What is Sustainability?

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting very much from the lecture. I thought it would be a one sided conversation about sustainability and protecting our limited resources, and while we did discuss the concept of sustainability and recycling, I was pleasantly surprised at the different view points offered. Dr. Baird Callicott, Dr. Sahotra Sarkar, and Jim Walker (Director of Sustainability at U.T.) all had differing opinions concerning the ways in which we attain sustainability, but their unique standpoints made the lecture much more interesting to watch.
The lecture began with  Lawrence Abraham, Interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies, introducing the moderator Jim Walker and Dr. Callicott and Dr. Sarkar.
Jim Walker is locally and nationally known as a major player in the development of sustainable communities, one in particular being the Miller community here in Austin. Personally, I was really impressed by the moderator's ability to state his own opinions of sustainability while equally respecting both Dr. Callicott and Dr. Sarkar's arguments.
Dr. Callicott is a distinguished philosophy professor at the University of North Texas, co-editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, and involved heavily in the conversation of sustainability.
Dr. Sarkar is a professor of philosophy and biology at the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in systematic conservation planning and is known for his criticism of hereditarian thinking in biology.

Dr. Callicott began by talking about how skeptical people are of the concept of sustainability. He told us how he prides himself on being a contrarian and actually thinks the concept of sustainability is quite clear. He simplified the concept by using the example of a runner in a race, their pace being sustainable for a certain amount of time. While the definition of sustainability is clear, it is also relative. It's naive to plan on sustainable agriculture to last millions of years, the process is relative. He stressed the significance of understanding the "temporal metric" of sustaining anything. He also stressed the importance of recycling and modeling our economy after the economy of nature.
Dr. Sarkar agreed with Dr. Callicott in that as a community we must take better care of the world around us that isn't human. He uses owning a baseball team and spending a certain level of money each year to achieve success as an example to explain large scale sustainability. He brought to our attention his work on the protection of the Jollyville salamander that is going extinct, speaking about him being told that the protection of animals has  to do with sustainability. (In my understanding, he disagrees that the extinction of animals effects sustainability.) He thinks that instead of taking on large scale sustainability, it is more important to have small scale individual solutions so that the next generations can enjoy our world as we do.
Jim Walker presents the question, "Why aren't we moving forward on teaching this?" He claims that nothing measurable has really happened in the past 30 years.
Dr. Callicott disagrees with his assessment, blaming his optimism. He finds 21st century problems so complex that they require interdisciplinary conversation. He then goes on to tell us about the Clay conference.
Walker states that his pessimism stems from the big data, asserting that there is an absence of urgency with the big data. He notes that the it is hard to conceive global action when such large examples are used.
Dr. Sarkar brings up the the clean air act, clean water act, and the endangered species act. He speaks about the unwarranted fears of the world collapsing due to increasing population (7 billion people) and poor environment. Sarkar then summarizes Haldane in Possible Worlds who says that the job of a university professor is to make students think. I loved this point in the lecture because I've always felt that the teachers who have impacted my life never told me what to do, but allowed me to make my own decisions and take different positions. Dr. Sarkar says, "We aren't denying any service to students by talking about fuzzy concepts..."
Dr. Callicott discusses liberal education, saying that is obviously liberating. He says, "Education enables you to think freely." He goes on stating that we humans are subject to the same laws of biology that all creatures are. Our cultural values and attitudes can effect our behavior. He brings up population control, using the example of European countries like Italy being less fertile because women are achieving economic opportunities and gaining control of their reproductive lives.
Walker summarizes the discussion with the question, "How are your actions relevant to the people around you?"
Dr. Callicott argues that the most important thing we can do to make change is to vote for representatives that want policies to protect us. An example being the no smoking policy implemented at U.T. and apparently U.N.T. as well.
Dr. Sarkar agrees with Callicott on the importance of voting for representatives that want sustainability, but also argues that "it is a collective problem that requires collective action."

I think that overall I agreed more with Dr. Callicott's stand point. I did find some of their metaphors a bit hard to follow, but for the most part I understood what they were saying. Something that really shocked me was the question from the guy who made the conscious decision to not reproduce. I think that the concept of reproduction is completely different for men and women. People want to have children for a plethora of reasons and I seriously doubt that anyone who makes the decision to bring another human into this Earth does so to ruin the environment.

Jim Walker noted in the beginning of the discussion that the lecture aimed to try and get students to think about ethics and critical thinking. At least for me, the lecture was a success. I'll definitely be looking out for next year's conversation!