What is sustainability, anyway?

Abstract

We know that a sustainable global human society is imperative and what must be done to move toward it. In this context what usually comes to mind are familiar solutions such as solar, wind, and hydrogen energy technologies; habitat and species protection; control of our own consumption and population-all of which environmentalists have been urging for years. These share a deference to the cyclical character of the Earth's systems and the need to harmonize the human economy with them. Since the industrial revolution, we have increasingly ignored or altered the natural cycles-carbon, nitrogen, hydrological-that replenish these systems. The resulting explosion in economic output has come at the cost of the long-term and dangerous depletion of natural capital. The costs by now are as familiar as the solutions: by relying heavily on nitrogen fertilizer instead of organic farm waste, for instance, we have reduced the fertility of agricultural lands and created enormous dead zones in our oceans and rivers. Our vast and accelerating logging operations and ubiquitous dependence on fossil fuels have increased atmospheric carbon concentrations to levels never seen before. By diverting or damming rivers, we've dried out seas (or created new ones), changed local weather patterns, and disrupted entire ecosystems. We know this cannot go on. Returning to a cyclical system-harvesting renewable resources sustainably, reusing and recycling materials in preference to mining virgin ones, rebuilding and nurturing agricultural soils, weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, and so on-along with respectful husbanding of biodiversity, will start us down the path of material sustainability. Giving due and purposeful attention to the inequities that lock billions into wretched poverty and undermine the security of all will start us toward social sustainability.