Dr John Ehrenfeld, Writer and Researcher - Sustainability by Design and Flourishing - Keynote Speech

[00:00:00] When one gets old, as I am, many things [00:00:13] begin to disappear. [00:00:14] One of them is my voice. [00:00:16] So you may have to amplify this as I go. [00:00:23] But I want to deeply thank Steve and the organizers [00:00:26] of the conference. [00:00:29] As he said, he tried to get me here last year. [00:00:32] I do hope the wait is worth it. [00:00:36] I've come a long way, maybe not as far as some of you, [00:00:40] but I've come a long way from the States. [00:00:43] And I bear some bad news. [00:00:46] But I also promised to end this talk on a positive note. [00:00:53] The bad news is that sustainability, [00:00:56] the theme of this conference, and many like it, [00:00:59] is in need of clarifying, or to be more academic, demystifying. [00:01:06] Some 2,500 years ago, Confucius had something to say [00:01:11] about the mystification of language. [00:01:14] When the master was asked by one of his disciples, what would he do [00:01:19] if he were given his own territory to govern, [00:01:21] he replied that he would, quote, rectify the names. [00:01:27] That is, make words correspond to reality. [00:01:31] He explained, and again, I'll quote, "If the names are not correct, [00:01:37] if they do not match realities, language has no object. [00:01:43] If language has no object, action becomes impossible. [00:01:49] And therefore, all human affairs disintegrate, [00:01:52] and their management becomes pointless." [00:01:55] I could stop at that point and say it's all there. [00:01:59] But I'm going to go on. [00:02:02] He, that is, Confucius, would have had a field day rectifying [00:02:08] the meaning of sustainability. [00:02:11] As used every word today, the word has little to do with reality. [00:02:16] Our affairs are disintegrating as measured [00:02:20] by the ever-increasing unsustainable conditions all [00:02:23] around us. [00:02:24] And further, it's pointless to attempt to integrate, coordinate, [00:02:30] or manage what goes for sustainability today. [00:02:34] The very idea that we can continue indefinitely [00:02:38] to sustain our life cycle and associated economy [00:02:43] is about as far from reality as one can get. [00:02:46] The earth has limits, no matter how hard, [00:02:50] some technocrats and know-nothings keep trying to deny it. [00:02:56] Sustainability is everywhere these days, [00:02:59] even in the title of this conference. [00:03:02] One speaker's goal was to, quote, "Improve [00:03:06] the sustainability of manufacturing." [00:03:10] One of the posters asks, can business be sustainable? [00:03:16] Well, the average lifespan of a company on the US-- [00:03:22] in the Standard & Poor's index is about 25 years. [00:03:29] So I leave that for you to decide. [00:03:33] Business pundits argue that every firm needs a sustainability [00:03:37] strategy to prosper. [00:03:40] Politicians also call for sustainability. [00:03:43] But in this case, it's often about being reelected indefinitely. [00:03:49] These and others engage in very sloppy speech habits. [00:03:53] The word sustainability is an empty word. [00:03:57] Semantically, it has no meaning until what is to be sustained [00:04:01] is made explicit. [00:04:03] Without a specific reference, the word creates actions [00:04:07] to sustain the status quo, or whatever [00:04:10] is topmost in the speaker's list of values. [00:04:14] In the capitalist modern nations, whether explicit or not, [00:04:19] the desideratum is growth. [00:04:22] Meaning, let us act in such a way to ensure [00:04:26] that we can continue to grow in revenues or in competitive advantage. [00:04:34] This call for sustainability isn't even [00:04:36] about keeping everything the same. [00:04:39] It calls for sustaining growth indefinitely. [00:04:43] Growth is the magic word, even if it is unspoken. [00:04:48] It was at one time explicit in the Brundtland definition [00:04:53] that got this whole business started. [00:04:56] Brundtland said sustainable development is development, [00:05:01] but done in a way that the future could share [00:05:05] in the same fruits of the earth that we do. [00:05:10] Growth, it is said by many, is the answer to human suffering [00:05:14] and inequality, but this is far from reality. [00:05:19] Growth does lift some out of poverty, [00:05:21] but impoverishes others at the same time. [00:05:25] Who wins and who loses is still a question. [00:05:30] This loosely hidden connection of sustainability [00:05:33] to unrealistic growth would be at the top or near the top [00:05:38] of Confucius's list of words to rectify. [00:05:43] I expect that if I asked everyone in this hall [00:05:45] whether indefinite growth were realistic, [00:05:47] most would answer no. [00:05:51] So if we now know that we cannot continue to keep going [00:05:54] and growing as we have, wouldn't it be wise to stop [00:05:58] and think of another path to follow in the future? [00:06:02] And if we are arrogant or stupid enough [00:06:05] to think we can go it alone, keep in mind [00:06:08] that 80% of the world's people are trying [00:06:11] to reach the same level of affluence and consumption [00:06:14] as we have. [00:06:17] Maybe we will be smart enough to figure out [00:06:19] how to continue using more than one earth as we are today, [00:06:24] but the stark reality facing us is [00:06:26] that a whole world as affluent as we are [00:06:29] will need three or four earths or more. [00:06:33] Perhaps we can call up Confucians from the grave [00:06:36] to help us. [00:06:38] Confucius and many other wise men understood what qualities [00:06:42] should be maintained and what words should be used [00:06:45] to guide the management of people. [00:06:48] All had quite similar views of what constituted a good life. [00:06:53] That is, a life that exposed the full potential of human being. [00:06:57] Confucius would take special steps to rectify the word being. [00:07:10] It does not rightly refer to an object or to a person. [00:07:14] It refers to the action of existing, of living. [00:07:19] These two words, sustainability and being, are closely connected. [00:07:33] All living creatures exist, but only humans be. [00:07:37] of intentional living existing, but within a meaningful life. [00:07:43] And in the case of sustainability, a particular meaningful life. [00:07:48] One of caring. [00:07:50] Caring is what makes humans distinct from other creatures, [00:07:53] except perhaps our primate ancestors. [00:07:57] Confucius would correct the current sense of being interpreted as fulfilling our insatiable needs. [00:08:04] A world view that has followed our historical trajectory, especially since the age of enlightenment. [00:08:11] Given that one Earth is all we have, it behooves all of us to tread on it as lightly as we can. [00:08:19] I don't count on planetary exploration as the solution to our dilemma. [00:08:25] Treading lightly comes in two flavors. [00:08:28] One, consuming less and becoming more eco-efficient about making whatever we consume. [00:08:37] Given the theme of this conference, I'll certainly speak about the second, eco-efficiency, excuse [00:08:44] me, eco-efficiency, but I'll also spend more time on the first, that is consuming less. [00:08:50] In fact, most of what I'm going to say about eco-efficiency in industry can be captured in [00:08:56] just a couple of words. [00:08:57] More systemic eco-efficiency is better than less, full stop. [00:09:05] Systemic eco-efficiency is critical. [00:09:10] That's where integration comes in. [00:09:12] Integration encourages, better requires systems thinking. [00:09:19] And this leads me into the mainline of my talk today. [00:09:24] Let me continue by parsing the theme of the conference, integrating industrial sustainability. [00:09:31] The first word integrating needs little explanation, except to note that it refers to both the physical [00:09:38] systems and the human actors involved with them. [00:09:42] I'll return to this piece of the theme because the bounds of the system to be integrated are not clear [00:09:49] or explicit. [00:09:49] The second word, industrial, is also, I think, clear to all here, but needs some qualification for the general public. [00:10:02] Industry entails all of the entities involved with winning and converting raw materials [00:10:08] and to the products that are bought and sold in the marketplace. [00:10:13] It's the engine that drives a modern economy, although the financial tycoons of the world [00:10:20] might claim that role for themselves. [00:10:22] The third word, sustainability, is, as I have already commented, the most problematic of the three. [00:10:31] The same result arises every time the adjective, sustainable, is used as in sustainable development, [00:10:43] sustainable communities, sustainable luxury. [00:10:47] You figure that one. [00:10:49] Or in equivalent grammatical sense, industrial sustainability, as in the title of this conference. [00:10:57] Recently, I've come across quite a few articles decrying the use of sustainable or sustainability [00:11:03] because they lack specificity and are being used in many unrelated ways. [00:11:09] When sustainability is matched with integration as it is here, the results should be obvious. [00:11:16] Integration becomes impossible or at least terribly problematic. [00:11:22] No one really knows what's to be integrated with a concomitant issue [00:11:26] of whose efforts are to be coordinated. [00:11:30] In the old English way to describe such situations, [00:11:34] we might say that everything is at sixes and sevens. [00:11:39] And the world continues to become more unsustainable every year. [00:11:45] Global emissions of CO2 rose approximately 80% from 1970 to 2004. [00:11:53] In 2012, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 far exceed the natural range of the previous 650,000 years. [00:12:03] The first decade of the 21st century was the hottest on record. [00:12:09] As a result, extreme weather events in my country, the U.S. and as I understand here in the U.K., have become more frequent and more intense. [00:12:19] The U.S. and the eastern U.S. in particular, has experienced a significant increase in extreme [00:12:26] precipitation events, with the greatest number of episodes taking place during the 2000s. [00:12:33] Beyond these environmental issues, we see increasing social pathologies, [00:12:37] most notably in income inequality. U.S. census data for 2010 show the widest income gap between [00:12:47] rich and poor on record. In 1968, the top 20 percent of Americans captured about seven times [00:12:55] the income of those living below the poverty line. By 2010, it had grown to more than 14. [00:13:04] This disparity has led to public protests in the United States, as in the Occupy Wall Street [00:13:10] movement, and is a strong factor in the Mideast struggles, born out of concern that the institutions [00:13:19] of society are no longer adequate or fair. If industry is to contribute to sustainability, [00:13:29] several important steps must be taken. First, everyone involved must share the same meaning. [00:13:37] Whatever meaning is agreed upon must contain a specific reference to what is to be sustained. [00:13:44] Otherwise, all collective efforts will remain uncoordinated. Just as an atrial fibrillation, [00:13:51] a condition when the several chambers of the heart stop beating in a coordinated way, [00:14:00] life then becomes difficult or even impossible to sustain. [00:14:05] All right. I hinted at such a specific formulation above, but let me now put it more directly. [00:14:13] I find that sustainability [00:14:18] is the possibility that human life and other life will flourish on the planet forever. [00:14:26] It's simple, concise, and I believe understandable, but also a bit controversial. [00:14:38] With that definition in mind, let's re-examine the theme of the conference and of the center sponsoring it. [00:14:45] First comes the question, are we flourishing now? Clearly not. [00:14:52] Except for a few big bumps along the way, we're richer and own more things, but that does not make [00:14:59] and is not making us satisfied with our lives. Only a minority of people respond positively when asked, [00:15:07] are they flourishing or thriving or achieving any similar measure of human well-being? [00:15:15] In my country, more and more people are locked out of the doorway to upward mobility and seem doomed to live impoverished lives. [00:15:26] This strongly suggests that before worrying about keeping something going, [00:15:31] we must discover what is preventing the appearance of flourishing today. [00:15:38] So here are my thoughts. [00:15:41] "Our materialistic culture and the industrial system serving it are predicated on a model [00:15:46] that ascribes human behavior as driven by insatiable need. [00:15:54] It doesn't take a lot of thinking to visualize the impossibility of maintaining such a culture [00:16:03] on a finite planet. [00:16:05] We can delay the ultimate for a time by the cleverness of our technology. [00:16:11] But no amount of eco-efficiency is going to offset the growth demanded by all the nations of the world. [00:16:18] If we humans were truly needy at our core, [00:16:23] then I believe our lifespan on Earth is limited, but I do not. [00:16:31] I believe, based on scientific and philosophical evidence, that our fundamental driver is care, not need. [00:16:40] Care in this ontological construction of the human being, is not the affective, affective care, [00:16:50] say, of the film Love Story, or of the myriad sentimental tales that make up most of literature. [00:17:00] The ontological, not the psychological sense of care, is rare in that literature. [00:17:08] Care refers to attending to the immediate world that we perceive through our senses, [00:17:15] and also what has become stored in our memory. [00:17:20] Attention itself is a precursor of care, and triggers further cognitive processes ending up as physiological movements. [00:17:30] Care is the name given to the overall process of perturbing the brain, bringing something to our conscious attention, [00:17:37] and consequently acting intentionally. [00:17:41] The specific action we do take may reflect our current emotional state, past experience, [00:17:49] and immediate state of our cognitive system, and so is more or less unpredictable. [00:17:55] But any such action is a caring action. [00:18:01] Our cognitive system is constructed such that we respond in a coordinated fashion [00:18:09] to all perturbations from both inner and external sources. [00:18:13] We act in this "designed" way to maintain the integrity of our whole organism. [00:18:21] If we fail to respond in such a way, we risk being unable to survive. [00:18:28] Our survival depends in a cognitive sense on attending to, that is, caring about, [00:18:35] everything that we encounter, every instance of our conscious lives. [00:18:42] For analytic purposes, we can divide up that world into chunks to help us design the way we care. [00:18:50] We need different tools to care for ourselves, for other humans, and for all the rest of the non-human world. [00:18:58] We need any one of these major categories, say ourselves, we need different tools and strategies. [00:19:06] For example, to feed our bodies, to fill our brains with learning, to spend our leisure moments, [00:19:13] and all of the other major categories of everyday life. [00:19:20] So here's some of the good news, I promise. [00:19:21] A clue to how industry should integrate sustainability. [00:19:29] Design and produce products and services to support human caring, in place of the present focus on need. [00:19:40] How to do this is not so simple because we have served only need for so long that we have forgotten how to design for care. [00:19:52] So here's an interesting fact, however. [00:19:55] Adam Smith, in his very early writing, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, created the idea of the invisible hand in that book. [00:20:04] But he based it on a model of human self-interest as empathy, that is, caring relationships. [00:20:13] He thought if people acted out of their empathetic, that is, caring relationships, the whole of society [00:20:19] would move toward higher levels of well-being. [00:20:23] That empathetic and caring sense got lost, however, when economists appropriated the idea of the invisible hand, [00:20:32] replacing care by need. [00:20:35] Smith himself got this ball rolling in his later classic, The Wealth of Nations. [00:20:44] After understanding the proper role of care, the second thing to understand about sustainability [00:20:52] is that it is an emergent property of the very large, complex system called planet Earth. [00:21:02] This is a familiar emergent property, springing from the intricate interrelationships of the entire object. [00:21:12] No paint-by-numbers kit could produce the beauty of an old master's work. [00:21:19] Emergent properties are observer-dependent, making quantification problematic. [00:21:25] Sustainability as flourishing like beauty emerges only when the whole system is working. [00:21:34] Although we see examples of flourishing in isolated ecosystems and in some individuals, [00:21:42] we cannot claim that the global system is sustainable when so many continue to suffer. [00:21:50] Democratic countries like the UK and the US have asserted that every human being has an intrinsic value [00:21:59] and a set of human rights. [00:22:01] Further, we cannot talk about sustainability, which concept connotes the persistence of positive qualities [00:22:09] when the Earth's life support system is deteriorating increasingly at our hands. [00:22:17] The industrial subsystem of the planet is embedded in a larger world with which it exchanges energy and materials. [00:22:26] It is run by humans and is influenced by human doings, laws and regulations, [00:22:33] demand, the way its outputs are used in practice, and more. [00:22:39] We have ignored this fact for several centuries and have treated industry like a machine, [00:22:46] producing its outputs with certainty, subject to occasional malfunctions [00:22:52] that can be fixed by simple adjustments to the machine. [00:22:57] We have actually done much more. [00:23:00] Excuse me. [00:23:08] Treating the entire socioeconomic system like a machine that occasionally sputters, [00:23:15] but can be fixed with Band-Aids. [00:23:19] But all machines operating in a complex world tend to produce unintended consequences. [00:23:26] Energy sources based on fossil fuels have led to global climate change. [00:23:31] DDT, considered to be a wonderful pesticide that would eliminate malaria, [00:23:38] produce the near extinction of many bird species. [00:23:42] CFCs, with properties many times better than the chemicals it replaced, gave us the ozone hole. [00:23:51] Free markets, quote, "free markets," [00:23:54] supposed to be the best arrangement for economic transactions and for allocating scarce resources, [00:24:02] also have given us the extreme levels of inequality that plague many nations. [00:24:07] Putting these and other similar unintended consequences together, [00:24:14] we have gotten unsustainability, an explicit set of human and natural pathologies, [00:24:21] and an emergent consciousness that we are doing something very wrong. [00:24:29] What's wrong, however, cannot be cured by recycling and other eco-efficient techniques. [00:24:37] This basic approach to design and industrial operations is critical, [00:24:42] but will not make unsustainability go away and cannot bring flourishing to life. [00:24:50] Academics and practitioners designing and integrating industrial systems [00:24:55] must take into account from the outset that except for trivial parts, they are working in the arena of complexity. [00:25:06] Unknown outcomes will show up. Human errors are inevitable. [00:25:14] The high degree of certainty coming from the engineering science base of design is misplaced and occasionally borders on hubris. [00:25:25] Even Six Sigma, for example, and other attempts to avoid errors, needs to be replaced by a design and operational philosophy that anticipates departures from the design set point as inherent properties. [00:25:41] My comments following were all anticipated by Steve in his presentation of the Toyota system. [00:25:50] "Manufacturing improves quality and reduces waste of material, space, and work. [00:25:55] Customer satisfaction can be improved with modern manufacturing and service systems, but it is all about the wrong kind of satisfaction." [00:26:06] Marketers' typical questions ask, for example, "How well did the purchase satisfy your expectations and needs?" [00:26:15] It would not be very difficult to rephrase such surveys to ask instead, [00:26:23] "How well did the purchase help to take care of one of your key domains of life, for example, your family?" [00:26:33] The answer to such questions comes not, then, from some kind of inner psychological process, but by observing the results. [00:26:44] A little more good news. [00:26:51] An alternative design philosophy does already exist. [00:26:59] Pragmatism. [00:27:01] Arising in the late 19th century in response to the reductionism and intuitionism of Cartesian thinking, [00:27:09] An alternative thinking and methodology is ideally suited to treat complex systems and situations. [00:27:17] The existence of unintended consequences is taken for granted. [00:27:23] The truth of any moment is taken as contingent and fallible. [00:27:28] The inquiry to seek truth is continuous and involves a democratic collective of all interested parties. [00:27:37] Applied to the integration of industrial systems, pragmatism argues for participative design, contingent planning, adaptive governance, enhanced monitoring, all features that spring from the basic unknowability of complex systems. [00:27:55] One consequence of applying these would be the lessening of the role of short-term profit in both design and integration in favor of a longer-range sustainability perspective. [00:28:10] As we heard earlier, the very famous Toyota production system is pragmatic at the core. [00:28:25] It tells me that its philosophic base is pragmatism. [00:28:31] It rests on continuous inquiry, a focus on root causes, and broad participation in truth-seeking. [00:28:41] Truth is understood as being contingent and fallible. [00:28:45] The appearance of unintended consequences or breakdowns is expected. [00:28:49] The methodology is designed to make them disappear. [00:28:54] When everything is working, quality emerges as if by magic. [00:28:59] And so is it with flourishing. [00:29:03] If the world system is running rightly, flourishing shows up like magic. [00:29:09] Sustainability is flourishing is not something resulting from the mechanistic design of industrial systems. [00:29:17] It cannot be produced like widgets. [00:29:20] It emerges only when the whole system is working correctly. [00:29:26] It arrives when people are satisfactorily taking care of the important domains of their lives. [00:29:33] Caring never stops until life itself does, but it does not have the insatiability sense that need carries. [00:29:44] It shows up when families and ecosystems are healthy, when learning enables individuals to cope with the uncertainties of life and in many other domains. [00:29:57] This should be the goal of the integration of industrial systems for sustainability. [00:30:04] Now note that's a very slight but important shift in the title of the conference. [00:30:10] And let me end on that note. [00:30:11] I will repeat it so I make sure you heard me clearly. [00:30:16] Integrating industrial sustainability lacks meaning because the use of sustainability here refers to nothing at all. [00:30:27] Confucius warned us about situations like this, saying as I quoted at the beginning of my talk, [00:30:34] that all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless. [00:30:40] To avoid this outcome, try this alternative way of expressing the title. [00:30:47] The integration of industrial systems for sustainability. [00:30:55] The last two speakers stressed the importance of sharing a common language if you want collaboration. [00:31:06] It was central to Steve's comments on the way Toyota goes about it. [00:31:11] And Padmachi stressed how important it is to have a conversation with all of the stakeholders. [00:31:18] And those conversations depend on sharing a common language. [00:31:23] It was explicitly pointed out by Steve that that's one of the key characteristics of that Toyota production system. [00:31:33] In fact, the first or second slide talked about making certain that everybody shared a common language. [00:31:41] Now, it'll take some time to agree on just what qualities to sustain. [00:31:48] But once you get that agreement, you can proceed with all deliberate speed to integrate industry. [00:31:57] And when you get there, if you have focused on care and on complexity, [00:32:04] sustainability as flourishing may, may come forth. [00:32:11] Don't be disappointed if it does not the first time. [00:32:15] Good pragmatists, like good gardeners, keep on trying until they get the results they seek. [00:32:26] So best of luck with your efforts. [00:32:29] Thank you for inviting me to Cambridge and for listening to my slightly iconoclastic views. [00:32:36] Thanks.