Monday, January 21, 2008
What is Environmental Sustainability?
This weeks' discussion is focused on asking the question: What is environmental sustainability? Answer this question based on the readings. Please include your gut feelings about the subject. If I see the discussion going flat I may ask more questions, so to avoid that make your discussion lively!
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16 comments:
Environmental sustainability is the potential longevity of necessary human ecological support systems, such as climate, agriculture, forests, and oceans.
To an extent "Environmental Sustainability" is a misnomer as "environments" per se, are always sustainable even when they are changing or have changed in form. In other words, life goes on even if we aren't around to see it.
I mean, ultimately, all life is sustainable... When a tree sheds its leaves, we continue to call it a tree. And even if that tree dies, its molecules remain.
What we mean by Environmental Sustainability is really those practices upon the earth which keep things status quo for the benefit of human-kind's sustainability.
All organic systems are fragile and and constantly changing. Environmental Sustainability is our attempt to keep naturally evolving and changing earth systems from doing so, so WE can continue to stay as we are.
The idea of Environmental Sustainability is a way for man to feel in control, as if we can exist without playing part in the natural degradation which takes place when one thing utilizes another for its existence.
To me, humans are like pepper on a potatoe. One day that great big hungry Diner-In-The-Sky is gonna swoop down and gobble us all up.
That's my spin on it, anyway.
Our textbook gives rather dry and technical descriptions of what environmental sustainability is, and leaves the student to mostly make their own determination as to what it succinctly means. They dance around the economic picture and market trends and such. The classic definition I've often heard in environmental sciences classes is that it means: "Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."
Personally, I like what Native Americans such as Vine Deloria, Chief Red Cloud and Chief Oren Lyons say about providing for the seventh generation to come:
"When we were given these instructions, among many of them, one was that when you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you counsel for the welfare of that seventh generation to come. They should be foremost in your mind--not even your generation, not even yourself, but those that are unborn so that when their time comes here, they may enjoy the same thing that you are enjoying now." -Chief Oren Lyons of the Onandaga Nation
If we could do that, think that far ahead instead of so short-sightedly, we might achieve something akin to sustainability.
I probably do not agree with Christine that "life goes on even if we aren't around to see it." For billions of years on this planet, there was no life at all. This planet may return to that state eventually. What I think she was driving at is that, on an atomic level, matter is not created and matter is not destroyed. That is certainly true. Whether or not that matter can contain life forever, is a contention that I question.
Thanks June...
I think you really did get what I was driving at...
Only one thing.
I wasn't driving... I was walking (:
But as you know, I tend to have this "spiritual" bent... My definition of "life" might be different from others'.
In my mind, once the potatoe gets eaten, the eater is sustained (even if that eater can't be defined in human terms.)
Sending a great big pink bubble of love out there to ya.
Christine
Thanks double for the bubble, Christine. What I can't figure out though, is whether or not you are related to Dan Quayle... (I'm really hoping this class allows for some frivolity?)
To me, simply put, environmental sustainability is making sure we are concious of our present day consumption in order to preserve resources for our future. We need to be mindful of how we treat out planet to make certain she will stick around for more years to come.
Christine and June:
Wow! What interesting points you both make!
Christine, I really enjoyed hearing your version of environmental sustainability. I have never really looked at it as you do.
June, I always enjoy hearing your opinions. I agree with your definition of environmental sustainability and REALLY liked the quote you inserted from Chief Oren Lyons of the Onandaga Nation. I, too, agree with that idea.
Thanks to both of you for contributing such great thoughts and ideas! I promise I will provide better blogs in the future. :)
I sometimes wonder whether "sustainable" is attainable when I read passages like the following from our reading assignment:
"It seems as if technical progress becomes autonomous and hence is self-determinative (like nature) and independent of human intervention; there is a primacy of means over ends and it is all so complex that it becomes impossible to have the good without the bad. Hence the favourable effects are inseparable from, and always accompanied by, pernicious outcomes and in the end technology is said to create more problems than it solves: 'hydraheaded' is a term often used." (Simmons, 42)
As technology seems to be on the rise and not on the decline, the hydraheaded monster will only get larger and more problematic. If that is inevitable, can there even BE environmental sustainability? Is it naive and foolish of us to imagine that we can attain such a goal?
Juney:
I'm NOT related to Dan Quayle, but apparently my spell checker IS. Doh!
As for my view on "Environmental Sustainability" on this planet, I'm all about
eustasy,isostasy, and gravitational equilibrium.
Or as they used to say in my neighborhood, "What goes around comes around."
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Good to see that most everybody's picking up the blogg thing. I like to say that "Environmentalism is a Social Issue". The world and much of the life on it will be here for a long time to come. We are the biggest threat to ourselves. Often times I hear people talk about sustaining this quality of life that we have been enjoying because of cheap fossil fuel energy. The big issue is what will we switch to, solar, hydro, wave energy etc. I think that reaching towards sustainability will take an extreme reality check about who is causing the vast majority of the "damage" through resource consumption and pollution. Those that live with the most will also lose the most when the playing field is evened. out. The global majority who live in poverty may suffer more do to political and infrastructure instability, but it's a larger drop to go from good to bad then from bad to worse. In short while environmental sustainability could be possible. I believe it is impossible for this current standard of living to be maintained. Check out this article:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/75474/
Environmental sustainability is stopping depletion of our natural resources. This includes our forests, water sources and the land we build on. We need to teach people to create a sustainable practice that doesn't pollute, or doesn't use more resources that we can not replenish.
Environmental sustainability to me is an ellusive idea, given my Science background. Science has shown that the Earth and it's atmosphere have constantly changed and evolved since the formation of the planet and the other planets in the solar system. So, for me, it is hard to say what Earth looks like in stasis, much less whether or not humans can ever hope to control it.
For example, at one time it is believed that Planet Earth was wholly engulfed in Water. And geologists have shown that the original land mass seems to have been comprised of one great chunk, which slowly divided over time, to the present land masses we recognize as the map of our Planet.
I think that the commonly accepted definition seems to be: long-term maintenance of ecosystem components for the benefit of future generations.
But I have a LOT of issues with the notion of sustainability, because I believe that a part of sustainability is realizing that the world is ever-changing and in a natural, eternal, evolutionary flux. That fact, combined with the innate self-centeredness of the human race seems to act in direct opposition to the idea of environmental sustainability.
KW
Christine
I like your ideas about Environmental sustainability being a means to keep the status quo to sustain humans.
I think we humans like to assume that we are at the top of the chain and therefore the most worthy to survive, and I am quite unsure that this is true.
K
June
I too share your question about sustainability being attainable - I think this is an excellent observation
KW
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