The Disablement of World Sustainability Today

by Kathleen A. Falk, B.A., A.A.S.

Copyright c 2012

Do not use or reproduce without

permission from author.

Thank you to Paul Barr for webmastering this post.

 

The first day or so, we all pointed to our countries.  The

third or fourth day, we were pointing to our continents.

By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.

(qtd. in Sagan 163) 

--Prince Sultan Bin Salmon Al-Saud,

   Saudi Arabian astronaut

The global crisis we, humankind, now face together as a species may be remedied by a shift from human endeavors in economic globalization toward collective efforts and approaches that will ensure world sustainability (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  When assigned in the 1980s by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) to formulate and report on an urgent “global agenda for change” (Brundtland), the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, provided a definition of world sustainability that is relevant even today and that reads as follows: "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development).  The sustainability crisis we, the world, presently encounter has materialized from the global ecological crisis, in addition to interconnected social and economic crises, all of which are disabling to us, humankind, and must be examined (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  We have been both irresponsible and generally permissive about the destruction of our home planet, and underlying our resulting disablement is our own systemic dysfunction that robs us of choice and power and renders our abilities irrelevant (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).

1.   The Global Crisis

The contemporary global crisis is reflected in timely, comprehensive data that indicate the exact nature and extent to which our civilization is unsustainable (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  To address this global crisis, we must first “apprehend a world in constant whirl, changing rapidly while becoming more integrated,” in the words of Professor Wayne Hayes, who instructs students on World Sustainability at Ramapo College of New Jersey (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  The problems constructed by unsustainability are, according to Professor Hayes, “divided into these categories:  1) the ecological crisis of resource depletion, exhausted waste disposal sinks, overshoot of carrying capacity, and climate change; 2) the social crisis of unmet human needs, growing inequality, the plight of women and children, desperately poor regions, failed states, the AIDS pandemic, wasted potential, and exclusion; and 3) the economic crisis of ideological hegemony of the Washington Consensus and accelerating corporate domination of the international order” (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).

1.1  The Ecological Crisis

In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance

of the planet established by nearly four billion years of

evolution…Humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth’s riches and change its pattern of consumption. (Arthus-Bertrand) 

--from the official web synopsis

   of the film Home

Professor Hayes has summarized the ecological crisis as the “potentially catastrophic degradation and contamination of our planetary home” (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  Various reliable statistics demonstrate how this dreaded prospect is a now a tragic reality.  These statistics include the following:

·         In 2005, the FAO reported that, each year, thirteen million hectares of forestland are destroyed (Arthus-Bertrand).

·         Already, the Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, has been reduced by twenty percent (Home).

·         Plantations of eucalyptus, used to make paper pulp, are growing as demand for paper has increased by five times in fifty years.  But, at the foot of these trees, nothing grows because their leaves create a bed that is toxic for most other plants, and meanwhile, the trees are helping to exhaust water reserves (Home).

·         One in four mammals, one in eight birds, and one in three amphibians are on the brink of extinction, and species are actually becoming extinct at a profoundly accelerated rate that is one-thousand times faster than the natural rate, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2008 (Arthus-Bertrand).

·         NASA DISS data has shown that, in the last fifteen years, the average temperature has been greater than ever before recorded, and other data has shown that, by the year 2050, it is possible that there will be two-hundred million climate refugees (Arthus-Bertrand).

·         According to scientific data from 2004, in forty years, the thickness of the ice cap was diminished by forty percent (Arthus-Bertrand).

It is noteworthy that man’s lustful and gluttonous quest for meat has manifested itself as a staple ingredient in the demise of world sustainability.  For example, the rainforest has given way to cattle ranches or soybean farms, and ninety-five percent of the soybeans yielded on such farms are used as biofuel, meaning as feed for livestock and poultry, in Europe and Asia (Home).  “And so, a forest is turned into meat,” according to the film Home, produced in 2009 (Home).  When forests burn, they release massive quantities of carbon that account for twenty percent of the greenhouse gases emitted around the world, and in this destructive manner, deforestation is a principle cause of global warming (Home).

            Other major causes of global warming include the human activities of transport, industry, and agriculture, all of which release huge quantities of carbon dioxide (Home).  The effects of global warming are most visible in the Poles of the Earth, where the Arctic ice cap is now melting such that it could totally disappear before 2030, or even before 2015, according to some researchers (Home).  Under the effects of global warming in Greenland, caused by industry and other greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere, freshwater of an entire continent, representing twenty percent of the whole freshwater supply of the world, flows into the saltwater oceans to effect a huge reduction of the world’s drinking water supply and will raise sea levels by up to approximately seven meters, thereby threatening low-lying lands worldwide and the seventy percent of the global population that resides on coastal plains (Home).  All around the planet, as snows and glaciers are receding and too quickly, billions of people, who each rely on the melting of these freshwater solids in the natural water cycle for drinking water and crop irrigation (as in Bangladesh), must now survive or migrate away from the devastating phenomena of flooding and hurricanes that emerge as byproducts of global warming (Home).

Now, also as a byproduct of global warming, droughts are taking place in locations all over the Earth (Home).  Half of Australia’s farmland, for example, has been affected by drought (Home).  Wildfires are increasingly taking a toll on major cities and, at the same time, exacerbating global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (Home).  Meanwhile, in Siberia and elsewhere on Earth, temperatures are so low that the ground is consistently frozen (Home).  But, in several of these places, the ground encases methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty times more damaging than carbon dioxide, and if the ground were to thaw from global warming, the methane would in turn trigger such a pronounced furthering of global warming that no one can predict actual outcomes (Home).

            Other ecological damage and danger exists, should be researched, addressed, and ultimately remedied, along with the environmental problems that have been discussed here.

1.2  The Social Crisis

Society never advances.  It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.  It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but…for everything that is given something is taken. (qtd. in Sagan 245)

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,”

   Essays: First Series (1841)

Professor Hayes has described the social crisis as the “polarization between globalized rich and localized poor; the exclusion of most of the world’s inhabitants; the eclipse of community; and increasing violence and misery” (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  In 2007, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that eighty percent of the planet’s resources are consumed by only twenty percent of the world population (Arthus-Bertrand), and in the film Home, it is reported that half the contemporary world’s wealth is owned by the richest two percent of the global population (Home).  This data best reflects the problem of the “exclusion of most of the world’s inhabitants” (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  One person in every six “now lives in a precarious, unhealthy, overpopulated environment,” as reported in Home (Home), and this particular tragedy serves as just one example of the commonplace, yet extreme situations that polarize the quality of life for the rich and the poor (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).  To address the suffering of the poor, Professor Hayes has suggested that educating females at a young age is likely the most effective means by which to fight poverty, saying: “Educating young women is probably the best anti-poverty program out there” (Hayes, lecture). 

            In addition, geographic issues are noteworthy when examining the social problems that serve as components of the global crisis and are markedly exacerbated by accelerated population growth.  For example, the WCED projected during the 1980s that, by the next century, nearly fifty percent of the world population will reside in urban areas, while the world’s economy is becoming more and more urban-based and the countryside is essentially becoming “urbanized” (World Commission on Environment and Development).  Meanwhile, this significant progression has included an approximately tenfold increase in city populations, as well as even a doubling of rural populations, within the past sixty years or so, and it marks what the WCED calls the “urban revolution,” which will negatively affect the developing, or third-world, nations more so than others, as follows (World Commission on Environment and Development):

[UN] projections put the urban challenge firmly in the developing countries, in the space of just 15 years (or about 5,500 days), the developing world will have to increase by 65 percent its capacity to produce and manage its urban infrastructure, services, and shelter—merely to maintain present conditions. And in many countries, this must be accomplished under conditions of great economic hardship and uncertainty, with resources diminishing relative to needs and rising expectations. (World Commission on Environment and Development)

Within the third world, the presence of desperation due to “great economic

hardship and uncertainty” (World Commission on Environment and Development) is a critical component of that which must be remedied for the emergence of a comfortable social climate that would be ideal for world sustainability.  For example, that “children are a family’s only asset as long as every extra pair of hands is a necessary contribution to its subsistence” (Home) seems to contribute to a depressed and oppressed social environment for those who are struggling in the developing world.  Ideally, all peoples would provide for themselves and for future generations, but not use children to perform this duty.

The bigger problem, it is important to stress, is not limited to the third world or to future generations.  For example, just four years ago, the United Nations Development Programme reported that, across the entire globe, one billion people did not have access to safe drinking water, while in 2008, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that one billion people were suffering from hunger around the world (Arthus-Bertrand).  Lester Brown, in his book Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, describes the downward spiral of food security and its likely impact on the global population:

…Our continuing failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining the world food economy forces me to conclude that if we continue with business as usual …a collapse is not only possible but likely. (Brown 3)   

With such widespread dangers in mind, the global community must respond with efforts in world sustainability to curb the probability that the quality of life will continue to diminish for Earth’s inhabitants while planetary resources are likewise depleted.  Without appropriate and responsible endeavors in the interest of world sustainability, the social climate worldwide will become hostile, depressed, ultimately unhealthy, and even unlivable.  Relative to the whole period of our inhabitation of Earth, we, humans, have little time left to take responsibility for the damage we have done, not only to ensure our survival and the survival of the planet’s biosphere on which we rely, but also to establish a quality social climate necessary for the sake of the civilization and happiness of our species.  On this subject, Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, has asserted that community increases the chances for both ecological stability and happiness (McKibben 108).

But standing in the way of world sustainability is a social phenomenon known as change resistance, which Thwink.org synopsizes as follows:

The transformation of society to environmental sustainability requires three steps: The first is the profound realization we must make the change, because if we don’t our descendants are doomed. The second is finding the proper practices that will allow living sustainably. The third step is adopting those practices.  Due to the phenomenon of change resistance, society has faltered on the third step. By now the world is aware it must live sustainably, which is the first step. There are countless practical, proven ways to do this, which is the technical side of the problem and the second step. But for strange and mysterious reasons society doesn't want to take the final step and adopt these practices, which is the change resistance or social side of the problem. Therefore, the social side of the problem is the crux. (Thwink.org)

Similarly, Carl Sagan, in his book Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death

at the Brink of the Millennium, also indicated that change resistance is the biggest problem to ensuring world sustainability:

If we are to prevent this climactic danger from working its worst, we will simply all have to work together, and for a long time.  The principal obstacle is, of course, inertia, resistance to change [at least on the part of] huge, worldwide, interlocking industrial, economic, and political establishments... (Sagan 139) 

The kind of social climate we must seek together for our species should be

characterized by peacefulness, concern for ourselves and each other, and ultimately, respect for ourselves and our communities.  With consideration to the significance of such recent tragedies as 9-11-01, it is imperative to address that engaging in and supporting terrorist acts, attitudes and beliefs are contrary to the character and quality of the social climate that is necessary for world sustainability.  With regard to this subject, Professor Michael Edelstein points out in his book Contaminated Communities: Coping with Residential Toxic Exposure:

 

Our health is threatened in new, invisible, and unpreventable ways.  We are helpless to protect our families and dependent on others for safety.  Our fear of the environment extends to the mail delivery, offices and apartments in tall buildings, airplanes, and any place that we may become exposed and vulnerable.  We distrust and stigmatize others out of fear and blame to the point of sacrificing our liberties and waging war…  Our normal and naïve world has been spoiled. (Edelstein xii)

However informed we may now be on warfare strategy and internal and

external surveillance, if we cannot even overcome our own social pollution, then not only is overcoming other kinds of obstacles, such as those ecological or economic, essentially inconsequential to the maintenance or improvement of the civilization of our species, but also we jeopardize our very survival and maybe even that of our biosphere (i.e., through the use of nuclear war).

 

            Nonetheless, it is clear that state failure provides in the modern day the “greatest threat to global order and stability,” as Brown has argued (Brown 18).  Brown has also noted that failing states can serve as “possible training grounds for international terrorist groups, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, or as a base for pirates, as in Somalia” (Brown 19).  Additionally, failing states may develop into a source for drugs, such as in Myanmar (formerly Burma) or Afghanistan, which provided ninety-two percent of the global supply of opium (used for making heroin) in 2008 (Brown 19).  Also, failing states can become sources of infectious disease (such as HIV/AIDS and polio) because such states cannot provide functional healthcare services, and loss of security, as in Afghanistan, is a most prominent characteristic of state failure (Brown 19). 

      

Rapidly, we must progress in social intelligence to counter the dysfunction that we demonstrate in our intra-species relations and social dynamics in order to ensure world sustainability.   

           

1.3  The Economic Crisis

[P]lainly, nobody will be afraid who believes nothing can

happen to him…[F]ear is felt by those who believe something is likely to happen to them…People do not believe this when they are, or think they are, in the midst of great prosperity, and are in consequence insolent, contemptuous and reckless…[But if] they are to feel the anguish of uncertainty, there must be some faint expectation of escape. (qtd. in Sagan 140)

--Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Rhetoric, 1382

Professor Hayes succinctly defined the economic crisis as the “systemic imperative of economic globalization to ceaselessly grow despite overshooting the limits to endure exponential demands on resources and on vulnerable and vital ecosystems and the decoupling of economic growth from human well-being and security” (Hayes <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>).

In the film Home, the transformation of the economy from its historical roots in an “equitable and natural alliance” among humankind and between humankind and the Earth into a contemporary disaster for world sustainability is well illustrated (Home).  The narration in the film details this progression that spawned from the basic human fight for survival, became economically-driven, and has, thus far, concluded with the urban revolution, as described by the WCED, along with the industrialization that constitutes the “exploitation of the energy the Earth supplies to human genius” (Home):

Towns change humanity’s nature, as well as its destiny.  The farmer becomes a

craftsman, trader, or peddler.  What the Earth gives the farmer, the city dweller buys, sells, or barters.  Goods change hands along with ideas…But how can you conquer the world on an empty stomach? ...Agriculture was their first great revolution…It changed their relationship to nature…It resulted in the first surpluses and gave birth to cities and civilizations…  [Thanks to the harnessing and exploitation of energy largely from oil] in the last sixty years, the Earth’s population has almost tripled, and over two billion people have moved to the cities… Machines replaced man. (Home)

Brown has described the world economy as “mismanaged” and as having “many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme,” which is an economic situation that entails the use of numerous investments to pay off returns (Brown 14).  Brown continues to explain that the Ponzi scheme “creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself” (Brown 14).  Also, in this scheme, the “investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain high rates of return paid out to previous investors.  When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses…”

Since the recent eightfold multiplication of the economy in years following about 1950, the economy started to “outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself,” according to Brown (Brown 14).  Just last year, global demands on nature exceeded its sustainable yield capacity by about thirty percent, which sets the stage for a Ponzi scheme-like collapse when natural assets are depleted (Brown 14). Sagan wrote on the topic of the unintended danger of our economic activities:

Our technical civilization now poses a real danger to itself.  All over the world fossil fuels are simultaneously degrading respiratory health, the life of forests, lakes, coastlines, and oceans, and the world climate.  Nobody intended to do any harm, surely.  The captains of the fossil fuel industry were simply trying to make a profit for themselves and their shareholders, to provide a product everyone wanted, and to support military and economic power of whatever nations they happened to be situated in.  The facts that this was inadvertent, that intentions were benign, that most of us in the developed world have benefitted from our fossil fuel civilization, that many nations and many generations all contributed to the problem all suggest that this is no time for finger-pointing.  No one nation or generation or industry got us into this mess, and no one…can by itself get us out. (Sagan 139) 

Our global Ponzi economy, though not intended for collapse, is, in Brown’s words, “on a collision path because of market forces, perverse incentives, and poorly chosen measures of progress” (Brown 15).  People rely heavily on the market because it “allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match, and it easily balances supply and demand” (Brown 15). 

But entrenched in the market are various, fundamental flaws (Brown 15).  For example, according to Brown, “it does not respect the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems [and] …also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern for future generations” (Brown 14-15).  Nor does it incorporate indirect production costs (such as climate change in the case of fossil fuels) into the prices of goods (Brown 16).  Furthermore, since the market provides only some information and excludes other information (like the full cost of products), we make bad decisions (Brown 16).  Moreover, our market “does not value nature’s services [or] …respect [nature’s] carrying capacity,” as Brown has pointed out (Brown 17).

Our economy works in an unsustainable fashion because humankind has not fully recognized and accepted the relationship between the economy and the environment, because political leaders often do not see the big picture, because economists who serve in government do not sufficiently think like ecologists, and because the pool of ecological advisors may be simply too small (Brown 18).  Again, the deterioration of the relationship between the economy and its natural supports can contribute to state failure (Brown 18), as discussed in section 1.2.  Also noteworthy is that the world’s expenditure on weapons is an amount twelve times greater than what is spent on aiding developing nations (Arthus-Bertrand), which underscores the social dysfunction of our species, establishes a war-based driving mechanism for our global Ponzi economy, and ultimately contributes to the disallowance of world sustainability.  Sagan wrote that the large sum spent on the military “takes food from the mouths of poor people” (Sagan 239).

            One important fact that is generally overlooked is that economists have informed us, according to Michael Mann and Lee Kump in their book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, the “formidable cost of emissions reductions may actually be less than the economic damage that will result from climate change” (Mann and Kump 146).  In fact, emission reductions in the upcoming decades could save the global economy US $3 trillion in that period (Mann and Kump 146).                    

2.  The Disabling Analysis

I am not a pessimist.  To perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism. (qtd. in Sagan 179)

                                    --Roberto Rossellini

To illustrate the meaning of disablement in the case of contamination, or ecological disaster, for affected populations, Edelstein cites Adeline Levine’s description of how Love Canal residents viewed their treatment by the New York State Department of Health as an example of how the affected become rapidly dependent on professionals to “expertly handle various areas of life formerly governed by their own naïve wisdom” (Edelstein 161):

Because DOH officials did not pay serious attention to the task of providing information to them and working through the implications of the information, the residents felt that they were being treated not as rational, respected adults but rather as though they had somehow lost their mature good sense when they became victims of a disaster they had no way of preventing. (qtd. in Edelstein 161)

            In this and similar situations of professional or governmental intervention amidst contamination, the affected citizens lose “their ability to participate directly in understanding and determining courses of action important to their lives, [and] this disablement is a key cause of the lifescape shift toward a sense of lost control,” according to Edelstein (Edelstein 161).

            In contamination situations, psychological recovery is interrelated to ecological recovery (Edelstein 162).  Edelstein has pointed out that it is impossible to re-establish mental health if one still knowingly resides in a polluted environment, and part of the problem lies in that contamination is not easily or quickly removed, in contrast with that it may be easily and quickly identified and labeled (Edelstein 162).  Thus, mental health stresses from the knowledge that one’s home is contaminated cannot be easily alleviated because the presence of the contamination itself is often long-term (Edelstein 162).  This mental health degradation that occurs with ecological degradation is a form of disablement.

            Generally, Edelstein noted, “the process of disabling reflects how in postmodern society the regulation of environmental risks embodies the pseudo-technocractic character of society” (Edelstein 162).  In other words, criteria used in decision-making do not mirror social values used in political processes, but instead do reflect political decisions obscured by the “rationale of technical standards set by experts” (Edelstein 162).  For instance, in risk assessment, the acceptability of risks is determined by professionals whose actions mainly reflect political and economic forces that are vested in permitting facilities and minimizing the costs of environmental standards (Edelstein 162).  This phenomenon produces unwanted dependence by victims of contamination on government officials “whose will and competency to master the situation they [victims] come increasingly to doubt,” as Edelstein has put it (Edelstein 162).  The distrust and dependence that contamination victims suffer are again forms of disablement, ones that are described more specifically by Edelstein as follows:

The prolonged dialectic that evolves from the inherently contradictory yet mutually bound relationship of regulator and contamination victim represents a form of social schizophrenia.  Victims are stressed by their initial dependency on government officials who simultaneously communicate such double messages as “You are at risk / You are safe” and “I will help / There is nothing I can or will do.”  In turn, citizens demand help from regulatory officials but reveal increasing degrees of frustration, anger, distrust, and hostility as they realize that officials are not clarifying and solving problems, at least not quickly.  When regulators receive such mixed messages as “Do for me as much as you can / What you are doing is not good enough” and “I am relying on your help / I not only don’t trust you but I blame you,” they become embattled. (Edelstein 163)

            Contamination victims soon find themselves to be in a double bind (Edelstein 165).  They either “wallow in uncertainty or push for a clearer definition of the situation,” Edelstein wrote, and the double bind, serving as another example of disabling, exists in the “twin risks of clarity: the risk may simultaneously be considered too low to justify assistance yet great enough that environmental stigma results” (Edelstein 165).  In contrast, the regulators’ bind is defined by the frustrations of federal, state, and local environmental and health officials, who are “forced to make decisions under uncertainty and limited in their allowed response” (Edelstein 168), and their frustrations may constitute still another form of disabling.  It is noteworthy that the officials face a public that is markedly sensitive to their actions and communications (Edelstein 168).

            Citizens’ and regulators’ binds interact such that it is highly improbable that alarmed citizens will understand and accept as rational decisions made by regulators (Edelstein 170).  This relationship between the binds results in the denigration of the regulators by those who they attempt to help, making regulators or officials the scapegoats in situations that they did not cause (Edelstein 170).  According to Edelstein, “officials may carry a reservoir of anger and resentment from such pressures” (Edelstein 171).  As a result, scientific officials may also respond defensively when facing pressure and insecurity coupled with rejection from angered citizens, and as Edelstein has articulated, these scientists “tend to overreact, compounding problems of communication by escaping into the safe turf of science” (Edelstein 171): 

Scientists cope with the uncertainty they face professionally by becoming more emotionally detached from those they are studying, more insistent on method, more concerned with professionalism…and more insistent on remaining within what is certain for them, their own belief system.  Scientific doubt, then, becomes a form of certainty because it insists on the primacy of scientific method… Scientists will often express and insist on the limits of scientific certainty in ways that heighten the uncertainty of the community. (qtd. in Edelstein 171-172)

    

In this way, there exists a dual disablement—that is, for regulators, officials, and scientists, as well as for the citizens who are affected by contamination.

            It is important to emphasize that information, a vital commodity that is often strictly controlled by government agencies (Edelstein 172), may be a key factor in disabling.  That the government maintains control of essential info so frequently represents the very strategy that reinforces the helplessness and dependence of citizens, in addition to their distrust of regulators (Edelstein 172).  Also, regulatory communication usually differs from what is expected in terms of what constitutes valid communication for everyday life (Edelstein 172).  This everyday communication is judged by four criteria that have been suggested by Jurgen Habermas: 1) clarity, 2) basis in fact, 3) believability, and 4) appropriateness (Edelstein 172).  The failure of one or both parties to meet even one of the criteria could result in the breaking off of communication, arguments over issues that are unresolved, or the adoption of a mode of action that is geared toward forcing the issue somehow (Edelstein 172-173).  In regulatory communication, regulators often fail to be clear (#1), indicate or suggest that they have made assumptions that citizens view as questionable (#2), lose the trust of citizens (#3), and do not fit citizens’ expectations for what seems relevant to the situation (#4) (Edelstein 173).  The consequence of this may be that citizens use strategies to get attention, may be unclear, imprecise, or incredible (Edelstein 173).  Other failures in communication, including distorting information, may be present (Edelstein 176-192).  The two-way communication “break-down” seems suitably described as a form of disabling.

   

Works Cited

Arthus-Bertrand, Yann.  Home.  PPR Group.  Web.  14 Apr. 2010. 
     <http://www.home-2009.com/us/index.html>.

Brown, Lester R.  Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. 
     New York: Earth Policy Institute / W. W. Norton, 2009.  Print.

Brundtland, Gro Harlem.  “Our Common Future: Chairman’s Foreword.” 
     UN Documents: Gathering a Body of Global Agreements.  NGO
     Committee on Education, n.d.  Web.  14 Apr. 2010.  <http://www.un-
     documents.net/ocf-cf.htm>.

Edelstein, Michael.  Contaminated Communities: Coping with
     Residential Toxic Exposure. Colorado: Westview Press, 2004. Print.

Hayes, Wayne.  World Sustainability Class Meeting.  Ramapo College of
     New Jersey.  Mahwah, NJ.  19 Apr. 2010.  Lecture.

Hayes, Wayne.  “World Sustainability Syllabus.”  The World Sustainability
     Web Site.  Michael Edelstein and Wayne Hayes, 8 Mar. 2010.  Web. 
     14 Apr. 2010.  <http://profwork.org/wsy/support/syllabus_night.html>.

Home.  Dir.  Yann Arthus-Bertrand.  PPR Group, 2009.  Film.

Mann, Michael and Lee Kump. Dire Predictions: Understanding Global
     Warming. New York: Pearson Education, 2009. Print.

McKibben, Bill.  Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the
     Durable Future.  New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007.  Print.

Sagan, Carl.  Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink
     of the Millennium. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.  Print.

Thwink.org.  The Phenomenon of Change Resistance.  Thwink.org.  Web. 
     18 Apr. 2010. <http://www.thwink.org/sustain/general/
     ChangeResistance.htm>.

World Commission on Environment and Development.  “Our Common
     Future: From One Earth to One World.”  UN Documents: Gathering a
     Body of Global Agreements.  NGO Committee on Education, n.d.  Web. 
    14 Apr. 2010.  < http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-ov.htm#I.3

>.

by Kathleen A. Falk, B.A., A.A.S.

Copyright c 2012

Do not use or reproduce without

permission from author.