Hi ken 
I cannot disagre with the principles of consensus through informing that you note. I can also appreciate the frustration behind jab and others remarks. Consider how long the media has been reporting the tragedy of Zimbabwe with no significant action taken by the world to remove a corrupt dictator. How long have we been hearing and denying climate change as a discussion not an action piece. I say this recognixing my own lack of response but cycling to work, having one car, installing rainwater tanks, planting vegetables not flowers, these things we could do. I'm a little too left to believe too much in top down systems action prefering the agglutinating force of local revolution. I hope both global and local solutions work but out my money on the second 
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
To: Friedman, Ken <[log in to unmask]>
To:  <[log in to unmask]>

Sent: 1/07/2009 9:12:25 PM
Subject: Re: Betraying the Planet

Dear Gavin,

One of the challenges implicit in your comment is that we know what it is that we are supposed to do.

And then comes the next question: who is it that is supposed to do the doing?

Just this morning, I was at a meeting where the university is working its way through our response to the challenge of sustainability ... it always amazes me that there are as many steps as there are to get even a medium sized organization -- a university -- to orchestrate its efforts on these issues.

On another list, GK VanPatter wrote on this issue in relation to design schools:

"While many graduate design education programs that have embraced 'sustainability' as a theme in designing, most merely treat the theme as content (WHAT), rather than as a lens through which to engage all kinds of problems and opportunities, generating ideas and solutions at a systems level (HOW)." 

This is another way of examining your comment (and Jan's). To use sustainability as a lens through which to engage all kinds of problems and opportunities, generating ideas and solutions at a systems level requires a mapping and remodeling of nearly everything we do in graduate design education, and to get there, we much map and model the undergraduate foundations on which we build graduate education. We have a working group doing just this. 

What we already know is that this entails many changes both to education, and to practice, and even to the way we run our staff structures and our building. To remodel the undergraduate curriculum from conception to accrediting the new programs will take us at least three years. Getting everything in place and tuned will take five to six years. The changes to graduate will run concurrently, but they cannot run independently. From the time I put sustainability on the faculty agenda as one of our three cornerstones to the day that we achieve the goal that GK has stated so well means a time span of seven to eight years, involving everything from thinking and planning to changing, to gaining approval and accreditation at all levels of the university and the government, to acquiring and allocating resources, to implementing the program, testing it, checking it, changing what doesn't work and improving what does. Perhaps we can trim a year or two off that. 

But the notion that we can "just do it" only works in footwear adds.

Now that's just a single organization -- a thousand or so academic and administrative staff, twenty thousand or so students. Consider the steps it takes to get an industry to do something -- the design industry, as exemplified through the efforts of The Designers Accord, working to reorient firms, practices, and the practices of clients.

The Designers Accord does have a fairly workable program, and this means rapid progress in some dimensions while permitting easy scalability. But it does not yet ensure results.

The "just do something" ethos was the motivating factor behind Earth Day, back in 1969 or so, and the notion that ecology festivals and individual action were all it would take. The challenge is rebuilding cities, societies, and economies around the actions required for long-term transformation.

I'm not saying do nothing. I am, in contrast, proposing that it is vital to think through and create commitment for genuine action leading to significant results. 

Since this requires consensus and commitment across a wide spectrum of actors, voters, stakeholders, politicians, business leaders, shareholder bodies, banks, governments, government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and more, I still can't see Paul Krugman's article as distraction or endless discussion.

Let's be fair here, too. We've each got to ask what we're willing to do to make things happen. I've made serious commitments to these issues -- within a range of available resources. To do more requires consensus among many other actors, and I find Krugman's article and other articles like it exactly the tool I need to create that consensus and to generate the commitment we require. In fact, it was a great help to me today in persuading a few key colleagues that sustainability was more than another word for risk management.
 
Again, I agree with Ranjan, and Jan, and with you, that we must be active. I'm simply unwilling to treat a responsible contribution to a major public forum as endless discussion. Unless, of course, you think that Prof. Krugman would do more good for the world by discussing price elasticity, foreign exchange rates, or one of the other topics on which he is well qualified to lecture and to write. My favorite, of course, would be the economics of increasing returns and Krugman's critique of Brian Arthur's work. 

Look, I don't mean to seem grumpy here -- well, perhaps I DO mean to seem a little grumpy. Are you really saying that it would be better for Krugman NOT to use his column in the New York Times to further the public debate on this topic? Even though a bill has passed the House of Representatives, it has not yet passed the Senate. Until it passes the Senate, it is not law. Where do you think Senate votes come from, if voters do not demand Senatorial action, a demand that is always the product of public debate. If American voters fail to push their Senators on this bill, it will fail.

So I'd prefer to thank Paul Krugman for keeping this discussion alive, while doing what I can on the ground to do my part at one university.

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

--

On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 19:08:08 +1000, Gavin Melles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I think the message about distraction means enough endless discussion just do something