ABSTRACT

We begin this chapter with two portraits, one of the Auroville Earth Institute in Chennai, India, and one of development of the tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Satprem Maïni is the Director of the Auroville Earth Institute,

whose mission is to research an earth-based architecture. The general idea is that buildings can be made sustainably with local earthen material by compressing soil and designing these compressed blocks so that they can lock together and provide inexpensive, energy efficient living space while training local workers to become skilled masons in the process. Since 1989, he has trained over 8000 people in 75 countries in this way. The process begins when soil is excavated from the same local

space for the building, and then it is tested and stabilized to make it stronger. It is then compressed into blocks with presses. These blocks are the material for the building, which can be several stories tall. Then, the excavated space is restored ecologically, sometimes as a water filtration pond or other space of rich life, as opposed to a trash pit. This has the power to convert slums and other vulnerable living spaces into healthy, safe, and permanent living spaces that are a pleasure to be in because the blocks actually “breathe” and take in pollutants, keep the temperature even without a heating or cooling system, and can be built to be earthquake resistant. The institute comes to these processes with a specific consciousness of improving the lives of the worst off around the world while protecting Mother Earth:

Maïni writes:

This vision and commitment provides a goal of improved material lifestyles for (especially rural) poor households, improved social equity and opportunity for these households, and ecological integrity of the local environment. Projects such as these, and groups like Engineers without Borders who look to provide affordable, effective ways to improve and save lives by opening up opportunities, provide a reason to be optimistic for the future. In this future, committed and ethically conscious projects innovate new, ecologically beneficial, inexpensive, and durable opportunities to improve the lives of people who are worst off. The beauty of so many of these kinds of projects-and there are too many to mention here-is that they do not even require aid or charity, but rather the opening of opportunity where it has otherwise been suppressed. Sensible financial mechanisms and policies can support sustainably designed projects that improve the material welfare and ecological integrity of the local environment. However, often design, engineering, and development projects do not look like the projects of the Auroville Earth Institute, but more like the Alberta tar sands. The tar/oil sand fields of Alberta, Canada, paint an entirely more

pessimistic future. It is perhaps one of the “largest industrial projects in history,” and represents a disturbing trend of a “growing reliance on non-conventional fuels,” that create “increasing scale of environmental disruption” (Davidson and Gismondi, 2011). The shift of power to the economic sphere, where corporate interests have substantially more influence than other social and environmental concerns, is consistent with the main economic approach of the modern period since the 1970s of neoliberalism (Centeno and Cohen, 2012). The tar sands lie under former forests, which have been torn

from the Earth to mine the sand and clay soils that are soaked in low-grade oil called bitumen. In addition to strip mining to get the tar sand oil, mining companies inject steam at a high pressure that liquefies the oil and separates it from the sand. The oil then is recoverable through wells. The process has left these former forests

something akin to a moonscape extending over 530 km2 (330 square miles) of barren land with toxic retention ponds that dot the land. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil have seeped and spilled into the landscape, in addition to the vast habitat loss that has harmed wildlife. The reason for this project is to extract the oil for energy and produce billions of dollars in economic revenue (admittedly for a concentrated elite minority). The energy is difficult and expensive, and this indicates that oil has become valuable and scarce enough that companies and countries are willing to pursue the most expensive and difficult sources. Another example of this behavior is that rigs are drilling in deeper and much more dangerous marine waters, and it raises the specter that the world’s sources of oil have or will soon reach their peak, so-called “peak oil.” Tar sands oil will emit far more carbon dioxide than even standard

oil. Consequently, it fits the modern story of pursuing even the dirtiest energy sources with very high external social and environmental costs that will continue to spur climatic change. When the oil is squeezed from the sand and soil, this oil will be shipped through a controversial pipeline that is in the process of being built across the United States, which will travel over the largest aquifer in North America, the Ogallala, and other aquifers that feed Midwest agriculture. Environmental groups have protested every angle of this project, but Canadian and US tribal governments have been the most successful in raising obstacles. Tar sand development is described by some tribal leaders as a “slow industrial genocide” for regional indigenous peoples whose “ability to hunt, trap and fish has been severely curtailed and, where it is possible, people are often too fearful of toxins to drink water and eat fish from waterways polluted by the ‘externalities’ of tar sands production” (Huseman and Short, 2012). This development project has produced enormous revenue and an important supply of industrial energy, but scholars agree that the tar sand development is a fairly unmitigated social and environmental catastrophe akin to a “collective agreement to engage in suicidal tendencies” (Davidson and Gismondi, 2011). Thus, on one hand we have a story of optimism that includes

reductions in inequality and material deprivation while improving the local environmental functions. On the other, we have a story that engenders a more pessimistic story that the status quo political and economic values continue to be extremely powerful and are

not substantially working toward sustainable energy, engineering, resource stewardship, or consumption. In this chapter, we confront the problem of “disposition”—what

attitude should we take when we think about the foreboding limits of the real world, and the genius of human imagination? In this chapter we ask just how optimistic we should be about the prospects of sustainability. On this front, some believe that the track record of countries, companies, and individuals working toward a more sustainable future does not provide much reason for hope, while some believe in an infinite human adaptability and proclivity for innovation. Part of this attitude is traced to the Enlightenment, when people like the Marquis de Condorcet and William Godwin believed that the unlimited power of human reason would defeat every curse of disease, hunger, and even mortality. First, we ask if our choices are simply between Promethean arrogance or Malthusian disillusionment.