_{back sustainability page list} Sustainability _{definitions and quotes}

Sustainability... The balances are maintained if a resource is not consumed at a higher rate than needed for regeneration. your contribution

Sustainability quotes: There's also the basic emptiness of the "generations to come" assertion. When we built our world in a fashion that can't survive as we built it, every choice got integrated with every other. Now in the time frame needed to substantially redesign it "generations to come" is sort of like "next Tuesday". Whole environmental systems are not easy plug-in devices for which our ways of thinking, types of habitat, energy sources, etc. can just be swapped like characters in a story. As our whole habitation of the earth was built it's parts became built into each other. It's closer to "unplug and start over with the connections" than "plug and play". Nature has no universal "bus". We have considerably less than zero time for rebuilding civilization in ways that are not likely to last. This is a key problem. Nearly all the "mid-course corrections" for capitalism's [and communism's] collision with its natural limits are not durable solutions. They're relatively short term fixes, especially considering the vast effort they'll require. After some uncertain "wedge" they run out and "leave it to the future" as to what to do next. I think nearly all the 'hopeful schemes' leave "generations to come" with much worse crises when the short term fixes run out. They are generally designed with the wrong purpose, adding new resources to the mix rather than fixing the problem that economies demand ever increasing resources. All the ones funded for research I know of are for perpetual growth. It's a cognitive error, central to how we got into this trouble in the first place. - Phil Henshaw 25 August 2008 - Mail:   i d   a t   s y n a p s e 9   d o t   c o m under development > click to empower

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