What's the Value of "Sustainability"?
The earth's natural systems work quietly and efficiently to maintain the most complex systems we can imaging. No human system is as complex, as self-healing and replenishing, or as life supporting.
Sustainability is a way of thinking about our work, our homes, our communities. It's about self-restoring systems. Systems are like colonies -- they thrive on diversity and are regenerative. One member helps a neighbor. That neighbor helps another...and the circle continues in a complex web of life. For example, native plants live and thrive in colonies. You just don't see mono-culture in nature.
Trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, mosses, annual wildflowers, perennials, wetland and bog plants, rock lichens, tree lichens all thrive in a single ecosystem. What a model for sustainability!
Each member of the society specializes in using and providing something of value for and by a neighbor. If we model our cities this way -- we each help one another to thrive. It's not a matter of altruism -- it's a matter of practical thriving. It's not even about survival, really. It's about thriving with splendor and beauty and resiliency to meet the changing conditions of our fluid planet.
Sustainability on earth is about surviving on a very thin skin of a highly volatile planet. Change is essential and that's why sustainability is such a shifting, morphing concept. What's sustainable on a moutaintop isn't sustainable in the desert or even the mountain's foothills.
Sustaining life and the earth is in our own best interest. The natural services provided by the diverse systems of earth are just not affordable when usurped by modern commerce. We can't afford to filter polluted air across an entire city or region. We can't afford to turn salt water into fresh water. We can't afford to create new creatures that will provide us with food. We can't even farm land without depleting it of nutrients!
Hubris is the antithesis of sustainability. And hubris is an ancient word that has gotten us into trouble civilization after civilization. It's time we replace that attitude of pride and greed with one of living in harmony with our neighbors of all varieties. The earth is speaking -- are we listening to the values being explained to us through the voices of the air, the waters and the land?
Sustainability is a way of thinking about our work, our homes, our communities. It's about self-restoring systems. Systems are like colonies -- they thrive on diversity and are regenerative. One member helps a neighbor. That neighbor helps another...and the circle continues in a complex web of life. For example, native plants live and thrive in colonies. You just don't see mono-culture in nature.
Trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, mosses, annual wildflowers, perennials, wetland and bog plants, rock lichens, tree lichens all thrive in a single ecosystem. What a model for sustainability!
Each member of the society specializes in using and providing something of value for and by a neighbor. If we model our cities this way -- we each help one another to thrive. It's not a matter of altruism -- it's a matter of practical thriving. It's not even about survival, really. It's about thriving with splendor and beauty and resiliency to meet the changing conditions of our fluid planet.
Sustainability on earth is about surviving on a very thin skin of a highly volatile planet. Change is essential and that's why sustainability is such a shifting, morphing concept. What's sustainable on a moutaintop isn't sustainable in the desert or even the mountain's foothills.
Sustaining life and the earth is in our own best interest. The natural services provided by the diverse systems of earth are just not affordable when usurped by modern commerce. We can't afford to filter polluted air across an entire city or region. We can't afford to turn salt water into fresh water. We can't afford to create new creatures that will provide us with food. We can't even farm land without depleting it of nutrients!
Hubris is the antithesis of sustainability. And hubris is an ancient word that has gotten us into trouble civilization after civilization. It's time we replace that attitude of pride and greed with one of living in harmony with our neighbors of all varieties. The earth is speaking -- are we listening to the values being explained to us through the voices of the air, the waters and the land?
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GREAT ARTICLE! Hopefully we will be able to improve our "listening" skills in time to re-think our production strategies before we do "immeasurable" harm to the one and only planet we call our home.
Lauren, production strategies are a big key to the solution! Greening the supply chain -- all the parts of the final product -- is a great beginning. It's hard to identify those parts and how far they have traveled, but by BUYING LOCAL we make a good start on a more sustainable system.
Sustainability thinking is about a system...of living/working/playing...all connected with survival.