Toward a Sustainable Technopolis - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 172

(Environment, Economy, and Equity), technopolis thinkers can help advance it
by attending to life-cycle perspectives on products and technologies, and to bio-
mimetic technologies and market mechanisms for recycling/reselling ''waste.''
P 3 also implies taking care of (providing new habitat for) the poor who will be left
homeless by rising sea levels. Is renewed mining in warming north polar regions
immoral? Of course not. If done carefully, it's part of P 3 . Naturally, forensic
investigations will reveal who some of the culprits are in anthropogenic climate
change. But the excoriated NASA official who said the climate will change with us
or without us, and our major challenge is adaptation, was correct. Let's do less
arguing about whose fault it is, and learn to do better as we invent preventive and
adaptive strategies.
While the British Stern Review (Norris 2007 ) concludes, ''It would be con-
siderably cheaper to stop current climate trends than to try to adapt to a changed
world,'' Norris goes on to note, ''It is really hard to get [heat-trapping] gases out of
the atmosphere once we put them there.'' It is a challenge to those in this audience,
and to the scientists who work for you, to determine the facts and the best balance
of prevention and adaptation.
I don't think adaptive strategies can rely totally on measuring and pricing
externalities. (The carbon rights exchanges have been distressingly scandal-prone,
according to The Economist magazine.) Does the idea of privatization of your city
water supply scare you? If so, consider this more extreme example: You exhale
CO 2 when you breathe…Will bourses for carbon rights lead to ''pay for breath?''
We will have to be very clever to design sustainable regimes that are not totally
price-based. But we will have to design them.
All in all, sustainability is most workable as a concept when it is defined
loosely. In any case, we will not be able to forecast with certainty the impact of a
managerial act on people or on the planet any more than we can foresee the impact
of a corporate activity on the financial bottom line. (Think about making a sales
call on a new prospect, who may or may not purchase your product.) Why not?
First, we don't know enough of the applicable science. Second, the complexity of
environmental, medical, and psychological phenomena makes prediction error-
prone. Third, the impacts on people, on profits, and on the planet will interact with
one another!
There are many definitions of sustainability. Perhaps the most familiar is the
Brundtland report's: ''Sustainable development is development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs'' (World Commission 1987 ).
An admirable sentiment, but a suspicious one. Suppose I borrow money to buy
a house that I will bequeath to my children. I may die tomorrow, and the market
may go down, leaving the kids unable to sell the house for the amount of the debt. I
have compromised their ability to meet their own needs. Suppose I borrow money
to build a green business. Green firms face the same business risks as other
companies; my children might inherit a profitable business, or they might inherit
nothing, my assets wiped out by the bankruptcy of my enterprise. With no funds to