The Sustainable Life

Note: This post is written by HAB, not our usual writer, Jared.

No Impact Man is one wing of Colin Beavan’s multi-format documentation of his year spent striving to not impact the earth.

I have not had a chance to read his book, and probably won’t, this shouldn’t be seen as a huge knock against Colin and his admirable quest to reduce his impact. However, I, like many others am growing a bit fatigued of the “Do something for a year and then sell a book about it” concept.

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been some great projects born out of this framework, but once I’ve read a half dozen or so, I’ve pretty well had my fill.  My personal favorite of this genre was “Not Buying It”, worth a read if you aren’t tired of this genre as well.

On to the movie itself. I believe this film is intended as a documentary of Beavan’s book writing more than his actual journey to no-impact land, and as such seems to have more of a focus on the impact of this project on his wife and their relationship. At one particular point in the film Colin himself even comments how “Reality-TV like” the conversation between he and his wife feels, and he is speaking the truth, many of their exchanges seem somewhere between survivor and a marriage reality show.

Relationship spotlight notwithstanding, it was interesting to watch the stages of the project unfold on camera as the Beavan household moves from a relatively standard middle-class Manhattan household to living a relatively primitive existence without cars, elevators, electricity, toilet paper, detergent (well, they do have Borax), and all the trappings of our current middle class lifestyle.

But in the end, I just couldn’t connect with the Beavans and was left wondering whether they give the environmental movement a bad rap.  As I watched their film I wavered in deciding whether to label them as fringe lunatics or spoiled yuppies and I just couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that despite all the publicity of their sacrifices, they are still living a life much more comfortable than many of the world’s citizens.

My final rating is 2/5 stars. There are some redeeming moments and the film is easy enough to watch, but it is nowhere near the best in class.  Topics covered will be familiar and almost rote to anyone with a background in sustainability.

About one week ago, MIT hosted its annual Energy Conference. I was in attendance for most of the conference.  I was able to attend panel discussion about supply chains, electric vehicles, and the future of China as a clean technology powerhouse.  In addition, I saw the three keynote lectures and a panel about clean technology investing.

I was impressed by the conference overall.  The organization for a student-run event was stellar.

As for the content, I found all of the lectures and panel discussions to be very informative, but not particularly incendiary.  And really, that’s probably a good thing given how serious the energy problem is.

This brings me to my take home message from the conference: What is the energy problem?

There is a huge number of people, a huge amount of energy, and a huge pile of money being spent on the “energy problem”.  But the real issue seems to be that the future is very uncertain with regard to energy.  Oil production may be peaking, but coal is still plentiful, especially in China, India, and the USA.  When will the market for clean energy become profitable?  Until people know the answer to this question, the clean technology sector is unlikely to make in-roads on a large-scale in the energy sector.

If you can predict what the future of energy entails, you might want to inform the “experts” in the field, who all seem to disagree with each other.  From my perspective, the uncertainty of the future is paralyzing progress on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.  This uncertainty stems from a combination of a lack of government regulation, a lack of a consumer demand, and a lack of economic profitability of new technologies.

I’ll address these issues more in future posts, but I cannot guarantee clear solutions.  Until one aspect of the situation takes the lead (be it governance, consumer attitude, or economics), little measurable progress will be made.

It’s been awhile since I had a chance to write, but it isn’t for a lack of material.

I wanted to give a quick plug for the MIT Energy Conference that is taking place today and tomorrow.  I’ll be attending, and will provide my thoughts on the event in a subsequent post this weekend.  It looks to be a good mix of technology and policy talks.

March 5th and 6th, 2010

On first glance, I’m most excited about the panel discussions on the water constraints in energy production and the rise of China in the clean energy sector.

Stay tuned for more.  Also, you can check out the conference via facebook.