Personal Journal Entry #13 - The Four Challenges to Sustainability by David Orr

                                                                                                                                 March 31, 2011

GR #9: The Four Challenges to Sustainability by David Orr

David Orr explores the theme of sustainability in his paper the “Four Challenges of Sustainability.”  The article begins with a short look at the origins of the ‘concept of sustainability’ something he believes did not enter public notice until after the threat of nuclear war emerged in the 1950’s.   Initially, he draws his readers into a rather bleak look at some of the things he believes we can no longer sustain.    He identifies militarization as one issue while emphasizing his belief that sooner or later it will lead to ‘Armageddon.’  Furthermore, he identifies world poverty, a growing population, unrestrained development, a divided world, an ever increasingly complex world that is overwhelming our capacity to manage, and a world that is spiritually impoverished as all being possible sources for an end of the world scenario.

Orr believes that there are some potential barriers to reaching a sustainable world.   Social factors could prevent change as complex human systems become impossible to manage and people will fail to understand how to live in large numbers in a fragile world.    Political ineptitude could also interfere with man reaching a sustainable future as there is a lack of leadership or leadership is corrupted.   And finally, Orr believes we may fail because of a ‘spiritual emptiness’ which undermines man’s desire to work towards a sustainable future.  

 

Orr asserts that the challenge of sustainability will be a driving force in bringing mankind together to deal with the one issue that should be uppermost in all men’s thinking – building a sustainable world.  He believes the great discovery of the 21^st century will be the fact that man will finally discover “our interconnectedness and implicatedness in the web of life.”    Indigenous populations will undoubtedly point out that it is not a new belief at all.    Orr sees man’s transition to sustainability as having four main challenges:

1.    Create more “models, metaphors, and measures to describe the human enterprise relative to the biosphere.”

2.    “The transition to sustainability will require a marked improvement and creativitiy in the arts of citizenship and governance.”

3.    The public will need to be educated about sustainability.

4.    Man will need to embrace spirituality and accept that many of our problems can only be fixed by higher forces of “wisdom, love, compassion, understanding, and empathy.”

To keep going the way we are going will do nothing more than kill the planet and ultimately destroy man.   Orr argues that we need to stop denying, leave complacency behind, and get to work preserving life on earth.