Getting to Green

Sometimes you can learn things by watching "reality TV", so long as you keep in mind that it's not ... you know ... real.

So I'm struggling with the process of getting my mind around all the aspects of socio-economic sustainability. Lots of good reading, resulting in lots of references to lots more books and articles, some of which will doubtless soon appear in these ramblings.

Any time I indicate that a market-based solution to any given problem might be less than optimal, I get beaten over the head with Adam Smith's "invisible hand". A lot of folks (including a lot of folks on Greenback's campus) seem to think that Smith's classic Wealth of Nations defined, once and for all, the innate superiority of "free markets" in all goods, all services, all circumstances.

It's probably a little bit (but only a little bit) unfair of me to lay blame for the cultural immaturity that is consumerism at the door of American higher education. After all, most of the behaviors and expectations that prevent children (consumers) from becoming adults (citizens) are established well before entry to college or university.

Well, maybe not the pets themselves. Maybe more their owners. Especially when it comes to dogs, because dogs can't help the fact that for millenia they've been bred for subservience. Cats, on the other hand, might have to take the rap themselves.

Just a short thought, regarding sustainability books. The Local Politics of Global Sustainability, the best book I've found so far about social sustainability, is filed in the Greenback library system under Library of Congress classification "HC 79". HC 79 is the classification for "Economic history and conditions -- Special topics".

It all started when Dave Newport at UC-Boulder (I think it was Dave, but looking back I can't find the specifics) said good things about the book "Understanding the Social Dimension of Sustainability."

Following on from yesterday's post, and reflecting on posts dating from February, it strikes me that Greenback U's overriding concept of sustainability frames it as a technological problem. But, while we have a number of very-good technologically-oriented academic programs, we have far more departments, faculty and students who focus on the arts, the humanities and the social sciences. Maybe that's part of the reason that the sustainability issue has such a hard time getting traction around here.