It’s just not sustainable, my friend and I say together. We’re talking about her work/life imbalance, the juggling of domestic and professional responsibilities that has her absurdly multitasking, barely pulling it off, always failing someone or something, always guilty. (In case you were wondering, no, the answer is not that she should stay at home in a frilly apron baking cupcakes instead of practising medicine. The answer is that adequate childcare should be available and affordable.)
Something sustainable is literally something that can be held up, from the Latin “tenere” as in “tenacious”. If a course of action is depleting resources faster than they are generated, causing a net loss, it’s unsustainable because sooner or later there will be nothing left. Harvesting peat is the obvious local example but others would include losing weight, overwork and lack of rest.
We’re used to sustainability as a buzzword around care for the environment, and often such terms feel reproachful, as if we’re being told off for using too much, taking more than our share. We should buy less, throw away less, drive less, fly less. It feels as if what’s sustainable for the planet is unsustainable for individuals trying to survive capitalism, as if living sustainably is another demand to do more with less. It doesn’t have to be that way.
[ Sarah Moss: ‘I’m a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic’Opens in new window ]
I’ve always thought it’s deeply unfair to position new parents like my friend at the sharp end of green scolding. Especially when space and money are tight, disposable nappies are a godsend to a household and also horrible for the environment. You can transport babies on bicycles – people do it all the time in places with safe cycling infrastructure – and you can get pushchairs on buses and trains, but in Dublin it’s not easy, pleasant or reliable. Maybe let’s inconvenience some oligarchs before we come for the exhausted mothers, and while we’re at it provide a subsidised laundering service for cloth nappies.
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Human energies also need care, which is not in opposition to but part of care for human environments. Much of our excessive consumption comes from various kinds of scarcity: time, affordable fresh food, active transport infrastructure and reliable public transport. Some people are obviously making active choices to prioritise their own egos and individual power over everyone else’s health and safety (SUV drivers, I mean you), but most of us are muddling through in environments engineered to create scarcity and to direct us to solve this engineered scarcity by unsustainable consumption.
For most of us, the necessary changes must be collective and corporate. Only the well-resourced can consistently resist powerful systems as individuals. I can cycle everywhere because I live within 10km of most of the places I need or want to go, because I have a high degree of control over my own time and the immeasurable blessing of physical health. In this situation, the choice to cycle enhances and does not deplete my life. It is (most days) more of a joy than a sacrifice. It would make no sense to try to insist that people in more difficult circumstances make the same choices; better to change the circumstances.
My household’s diet is based on organic and mostly Irish fruit and vegetables, delivered weekly. If everyone could eat as we do, more people would be in better health, Irish organic farming would be more sustainable and there would be shorter supply chains and less food waste. But this is possible for us because we can afford the additional cost, I have the time and knowledge to cook and none of us has allergies or intolerances. It’s stupid to say that everyone should do what we do unless we also say that everyone should have what we have, which is the truly sustainable position.
[ I enjoy Ireland’s weather, take pleasure in rain and whinge on hot daysOpens in new window ]
And so my point is that social justice and climate justice are not in opposition. Some of the reasons for our unsustainable habits are moral failure (SUV drivers, I still mean you), but most are systemic failure, or rather the success of a system engineered to maximise profit and economic growth at the expense of humanity as well as the rest of the natural world. Sustainable behaviour involves rest, companionship and pleasure as well as separating your recycling (but protest the wanton stupidity of most food packaging) and taking the bus (protest the fact that it’s late and crowded).
