Toward a Sustainable Technopolis - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 171

to the second law of thermodynamics. At another extreme are advocates of min-
imizing the impact of people on the planet. Their subtext implies minimizing the
number of people on the planet. At still another extreme are economists like Solow
( 1991 ), who believes everything is sustainable because the price mechanism
moderates input substitutions.
We can suspect the dean of taking too literal a view, and suspect the earth
advocate of hating people. The economic theorists continue to ignore the exter-
nalities that create the environmental problems in the first place. The City Club of
Portland ( 2000 ) cited one source that advised, ''Decouple economic development
and population growth from environmental impacts.'' This is a physical impos-
sibility. Is there a constructive middle ground that is scientifically feasible?
Nothing we do will be sustainable for the very long run. We depend on solar
energy (as the dean was no doubt thinking), and the sun will eventually die.
Meanwhile, every social process degrades energy, in the aggregate.

• Sustainable cannot simply mean ''static;'' that would mean the end of innova-
tion and the start of excessive regimentation in all spheres of life. Climate
change (that portion that is not anthropogenic) would proceed in any case, and
society and the ecology would have to change and adapt.
• Can ''sustainable'' mean ''capable of evolving in a steady, manageable way?''
No. There are always Black Swans. Global warming is only one example, and it
is one that is more predictable than most.
• People, profit, and the planet? We can all get along sweetly and live lightly on
the planet, and still get hammered by a rogue asteroid. Only through technology
can we hope to reduce the probability or consequences of an asteroid collision,
and better technology will do it better. A static society, creating no new tech-
nology, is no answer.
• Notwithstanding that many subsistence economies have lasted for hundreds of
years, and have been portrayed by historical writers as noble and fulfilling, we
cannot equate sustainability with subsistence regimes. Without surpluses and
redundancy, such economies are vulnerable to environmental change.

On what time scale is it realistic to speak of sustainability? How wide are the
limits of change, within which we're still willing to say a system has been
''sustained?'' An impressive number of sources agree the time span is a few
generations. The City Club of Portland, the President's Council on Sustainable
Development, Sustainable Seattle and others say ''for generations to come;''
''present and future generations;'' ''our children and grandchildren.'' This view
sensibly leaves scope for changing the plan when conditions and technologies
change. 3
Thinkers and activists urge companies to attend not only to profits but also to
their impacts on the environment and on society. People, profit, and the planet
(P 3 )—can this view be sustainable? Whether the dialog is cast in terms of P 3 or E 3

3

Section 4 up to this footnote marker is verbatim from Phillips ( 2008a , b ).