bragi

You need to work on your reading comprehension yourself. And your vocabulary. And your maturity. In fact, many, many people have read your posts, clearly understood them, and have said, in effect, a stone-age lifestyle is not the only way of life that is sustainable. Your response has been to repeatedly imply that everyone who doesn't agree with you is an idiot. Do you know what "sustainable" means? "Sustainable" , in this context, is defined by Webster as "able to be prolonged or continued." It does not mean, "having zero effect on the environment." When most reasonable people imagine a sustainable culture, they're talking about a system that, while it does impact the environment, doesn't affect the environment to such a degree that it collapses and we all starve; that is, until it is no longer able to sustain us. Buy a @$#$% dictionary and look words up before you start blindly flinging them around like one of Bush's speechwriters.

Roody

Bush's speechwriter....ouch

cooker

So let me get this clear...you're advocating a non-sustainable lifestyle, while ridiculing anyone who advocate for sustainabilty?

yes

The working definition of "sustainability" in scientific circles is...
"meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
It was defined in this way by a U.N. commision in 1987.

Now, there are several 'sustainability metrics' available to quantify sustainable concepts. Many have three individual metrics: social, economic, and environmental. These are generally thought to be of equal importance.

The title of this thread is: 'none of you are sustainable.' This doesn't make any sense. A person can not be sustainable or unsustainable. We are all mortal after all . A lifestyle or action can be labled in this way. A product or activity can be measured with various versions of environmental or sustainability metrics. However, there are many from which to choose, and any result needs to be interpreted as imperfect and dependent on a large # of assumptions.

Carry on...

KrisPistofferson

Then you obviously don't understand the definition of the term "sustainable," or have some very strange primitivist notions, coming from an admitted car user. Look at it this way, your life is even more hypocritical than ours, in your own view, isn't it time to commit suicide?

Roody

Or at least commit autocide and get rid of his car so he won't be seen as a damn hypocrite.

Thank you. Not a great definition, but a definition. It would be difficult to predict the needs of future generations, and also difficult to balance environmental, economic and social needs, when these often conflict.

krazygluon

Ok...so if I read this right...by saying that subsistence lifestyles and going back to the stoneage are the only truly sustainable things...yet also saying that you don't advocate them means that you feel you have a perfect understanding of sustainability yet you don't believe its worth attempting.

My inner cartoon would like to know where you live so he can drop anvils on you from space...hey if you can be absurd I think we're all allowed a smidge of it in this thread.

I'd like to, at this point suggest that you're being a bit of a troll, not to mention quite a bit of a tool.

And to be honest...I don't like my comfy life, at least not much of it. That's why for the last year or two I've been transitioning to being (as my college buddy tells me) a bike riding vegetarian hippy. I'm still a bike-riding vegetarian hippy with a computer...and when/if whatever revolution comes...the computer will be the thing I get really emotional over losing. (not air conditioning, not cars, not textured soy protein (but if I can figure out how to make the stuff I'll be very happy)

While you're on the subject of not reading velotimbe...you don't seem to be giving feedback on some of the things we've been saying about the possibility of some technology still being sustainable. I just can't see humanity eventually spending the rest of its future with no more electricity. Its an awful big cat to get back into the bag.

I've been wondering just how much of human metalworking processes are sustainable. I know steel/iron blacksmithing nearly deforested europe before they switched to coal, but at the same hand the japanese worked steel for quite a long time. (they just didn't have that many things made from the stuff because bamboo and wood were plentiful and renewable)

Bizurke

I'm not exactly sure why what I said was taken as whining but that was most definitely not the way I was trying to convey it. Sorry if there was some sort of miscommunication.

crtreedude 

I would suggest the starter of this thread take a few years off to mature. When I was young, all was black and white - now I realize that solutions occur because we move CLOSER to the goal - and continue to try to get a bit closer, not drift away.

For example, most of us ride bikes that are not anything like bikes 40 years ago. no one sat down and designed one of the modern bikes of today from nothing - it was built on top of many, many models - use the good, throw away the bad.

This is life - it is called the evolution of ideas. Instead of stating the obvious (we arent there yet) perhaps encouraging the next step would be appropriate.

People trying to move closer is the key - once you get them moving, you can pick up the pace. But, inertia is hard. This group here has already started moving in the right direction - once you start moving, well, you can build up speed.

There is a saying I use often - you can't steer a parked car. But, once your vehicle is moving, steering is possible. If we are moving, that is a good thing - don't discourage it.

I would also say that you really have no reason to think you can come on an open forum like this - and present yourself as a mentor to lead a discussion. I am sure there are people who are part of this list who are doing much more than yourself IN ACTION to be sustainable. Just because you get paid to talk to students about it doesn't make you an authority.

By the way - it would be interesting to know what you PERSONALLY are doing that is significant, besides receiving money to teach. If you would like to compare your life to mine (or many people part of this list) - any time.

Thought I am probably more sustainable than most people, even in this list, I honestly only have good thoughts for people who are trying to use as few resources as they can. Imagine if all of the USA did the same? I suspect that oil might last more than a few more decades.

just my dos colones

LittleBigMan

I haven't lurked here much, but I'm one of those you would call, "car-lite," as opposed to "car-free." I'd say that even with riding my bike to work most of the time, instead of all of the time, the impact of that choice is significant, especially if multiplied by the numbers of people that also choose to do what I do.

Each year in Atlanta, the average car commuter dumps almost 2 tons of pollutants into the air. You might say that's "insignificant" as an Environmental Educator, but I would also remind you that every positive social change started with a few who were willing to believe their actions would have an impact, despite the seemingly overwhelming opposition.

Besides, when you consider my personal environment, i.e., the body I have to live in the rest of my life, cycling to work certainly has an overwhelmingly positive impact. Add to that my personal economic environment, which is impacted by tremendous cash savings of not owning/operating a second automobile.

No, I think as an Environmental Educator you should remember the power and importance of individual choices.

Pampusik

"Mr. Educator" would also do well to look up the words "sustainable" and "sustainable development" before engaging in a faux, quasi-intellectual rant -- perhaps starting with the Agenda 21 documents created by the UN Division for Sustainable Development.

https://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/docume...da21/index.htm

Icycle

It's also worth pointing out that even stone-age technology is no guarantee of sustainability. The natives of Easter Island were a stone-age polynesian society that arrived on their island around 700-800 AD, and reached a peak population of 10,000-15,000 by the 17th century. Through overpopulation, overconsumption, and conspicuous consumption in the form of the famous Easter Island Maoi statues, the islanders completely deforested their island and devastated the local ecosystems, so that by the time of European contact in the 18th century, the population had plummeted to 2000-3000 inhabitants with anthorpological evidence of cannibalism. By the mid-19th century, the population had been further reduced by European disease and slave trade to only 110.

crtreedude 

The Mayan culture pretty much deforested everything down this way about 500 years ago if I recall. This pretty much did them in - the Spainards were just after the fact.

Pampusik

Before the rise of the Mayans, overconsumption is suspected behind the fall of the Teotihuacan as well. It seems that one thing we learn from history is that we rarely learn from history...!

Icycle

For those of you who are interested in sustainable and non-sustainable cultures throughout history, I highly recommend Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. He explains the reasons for collapse of society by examining many historical examples of societal collapse. Not suprisingly, environmental damage due to unsustainable practices like deforestation were major contributing factors to many societal collapses. There are some very interesting chapters where he examines some natural experiments in the islands of the North Atlantic and in Polynesia, where some societies thrived and others collapsed. He also examines the prospects for some modern societies that are approaching their ecological limits, including China and Australia.

slagjumper

This is a problematic definition, but it is a start. For me, the connotations of sustainability are like that failed biosphere project a few years back. That is that there is an essential equilibrium of all economic systems, natural resources, pollution, and population, in the planet so that human life may continue. Change is implied since the Earth is a complex system, with many variables.

By this definition, there are many solutions, but no great solutions. Reducing human population could achieve equilibrium of sorts. We could do it ourselves, or it could be a consequence of life within the system, bird flu, pollutant induced infertility, or war for example.

Change in the system could have unpredictable results. For, example if 100 or 1000 times more people commuted by bike, the price of gas would drop and some of the bike commuters would revert back to driving.

I think that it was unnecessarily argumentative of the OP to posit the conundrum as “your not sustainable”, however it did spark some thought. Perhaps we should all start attending the local “Peak Oil” meetings in our cities. I think that people who make a conscience choice to use less renewable resources are doing more to help the system than harm it.

Unfortunately for capitalism, its very tenants necessitate the increasing or growing of profits in order for that system to work.

Final thought, it seems like many are part of the problem and part of the solution.

carless

+1 Thanks for some thought-provoking ideas, in a succinct digestable form.

Eutychus

Can't we all just get along?
During the massive late-20th-century oil crisis, we were being urged to reduce oil consumption so we wouldn't run out of oil. I got to figuring--let's see: If we have enough oil to last ten years, and we cut consumption by 10%, whoopee! It'll last 11 years. Yaayyy!
Ok, maybe we have enough to last 100 years, and we cut consumption by 20%--wow!--it'll last 120 years. Big deal, people. Guess what. WE'RE GOING TO RUN OUT OF OIL. And wonder of wonders! There are other sources of energy to take its place. Everyone thinks they're too expensive, but they wouldn't be considered so except by comparison to cheap oil. When the oil isn't there, whatever is available will seem to be a bargain. And the oil isn't going to run out all at once. It will be a gradual thing (already is, haven't you noticed?) As it becomes scarcer, its price will increase (Have you noticed?) and other energy sources will be more attractive. The only limited resource we have to worry about is human creativity, and some would argue that it's only limited by the degree of demand for it. So let's demand it, first of all from ourselves.
Can you imagine this big a deal made out of the fact that in 1875 WE WERE ABOUT TO RUN OUT OF WHALE OIL!!!

bmclaughlin807

Isn't this what I said earlier? In fact, I think a couple others have said pretty much the same thing.

The problem is that oil isn't the only limiting factor we have to deal with... there's pollution and just plain old overuse of the land.

Of course, if we convert to 100% renewable power, and eat algae wafers from algae that can be grown in huge vats, rather than plants and animals that have to be grown on farms, yeah, maybe we'll push things off a lot further.

To be honest, nobody knows what the future will bring, but those that predict the end of civilization because we're running out of oil are probably still trying to eat all the rations and everything they stocked away in their bunkers in the 1990's in preparation for the end of the world as we know it on January 1st, 2000. Or, maybe they're not... maybe they're stocking up even more, in preparation for the NEW end of the world. Or is it World War III and the nuclear holocaust that they're preparing for? I loose track of these things so easily.

Wait, wait... is it AIDS that's going to end the world this weekend, or Bird Flu? Or was that SARS?

I agree, peak oil IS real. And yes, it may be here... Obviously there will be changes... whether those changes are going to be easy or hard is anybody's guess at this point.

The world has seen a lot of change, not all of it good. Hopefully this will be one of the better ones.

Denver took a step in the right direction recently, with the approval to build out the light rail system to serve more people and a much larger area. Yeah, it'll be a few years before it happens, but I think Denver will be better for it in the long run.

onelung

When a bunch of neo-hippies get together and start discussing “sustainability” one fact always gets lost in the diatribe – Oil ain’t a fossil fuel.

Oil has been discovered in “basement rock” in Southeast Asia where it could not possibly have come from anywhere but deep within the earth. Research done in Russia in the 1980’s replicated what is most likely the chemical process within the earth that produces oil.

The earth is generating new oil as you read this. The problem is that is it too deep to drill for it economically.

Do some research on the Internet. It’s all there.

Nothing is sustainable. The earth, like those of us who walk around on it, is changing every day.

Cosmoline

Don't believe everything you hear on Art Bell.

marcm

While the abiotic theory of oil origins may be true, it hasn't been proven to be very helpful. In other words, even if oil is being generated from deep within the earth, if we can't get it cheaply enough or it doesn't come to the surface quickly enough, we're still facing "peak oil" with all of its implications. Plus, even if we had a bottomless supply of cheap oil, it's probably still unsustainable in terms of the environmental effects of burning it in large and increasing quantities.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic or defeatist, just explaining the facts as I understand them. If you have a rebuttal to the theory of man-caused global warming, as presented for example in Al Gore's recent film, I'd be interested to read it. (I've read some skeptical viewpoints on global warming, but none yet which address the strongest pieces of evidence displayed in that film.) On top of that, if you find plausible evidence that abiotic oil is (or will be) available cheaply enough and in large enough quantities to prevent the coming oil shortages which "peak oil" predicts, I'd be very interested to see that as well.

Until then, I don't personally mind too much if people call oil a fossil fuel, even if it isn't one (and I haven't been convinced either way). The implications of global warming and peak oil would seem to render that dispute trivial by comparison. So I won't bother asking if you've read (or seen) all (or any) of those Soviet Russian scientific articles which ostensibly vindicate the abiotic theory of oil origins. I haven't either.

Jack Burns

The point about oil is well made. Our entire society is propped up by cheap oil, and that is coming to an end, perhaps within the next 25 years or less. Oil is not "running out" as some have stated, but it's certainly harder to get to and more expensive to deliver as a usable product. In short, it's very close to reaching the point of having what is known as a negative EROEI. (Energy returned on energy invested)

A society propped up by fossil fuels is clearly not-sustainable, so I think the original point of the post was to point out that if we're using fossil fuel based products, we are not living sustainably.

Sustainable means that the society does not consume more natural resources than can be replenished by natural biological and geophysical cycles, and does not produce waste faster than can be dispersed by natural biological and geophysical cycles. The only way to create a sustainable society is to live within these limits.

I haven't been around this forum long enough to comment on the existence of a "caste" system, so I will not. But I do think we're all just trying to do the best we can within the system we find ourselves. Thanks to a compulsory but grossly inadequate educational system, most of us come into adulthood largely ignorant about the relationship of biology, economics, production and consumption. We're sucked into the vortex pretty quickly and either sink or swim. We just try to get a job, have a decent home, reliable transportation, good food and hopefully a little fun and laughter along the way.

A few of us asked a lot of questions along the way and managed to ferret out the information that was bypassed during our high school days. We adjusted and have made an honest effort to live differently. Our values and mores are different from that of the mainstream and thank gawd for that, because there is that other group you have to be mindful of. You know. The gross consumers that take more than their share of resources and are completely apathetic about anyone's needs but their own.

So no, we're not living sustainably. But no worries. Mother nature always bats last, and thanks to Peak Oil, global climate change and shrinking aquifers, us featherless bipeds have some rough days ahead. Bad for us, but good for all the other living things that have suffered because of our gluttony.

bragi

You don't actually believe everything you see on the internet, do you? There are sites that claim that aliens are among us. Some sites claim the Holocaust never really happened. Still others warn us that we'll fall behind everyone else if we don't have our penises enlarged. Most incredibly, there are also sites that tell us that oil is not a fossil fuel. Use some judgement. Do you honestly think that respected oil company geologists and investment bankers are a bunch of morons when they make billion-dollar decisions based on the idea that oil is a fossil fuel? I mean, they have access to the internet, too..

onelung

The issue is not the Internet, it’s how the spread of scientific knowledge is impacted by politics and the public’s ability to understand the truth. A lot of people in the US don’t want you use oil because it makes the Arabs richer. Another group of people wants you to believe that oil is more precious than gold so they can charge like hell for it. All the discussion about “sustainability” is in a little way part of those political agendas.

The concept of things being sustained in their current status is comforting to a lot of people, and they lust for it. It just falls outside the bounds of reality.

With an apparent genetic predisposition to be late bloomers, my male antecedents left me with the unusual lineage of having a grandfather that was born in 1869. Mort started his life on a horse and was damn grateful to finally get a car in the 1920’s. His life was not any more sustainable than it is today, and he certainly liked the improvements that came along over the years.

The point I would like to leave this discussion with is that there is a continuous, incomprehensible march of new technology and nothing is going to stop it. The concept of sustainability is media buzz generated by people with an agenda to sell.

And since you brought it up, yes I am a space alien. I’ve tried using the Internet to super size my member but it didn’t work, and I’m convinced the Spanish-American War never happened.