Sustainability is...

I remember my first image of sustainability was a farm. You had to live on a farm, grow all your own food, generate all your own electricity, and probably make everything you used too. That’s still the first thing I think of, honestly. But after this class I think that you can take sustainability a few steps further than just trying not to make an impact and define it as actions that positively impact the environment around us. Not only are we reducing our use of and interference with systems, we are actively finding ways to participate in and promote them them.
The first example I always think of is in construction of buildings to live and work in. It seems to be not only about how much you use, but how you use it. The better one can incorporate any sort of construction into natural systems, the more sustainable it might be considered. For example, while LEED building standards are centered on using the right materials in the right way, the next step described in the Less than Zero model is to make buildings that actually participate in natural processes like cleaning their own waste water. This kind of construction not only can be something long lasting and built along ecological standards, but they actively promote the local ecosystem. It also seems like something that can, and probably should, be much more communal than the farm image I described earlier. Not only is it hard to make much change by keeping it too yourself, but a bunch of isolated family farms wouldn’t be much better off than we are now, I wouldn’t think, because it’s the same sort of isolation we have from each other and the natural world now is causing problems. I think we need to be able to interact with each other. We need to help each other, really, because I don't think everyone is going to be capable of producing their own food unless we really revert to an earlier time in history.
There is also an element of how we use nature to structure our technology that is interesting. Again, in the Less than Zero article, buildings are supposed to integrate with the ecosystem that has evolved in that area and that seems totally valid. It creates buildings that are really part of natural systems. And yet, in the biomemetics article they are essentially doing the same thing but using the information they get to perpetuate military and commercial production. It’s like taking the natural out of nature some how.
I still wonder what it would mean to live a sustainable lifestyle and be a traveler. As important as it is to put down roots and really learn about what it means to live in one place and to get to know it well, I think some people wouldn’t be happy living that way. I’m not sure I would be, though that might stem from all the inundation of ideas that to have fun sometimes you have to go halfway around the world. Still, if you think of pre-industrialized societies that had to live within natural systems, not all of them were sedentary agricultural communities. Animals migrate. Surely people can too. It’s hard to get past thinking ‘Well, you’d need a new form of transportation, that’s for sure’ though. It's definitely something I'd like to try and explore more.