By what standards?

Sustainability is a nice word to throw around. People feel good committing actions that they feel are "green," "environmentally friendly," or "sustainable," but in truth, most people have little better than a vague understanding of any of these concepts. While it is generally understood, especially among people of our generation, that current practices in almost every aspect of life will quickly deplete the earth's resources, damage natural ecosystems, and numerous other apocalyptic sounding events, the details that could change these things are often poorly understood, at best, as well as often being hotly contested.

The question to start with is by what standards are we to measure sustainability. In broad terms, this could mean carbon footprint, energy usage, or the effects of a persons individual food consumption on the environment. If one is concerned with their carbon footprint or energy usage, then their best option for being "sustainable" is to remove themselves from the "grid" as much as possible. This comes through methods such as using solar and wind energy on private residences to reduce draw from the power grid, wells and rainwater catchment systems to remove from the water system, and other methods which provide alternatives to the current system's sources for these services. Gardening and even owning a few small livestock can reduce one's consumption of industrialized food, even to the extent of kitchen scraps feeding a pig or goat, which provides meat, or even, in the case of the goat, milk. Many sustainable practices are not new developments, but ancient practices that gain new value in the light of the popularly styled "environmental crisis."

Other standards include how "sustainable" a person desires, or can afford, to be. Some people may want to be so sustainable that they actually leave no "trace" except a corpse that decomposes to feed plants and give new life, while others may want to draw from the earth's resources an amount of energy and substance enough that their effort can equally put back in, in effect allowing another person to use the same amount of resources to perpetuity. Some may want to only be sustainable enough to make the earth's resources last for their individual lifetime, in which case their lifestyle will probably be successful at that level.

Sustainability is a vague goal, but striving for this ghostly muse will allow us a lens through which to view our world and actions, so that we may, hopefully, be able to pass on the world to future generations. Instead of a general consensus of practices that qualify for this goal, it is far better to have a multitude of diverse opinions that will, through competition, reveal feasible opportunities for all people.