Sustainability is about the human numbers and way of living in our ecological niche, which happens to be nearly the entire Earth. Our niche is supported by a complex interplay of other organisms and natural systems. Humans are directly and indirectly causing what is known as the 6th Great Extinction. Human overpopulation is causing depletions and pollution that kill off many other species. Some estimate that at the time of the human population crash, which is mathematically inevitable near 2050, we will take well over half the species with us. The global warming scenario, as it is now, with runaway methane release, leads to not only human extinction around 2100 (no recovery after the crash), but an extimated extinction of 89% of all species that were present at the beginning of this interglacial epoch.
As far as the Earth is concerned, and life itself, human effects will be gone in several million years. New species will be here, along with some that have been here many millions of years. The cycles of less and more life dependent on other natural forces, will continue until Earth is incinerated in the outer reaches of the red giant phase of our sun in 4.5 or more billion years. Some of the Earth's organic material may have been blasted out into space to eventually help seed another forming planet, like ours was.
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