My Definition of Sustainability

Sustainability: Conducting ourselves in a way that will allow future generations to enjoy a better life than we enjoy.

Explanation: My life right now is pretty good. This morning, natural gas heated my house cozy warm. I turned on the lights so I could see better and checked my emails, glad that I had plenty of electricity to power these devices. I put on a new jacket I had received for Christmas, and went outside and breathed in the clean air. After putting out my garbage cans, I drove my car to the gas station and was happy to see that gas prices had come down again. Driving around, I didn't notice any trash littering the roads and fields. At the supermarket, I bought a variety of meats, vegetables and other tasty food. At home, I used clean water for making dinner and doing the dishes. Except for my mortgage payment, all of these things - natural gas, electricity, water, garbage collection, clothes - consume just a small percentage of my earnings. And the clean air and clean land doesn't seem to cost me anything either.

This is a pretty good life and it is filling my needs. And I don't seem to be doing anything that would prevent future generations from filling their needs, so according to the popular definition of sustainability, my lifestyle must be sustainable, right?

What signs might there be that something I am using or doing is not sustainable?

• Shortage: I can't get Bluefin tuna anymore
• Price: Wild salmon is getting really expensive
• Damage: Everytime I light my barbecue, billows of smoke go up in the air

But more importantly, there might be consequences I can't easily see:

• Future shortage: Oil won't last forever, but I am using it as if it will
• Unassigned costs: I don't pay for any of the health consequences of pollutants my car emits
• Long term damage: Cotton production degrades land and water resources, yet most of the clothes I buy are not made from organic cotton

This is the problem I have with the classic definition of sustainability - what we call our "needs" in this society is really our extravagantly comfortable lifestyle and living this way won't allow future generations to live the same way. So we should look very carefully at the impact of our lifestyles, and be willing to conduct them in a way that ensures that future generations will have lifestyles at least as good as ours, even if it means that we have to make sacrifices now.

Edit Page Add Page