The Story of The Stuff and The Shameful Lack of Spanish Engineers Literacy in Sustainability

Annie Leonard is one of those important guys featured on the (en)rich list <http://enrichlist.org>. This short video is a condensed film version of a longer documentary, it is truly inspirational and describes the life cycle of products from cradle to grave. It is like a simple primer to a new discipline called Industrial Ecology, whose principles I could learn in my Masters degree in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) http://snre.umich.edu/ at the University of Michigan. Leonard frames the story of stuff embedded in Western capitalism system and she critizes how things are working (not working) in the US with a focus in consumerism. 

The lack of sustainability nowadays is a very complex system, but in my opinion, growth and its son, extreme consumerism of goods, is in the very root of the unsustainable path we are immersed in. On the other hand, since we are not living in a linear world, we tend to undervalue the consequences of industrial processes, pollution and we do not fully understand synergies between products and the environment. One of the reasons of society not being aware of how unsustainable is our miserable life is that prices do not reflect the true cost of producing the stuff that fill our houses, basements and, ultimately, garbage bins. Another reason is the lack of culture and values (amplified by mass media) so typical in this early 21st century, that at the same time makes the people insensitive to environmental justice issues and cross cultural empathy. Corporate lobbies, weak governments, lack of transparency and corrupt politicians make up the rest of factors influencing unsustainable development.

Obviously, there are a wide range of solutions to reduce our environmental footprint http://www.footprintnetwork.org, and many of them deal with improving our behavior, policy, planning and technology. But none of them will come true if we do not improve our culture, education and citizenship values.When I was student at Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and Universitat de Lleida I missed the big picture of the world that anglosaxon educational system provides to the student. In Spain our University neither supply us with the tools to become proficient and conversational in discussing "big picture issues" nor gives us the confidence to "think out-of-the-box". We, Spaniards Engineers, are like Renaissance Men, engineers that will solve all the problems we face, in our particular little technical worlds: Civil Engineers will focus just in infrastructure construction, Forestry Engineers just in afforestation, Environmental Licenciados in everything/nothing (?!), etc... We are prisoners of our own success after long decades of a dictatorship that put a premium on sharp engineers who could solve every silo of reality. However, after 35 years of democracy in Spain, we still are fighting for exclusive competencies through our Colegios Profesionales, and in my opinion we still do not dare to cross certain boundaries, not even in coffee chats. Where is the "System Thinking for Sustainability" that must be the consequence of our education? Where is the humanistic training? WHERE ARE THE (GREEN) JOBS IN THIS F***ING COUNTRY?

To be continued...

Vzcde. Ambient.