 20,000 on Amazon), how many will really adopt a majority of its suggestions? I know, despite my near-crippling terror about the dangers of worsening environmental quality, that I haven't necessarily the fortitude to make the most dramatic and impactful changes.
I want to be clear (Spencer) that I am not suggesting that we can't change, or that the problem is “too big.” I am trying to make a fine point about the usefulness of the practical, changes-we-can-all-make-in-our-daily-lives approach to the current predicament, of which concern about the aggregate impact of incremental changes is only the first half. The corollary is that, after replacing their incandescent light bulbs and purchasing local kale – even after forgoing a jet-fueled vacation to Hawaii – people might well feel that they've “done their part.” This is dangerous, in part because they will have. As long as our complexly intertwined model of global capitalism persists as the dominant paradigm, consumerism (and I'm talking specifically about the U.S.) will reign supreme, and the net effect of all these measures will be to forestall the symptoms of a well-established disease. While even Wessels writes that our aim should be to slow movement down the continuum of degradation, such movement will enable us to avoid making really hard decisions about societal values (see Tom Friedman in the New York Times: "Real Men Tax Gas"). I don't mean to disparage any of these authors, or anyone making palpable changes to their lifestyle in an effort to help. I just think about last summer, when gas prices went over $4 per gallon and people stopped driving so much: prices dropped, and everyone hit the road in celebration. As much as many of us do want to to work for real change, I think we are also very good at deferring it by moderating the current, unsustainable model.
Unfortunately, while the intra-economic changes proposed by Boyd and Suzuki are incremental, the environmental detriment caused by the current economic model is compounding. The end result of the well-intentioned changes proposed to mitigate the environmental impact of industrialized societies might well be to delay the biggest changes past the point of their usefulness. I think of William Prescot and his courageous but doomed militia on a hilltop in Boston nearly 250 years ago: he told them, "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," and the rest is history.