There is tons of information floating around about sustainability - and most of it is largely useless. Media articles and press releases trumpet new breakthroughs in vague terms that make it impossible (perhaps intentionally) to really quantify the virtue of a new process or product, something we have to do if we’re actually serious about building a sustainable future rather than merely paying lip service to it.

David MacKay has produced an excellent field guide called ‘Sustainable Energy - without the hot air’ for the more technical- and policy-minded among us, and best of all, he’s put it all online for free PDF download. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but I skimmed through the transportation section in the technical chapters at the back, and he puts some seriously useful hard facts at your disposal.

You can also buy a physical copy of the book, if you are so inclined. (I wonder if he’s included a discussion on the impacts of a hard copy vs. downloading and reading it on a computer…)

Everyone knows that when it comes to curbing global emissions, China is the elephant in the room. Without compliance on behalf of the world’s fastest growing emitter, any treaty on climate change becomes a half-measure at best, and a farce at worst.

It would be easy to point to slowing emissions growth in the Western world and explosive increases in China and India and make the assumption that us rich folks might be doing something right. Surely all those green painted products, solar-powered gizmos and hybrid cars we’ve been consuming with such reckless abandon must be a step in the right direction!

The problem with that theory is, and always has been, the same as the fallacy of individual action when it comes to environmentalism. That re-usable grocery bag of yours starts to look a bit less significant when you’ve got a 300 MVA industrial arc furnace smelting steel in your back yard. Industrial production in the West is dwindling - or rather, it is being exported abroad - and so our domestic statistics can pretend to show bright green checkmarks only because we are outsourcing our emissions.

Unfortunately, climate change is a global problem, and the greenhouse effect is rather agnostic on the subject of Chinese vs. American carbon. However, even if we were to give credence to the notion of national emissions, pointing the blame remains a murky issue.

Fully half of China’s emissions growth is the direct product of manufacturing products for developed economies in the West. And nearly 1/3 of its total emissions are a result of producing goods for export. Clearly, if we are looking to fulfil bureaucratic quotas based on domestic production (Kyota, I’d be looking at you if you had any teeth) outsourcing high-emissions activities like manufacturing is the best way to do it. Not only do we get cheaper goods, but we have a ready scapegoat when the sky falls.

Quite the bargain. And we wonder why those unreasonable Chinese seem so reluctant to shoulder their part of the global emissions reduction burden…

Game

“Using more renewable power in Sydney would make electricity bills more affordable, according to a study prepared for the CSIRO that challenges assumptions about cheap coal-fired energy.”

Set

“The study looked at five scenarios for NSW, ranging from building more coal-fired power stations, as recommended by the 2007 Owen review of the state’s energy needs, to a large energy efficiency campaign combined with more renewable power.

It found building baseload power using coal was much more expensive than focusing on energy efficiency and tapping into a network of small “co-generation” power sources sprinkled in the suburbs.”

Match

“Building a new coal-fired power station to meet demand before 2020 would cumulatively cost up to $30 billion, while building the infrastructure to supply the grid from more local low-emissions sources plants would total about $27 billion over the next decade, the university report calculated.”

From the Sydney Morning Herald, based on this study.

It’s rare that people actually ask you why you’re interested in sustainability. Probably, it’s because the answer seems blindingly obvious - to help avert future doom and gloom. While that’s almost certainly the real, fundamental answer, when it comes to the day to day motivation behind my work, there’s more to it.

One of the most fascinating aspects of sustainability for me is the sheer scope of the problem, encompassing nearly every aspect of civilization and the natural world beyond it. There is never a simple answer to any question. Any problem might have a hundred solutions; and often, any solution has a hundred problems. Counter-intuitive facts abound, forcing you to re-evaluate what were once touchstones. Looking at things from a different perspective often brings fresh insights, for better or for worse.

Can walking really be worse for the environment than driving a car if you eat a lot of meat? Can mercury-filled compact fluorescents really reduce net mercury emissions? Can trains really have a greater footprint than airplanes? Can planting trees really promote global warming? Can nuclear power really reduce the amount of radioactive material in the environment? Can eating local really produce more greenhouse gases than importing food? The answer to all of these is a resounding “maybe.” Or, “it depends.”

In short, I can’t imagine a more intellectually stimulating field to work in. Building a sustainable future is, without doubt, the most complicated challenge humanity has ever faced.

That’s a big statement. But just try and deny it.

Laos is the most isolated country in Southeast Asia, a slash of thick forests, jagged mountains, and snaking rivers that cuts through the heart of the region. Until relatively recently, road access to other countries was virtually impossible, and the flow of people, goods, and information was along the Mekong or the Nam Ou rivers. Even today, nearly half of the settlements in the country have no road access.

While Laos is developing at an explosive rate, much of it remains relatively pristine, and it was fascinating for me to see first-hand the course that development has taken in these untouched areas. I’m going to use Laos as a microcosm for how I see the way that culture relates to the prospects for sustainable development in the Global South.

One of the most startling initial impressions while riding through the winding mountain roads was seeing huge swathes of forest on the mountainside slashed and burned. In much of northern Laos, this is how agriculture works; the burnt forests provide rich soil for planting crops, though they last only a single season. After the rice is harvested, the torrential rainy season washes away the arable soil on the unterraced hillside, and the local farmers repeat the process somewhere else. In a sparsely populated country where three-quarters of the people live rurally, its easy to see how farmers might imagine that their natural bounty is inexhaustible. Especially when that style of agriculture is what they have always practiced. Trying to convince a poor, scattered population that they need to break from tradition and work harder to foster more sustainable methods of agriculture ‘for the good of the planet’ is hardly a challenge unique to Laos.

However, while food and farming may be firmly rooted in cultural history, there is some reason for optimism when it comes to the elements of development that have no traditional precedent; namely power and communications. In these circumstances, the best technology wins, and when it comes to remote regions with inaccessible, inhospitable geography and climates, more often than not, the winner is renewables.

When I visited the village of Ban Kiew Kan in northern Laos, a day’s trek by foot from the village of Muang Ngoi, itself accessible only by boat, I would never have expected to see electricity. Yet every home had a compact-fluorescent bulb, and the chief’s house was even decked out with a satellite dish. Fossil-fueled generators would have been impossible option here in the mountains, with no practical or affordable way to resupply them with fuel, and so the solution came in the form of micro-hydro.

Scattered among the infinite streams that flow down from the mountains, the locals had set up wooden scaffolds that held machines resembling tiny outboard motors, their long driveshafts dipping into the current. These generators were enough to provide a modest, but simple, cheap, and consistent electrical supply to remote villages. The villagers aren’t ‘going green’ to pump up their eco-cred; they’re doing it because fossil fuels just don’t make sense for them.

Local micro-generation shows great promise to spur development in areas that lack access to transportation, let alone grid electricity. This sort of leap-frogging is certainly not restricted to power generation; the mobile phone has been the basis for a tremendously important communications revolution in the Global South, especially Africa. Without even the option of expensive, infrastructure-intensive land-lines, mobile phones in Africa have quickly become one of the fastest growing and most profitable industries in the entire world.

The take-home point is, while there are obvious challenges associated with shedding bad habits, places where those bad habits have not yet had a chance to take root can become great breeding grounds for sustainable development. When cleaner technologies win on the basis of practicality, availability, and affordability, is it any surprise to see their adoption?