Duda Breseeg, right, a candidate for HPU Masters degree in Sustainable Development gets to practice microfinance on the ground now with Nobel Peace-Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, left, and his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Photo courtesy Duda Breseeg.

As nature was abundant, it made sense to grow bigger, more structured industrial complexes and urban centers. In the 20th century, third world countries focused development efforts on machines, industrialization, and urbanization that would, they believed, provides for their kids what they never had an end to their daily physical struggle, improved health, and increased income. What they had in abundance was wilderness and lush forests; what their people did not have was jobs, proper shelter, food, and an income. To third world citizens, utilizing their natural resources to generate income made good sense.

Sierra Leone, in Western Africa, is a good example. It is a low-income country, the lowest on the U.N. Human Development Index, that is at roughly at the same stage of development as a small European nation 500 years ago, when feudal agricultural society was predominant. At this stage of development, it still makes sense for them to focus on industrialization and urbanization. However, because modern industrialized earthlings, the 21st- century global citizens, are continuing to follow the same economic rationale, converting natural to industrial resources, they will fail to provide their children what they never had. If they continue doing it, we are going to see a decline of lifestyle and standard of living.

The 20th century saw the Western world transform from a Garden of Eden to an industrialized concrete jungle. Instead of treating our economy as a sub-system within our natural environment, modern society has shaped and modified ecosystems mainly based on human wants. Now is the time for us to change the models that took us here in the first place.

Treating the economy as separate from the environment has resulted in global environmental turmoil, including direct attacks on the environment in which we live such as global warming, air pollution, deforestation, acid rain, depletion of fish stocks, floods, and tropical storms, and others. There are alternatives to our present patterns of economic globalization, pathways to sustainable development. This will look at threats to our modern industrialized lifestyle and at sustainable alternative economic strategies as both of these impact future populations globally and, especially, the United States, Hawai‘i, and our own Hawai‘i Pacific University. We are already mobilizing to adapt to the changing climate, and there are things students can do in their student and professional careers as well as their individual lives to effect new global realities.

In a March 2 article in Kalamalama, the editors of EarthTalk, based on information from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), tell us that the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Research findings suggest that global climate change is our new reality and that it is caused by human behavior. Dr Susan Soloman, a leading world climate change specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told Kalamalama writer Jennifer Ching (April 13) that "There is no doubt that the world is warmer than it used to be. . . .and it’s due to burning fossil fuels."

Ching added that "Unless we act in response to the global warming of our planet" these best of time "could easily become our worst times." As the world’s climate is changing because of our demand for fossil fuels, it is important that we develop in a sustainable way.

A commonly accepted definition of sustainable development, offered by the Brundtland Commision in its 1987 report, "Our Common Future," states that sustainable development is "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The current economic growth model (the Neoclassical model) is based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a performance indicator: bigger is better, wealth is distributed via the market, and the depletion of natural capital is ignored: disappearing ecosystems, species extinction, decreased biodiversity, increased pollution of our waters and our air, and unsustainable conversion of natural resources for profit.

A sustainable alternative, ecological economics, has been is that developed partly by Herman Daly, a former senior economist at the World Bank. Daly’s system sheds light on some economic concepts missing in the neoclassical model: fair distribution of wealth and attention to the scale of growth. In Beyond Growth (1996), Daly says that three concepts--scale, distribution, and allocation of resources are essential to the economics of sustainable development. Allocation of resources must be efficient; distribution of income or wealth must be just (a limited range of acceptable inequality); scale to be ecologically sustainable msut be in balance relative to the containing ecosystem. This is not recognized in standard economics, and has therefore become the differentiating focus of ecological economics. It is this new scale imperative that guides us to rely on more than one source of primary energy, diversify sources, and focus on renewable energies.

Much of the burning of fossil fuels can be linked to increased demand for energy, according to lifetime energy researcher and MIT fellow Vaclav Smil. In his Energy at the Crossroads (2003), Smil concludes that the citizens of affluent nations should not only consider being more energy efficient, but, to be truly sustainable, must also reduce their total use of energy. Earth Policy Institute founder and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown, agrees. In an article reprinted in Kalamalama Nov. 17, 2008, he wrote that as oil prices go up and as climate change cast a shadow on future uses of oil, the old energy economy is being replaced by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. Thus it make sense to say that to move towards sustainable development, the United States and Hawai‘i need to move toward diversifying their sources of energy, reduce their oil dependence, reduce total energy use, and invest insistently in renewable energies such as those of solar, wind, water, and combination of these (co-generation).

United Nations Television is available on YouTube, and on May 14, Ban Ki-moon, U.N. General Secretary, broadcast that 2009 is the year of climate change and that "in December, Governments will meet in Copenhagen to seal the deal on a new Climate Change agreement, one that can power the planet and green growth." Moon added that "Climate Change carries no passport, affects all countries from rich to poor, but the poor suffer the worst."

President Obama, also on YouTube, suggested on June 6 that "the nation that leads the world in creating a new, clean energy economy, will be the nation that leads 21st century global economy."

The House of Representatives passed landmark legislation in June 2009 aimed at slashing industrial pollution blamed for global warming. Now remains the important work of implementing an unprecedented carbon cap-and-trade program that could set a new global standard on carbon economics. Unfortunately, despite the President’s rhetorical efforts to put climate on the agenda, he picked an economic advisor, Lawrence Summer, former head of World Bank, who has constantly ignored the economy-environment link and is a well known growth advocate.

How is Hawai‘i and its mobilizing to adapt to climate change and to and stay in the forefront of sustainable economics? There are certainly signs that Hawai‘i is suffering some of the effects of global warming. In an April 13 article in Kalamalama, Chelsea Hale reports that Kailua Beach is eroding at an accelerating speed and that rising sea levels is one of the causes. Rising sea levels are caused by global warming, which is caused by burning of fossil fuels. Warren Dominy, director of Aquatic Feeds and Nutrition Department of Oceanic Institute (OI) reported that Hawaii is the most vulnerable state in the United States when it comes to dependence on a sole source of energy. Dominy reported in a March 16 article in Kalamalama that Hawaii is the most oil dependent state in U.S. with some 93 % of its energy from fossil fuels and almost no local production.

So what is Hawai‘i doing about it? In 2007, Linda Lingle, made a commitment to renewable energy which will serve as an example for the entire nation and the world. The goal is to meet 70 percent of Hawaii’s energy needs with clean energy by 2030. In 2007, Also, in 2007, Lingle enacted the Global Warming Act, which requires Hawai‘i to return its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020—a Kyoto- Protocol-style commitment toward reducing greenhouse gases.

And what is Hawai‘i Pacific University doing about it? Despite a the strong notion of global citizenship at the school and many passionate individuals in the HPU community, HPU is still struggling to put sustainability among its objectives. Some faculty would like to put sustainability on the curriculum.

Dr Art Whatley, Program Chair of the Global Leadership and Sustainable Development graduate program, experienced an approximate 65 percent increase enrolment in fall 2009 while most other HPU programs saw enrolment numbers stagnate or drop. Whatley not only prepares students for professional sustainability careers after their graduation, but he also genuinely implants the moral notion that everyone must be an agent of sustainable change in society.

While there’s been talk of hiring a sustainability coordinator, currently HPU recycling efforts do not meet Honolulu City and County requirements. More than ever, now is always the right time for senior management at HPU to follow the efforts led by Whatley and others to put sustainability on the agenda both as part of the discussion and in practice.