Green Plans, working strategies for a sustainable future, a primer.

Chapter 2
Why are green plans needed?

To quote Albert Einstein: “Today’s problems cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.” The complexity and scale of today’s environmental problems have outgrown existing modes of environmental management, which are typically singleissue, reactive, short-term, and conflict-based. Global climate change, massive species extinction, depletion of the ozone layer, increasing production and distribution of toxic chemicals, and decreasing productivity of forests, topsoil, and fisheries are examples of the enormously challenging and complex problems now facing humanity. When coupled with global population increases and rapid expansion of a resource-intensive consumer culture, these problems foretell a troubled future for our planet. Today, if every person in the world was to enjoy the same lifestyle and resource consumption rate as the average American citizen, it would require three planet Earths to support them.

Over the last few decades societies have made great progress, through environmental laws and regulations, toward cleaning up pollution. But the problems go well beyond the solutions so far devised. It does not work to remove pollution from the air only to release it into the water or bury it in the land. We cannot solve the problem of dying fisheries without also considering the forestry practices that contribute to it, nor can we sustainably manage our forests without tackling air pollution problems. Ecological systems are intricately linked and highly complex.

Workable solutions must be comprehensive enough to embrace this complexity. Problems that affect the global environment, such as climate change, are the most difficult to address, because they cross all ecological and human-made boundaries.

The need for international action on sustainable development was formally recognized at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992—the Earth Summit. The defining work of the conference, the Agenda 21 action plan, was adopted by 179 nations and declared that: “Governments should adopt a national strategy for sustainable development... Its goals should be to insure socially responsible economic development while protecting the resource base and the environment for the benefit of future generations.”

Prompted by the Earth Summit and a growing awareness of the fact that conventional strategies are inadequate to the task, the principles of sustainable development are being learned and spoken like a new language: by communities seeking to improve their quality of life, companies pursuing benefits to their bottom lines, and by those countries trying to follow through on their commitments to Agenda 21. The momentum created by all of this activity offers unprecedented potential for resolving our environmental dilemma. Yet, without a unifying vision and sense of purpose, the sum of these efforts will not be enough for an enduring recovery. Green plans provide the framework needed to harness the potential that now exists and channel it toward development of a sustainable future.