The five E’s in sustainable development are economy, environment, efficiency, equity, and ethics, as shown in Figure 10.3. Therefore, sustainable development is an ethical concept, like “justice.” We need a new vision of sustainability, a vision that focuses on understanding how sustainability is a kind of relationship, a relationship between society and the environment. All human relationships, good and bad alike, involve attitude and action. The essence of sustainability is to both develop a mature ethical attitude toward nature and a mature physical relationship with nature, which involves exploiting nature in an appropriate manner.
Technology increases our ability to exploit the environment and the efficiency of exploitation. But it does not determine how we ought to exercise that ability and efficiency. In the 1970s, technology and economic incentives led to more efficient home heating and insulation. What did we do with that ability? Use less energy? No, we built bigger houses because we could heat bigger houses more affordably. The thermal efficiency is the traditional domain of engineering and much of the activities are constrained by scientific laws, including thermodynamics. Through technical ingenuity and enhancing efficiencies within the existing economic system and achieving greater efficiencies in materials and energy use are important steps toward sustainable development. Equity on the other hand ensures a better quality of life for everyone, now and generations to come.
Society is a ship whose engine is technology and rudder is ethics; history bears plenty of witness to the wrecks caused by technologies that developed ahead of ethics. There is no reason to think sustainability is any different. Technology is important, but not as important as understanding how sustainability is first and foremost a relationship: a relationship with the environment; a relationship where ethics (or lack of attention to ethics) is the predominant influence on how we exploit nature (Common Dreams 2010).
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