Where do you see Sustainability as a concept in 10 years?

[Johnny Electriglide]

I noticed the business "sustainability" reports that fly in the face of real sustainability. The businesses need continued population growth, or to cause it, to be "sustainable".
Their thinking is all short term, and does not take into account the other effects of more and more people, or an increasing general standard of living(faster depletion and pollution), on the biosphere. They don't seem to realize that the long term effects of harming the biosphere is mass death and no business.
For businesses to be truly sustainable, they must think of very long term, and of a static economy and population at a sustainable long term level.

[matthewtrigg]

True, but they are working in a society that itself still perceives continual growth as a certainty.

Those that do practice sustainability reporting are in a much better position to perceive a shift away from this compared to those who are still failing to see past next month's share price.

[daybrown]

There are a lotta good threads that could be followed up here. But the future depends on the success or failure of innovation. I read of a new solar panel process that would reduce the cost by 90%. I bought my first solar panel 25 years ago, and have seen several 'innovations' since then announced promising to reduce the cost. Vaporware. So, I dunno.

More certain, lacking a breakthru, is that while the rise to Hubbard's peak followed a smooth bell curve, the decline will be precipitious, and the crash at the bottom would make the 1929 Wall Street debacle look like a fender bender.

As the price of oil rises, greed will motivate more violent attempts to control it. Which will damage the infrastructure, reduce supply further, and drive the price higher faster, which will increase the greed... and entirely tank the global economy.

We already see comparisons with the fall of Rome. But Rome wasnt built in a day, and didnt fall in one. Long before that, unprofitable provinces were abandoned by the legions, and like failed states now, fell into anarchy and barbarism. Part of the reason that oil production has peaked is the violence already going on to control it.

The collapse of Afican economies has cut their consumption of oil, making more available to the developed nations. When you look at the collapse of Chinese dynasties, the Greenland Norse, the Maya, Chaco canyon, etc, what you see is that as resources get tight, rather than cutting back on consumption, the power elites acrually *INCREASE* their exploitation to convince themselves that everything is still OK. The mandarins never know there's a problem til the bricks in the palace wall start flying over it.

So- unless this energy consumption issue is dealt with effectively, we will see global economic collapse, revolution, anarchy, and famine. Which will solve the population problem.

The effect will vary dramatically depending on where you are. Long before the fall of Rome, the smart money got out and moved to Constantinople. Before the fall of Constantinople, it moved to Vienna. Before the fall of Vienna to Napoleaon, it moved to the USA, and its still here.

More or less. All over my neck of Ozark woods, in the past few years, I've seen rich bastards moving in and building McMansions and starter castles. There is enough stone in the stoneyards along US 65 running north from Conway to actually build a full scale medieval castle. I dunno where its all going, but I note the finely crushed & washed pea gravel drives that lead away into the woods from time to time.

Sustainability in 10 years depends on where you are. Densely populated regions, without an energy breakthru soon, will have only a few survivors fighting over rat roast. Jared Diamond, in his latest "Collapse" outlines the criteria for rapid adaptation to the fall of empire:
1- low population density. Like in Alaska, the Rockies, or the Ozarks.
2- homogeneous population. If there are minorities, demagogues will arise to scapegoat, but if not, then people seek to find solutions.
3- plenty of timber. firewood and building materials that can be dealt with without high tech equipment and support.
Diamond warns against mining areas which polluted the ground water so that you cant even irrigate with it. The good news is that all mining transnationals will no longer be functional. The bad news is that whatever supply you have will be limited to what is local.

Pick the right area, and there will be enough hydro, wind, and draft animal power to grow all the food people need, with life being peaceful, clean, and long. In the wrong place it will be dirty, short, and violent.

[isenhand]

Well, if we do end up in a TEC (Total Economic Collapse) then at least we would have found a sustainable society! If we wipe out a few Gppl and end up in the Stone Age we can sustain that.
I find it interesting that the more we try to maintain our current socioeconomic system the more likely we will fall back to a more primitive way of life. However, if we were to start to realise that our current system has a fundamental unattainable nature to it then we can start to think about what kind of socioeconomic system we could have and how such a system would have a sustainable nature. In some ways, people have been making moves towards such a society.

[Johnny Electriglide]

There is a book written on the reverse of technology back to a stone age existence. Earthship villages in the right locations could be high tech and have year around growing ability. This stuff was around 5 years ago, using the median line of climate change. Now, it has been shown to be going at an accelerated rate 19% over the worst case scenario toward a world 9*C warmer before 2100 with wild card methane release totally beyond control, and a self sustaining process or feedback loop. That amount of climate change in that short a time is not adaptable by 89% of species (estimated). Species humans depend on, gone. We can talk about un-affordable, impossibly quick solutions, but they are fantasies. The most widely available food by 2050 will be human flesh, with polluted water to wash it down.

[isenhand]

Well, I think that that certainly represents one possible alternative, but then another book written presents another alternative. One where we could move over to a sustainable society that actually aims to balance our needs with those of nature through forming networks of communities that themselves have a certain degree of self-sufficiency and contributing to sustainability.

[Bowman]

It seems rather perverse that the issue of sustainabilty should ever arise because it defies all logic, common sense, and instinct that unsustainability should be in any way acceptable.

I'm starting to think that isolating some of the problems we face as a global civilization is misleading and actually unhelpful, issues such as global warming, peak oil, destruction of the rain forests, HIV/aids, the war on terror, globalization, etc. While each should have a place in our every day consciousness, sustainability needs to be as instinctive as breathing and needs to be the single most important consideration in everything we do, as individuals, as families, as local communities, at regional, national, and continental, and global level.

There is much more talk of sustainability in the press, especially over the last year, yet the word is always linked to some other issue be it environmental, business, energy etc. I don't recall an article or analysis in the press or media, much less from any politician that addresses sustainability as a value that should be central to every aspect of human activity.

Sustainability needs to be promoted from an epithet to a centralised standard against which everything is judged. So that, I guess, is the challenge and I do believe it will in some quarters at least be met within the next ten years.

[Johnny Electriglide]

Originally Posted by isenhand

Well, I think that that certainly represents one possible alternative, but then another book written presents another alternative. One where we could move over to a sustainable society that actually aims to balance our needs with those of nature through forming networks of communities that themselves have a certain degree of self-sufficiency and contributing to sustainability.

Remember what I wrote years ago about the Earthship Villages, high tech with small manufacturing ability. Biofuel and electric vehicles, and possible radio/satellite/physical contact with other similar villages. That was all from the median data, and the mathematical certainty of population crash and oil depletion.
Everything has changed since the firm data on methane release came from the Russians not long ago. Remember, their first data was off by 800% low!!! So now, with the actual case being 19% over the worst case scenario line of several years ago (modified from the early 90s), we are really looking at extreme species loss and a surface that is uninhabitable even for these villages. Totally underground massive fortresses with nuclear reactors, good water and treatment facilities, hundreds of years supply of food, and grow light capacity with generational population staticism, would still have difficulty making it for the many many thousands of years it will take the biosphere to return to close to what it was. If these "molemen" could last, what would they be like in 200k years? No eyes? Inability to handle solar radiation? Still have an inate inability to understand and live sustainably on the surface?
I agree with Bowman that, like with my first post, everyone should be thinking about sustainability as an ecological definition, not business, or the oxymoron sustainable development. The old Ute Indian Rule of Life, to think 7 generations ahead of the consequences of our actions and decisions, should have been adopted throughout humanity, as common sense and a religious principal.

[daybrown]

There's history, and then there's prehistory. The former shows us that as a critical resource gets tite, the power elite, rather than cutting back on consumption to buy time to look for a solution, actually *increase* their exploitation of the lower classes. This stifles innovation, things get worse, and as Diamond says in his book by that name, the whole system goes into "Collapse".

It's a natural result of the group think the elite uses to convince themselves that they deserve support. But in the pre-history outlined by Gimbutas in "The Language of the Goddess" on the chalcolithic cultures of SE Europe... well look at what Joseph Campbell closes his forward to that work with:

"The message here is of an actual age of peace and harmony with the creative forces of nature, which for a spell of some 4000 prehistoric years, anteceded the 5000 of what James Joyce has termed the 'nightmare' (of contending tribal and national interests) from which it is certainly time for this planet to wake." [his parens]

He wrote this over 25 years ago, and even with his fame, hasnt awakened any significant numbers. If people want peace and sustainability, you'd think they'd go there and look at the ancients who been there and done that. Bear with me while I try to recall an outline....

From 8000 to 4000 BCE, dozens of trading towns, hundreds of villages, no signs of warfare. [that's a period]. Goodison & Morris, refer to this on the flyleaf of "Ancient Goddesses" where they set out to dig into a virgin tel to look for signs of warfare. Down 4000 years of occupation layers, just one house fire; no general layers of burnt rubble such as is always left after a place has been sacked.

And as noted in this thread, these agrarian villages were evenly distributed on the floodplains of the rivers that empty into the West end of the Black sea. Every 3km. Each village had about 8 sq miles of land that they farmed for 4000 years without destroying the fertility of the land. The soil cores show they used crop rotation, and the tree pollen shows they never clearcut the forests. The bone middens show the diversity of wild life that was there when they got started 10,000 years ago, and it was *ALL STILL THERE* 4000 years later. The didnt drive a single species to extinction.

And yet, all these people today, concerned about the environment and sustainability, dont know anything about it. Partly, this is due to group think. The Christians, Moslems, and Jews today would rather preach about peace than actually have to live that way. Its a whole different psychology when you replace their tyrannic Father God figure with the Great Earth Mother as the accepted concept of the divine.

Imagine the problems GW Bush or any other demagogue would have trying to work up a mob or an army by claiming that *he* speaks in *HER* name. So the first clue about sustainability is a religious reformation.

[Bowman]

Johnny,

I don't see sustainability as simply an ecological issue, and quite the opposite believe that while it remains viewed and portrayed as such it will never be taken seriously by the vast majority of people. For too long eco/environmental issues have been tainted with a whiff of pachouli and alternative lifestyles. Sustainability needs to be a fundamental requirement to every aspect of mainstream thinking, the very last thing it needs to be is some kind of alternative religion. Sustainability needs to the next equal opportunities.