Last May I received an email asking for an abstract of my remarks for this convention. Eager to please, I wrote to Walt Shields of Exponent with a list of possible topics. It was Walt who asked me to speak and with whom I have worked on several projects.
Here is what I said:
Hi, Walt,
Your SETAC coordinators are asking for a title and short abstract. What would you like me to talk about? Risk? Foresty in a green world? Science and sustainability? Photosynthesis? The history of the US Postal Service in Alaska?
The last was of course a joke.
I heard back immediately from Anne Fairbrother, whom I had not yet met, who said:
Ernesta:
I’m intrigued about the history of the US Postal Service in Alaska, but I do think a more appropriate topic would be either Science and Sustainability or some aspect about forestry-related risks. Feel free to be either as global in your remarks as you like or focused on regional issues.
Anne’s email laid down a challenge I could not ignore. I tested it with a toxicologist at Weyerhaeuser whose email response was: Ernesta – go with the mail.
Us geeks always like creative stuff that’s intellectually based. How can one not enjoy hearing about success and adventure, it’s the arctic Pony Express for goodness sakes!
So, Anne, here you go! Sustainability illustrated by the history of the postal service in Alaska. Seriously!
Let’s start with the word sustainability itself. Sustainability is a word in transition which means that the definition of sustainability is not yet written – at least not in any consistent way.
No matter what our mother’s tell us – language and usage change. Words evolve to meet the needs of society. A dictionary is only as good as the date of its edition, and certainly in the months that pass from final edit to publication, some meanings have already changed and new words have come into use. Consider the words: download, bling, and my favorite, atbat. Look them up in the dictionary of your school years. You won’t find them. You won’t find sustainability either.
We all have the same opportunity to contribute to the meaning of sustainability. And we are all groping a bit to see how to best convince others - and perhaps ourselves - that what we are doing should meet any definition that ultimately reaches the pages of our grandchildren’s dictionaries.
It is axiomatic that a sustainable endeavor is successful. Whether we consider the extraordinary ability of algae to photosynthesize in the dark and frozen North Sea, or advanced waste water treatment in Los Angeles allowing the reuse of sewer water for irrigation - we want sustained success.
While others struggle with a definition, let’s examine the behaviors that have consistently led to success in science or in the pursuit of any human endeavor.
Here is my short list:
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Articulate a clear vision: In this behavior you pursue a single purpose with a defined goal
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Make a commitment: Here you use a disciplined process to deliver results
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Maintain a worldview: In which you connect your daily endeavor with the big picture
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Overcome obstacles: Which means persist in pursuit of your mission regardless of setbacks
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Practice continuous improvement: don’t make the same mistakes twice and build on each step forward
My hypothesis is that these behaviors must be present for success and that success is the defining attribute of sustainability. Failure, by definition, does not produce lasting results.
Today I will use the story of astonishingly controlled focus and drive to illustrate the universality of the behaviors that lead to success which, in turn, underpins sustainability. My story will be about the delivery of mail. You may be among those who make jokes about “snail mail” and say that “postal service” is an oxymoron. But hear me out. It was not always that way.
The civilizing force of communication is well known. The Persian Empire employed couriers. The Roman Empire had official routes that stretched from the Britannia to Asia. Medieval messengers gained safe passage into walled cities and through the dark forests of central Europe.
Those who have been responsible for the mail over the ages had what it takes to succeed.
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Their vision: extend the connected network of citizens to the farthest reaches of the world.
Their commitment: route planning. All reliable mail systems engage in disciplined route planning. It is this guarantee of location and time that differentiates true mail service from a hope for good results.
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Their worldview: find a way to cross the borders. All national mail programs provide for delivery to foreign lands.
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And, do they overcome obstacles? This is a hallmark of the mail: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds". I am not reading from the USPS website. The quote is from the Greek historian, Herodotus writing about the war between the Greeks and Persians about 500 B.C. He refers to the Persian mounted postal couriers.
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And, continuous improvement: Until the advent of electronic communication, the price of a first class stamp in the United States increased at less than the rate of inflation.
These are the ideal behaviors, but we all know that reality can tension a mission to the breaking point – the point where it becomes mission impossible. Much of the work you do requires detection, analysis and solutions that might border on the impossible. Perhaps my story of mail delivery in Alaska will inspire.
Alaska is not an island off the coast of Southern California. Alaska is a very big place. In the 19th Century, there were no roads in Alaska – and today, most of Alaska remains unroaded.
The earliest mail routes in Alaska were in the islands of Southeast - you may have travelled through these on a modern cruise ship. In 1880, 6,812 pieces of letter mail originated in settlements from Haines to Juneau, Hoonah, Wrangell, and Sitka. There was semi-monthly service between Sitka and Port Townsend in Washington State.
There were immediate beneficiaries as mail began to move throughout the territory. In 1885 George Carmack homesteaded on the upper Yukon River. George subscribed to "Scientific American" and "The Review of Reviews". They were delivered by mail. He ordered and took successful delivery of a small organ which he installed in his cabin. The mail route to Carmack’s cabin went by steamship to the mouth of the Yukon River, and then up the river to the vast Alaskan interior.
When George discovered gold in 1896 the mail volume escalated. And that same year an intrepid entrepreneur named Beddoc started his first run on a much shorter overland route to the interior of Alaska. Beddoc embarked on a mail contract route across the Chilkoot Pass taking with him 1,474 letters for Circle City near the Carmack camp. More about that route in just a minute.
Beddoc was engaged by the Postal Service on what came to be called a Star Route. The Star Route carriers are the heroes of my presentation – the personal embodiment of the behaviors needed for success.
Congress launched star routes in 1845 directing the Postmaster General to award private delivery contracts. Here are the words from the RFP. The contract would go to “the lowest bidder tendering sufficient guaranties for faithful performance … with due celerity, certainty and security of …transportation”. Snow shoes, canoes, donkeys, reindeer and dog sleds all qualified. Bids for such contract services were classified as “celerity, certainty and security” bids. To avoid the constant writing out of these words clerks in the contract division designated them on route registers by three asterisks (* * *) and thus they became the star routes.
Beddoc's Star route ran a 900 mile marathon from Juneau to Circle City. He packed his own boat-building lumber on his back over the 3700 foot Chilkoot pass and arrived in Circle City in 34 days. This foot path runs from sea level to its summit at 3700 feet in a short 18 miles. The last four miles go straight up from 1,000 feet to the top. Beddoc learned fast. Wiser about 500 miles of rapids on the upper Yukon he returned to Juneau the long way, down the Yukon River to the sea, delivering 695 letters and four packages. His round trip was several thousand miles greater than the 1800 bargained for in contract route 78103.
Beddoc was not alone. Harry Ash, living in Circle City in the early 1890's, ordered a piano. His request reached Star contract carrier Billy Huson in Skagway. Huson and his wife dismantled a piano and wrapped it in yarn before hauling it over the Chilkoot Pass in the summer of 1896.
The contract carriers were a vital lifeline for the remote mining camps along the Yukon and its tributaries. Contract mail carrier, Max Lange, packed his violin on his route and joined performances of "Sweet Chariot", "The Old Rugged Cross" and "He Lifted Me". He may have been recruited to play at the St. Andrews Night Ball.
Rich and poor, men and women poured into Alaska to find the claims staked, the riches exaggerated and the winters colder than they could have imagined. But letters and packages kept coming and orders for silk and cotton and hot water bottles went out by return mail and many made new lives in the Great Land. By 1898 Star route mail service was good enough that sheet music could be ordered from New York and arrive in the Klondike six months later.
Let’s look at why carriers were successful on their Star Routes in Alaska.
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Their vision – fulfill the senders’ wishes. The carriers brought cookies from Mom no matter how far away she was.
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Their commitment – they signed a contract. A Star route contract “… to provide for the due celerity, certainty and security (of the mail).”
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Their worldview – Alaska was remote and sparsely populated. The Star-carriers were true pioneers pushing forward the previous limits of civilization.
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The obstacles to overcome – mountains blocking the path, rapids on the upper Yukon, no maps, no means of communication, brutal weather, bugs, winter darkness, no weary traveler’s way stations and no way to ask directions.
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Their continuous improvement – By the end of the 19th Century Star Route contractors offered their services by means of every conveyance imaginable. Over 50 million miles were covered by Star Routes in the United States. The system was largely responsible for cutting the per-mile costs by 38%.
These behaviors are also required of scientists. Focus, discipline, perseverance and hard work usually pay off. Success requires vision and a worldview that encompasses an extensive body of rapidly expanding scientific knowledge.
My talk today is about sustainability. My hypothesis is that the behaviors I have described and illustrated must be present for success and that success is the defining attribute of sustainability. At Weyerhaeuser we believe the outcomes of our vision and hard work demonstrate a sustainable path to the future. You probably think the same of much of your own work.
So, check yourself – are you modeling successful behavior?
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A vision is where to state what you are trying to accomplish and how the world will be better because of your work. A vision tells of a realistic, credible and attractive future.
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Vision without commitment does not achieve results. Assigned responsibility and adequate resources do along with sufficient patience and flexibility to get the job done.
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Worldview: a parochial mind has a very limited range.
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Overcoming obstacles: It seems the smallest setback can become an excuse for failure. We will not exceed our own expectations. If you don’t expect to succeed it will be easy to fall short of your goal.
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Continuous improvement: Here you scientists have a built in advantage. To the great frustration of the doctrinaire, science is a process of continuous improvement.
And so I come to my final observation: there is a triggering mechanism for successful behavior and the triggering mechanism tells the rest of the story. When the definition of sustainability is written it will include a reference to adaptation. A changing physical environment and competition for food drives adaptation in plants and animals. Change and competition are the triggers.
Darwin famously said it is not the strongest of the species that survive, but those most able to adapt. For humans, ingenuity and imagination are the drivers for adaptation. This means that successful behavior can be launched at will by a motivated and rational mind. When that mind is free to think outside the box, great things happen, such as great music and scientific breakthroughs.
Sustainability is a human conceit. The rest of the living world adapt and survive or don’t and fail. We – so-called “intelligent” life” – we have decided that failure is unacceptable and so are searching for a sustainable route to the future. Natural cycles of success, adaptation and failure will continue to swirl around us. For millions of years life on earth has been sustained but individual life forms have come and gone. We humans seek a unique outcome. We want to guarantee our own success. We seek to sustain our life as we know it.
To succeed we will have to be intentional about achieving that result. We will have to drive ourselves through any necessary adaptation. We are babes in the earth’s history. We have barely set out on our evolutionary journey. We still have our opposable thumbs and our big brains. And, we have every reason to be confident that we can think and subsequently act our way towards sustainable success. All we need to do is organize our intellectual resources in a way that maximizes our long-term survival. So – how will that happen? Government policy and rationing are proposed by some as the path to a sustainable relationship with the planet. I have a different view. Creativity fueled by ingenuity and imagination are my vote for the best method.
A closing word of caution: we need to be careful what we wish for. We cannot freeze-frame all evolution. The rest of the natural world will continue its cycle no matter what we do. The sustainable success we seek must play out on a dynamic stage.
The Postal Service will need to adapt in order to survive. The process has already begun through a recent collaboration with Fed Ex. Watch for more changes in delivery days and pricing.
Sustainability is inextricably tied to human endeavor. Any definition of sustainability must acknowledge this connection. Your search engine will offer many proposals. Here is mine: Sustainability is the intentional application of successful behaviors, inspired by human ingenuity, to promote adaptation and long-term survival.
You and your colleagues with your head start on disciplined problem solving – you are going to lead the way.
So I say, thanks for all you do as scientists, policy makers and caring people to so ably model the successful behaviors that necessarily precede the sustainability of our species. While the world may be indifferent, we mothers and grandmothers of future generations are grateful.
