Research and Solutions: Don't Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit! Counterintuitive Policy Advice for Achieving Sustainability

Abstract

As the ecological movement shifts from conceptualization to implementation of programs for sustainability, the matter of appropriate tactics and strategy comes into play with increasing frequency. This strategic and tactical review becomes all the more crucial in the twenty-first century context of global warming and peaking of world oil reserves. This essay argues that the currently fashionable and appealing tactic of “picking the low-hanging fruit” in order to achieve quick paybacks and build coalitions of support for sustainable policies is fundamentally flawed and, on its own, counterproductive. Grounded in the imagery of a pathway or avenue to sustainability, this policy nostrum eventually leads to a series of walls or barriers that make the goal of that journey unrealizable. In advancing the alternative strategy of sustainable city regions, this essay lays out the case for adopting the commitments, tactics, and strategems flowing from the idea that sustainability is a balance-seeking process requiring the establishment of the minimum level of activity that would make each succeeding step easier, not more difficult. This paper also addresses the continuing arguments supporting the low-hanging fruit dictum and the political realities that make it seem compelling.