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I just finished reading through tomorrow's four readings. Here are some thoughts that we might use to start discussion. If you want to form your own ideas before looking at mine, please disregard this. See you tomorrow morning. Steve Some thoughts on the four articles for tomorow: There are a series of things on which these authors agree and disagree: They all agree that: Current system is unsustainble Unsustainability derives from inequality, conflict, and individual short-sightedness. They disagree on: The scale at which things should be managed The universality of the knowledge that should be learned The possibility of impossibility of growth Whether growth and development are the same thing. All recognize that our current path is unsustainable, though they avoid the problem of time scale. The mainstream social democratic position advocated by Brundtland says that we need to grow our way out of poverty and inequality, in ways that don't degrade or deplete. Orr says growth is impossible; we need to manage our lack of growth to diminish inequality, destructiveness, and conflict. These have something in common, which is that we need a common solution, a large-scale effort, and management on the basis of the best knowledge, education, science, and spiritual awareness possible. They differ in that Brundtland advocates growth, which Orr sees as unsustainable. The Ecologist, on the other hand, would see both of these missing the point. Conflict, inequality, degradation, and depletion are indeed connected, but they are connected because they all arise out of the double road that leads from the enclosure of the commons: to large governing institutions run for the benefit of the elites, and to individualism and greed that destroy the possibility of local cooperation. So any sweeping programs in citizenship, governance, education, science are inferior to the face-to-face interactions and locally proven knowledge by which traditional commons were regulated. Kates et al. address just the knowledge side of this. But they do so in an interesting way. They advocate not large-scale (Brundtland and Orr) or small-scale (The Ecologist) systems of knowledge and governance, but awareness of the interaction between these scales. They see a decentralized network of science as parallel to a decentralized network of ecology and resource use and renewal. Daily Resources: Harrell's graph of sustainability time scale Harrell's reading notes Francis's reading notes