Perfect solutions sound enticing, don’t they? How nice would it be to be able to fix something in the best possible way and say, “that is perfect.” As gratifying as it sounds, it is almost always impossible. Even so, the quest to find perfect solutions is a real issue when it comes to sustainability.
A few months ago, after I gave a presentation on definitions of sustainability, a student raised their hand and asked, “can sustainability actually be achieved?” I thought about that question for a minute before responding, “no, but that’s not the point.” The student’s question stuck with me, and I began hearing the same angst over accomplishing an end goal of sustainability from people in environmental careers as well. In discussing the merits of different renewable energy sources, I heard these individuals bemoaning the fact that none of them were a “perfectly sustainable” option – wind is too intermittent, solar requires too much land, our energy storage solutions aren’t advanced enough yet, too many precious metals are required. All these critiques may be true, but they had me thinking the same thing, “that’s not the point.”
Fixating on finding perfect solutions is the same as doing nothing at all. Sustainability doesn’t need to be an end goal, but instead an ever-stretching horizon that we can make progress toward. To think about sustainable solutions linearly implies that we can’t make progress that improves social, environmental, and economic conditions unless that progress has no costs to it. I think that’s flawed.
If you’ve ever studied the environment, you have likely heard of Barry Commoner’s Four Laws of Ecology: everything is connected to everything else; everything must go somewhere; nature knows best; and there is no such thing as a free lunch. If our aim is to reduce environmental harm, we don’t discard a solution simply because it has a cost. Everything has some cost, even regenerative solutions. Instead, we consider that cost and continue to try to reduce it.
For example, reusable shopping bags help the environment, and many retailers incentivize their use. This has become an accepted social norm in the US over time. But, the more ideal solution would be for nobody to use any bags at all, plastic, paper, or otherwise. That is a norm that we have not yet accepted here. Does this mean we reject efforts to reduce paper and plastic consumption and only settle for the best solution? No. We encourage movement toward greater sustainability and continue down the road of finding even better solutions.
It’s a simplistic example, but it is an argument I keep hearing in the context of electric vehicles and batteries, renewable energy, and climate change reduction initiatives. In truth, the speed of innovation and improvement in more sustainable directions has been remarkable over the last decade or so. The cost of renewables and batteries has plunged, we have reduced our use of petroleum, and agricultural innovations have made huge strides that both improve production and soil quality. Are they perfect solutions? No, but that’s not the point.
Should we keep questioning our impacts and improving as much as our technological, economic, and societal limits will allow? Yes, but with caution. Let’s not block solutions with any cost, it just delays progress. If we shift our thinking to focus on what we are trying to move away from rather than a singular end goal, however, I think we can identify where we need to do better and keep stretching that sustainability horizon.
Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Business and Public Administration and Associate Professor of Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies and an environmental policy scholar. The opinions found in this article do not represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
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