The Future of Automobility, Conference Report #7

June 12-14, 2013
Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

Ethan Goffman

The future of the car is in doubt. It might shrink away, replaced by the old—bicycles, transit, and walkable communities—and the new—high-tech communications that allow instant communication and that empower transit. Or it might be here to stay, offering a unique personal empowerment that is hard to resist, and locked in place by a vast supporting infrastructure and political interests. Such were the conclusions, or lack thereof, of the “Mobility Futures” panel at the recent conference of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI).

Reducing car use is regarded as a major environmental objective, since cars are tremendous polluters and use vast quantities of materials, spurring sprawling, unhealthy land use. Yet future car use will be determined not so much by environmental concerns, or even technology, as by social factors.

Two of the papers dealt with the emerging post-automobility society. Philipp Späth discussed the Vauban District, in Freiberg, Germany, in which some 5,500 people began an experiment in minimal-car living in 1999. The district center is thus a network of transit, biking, and walking options and many residents have agreed not to own cars in exchange for exemption from parking costs. Two parking lots on the district’s edge provide space for those who do want to own vehicles. Car share is available, but Späth described this as partly a psychological cushion for those who feel uncomfortable without car access. Interestingly, many people eventually leave car use altogether.

The Vauban District is an excellent example of a sociotechnical transition niche that demonstrates the possibility of comfortable car-free living, but applying it on a broader scale is a whole other problem. Kakee Scott described a project to begin to do so, in which students collaborated on a plan to encourage such changes. The idea is to create bottom-up transit hubs empowered by technology and education campaigns, a self-styled navigation system called We-swarm. In this model, hubs form from below and spread, a bottom-up approach to change. In some ways, this is already happening in the “real world,” as activists, technology geeks, and city planners collaborate to use existing transit better and to get new transit built. For instance, the Washington, DC region, where I live, has powerful tools for finding the best transit route, along with citizen-activists, as exemplified by the website Greater Greater Washington. The bottom-up works to strengthen the top-down, as activists support politicians who improve transit networks and walkable communities. Of course this would do no good if large numbers of people were not happy to take advantage of these opportunities. A transition to a post-automobile society—or, more realistically, one with significantly reduced automobile use—must be intentional and requires a lot of hard work.

Change is difficult because the physical infrastructure for automobiles is already largely locked in and can only be altered gradually. Furthermore, the car has the unique ability to deliver individuals from point to point, with many of the costs invisible to the driver. Post-automobility scholar Peter Wells described how cars have evolved to further isolate individuals from their costs. As congestion has increased, automobile designers have designed for the “safety and security” of a “cocooning world,” so that drivers can better endure long, slow-moving commutes.

Petter Törnberg’s presentation dealt with the lock-in of car culture from a much broader perspective, through systems theory based on biological models. Recent biological theory describes a pyramid in which minor changes at the top are possible, but the whole depends upon a complex layer at the base, creating a kind of technological lock-in, or entrenchment. So, the move to more efficient engines, or electric engines, is relatively easy, but “further down in the value chain, it is more difficult to change.” Our road system, then, is a massive infrastructure codependent on cars, an entrenched system resisting change.

My reaction to these more pessimistic presentations is that change is beginning, but we still have a long way to go. To work around lock-in, we can repurpose existing infrastructure to new uses, as in a proposed bus rapid transit system in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live. The proposal to take some existing lanes and give them over to buses (to be called “rapid transit vehicles” to avoid the pejorative associated with buses) is sure to engender a political struggle, as opponents ask how taking away car lanes will ease our already congested system. The answer, of course, is that you can move far more people in a lane of rapid buses than in a lane of cars, but convincing people that this will happen requires a change in social mentality.

My other lingering question is why the “tragedy of the commons” model has not been applied to cars (perhaps it has, and I will find out in the reaction to this blog). Once the roads and parking lots have been paid for, and if one ignores the greater social cost of respiratory diseases from polluted air, greenhouse-gas emissions, automobile accidents, obstructed pedestrian and bike mobility, impaired social spheres, and fragmented landscapes, it makes perfect sense for the individual driver to employ a car to get around. He or she does not appear to pay these costs, at least on an individual-trip basis. The problem is largely a social one rather than a technological one.

What Is Happiness, and Why Does It Matter? Conference Report #6

Ethan Goffman

Happiness is opaque and cannot be measured directly. Yet defining happiness, and how to attain it, is important in the quest for the best possible society that does not consume and pollute itself to death, the quest, that is, for sustainability.

June 12-14, 2013
Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

 

The search for happiness was a theme of several presentations at the conference of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI). Carol Graham, in her keynote address, distinguished between Jeremy Bentham, who argued for maximizing contentment and pleasure among the greatest number of people, and Aristotle, who argued for eudemonia, a Greek word meaning both well-being and control over one’s destiny, for a purposeful life. As a social scientist, Graham is concerned with quantifying happiness, which can only be done indirectly, through asking people. Given the lack of an agreed-upon definition for happiness, the categories are nuanced. Asking if people are happy, whether they smiled frequently yesterday, and to rank their happiness against others will yield different results. In impoverished countries people may feel they are happy, but not in comparison to countries that are far more affluent. Afghanistan, for instance, was higher than the world average at smiling yesterday, but lower at having the best possible life.

Why does this matter? If we know what kind of society satisfies people, we can better formulate objectives in the quest for sustainability, certainly regarding social sustainability. For instance, wealth makes people happier only up to a point, at which it levels off and other factors are more important, notably health. Material gain beyond a certain point is thus a useless societal goal regarding happiness, and a devastating one for the environment. Happiness is also largely positional: we are unhappy if we feel ourselves out of the mainstream in our country, even if we might be wealthier than the majority of the world’s people. Equity is thus a useful goal for increasing aggregate happiness. Strangely, a poor country is happier than one rapidly becoming wealthy: stability is important. This suggests that rapid industrialization, as undertaken in China, is the wrong route, socially as well as environmentally. Getting clean water, a basic diet, and rudimentary electricity to large numbers of people might be the way to go.

Juliet Schor, along with John de Graaf, participated in the closing plenary dialogue, which considered the search for a better society. She emphasized sufficiency and well being as “true wealth,” although she eschews the term “happiness.” Her talk dealt with a number of aspects of our evolving society that work toward her goal of a sharing economy that uses our new electronic technology to refurbish old ideals of exchange and cooperation. Schor discussed Internet platforms such as Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Freecycle, Couchsurfing, and Task Rabbit as enablers of this new economy. These novel forms of engagement are, in turn, enabled by rating systems that give people an idea of how much to trust their new partners, replacing, on a far broader scale, the personal bonds of older, locally-based barter economies. The new technology, to Schor, “makes possible socialistic and social sharing that those of us who have argued against mainstream economics” have long supported. Schor does warn against the reinscription of old inequities in the new economy, for instance in exploitation of the “rabbits” offering personalized services via Task Rabbit.

Schor shares with de Graaf, an interest in shortening work hours to increase leisure and quality of life (a recurring topic of the SSPP Blog). This would occur, at least in affluent societies, along with shrinking wages so that the new free time would not be filled with consumptive activities. Schor discussed how some European countries have channeled increased productivity into shorter hours, but believes some of this new free time should go into the self-provisioning economy. My worry is that this just replaces one form of work with another, and could also be consumptive— I would rather the extra time went into, say, reading, art, philosophical and political discussion, sports, and games. In any case, Schor’s vision of the self-provisioning economy is necessary to replace the losses in work and income being experienced in America, particularly among the new generation of young people.

John de Graaf discussed the Kingdom of Bhutan and its Gross National Happiness measure, with nine key domains, of which living standards are only one. Yet in the United States we are obsessed with that single, limited perspective on a fulfilling life. We particularly suffer from a lack of time balance. Unlike most countries, de Graaf pointed out, the United States has no mandatory sick leave, maternity leave, or vacation time, putting us on a par with such luminaries as Iran and Myanmar. Indeed, 30% of American workers have no paid vacation. We are stressed out and, often, made sick, for instance developing diabetes and coronary problems. De Graaf referenced his doctor, who referred to overwork as the new tobacco, yet to be recognized by the medical establishment and wider society.

When asked during the discussion period if she was happy, Schor replied “I don’t really care about happiness.” For her, the question is “Am I leading a meaningful life?” with a strong purpose and values. De Graaf pointed out that this was a return to Aristotle’s eudemonia, living a purposeful life.

Who Attended The SCORAI Conference? Conference Report #5

June 12-14, 2013
Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

Ethan Goffman 

Amid the hullabaloo of the SCORAI conference, I managed to interview only one attendee from overseas, Lucie Middlemiss from the University of Leeds in the UK, whose field is, indeed, sustainable consumption. She explained that the conference gave her an opportunity to “link social theory and what I see on the ground.” It was her first visit to the United States, and she described it as great “to meet people on my radar that I haven’t had a chance to talk to,” adding that face-to-face communication offers opportunities you do not get on the Internet. Middlemiss pointed out that she does not fly often, and she felt the informal nature of the interactions at the conference made the long trip worthwhile. She especially lauded the SCORAI conference’s short presentations followed by intense discussion. By contrast, she regretted attending a previous conference in Portugal with a traditional format in which presenters just read papers.

I also interviewed two students, Anne Sherman in architecture and Airin O’Conner in business. Sherman works for Staach, a sustainability and design business. She felt the conference provided an opportunity to get fresh insight into how businesses can be run, and buildings built, to reduce consumption. This was her “first formal academic conference,” and she considered “everyone very accommodating, open, and willing to chat,” so she did not feel at all intimidated. She did, however, wish for “more perspectives from people actually on the ground,” those without PhDs and Masters degrees.

Airin O’Conner attended to learn about the “concept of servicizing,” that is “consuming less and providing more services.” She is interested in the psychology of sustainability and behavioral change, and how it is integrated with other aspects of the field. She, too, found the conference-goers friendly and supportive, although she felt “constantly reminded of how little I know and how much I need to learn.”

Sandra Rothenberg, Sherman and O’Conner’s professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, stated that “people like Airin and Anne will be running the companies of tomorrow. We need to expose them to ideas to make them better leaders.” She heartily endorsed bringing more students who are not at the PhD level to such conferences.

Financial and Ecological Overshoot, Conference Report #4

June 12-14, 2013
Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

Ethan Goffman 

Our global economic and environmental crises have strangely shadowed each other.  When one is prominent the other seems to recede from public attention, even though they are intimately related.  The third day’s keynote address, by John Fullerton of the Capital Institute, dealt with this relationship.  He discussed how the speculative bubbles of today’s financial markets depend upon the assumption of infinite, exponential growth, which cannot happen on a finite planet.

Fullerton is an especially intriguing carrier of this message, since he worked at J.P. Morgan until 2001.  He is that rare exception, a person from the world of high finance who understands the need for a sustainable planet.  Specifically, he discussed how the current model in which finance drives the economy, which drives the planet, needs to be reversed, giving the planet the highest priority.  Wall Street, he said, looks at the current situation as simply another cycle in which current practices can continue.  He finds it shocking that “the people that run the financial world haven’t thought more deeply that this time is different.”  The next round of speculation is well under way, with little relationship to the underlying economy.  Fullerton’s rough estimate is a $22 trillion value for the fossil fuels currently on the books, but not yet exploited, by corporations and nations globally.  While this energy pool is assumed to be part of the financial future, actually burning a significant part of it will make the planet unfit for human habitation.  The situation dwarfs the last financial collapse, in which $2.7 million in assets disappeared.  Yet investment firms continue to speculate wildly, backed up by central banks around the world creating money.

While the financial world sees few problems, governments do little to change the situation.  Fullerton points to the Dodd Frank bill in the United States as a decent start to regulating the financial system, yet one that is currently being negotiated to death.  He believes that before deeper change can occur, the financial sector and other elite players need to realize the fundamental problem.  He does suggest several solutions, although these are unlikely to occur in the current political atmosphere.  They include the following: fix mortgages and the student loan mess, stop subsidizing debt, wall off insured depositors, make it unprofitable for a business to become very big and complex, impose a financial transaction tax, modify capital gains to incentivize investment in things we need, regain sovereignty over the financial system, subsidize community banks and set up public banks, and try alternative currencies.  Yet such things won’t happen without fundamental ideological change.  Fullerton points out that banking needs to be seen as a profession with social responsibilities—as it once was—not a business solely concerned with making money.  “Till we shift the paradigm,” he says, “my ideas will never be on the table.”