© John Ehrenfeld Engineering Towards a More Just and Sustainable World John Ehrenfeld APPE 19th Annual Meeting Cincinnati March 6, 2010 Sustainability Is More than Greening

© John Ehrenfeld Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties, shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public NSPE Professional Ethical Principles Broad Societal Ethical Principles How does sustainability re-shape these elements of professional ethics?

© John Ehrenfeld Sustainable development is the current ethical guide. Sustainable development is a form of development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their own needs.” Brundtland Report 1987 Equity EconomyEnvironment Sustainable Development No, Sustainable development, itself, contributes to the persistence of unsustainability. Is this framework up to the job?

© John Ehrenfeld Unsustainability is an unintended consequence of our modern beliefs and practices.

© John Ehrenfeld Sustainability is the possibility that human and other forms of life will flourish on the Earth forever. Sustainability lives in a different paradigm. Sustainability is an emergent property of a complex system.

© John Ehrenfeld Two critical sustainability beliefs Humans are caring, not utility maximizing, organisms. The world is complex.

© John Ehrenfeld Engineering in a complex world. Reducing unsustainability (greening) does not create sustainability.

© John Ehrenfeld Sustainability is not produced by a machine.

© John Ehrenfeld Sustainability [Complexity] Problems Are Inherently “Wicked” Rittel & Webber, 1973

© John Ehrenfeld Utility maximizing is not the way to flourishing. The greatest happiness of the greatest number... is the measure of right and wrong. John Stuart Mill The hidden, dominating normative principal of modernity: Maximizing utility as the goal. Vilfredo Pareto The optimum case is where no one can be made better off without making someone worse off.

© John Ehrenfeld For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. E. F. Schumacher From “Small Is Beautiful” Sustainability poses serious ethical contradictions for engineers.

© John Ehrenfeld Martha Nussbaum "[W]e ask not just about the [technical] resources that are sitting around, but about how those do or do not go to work, enabling [her] to function in a fully human way" Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length … Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter. Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; …. Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a "truly human" way… Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us… Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one's life… Affiliation. Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other humans, to engage in various forms of social interaction… Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others… Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities. Control over one's Environment. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life; … Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; … Capabilities needed for functioning (flourishing) Engineers must address the human and social dimensions of sustainability.

© John Ehrenfeld Engineering for sustainability requires attention to three domains of care. Taking care of myself Taking care of others Taking care of the world

© John Ehrenfeld The Natural Domain The Ethical Domain The Tao of Sustainability Sustainability A strategy framework for recovering the domains of consciousness lost in modern cultures. The Human Domain If human and ethical dimensions of sustainability are not addressed, nothing much will happen!

© John Ehrenfeld Essential concerns An sustainability framework for engineering design

© John Ehrenfeld Engineer’s Choices Reducing Unsustainability Creating Sustainability

© John Ehrenfeld Engineering for Sustainability Reducing Unsustainability Dealing with the past Retain cultural structure Deterministic world Needy, disengaged actors Maintain transparency Quantitative, analytic Displaced learning Disconnected design Technocratic Solve, resolve problems Creating Sustainability Creating the future Changing cultural structure Complex world Caring, engaged actors Interrupt transparency Qualitative Local learning Participatory design Pragmatic Dissolve problems

© John Ehrenfeld Engineers for Sustainability The ultimate nerd The Renaissance Man Which one do we need?

© John Ehrenfeld Now in paperback Thanks, and here is the inevitable book plug.

© John Ehrenfeld Selected Publications Ehrenfeld, John R. Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture, New Haven: Yale University Press, Nussbaum, Martha C. and Amartya Sen, eds. The Quality of Life, Oxford: Clarendon Press Rittel, Horst, and Melvin Webber; "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning," Policy Sciences, 4: , 1973 Funtowitz, S.O. and J. Ravetz, “Embracing Complexity, The Challenge of the Ecosystem Approach”, Alternatives, 20:332-38, Law, J., Shaping technology/Building society, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 1992