Sustainability

Sustainability appears to be an intelligent philosophy. Growing up I harassed my parents to get me this or that no matter where I was or what i was doing. I believed that the more I took from the outside and used it as my own it would somehow bolster myself and make myself more powerful. I think that this is essentially the way we have been socialized to interact with the outside world. We can see examples of this on all levels of our government, tax breaks for the rich, the externalization of costs at the expense of the third world, or in the TED video Jason recommended in which politicians put waste treatment plants predominantly in our ghettos. Just as i understood with age that I couldn't have or take everything I wanted because eventually my parents resources would not be able to withstand the shock our politicians and the powers at be cannot rape and pillage the land and their fellow human beings or they will have no source of sustenance.
That was essentially a long winded rant hopefully pointing at the idea that we cannot continue to separate ourselves from our surroundings. If we take and take from our environment we as beings that are part of that environment will essentially be taking and taking from ourselves. Sustainability to me clearly means in order to live (sustain) we cannot take more than we give or we will eventually take ourselves out of existence.

Tough Question.

Hmmm....
"Sustain: v. 1. to keep in existence; maintain or prolong 2. to provide sustenance for 3. to carry the weight of; to support 4. to endure; withstand 5. to comfort or encourage 6. to suffer (an injury, loss, etc.) 7. to uphold the validity of 8. to confirm; corrobate (Webster's New World Dictionary)"
I haven't been in the ecological activist pool for very long, so "sustainability" is actually still kind of a new term for me. In my perspective, as of right now, it just means the fight to keep the environment at a stable point, if not improving it --- and sustaining the balance between what we need to take from the earth and what we need to give back.
Getting back to the definition...not all of those numbers mean the same in correlation to this subject, but I tried to find connections anyways... :)
1. Well, we obviously need to keep what we still have of the many wonderful and precious things in our world in existence...there are far too many times when we take the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the materials we use for granted. 2., 5., 7.,& 8. just like we take from the world, we need to take care of it in return. 3. All this denotes a certain serious responsibility we have to the environment and sustainability is basically owning up to that responsibility. 4. & 6. If we hurt the earth, we hurt ourselves, even if we don't realize it. It's really for everyone's benefit that we make things sustainable, etc. That's just what I can assume from the word.

Our time in this world is very limited, and it constitutes only a miniscule fraction of the whole that makes up world history. This fraction of time can equally be applied to all of those who make up our own generation - but jsut as so, the impact one generation can make on the world can transcend our determined period of time and have repercussions on the world that those after us will inhabit. That is why, sustainability to me is this very awareness of the impact we can have on our home planet, and being conscious of the responsibilities we have as its inhabitants to care for it. It involves taking care of our resources so that they will not run out, and taking care of the planet so that other after us may enjoy it just as we do. It is, in short, a selfless act shared by the billions that inhabit the world, as made up by the likewise countless inidividual efforts to preserve the world as it is, or if possible, to make it even better.

What is Sustainability

I'm not quite sure what sustainability means, and more than that what sustainability means to me. I do think that the definition of sustainability would include the idea of being able to exist in harmony with others, including the environment. I also think it would include the idea of the ability to use everything within a cycle of use and reuse (just like we see in nature) and to use everything within a limit so that the environment and others are not negatively impacted by our decisions.

What is Sustainability?

To be quite honest, I am pretty unsure as to how to define sustainability. I would say, however, that sustainability is just the effort of making lifestyles efficient and reusable. It is transforming something that could normally be accepted and believed to be trash and to make it withstand time and weathering. Sustainability is something that could impact our lives in such a great and magnificent way. Sustainability would allow us to produce less waste and to make a greater use of the resources that we do have available rather than using up resources that one day may not be so accessible to us. This could be a way of life that would benefit everybody involved and we make such a positive impact that it seems foolish to ignore the possibility of incorporating sustainable actions into our everyday lives. Sustainability could be just one more step towards a great, greener earth!

What is Sustainability

Sustainability is, to me, the process of making sure every natural resource offered on this planet stays accessible and stays plentiful for as long as possible. Granted, this is an extremely broad definition, but the concept itself, I think, is just as broad. Sustainability includes food, water, energy, wildlife and many other categories, each of which brings with it immense amounts of information and controversy and is in some form or another being threatened or at the very least utilized inefficiently.
When looking at this definition globally, sustainability seems daunting, and in a way it is. The sheer numbers of resources being wasted each day is staggering, an amount no individual can compensate for on his or her own. However, when looking at this issue from a different light, achieving or working towards sustainability is quite manageable. For instance, according to Energy Star, “if every American home replaced just one light bulb with [a fluorescent light bulb], we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.” In some ways sustainability will take a lot of work, a lot of joining together and a lot of rallying, but at the same time, sustainability can be partially achieved by doing easy, little things like replacing light bulbs, going trayless or taking a shorter shower.

steps in the right direction

One of the many reasons that I decided to enroll in this class was that I wanted to learn more about the meaning of being sustainable and how to live a more sustainable life. As of now, I think of being sustainable as taking and using only what is necessary and saving and reusing whenever possible. There are many things that I associate with sustainability such as recycling, using energy efficient light bulbs, saving water, and eating a vegetarian diet. However, I think sustainability is much bigger than just the actions we take (that's not to discount any of those actions because they are all great steps in the right direction). I suppose sustainability is very similar to responsibility in that we, as humans, are responsible for taking care of the environment and our earth. That is, it is our responsibility to be sustainable in order to save the earth for future generations. Thus, sustainability is a philosophy that encompasses our thoughts, actions, and values. It's a way of life.

Sustainability

What is sustainability? 

Sustainability for a generation is when they meet the needs of the present efficiently without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. To be sustainable the generation would have to use resources at a rate that would allow them to be replenished for future use. In my view, to be sustainable a community would have to use their resources, while preserving as much as possible for future use. Sustainability has become a term used widely that can cover a wide of variety of topics. For now, I feel my definition of sustainability is very vague, but hopefully by the end of course I can make it more set in stone.

Sustainability

My conception of sustainability has been that it is a process with a intricacy of systems that requires an understanding of the environment of which we are a part of so that humans can begin to live more harmoniously in the places they live. There are so many ways people can be proactive toward a better interaction with the mother planet, especially in the little daily activities that can easily be overlooked, but it seems fairly convincing that the evolution of our culture has lead us into an overproductive, overconsumptive, and express society that has tended to neglect our impacts on the environment. in this evolution, the cultural mindset has now become one more focused on owning and controlling the planet rather that being of and belonging to the earth during our lifetime. I even just watched a windshield wipers commercial where the product's slogan is "Outsmart the elements." If that is really what our ideology has become, the shift to becoming more sustainable human begins will take time, awareness, and immense action. So it is this mindset that we are trying to change along with more awareness and productivity in humanity to live in total balance with the natural earth.

Sustainability? What's that?

Interestingly enough, I get asked this question almost every time I mention I’m taking this class this semester. However, given my limited knowledge on the subject, my answer usually describes sustainability as a concept that enforces the idea of being environmentally friendly. I’m not sure as to how accurate that response actually is, but regardless of my ignorance, people generally seem interested and tell me it sounds like “a really cool class”. I think the reason people react in this way is because sustainability invokes the idea that our environment is very much at risk, and that we alone can make a difference as to what that risk is. I also believe in this idea, which is one of the reasons I'm taking this class. From what everyone has posted so far it seems there are different notions of what sustainability is, and perhaps my definition of sustainability isn’t right on point, but whatever the case, I’m really looking forward to learning more about it.

Reification

Sustainability is complex. In one way, it's an action (to recycle, to not pollute, etc), in other it's a lifestyle choice, and in another it's a state of mind. Should we really need to be asking ourselves how to save the earth? Should we not, as the "omniscient" human, have realized that our interference with nature, our taming of the untamed, our controlling of the wild is the problem? It's that frame of mind, thinking that "humans have the answer", that we are in this mess. Sustainability is our best human answer to this problem. Sustainability is our way of trying to fix what we cannot undo. But this is our problem. Everyone turns to sustainability, but no one knows what this is exactly. The term reification comes to mind which is the attempt to define an abstract concept in concrete terms. I'm going to agree with Jack Turner in that one of the main problems is "the majority of Americans no longer know this experience of the wild" (Abstract Wild). How can we save and connect with that which we don't understand? Unfortunately, I do not have any of the answers and have no idea how to find them, but that doesn't mean we stop looking.

What is Sustainability?

In its the general sense, sustainability means a way of living for individuals, communities, and the whole human population, that doesn't deplete or damage earth and its resources. My particular view of sustainability really comes from my background.
To be blunt, I come from a wealthy family. For most of my life, I had no idea how wasteful and unnecessary much of my lifestyle was. I took long showers, bought a lot of new things when I could have used what I had, drove my own car everywhere, etc. simply because I didn't know that I shouldn't. I took an environmental science class my junior year of high school and became an "earth-lover" right before the gas prices began to rise so quickly. So first of all, sustainability to me means awareness.
Also, I grew up going to church every Sunday, so I am very religious. And a few years ago, the pastor preached about people being stewards of the earth. I recently heard another sermon about the preciousness of water as well as other gifts of the earth. Whether you are religious or not, people are the ones in charge of the earth. Sustainability also means taking responsibility for the state of the earth, how healthy it is, and whether we're helping it flourish or sucking it dry.

Sustainability

Sustainability involves the different methods we use in order to preserve the environment. These methods include recycling, turning off lights, cutting down on our shower time, carpooling, and other activities that help preserve the environment we too often take for granted. I agree with the notion that we should do much more than we are doing to help preserve our environment, but it is important for us to first focus on the small things we can do to help preserve the world we inhabit. Though we can do a lot of small things to help improve sustainability, we have to understand that these small things can be very difficult for people who aren’t used to being environmentally conscious. I think the biggest challenge advocates of sustainability face is dealing with the fact that people aren’t willing to go outside of their comfort zone to help preserve the environment. This can easily be seen in some students’ inability to be supportive of trayless week in our very own cafeteria. People want to do what is easy and convenient for them, and a lot of times it is hard to prompt people to do what is necessary to help preserve our environment.

What is sustainability?

I used to consider sustainability to only be about meeting the needs of today’s society without sacrificing the needs of future societies. However, I think if you focus on that definition you tend to overlook an important aim of sustainability. Sustainability is about recycling, reusing, and conserving to make sure our natural resources do not run out, but it is also about maintaining the beauty of the earth.

What is Sustainability?

The first time I was really introduced to sustainability was in terms of fuels. In my first year seminar we learned about peak oil, the point at which global production of petroleum would reach its highest point and then begin to run out, making it increasingly more expensive until it was either drained completely or too expensive for most people to use. So in that context we talked mostly about what methods of creating fuels would sustainably be able to provide for the population. It sort of bled into a lot of other ideas about how industries that depend heavily on fossil fuels would change, with most of the focus on agriculture. So for a long time when some one talked about it, that was the idea that popped into my head right away.
A couple summers ago I saw a show about a family in Britain that decided to try and build a sustainable lifestyle, so they moved to an old farm and began to revamp it to supply all their needs for food, power and water on their own. They diverted a stream with an aqueduct to power a water wheel and generate electricity. They started a food garden and bought livestock. They built a water recycling system. It was very complicated. So I think where I’m going with this is that when i think of it now, I think more of being self sufficient and not wasting anything at all. And usually that self sufficiency is tied to having a farm. It’s not something you can really do all the way in a city.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a very broad concept. It aims to cut down unhealthy and unnecessary production, development, consumption, etc. It's about how we as humans interact with our environment while being conscious of our actions. This term can mean different things for different cultures as well, which makes it hard to define. Sustainability is not about preservation its about coming into contact with a resource and wanting to sustain it for the betterment of the group and the environment. We as humans are clearly interconnected with nature. In a philosophical sense we are not above nature, thus we should be loving and intimate with our environment so that we know how and why it reacts like it does. We should embrace our relation with our environment so that we won't deplete resources and/or take more than is necessary. Also, to be sustainable we must value others, not just the environment. The effects we have on the environment in-directly effects lower class citizens who live in unsanitary environments. If anything be sustainable for your fellow citizen because we really are all related in some form or fashion.

I think David Orr puts it best when he states, "We cannot know what sustainability means until we have decided what we intend to sustain and how we propose to do so" (Earth in Mind, 141).
This question is perfect because indicating what and how to sustain our environment is where it starts and that seems to be the goal of this course.

What is Sustainability?

When I hear the word sustainability I think of keeping the environment from getting worse and making it better by doing simple things in our daily lives such as turning off lights, recycling, or just being more conscious of the world around us. I don't necessarily think about doing big things to change the world drastically at once, but little things that everyone can do if they put time and effort into caring about the environment. The first major problem of course that comes to mind when talking about sustainability is the problem of pollution and things that need to be done to stop it. People need to find a way to get around other than using their personal cars to take them everywhere. When it all comes down to it there really is no choice and before long people will have to do something to help the environment around them.

Off the Map

For me, the definition of sustainability is much different from the definition in a book. What I learned from a previous environmental class was much more than recycling or being conscious of where food comes from or how much water one uses each week. Sustainability for me is literally disappearing. It's not leaving your trace on the environment. It's much like reducing your carbon "foot print", only you are reducing other traces of yourself as well.

The idea is to reduce consumption and for a community to share its resources to help each other out. The land provides us with much of the nutrients we need, and we can use those natural resources to fuel natural growth of the environment back. This process might as well eliminate the need for huge grocery stores that require so much energy to run and keep foods fresher, maintaining large quantities of produce to be wasted when expired. This is just on example of "disappearing" and "living off the map". Sustainability means an overall lifestyle change for the individual and a community too.

What is Sustainability?

Wow, that is a great question, well depends, I think it is kind of sad actually that we have come to a point in the world were we are actually asking this specific question. Really.... as I sit and think, it is not the question of what is sustainability that peaks my interest, but rather, how did we get here? No BODY wants the worlds environment to be harmed to the point that not only is our health compromised, but also the health of future generations. I don't claim to think I have the answer to this, to the question that we know what makes us and the people around us healthier, yet we time and time again choose not to do those things, and that is something that I always will wonder.

What do I know about sustainability though. It is healthy, its about connections, its about life, its about value, it takes work, it takes discussion, it takes success, and failure and it takes us all just a few moments everyday to do something about it. I am really jazzed and excited about the future and the current sustainability movement, as it has some great chances to make lives all around the world, for all types of life forms, better...... and also it is what we can do, we really don't have a choice, we have to find a way to live in, with, around and for all of life on the plant, I refuse to think of another option.