What is sustainability?

Nanotechnology Perceptions

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 179-195

  Ramsden, Jeremy J ^a  

^a CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 79958084428     PISSN: 16606795     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.4024/N14RA10A.ntp.06.03     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. E.g., Jean de La Fontaine, La poule aux oeufs d'or. In: Fables, Livre V, Fable 13. Barbin & Thierry (1668). "Je ne veux pour le témoigner / Que celui dont la Poule, à ce que dit la fable, / Pondait tous les jours un oeuf d'or. / Il crut que dans son corps elle avait un trésor. / Il la tua, l'ouvrit, et la trouva semblable /A celles dont les oeufs ne lui rapportaient rien, / S'étant lui-même ôté le plus beau de son bien. / Belle leçon pour les gens chiches: / Pendant ces derniers temps, combien en a-t-on vus / Qui du soir au matin sont pauvres devenus / Pour vouloir trop tôt être riches?" There are several variants in existence, including one in which the owners doubled the goose's food in the hope of doubling its laying frequency, but instead the goose simply became fat and lazy and stopped laying altogether. The fable could well be applied to the schemes known as managerialism, Taylorism, work-study etc.-by rigidly controlling the work process in the hope of increasing the output, the opposite result is often achieved.
2. See also T.T. Toth-Fejel, A few lesser implications of nanofactories. Nanotechnol. Perceptions 5 (2009) 37-59.
3. This is not obvious. However, considering that any business requires investment, if only for the renewal of equipment, the promise of expanding markets is typically required to make the investment sufficiently attractive. Demand must, in fact, exceed supply, otherwise the price of a good will tend to diminish and may become insufficient to cover the costs of producing it sustainably (i.e., including the cost of renewing equipment). Beyond that, it seems to be a deeply rooted aspect of human nature to wish to improve, including increasing productivity. Hence, many business monopolies continue to improve, even though there is no commercial necessity for it.
4. At least in the long term, because once there is only one fish left, even if its value were reckoned to be equivalent to the entire remaining resources of the planet, once that fish was gone no more value could be generated; i.e., the fisherfolk would have lost their means of livelihood.
5. It should be recalled that the individuals constituting the species are not genetically identical. In the commercial sphere, this diversity is achievable through a corporation, legally enshrined as an individual (a juridical person) but dependent on the collective activity of many "natural" persons.
6. M. Porter, America's green strategy. Scientific American 264 (April 1991), p. 96.
7. See also M. Porter and C. van der Linde, Toward a new conception of the environment- competitiveness relationship. J. Econ. Perspectives 9 (1995) 97-118.
8. See J.J. Ramsden, New thinking: a synthesis. In: Spiritual Motivation: New Thinking for Business and Management (eds J.J. Ramsden, S. Aida and A. Kakabadse), Ch. 7 (pp. 77-87). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2007).
9. F. Maltini, Climate change and the complexity of the energy global security supply solutions: the global energy (r)evolution. In: Complexity and Security (eds J.J. Ramsden and P.J. Kervalishvili), Ch. 11 (pp. 185-217). Amsterdam: IOS Press (2008).
10. L. Hill, Effects of clothing and fuel shortage on health. Nature (Lond.) 150 (1942) 536-538.
11. G.C. Holt, Carbon neutrality-what does it mean? Nanotechnol. Perceptions 5 (2009) 135-145;
12. ibid., 6 (2010)121-123.
13. R.W. Kates et al., Sustainability science. Science 292 (2001) 641-642.
14. In U. Petschow, K. Hübner, S. Droge and J. Meyerhoff, Nachhaltigkeit und Globalisierung (Springer, 1998) we find (p. 14) the principle tasks of the politics of sustainability given as: (1) the determination of the scale of the economic system that guarantees the continuing ability of the biosphere to support that economic system; (2) the fair distribution of resources and possibilities among the presently living population of the Earth and between present and future generations; and (3) the efficient allocation of resources, taking into account natural capacities, if necessary by the creation of institutional arrangements. Perhaps the (unstated) link is that if resources are distributed unfairly, the disadvantaged may ultimately rectify this situation by force; or it may depend upon some ethical principle or other.
15. W.C. Clark and N.M. Dixon, Sustainability science: the emerging research program. Proc. Natl Acad. Sei. USA 100 (2003) 8059-8061. (Pubitemid 36842497)
16. H. Komiyama and K. Takeuchi, Sustainability science: building a new discipline. Sustainability Science 1 (2006) 1-6.
17. Assuming that we are a P problem.
18. D. Gábor, The Proper Priorities of Science and Technology (18th Fawley Foundation Lecture). Southampton: University Press (1972).
19. G Sommerhoff, Analytical Biology. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1950).
20. W.R. Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall (1956).
21. E.g., in present-day Britain. It was quite widespread in the socialist economies (i.e., Eastern Europe up to 1991);
22. interestingly there it continues to some degree even today, presumably because of habit and tradition.
23. This view is not universally held. See, for example, B. Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Cambridge: University Press (2001).
24. Equally unexpected was the rapidity with which hundreds of wellhead fires in Kuwait, burning almost a million barrels of oil a day, were extinguished, thanks to innovative human ingenuity.
25. "Advanced" is here defined purely in terms of binary comparison by combat. In some other objective ways, Inuit are doubtless more advanced than Europeans.
26. In contrast, Napoleon observed that Mamelukes were clearly superior to Frenchmen on a one-to-one basis; a thousand or so Mamelukes confronting a similar number of Frenchmen would be roughly equally matched; and above that number Frenchmen were bound to win a confrontation because of their superior organization.
27. Cf. Allen's "Law of Excess Diversity",
28. P.M. Allen, A complex systems approach to learning, adaptive networks. Int. J. Innovation Management 5 (2001 ) 149-180.
29. r pertains to primary extraction, its value will itself be governed by a similar equation; it will only be constant in the IA régime (§ 15).
30. As exemplified, for example, by the trend for companies to deliver quarterly results to shareholders, rather than annually as previously.
31. 9).
32. We could refer to the early usage as Mode 1, the later usage thriving on distortion in order to achieve persuasion as Mode 2, and reserve Mode 3 for a future style appropriate for nanotechnology.