The letter below was originally written as a reflection paper for Kevin Desouza’s class, IMT 583 - Finance & Accounting Foundations for Information Professionals.

Mr. Eyman:

It seems, that in this economic climate where people are trying to make life easier for themselves, you are intent upon bringing up initiatives that will only waste our money and time. In fact, your abuse of Washington’s initiative system has been so flagrant that you have been mocked by an initiative that attempted to name you a horse’s ass^[3]. Fortunately for you – unfortunately for the citizens of Washington – the Courts struck Initiative 831 down as a mockery of the initiative system^[5]. Now we find you at it again with Initiative 985, which has been soundly discounted by none less than the federal government as potentially endangering Washington’s transportation infrastructure, despite your attempts to prove otherwise^[1].

So here is my proposal: since you seem so gung-ho about utilizing the initiative system to make the lives of Washington State citizens better (nevermind that you often miss your target and go straight to making it a living hell): why not create an initiative to abolish Washington State’s observation of Daylight Savings Time?

No, bear with me now – this is no better or worse an initiative than you could have dreamed up yourself. Arizona and Hawaii already buck the trend of daylight savings (so much so that Arizona becomes its own time zone when the rest of the country switches to Daylight Savings). Back in 2007, when the United States extended Daylight Savings so that it ended later, the National Geographic had this to say:

A study released last year by the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the change will save less than 1 percent of the country’s annual energy consumption.

Bob Aldrich of the California Energy Commission told National Public Radio that energy needs in the U.S. have changed a lot since the 1970s, when the data supporting the current bill was collected.

"We’ve become much more electronically configured, if you will," he told NPR. In addition to lights, people plug in more computers, televisions, satellite dishes, and other power-hungry electronics than they did 30 years ago^[2].

Yup, that’s right – we based the choice, in part, on data from the 1970s! Keep in mind, Daylight Savings Time was a way of helping to standardize railroad schedules, and no federal mandate exists that requires states to observe it^[6]. Let’s examine this from a financial perspective, since your initiatives are all about saving citizens money.

Consider for a moment that Washington is widely regarded as an economic gateway to Asian countries. Thus, much of our economy depends on our economic relationships with them. Later in Handwerk’s article, he cites Anthony Concil of the International Air Transport Association:

"When Europe and the U.S. are on different times, connections become less convenient. Right now there is one week of discord between the U.S. and Europe, so it’s sort of at a manageable level," Concil said.

He argued that if the energy bill passed, every year "you might have a monthlong period where you have lousy connections, so from a traveler’s perspective it’s not going to be particularly good."

Airlines may ultimately feel the change where it hurts the most—on the bottom line.

"It’s going to be expensive for airlines," Concil added. "Particularly for U.S. carriers—and they are in a difficult climate right now—it’s a major issue, as well as for carriers traveling to and from the U.S."

In 2006, the State of Indiana required all of its counties to begin observing Daylight Savings Time consistently – previously, it was left up to the counties to determine whether or not to observe Daylight Savings. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research took advantage of this law to study energy consumption changes in the state. In the abstract of their report, they state:

Our main finding is that—contrary to the policy’s intent—DST increases residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase are approximately 1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the DST period. DST causes the greatest increase in electricity consumption in the fall, when estimates range between 2 and 4 percent. These findings are consistent with simulation results that point to a tradeoff between reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling. We estimate a cost of increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $9 million per year. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions that range from $1.7 to $5.5 million per year. Finally, we argue that the effect is likely to be even stronger in other regions of the United States^[4].

An abolishment of Daylight Savings would likely have drastic impacts on our energy usage and consumption in the residential sector. Pairing an abolishment of Daylight Savings with a significant push for energy conservation and for companies to manufacture highly energy-efficient products could only help the state.

So, Mr. Eyman, I implore you – prepare our state for the future once again and throw your weight behind creating this initiative. Like many other initiatives that you have fathered, you can expect a good deal of healthy debate of the pros and cons of such an initiative; unlike your other initiatives, however, no matter what the result, you will have encouraged the citizens of our state to think seriously about energy conservation and use, as well as the practicality of observing an outmoded tool used for synchronizing train schedules.

With warmest regards,

Peter Ellis

Works Cited

1. Broom, J. (2008, October 25). "Federal transportation officials say Eyman’s initiative could be costly to state". The Seattle Times. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008309267_fedshov25m.html.
2. Handwerk, B. (2007, March 9). "Daylight Saving Change: Energy Boon or Waste of Time?". National Geographic. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070309-daylight-saving.html.
3. Initiative 831. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2003-04/Htm/Initiatives/Initiative%20To%20The%20People/INITIATIVE%20831.htm.
4. Kotchen, M. J. and Grant, L. E. (2008, October). Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Indiana. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://www.nber.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/papers/w14429.pdf.
5. Modie, N. (2003, March 15). "A bum rap? Eyman initiative is ruled out". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/112731_initiative15.shtml.
6. Vernon, J. (2008, October 31). "Daylight Saving Time History in the U.S.". National Geographic. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081031-daylight-saving-time-history-facts.html.

I’ve spent the last couple days at the Seattle Green Festival, a celebration of sustainability and, simultaneously, a call for change. The festival consists of a wide variety of speakers, an exhibit hall, and a number of activities and vendors all centered around the philosophy of living green. An interesting tidbit: all of the vendors at the Festival were screened and certified to adhere to specific green practices (though what these are, exactly, were never disclosed). This is a unique event, co-sponsored by Global Exchange, a human rights organization, and Co-op America, which focuses on economic action for sustainability.

I attended five sessions over the two days, in addition to wandering around the exhibition hall. Below are my notes from each presentation, followed by my general commentary on the entire thing. I don’t guarantee that these notes represent the entire presentation, just what I got out of it.

11AM Saturday: What’s the Economy for Anyway? (John de Graaf)
John de Graaf, co-author of Affluenza and creator of the PBS documentary by the same name, is someone whose work I’ve been familiar with since my freshman year in college. I’ve seen the film, and I think I’ve even heard him speak at least once before. He’s a fantastic, witty speaker who really knows his stuff, and it was fun to hear him again. Here are my notes:

• 48% of Americans think that the market should take over from the government
• What is the purpose of our economic system?
• Gifford Pinchot stated that the purpose of the economy was the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run
• A bit of historical background on our current economy..
  • 1920s: big economic boom!
  • October 1929: stock market crashes, Great Depression
  • Then: A slow increase in economic benefits for all between the ’40s and the ’80s
  • 1980s: Reaganomics: the “trickle down” theory of economics
  • Now: What Bush calls the ownership society and de Graaf calls the “You’re On Your Own”ership society
• Today, Europeans work about 80% of the time compared to the American work week
• The US is one of four countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee maternity leave
• Health: in the 1980s, the US ranked 11th worldwide in longevity; now, we rank, depending on when you check, somewhere between 45th and 47th!
• The US has 25% of the world’s prisoners
• The US pays the highest prices for health care and yet gets the worst results out of the system
• Americans take up 25 acres/person of space; realistically, the world can only support 5 acres/person.
• Question from de Graaf - and this is a fundamental question: what is the working definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Americans are encouraged to do this - in fact, we’re encouraged to do more and more of this.
• Last year, only 14% of Americans took a two week vacation from work.

de Graaf’s point was that, for all of our supposed success, as a country, we have a long way to go. There are inherent contradictions in who we think we are as a nation and who we actually are, and these contradictions need to be vocalized and discussed.

Referenced web sites: Global Working Families, Take Back Your Time

12PM Saturday: Climate Change as a Moral Issue (LeeAnne Beres)
This session was one I just walked into without really knowing what to expect. I hadn’t done any research on the speakers beforehand, so I really wasn’t sure who was speaking. As it turns out, LeeAnne Beres is executive director of Earth Ministry, a program trying to bring sustainability and religion together.This was unexpected, but an interesting talk nonetheless, despite my lack of a religious background (some of the Biblical references escaped me).

• Imagine: a religions conference in Japan in 1997 brings together religious leaders from several different religions and draws attention to climate change
• Belief drives action!
• Climate change needs to be framed as a moral/social justice issue, not just an environmental issue.
• Why argue about the origin of the species and not pay any attention to the extinction of the species?
• The Vatican was the first carbon neutral state in the world.
• Working for justice means sharing knowledge and imagination for good.
• Focus on values and why things happen.

Beres also plugged an upcoming exhibit at the Burke Museum in July: The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World, featuring photography by Steven Kazlowski.

1PM Saturday: The Living Building: Integrating Technology with Nature (Jason McLennan)
Jason McLennan is one of the nationally recognized leaders of the green building revolution and is part of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. If nothing else, he may have convinced me that I need to pester my parents about their upcoming remodel and potentially making it greener (something I’ve held off on thus far).

• The GBC provides leadership at all levels of the building industry: want to buy a chair? Go to them. Want architectural plans? Go to them. Want to build something? Well… go to them!
• The average house is twice as efficient as in the 1960s, but these houses have also doubled in size. In addition, the average family size per household has declined.
• If we don’t make the leap towards green buildings (and sustainability in general), what kind of a leap do we force on the next generation?
• The active metaphor in this presentation: the flower as a building of the future
• The goal of the building should be positive net impact
• The Cascadia GBC has set forth a Living Building Challenge, in which they want buildings to meet requirements defined by six core “petals” (going again with the flower metaphor).
• The first petal: site. Create compact, connected communities without using new site locations (we MUST reuse land that we’ve already claimed rather than simply claiming more land). In addition, we must set aside an amount of land for preservation equal to the amount of land developed in the project.
• The second petal: energy. The goal should be net zero energy impact; all energy should be provided for on site.
• The third petal: materials. Use reusable materials that are safe for human consumption and interaction.
• The fourth petal: water. Harvest enough water for the needs of the building.
• The fifth petal: indoor environmental quality.
• The sixth petal: beauty and inspiration.
• Buildings that quality for the Living Building Challenge must have already been built and have stood for a year before applying for the program. The program assesses based on real rather than theoretical numbers and estimates of use.
• This is not an architectural style, it’s a building philosophy!
• It took 30 years for drastic community change with the introduction of the interstate system between the 1960s and the 1980s. Fast change in our communities is possible, it merely has to be done.

12PM Sunday: The Great Turning (David Korten)
David Korten is the Founder and President of the People-Centered Development Forum.

• The big picture of the world as we know it today: a confrontation with Earth’s elements
• First element of the big picture: environmental collapse
• In 1970, our rate of consumption of materials and as a lifestyle became unsustainable
• Korten draws some inspiration from the original Star Trek, wherein Kirk would often call for Scotty to divert all power to life support (this routinely happened about once an episode, it seems): this is the message we should be heeding today - divert all power to life support!
• Second element: poverty/inequality
• We have to redistribute riches from the rich to the poor and convert nonessential uses of things to essential uses
• Equity of resources can be defended as a property right
• The world is ruled by financial institutions whose role is to increase the inequality worldwide
• “Tinkering in the margins” is not enough for sustainability
• The idea that it is an unbearable hardship to change our way of life to support the planet is a myth
• Our problem is really a bad story! The story we grew up with was to control and to subjugate things to human control because we are superior. We organize ourselves into what Korten calls “hierarchies of domination and abuse”. We have to change the story so that we care about one another and the earth, breaking the cycle of domination.
• The Internet provides the means to change the story.
• Korten notes that stories have changed already: the establishment of democracy changed the story of how nations can be run, women’s rights and the civil rights movement changed the story of equality
• For the environment, we must change the story from domination to symbiosis. This transition is in progress.
• The stories we tell are forms of power - in fact, they’re foundations for power.
• Korten quotes Hartmann, who describes this as “walking away from the king” (I’m not clear on which Hartmann he refers to, however).

The thing I noticed in this presentation is that while Korten calls the Internet the medium for changing the story, he completely ignored the idea that the technology itself runs counter to the ideas of sustainability. I noticed this to a certain extent in John de Graaf’s presentation as well, but not nearly as much, since he made no explicit reference to the Internet other than the web sites he referred people to.

1PM Sunday: Building the Green Economy (Shannon Biggs, Kevin Danaher, Jason Mark)
These are all co-writers of a book by the same name.

• The presentation opened with an exercise which I thought was brilliant: the presenter asked the audience to identify three different types of plants, then three different industrial logos. Almost nobody in the audience identified the plants, while everyone identified the logos.
• Martin Luther King’s speech was not titled “I Have a Nightmare” - he called it “I Have A Dream” for good reason, and this is the message we need to send.
• The current economy is something like the Titanic, band playing and all.
• Start from where we are with change!

Web sites mentioned: Global Citizen Center

Exhibition Hall
There was a wide variety of exhibitions, including Third Place Books, Bainbridge Graduate Institute (also a sponsor of the event), the Presidio School of Management, ChicoBag, Annie’s, and Batdorf and Bronson (heck, one of the companies I did a project with in my undergraduate work in Olympia, Fish Tale Ales, was even there). This was an interesting chance to walk around and see what kind of things are already being done sustainably. There was a children’s card game that I didn’t learn much about that was tied into the topic, people pedaling furiously on bikes to power one booth, and a whole slew of people wandering around at any given time. Alas, I had to feed the bookworm part of me and buy more books to toss onto the rather long list of books that I want to read someday.

General Festival Comments
Throughout this entire event, I couldn’t help but notice two things:

1. Preaching to the choir. It seemed like the people who attended were those who already spoke the talk and walked the walk, to a certain extent. There were a lot of times, particularly in the Korten presentation, where I got the strong sense of a minister preaching to the choir (and Korten, by the way, really embodied this, and got a standing ovation at the end). This is fine, but the problem is that we need to reach out to people who aren’t in the choir, and in some ways, it seems like we might have missed the mark.
2. It’s not deep enough. Both Amanda and I found ourselves saying “yes, yes, we know this already, we want more.” I didn’t feel that way quite so much in some of the presentations, since they all had good ideas (LeeAnne Beres’ presentation in particular was an eye opener, since I hadn’t thought about Biblical support for the sustainable cause before). There needs to be support for those who want to dive deeper than the people who are only there to regurgitate the content of their latest book, and I felt like that was lacking strongly.

Videos of all the presentations will supposedly be made available on the Green Festivals web site within a couple weeks. There’s another Seattle Green Festival planned for the last weekend of March 2009.

No Impact Man posts about an alternative American dream, quoting a passage from Segal’s Graceful Simplicity and asking what would happen if the passage turned into reality:

“The point of an economy, even a dynamic economy, is not to have more and more; it is to liberate us from the economic–to provide a material platform from which we may go on to build the good life. That’s the alternative American dream.”

Great, except that Segal’s absolutely wrong.  The point of an economy, especially a capitalist economy, is to promote the transfer of goods.  Yes, even a dynamic economy.  The economy is not the problem.  It’s not even close.

Why is the economy not the problem?  Because, as much as people badmouth it, they overlook something crucial: culture plays as much, if not far more of a role in determining how a society behaves.  We have a materialist culture, not a materialist economy, that promotes the constant accumulation of goods and services.  Even those like No Impact Man fall victim to this culture to a certain extent, and to a certain extent, I would argue this cannot be negated.  The exchange of basic goods - food, water, shelter - is materialistic and highly tied to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  You cannot change economic reality - that’s been around for far too long, and the culture far longer.

But it’s the culture we grow tired of.  It’s the culture that No Impact Man rallies against when he decides to minimalize his impact, not our economy.  Change the culture.

I’ve been thinking I needed printer ink for the last several weeks, since my printer is reporting that several of the cartridges are getting quite low. I had intended to order some tonight, and nearly did until I opened my filing cabinet and found refills for every single ink cartridge I have.

Well, at least I found the cartridges before I ordered new ones…

Note - I use a business-level printer that does duplexing and provides an insane amount of paper storage capacity (and it’s got a wireless connection built in to boot) - why do I use something with that much power? Home-use printers seem to fall a bit short in the areas of networking and duplexing, thus I went to business models. This is an HP OfficeJet Pro K550dwtn (actually, it’s a K550dtwn), and thus far has served me quite well. It helps that I keep my need for ink down by forcing all printouts to only use black ink and to use the “Fast/Economical Printing” setting (which is essentially draft printing). There is no visually appreciable difference between draft printing and normal printing speeds, except that draft printing uses a lot less ink.

Hmmm.  Excerpts:

On April 10th, 2008, a small group of the country’s top young progressives and post-environmental thinkers and activists will come together in Washington, DC to outline a vision and a strategy for a new progressive movement, one that leaves behind the old generation’s narrow and complaint-based politics.

[ . . . ]

The Breakthrough Generation 2008 Conference seeks highly motivated and talented young individuals who are willing to challenge accepted social and political norms and possess an ability to think and work in new ways.

Ann Thorpe, author of The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability, gave a talk entitled “Central Debates of Sustainable Design” as part of the UW’s Luce lecture series. My notes from this are below.

• Wanted to cover in the book where people come from when approaching sustainability and how to “do” sustainability
• Book systematically and visually presents the concept
  • “The making of” - the book started in 2001
  • Based on the principle of “If worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” - had to start somewhere for the idea
• Central debates: responsibility, pace (of adoption), scale, operation, and appearance. The talk focused on the first three central debates.
• Designers rarely have time to get up to speed if they don’t know about sustainability
• The market is not the same as the overall economy
• Natural resources have different prices
• “Let the market decide”
• The operational spheres of nonprofits, private, and public organizations all overlap with the economy
• It appears cheaper to destroy natural or societal resources than it is to preserve them according to the market
• What responsibilities do designers take across a market economy?
• Nonprofits will be seen as having a potential for a proactive stance in promoting issues
• Part of the problem is how we take things from the ecosystem and then redistribute it
• We don’t see the costs for the global distribution of produced materials
• Different things work at a different pace - art/fashion, communication, infrastructure, culture, nature (this list is actually sorted fastest to slowest in terms of rate of change)
• Commerce is starting to control the pace of change
• Much as we want to push change, we need stability in the (economic) system
• Change takes three forms: physical, economic, and cultural
• Audience question: sustainable costs more - can we make it cost less? Do cases of this happening exist?
• Answer: marketplace tools are a solution here. There are some cases where this has happened.
• Things are cheap in monetary terms that aren’t in sustainable terms - this is a systemic problem
• “Be an active citizen” to make sustainability viable - knowledge is power
• Sustainability is complex and depends on context of values
• How might open source play into sustainable design?
• Audience: We do sustainable buildings, but it “doesn’t look good”

The Seattle Times reports that a number of states are lining up to sue the federal government in order to get them to stop dragging their feet about federal emissions standards for automobiles. It’s interesting that they have finally realized that turning to legal resources is probably one of the only ways to get the federal government to cooperate; it has seemed blindingly obvious for quite some time that the Bush administration has absolutely no interest in improving fuel economy for the United States automobile fleet. This may seem like an incredibly myopic view of things; however, consider this quote from the article:

But these 16 states, representing about half of potential car-buyers, want to do better. That’s a lot of market share to entice car manufacturers to improve emissions-limiting technology.

But the Bush administration, which dragged its feet on acknowledging climate change, inexplicably seems intent on doing whatever it can to thwart states’ efforts to take the lead. The EPA was having none of it, rejecting the only waiver among more than 40 applications in 30 years.

It seems interesting that the government is afraid to allow states authority to enforce their own standards; for instance, the state of California, for a long time now, has had some of the strictest standards nationwide.  This is partly because they realize their responsibility, but also partly because the voters in the state actually support the endeavor.  It is no coincidence that many other states tend to adopt California’s standards after they are made; it is primarily because those states recognize the wisdom of these standards.  Let us hope that the federal government can do the same.

Someone once told me — perhaps in a far more eloquent way — that we should pursue that which makes us happy; that if something fails to make us happy, and should be abandoned.  As I think about this statement, I wonder whether or not this idea is directly applicable to the idea of sustainability.  For instance, we have people who greatly enjoy buying vehicles such as the Hummer, which is one of the lowest rated vehicles for fuel economy on the market — in fact, it is exempt from the EPA fuel economy scale due to its weight.  If sustainability does not make us happy — indeed, if its exact opposite makes us happy — should we pursue sustainability?

The problem is, sustainability is really something focused towards the greater good.  While some people are certainly happy implementing sustainable ideals, this is not globally true.  Nor is it really our responsibility to make it so, since we value the idea of personal freedom.  So what happens when the necessity of preserving a way of life overrides our need for individual freedoms?  We can certainly promote sustainability as a cultural movement, which is entirely appropriate, since there are a large number of people who believe in it.  But to force sustainability upon people who don’t want it is to alienate them from the idea.  This would almost suggest that we should focus on the young, that we have to focus our efforts on people who are growing up around the idea of sustainability, encouraging them to make sustainable decisions.  But then we have the same problem that we had before — we are forcing sustainability on a population that has no choice in the matter.  Yes, we can educate the young to make sustainable decisions, but is that really allowing them their own freedom?

One of the ideas that we must struggle with, then, is that sustainability, while necessary, cannot simply be foisted upon others.  Much the same thing can be said about our energy independence, where alternative energy supporters practically presume that everybody else is wrong and we are right — that we must force upon people the ideas of solar power, wind power, and other alternative energy sources.  While many people are certainly receptive to this idea, one could argue it is a violation of freedom.  So where do we start?  How do we make this an effort that makes everybody happy?  Is this even possible?  Sustainability is yet another field where we deal with this contradiction.  The answer to all of these questions is both yes and no — it simply depends on our approach.

The New York Times wrote recently on conflict between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minerals Management Service.  In brief, these two agencies plan to implement two different policies that will impact the polar bear population.  The Fish and Wildlife service intends to list the polar bear population as endangered, while the Minerals Management Service intends to open up potentially vital habitat for the polar bear to oil companies.  The energy problems surrounding this notwithstanding, this is a beautiful example of how two kinds of sustainability come into direct conflict with one another.  Which is more important - energy or saving world species?

This is where value judgements enter quite strongly into play, and, much as we might like to ignore the fact, sustainability is in fact a value - more specifically, it’s a personal value rather than a cultural value, since the culture of the United States as a whole has yet to embrace the idea.  Economists would say that sustainability is also a part of a person’s utility, since doing things to assure sustainability increases a person’s well-being.  When that’s the case and sustainability is not prevalent enough on a cultural level, which way do you swing the pendulum?  Do you declare the species endangered to protect their habitat, or do you attempt to increase our energy independence by allowing drilling operations?  Doing both is certainly entirely possible, but one act makes the other inherently more complicated.

I’m not sure there is a right answer here, but there is certainly a more correct answer given the direction of the economy and the overall political environment: declare polar bears endangered and protect their habitat, but allow for drilling elsewhere if it is feasible and can be done in a reasonably low-impact manner.  I acknowledge the relative absurdity of the previous statement, since by definition, no drilling is low-impact, ever, and the likelihood of such drilling occurring anywhere within the lower 48 states is likely to be met with extreme resistance by concerned citizens.  The debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and drilling rights there notwithstanding, Alaska is, plain and simple, an easier state to drill in, since much of its population is concentrated.

One hopes that we can arrive at a sustainable solution for both the problem of habitat and energy independence; indeed, it’s the only thing we can reasonably attempt as a nation.

As of late, I’ve had a job search agent working for me on careerbuilder.com, sending me all jobs that match the phrase "sustainability".  I originally intended it to try to isolate jobs that involve environmentally sustainable planning, advocacy, management, and thinking, but that’s not quite what’s turned up.  Here’s a sample of job titles from the most recent alert on January 2nd:

• Geologist
• Civil and Structural CAD Technicians
• Civil Engineers
• Architects/Architectural Designer
• Electrical Engineer
• Mechanical Engineer
• Regional Sales Manager - Retail

It’s fairly clear that at least some of these have some sort of ties to the environment - architecture and geology have clear ties (and to a lesser extent, so do the engineers).  But why the regional sales management position?

Keep in mind: this is a keyword search.  Thus, it simply matches the word "sustainability" in anything, and will match:

Supports marketing initiatives and ensures successful implementation and sustainability within the Region.

This is an indicator of two things, at least from my perspective as both an information management graduate student and as someone highly interested in sustainability:

1. It’s all about context. "Well, duh," I can hear you say, but it’s amazing how many people forget this.  Search engines are only as good as the amount of context it has about what you’re searching for.  What does this have to do with environmental sustainability?  Pretty much nothing, until you consider:
2. While "sustainability" may be synonymous with "environmental sustainability", the reality of the job market would seem to dictate otherwise.  Tying back to my previous post, this synonymy is not universal, though it would seem to be by glancing at the political atmosphere of  a good chunk of first world countries.  My job search might pull up a job that directly has to do with sustainability - my alma mater, The Evergreen State College, recently posted a job ad for a Director of Sustainability, for instance.  But it’s equally as likely to suggest regional sales positions precisely because the meaning of "sustainability" depends upon its context!