Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue

Would be very glad to talk with you about this but let's do it off the dialogue in order to avoid getting off the subject of the principles themselves. Let's plan to connect, my e-mail:muben@aol.com

Thanks.

Especially the children. Out of dodge on the next train.

I'm still having trouble thinking of size as frequency, area as triangles and volume as tetrahedrons- but its there.

Action is design followed by artifact. If there is no artifact, there is no action.

I liked herwitz's suggestion re the definition. Also agree, in general that the principles, the document as a whole could benefit from good editorial effort in conversion to popular language. Would much appreciate help on that score.

I am afraid that Dick's proposed version will not do. It is a linear proposition. Leaving the idea of "balance" out, removes any sense of constraint. The later is of course essential. In a sense by saying, for example, that current structure of the world economy is not sustainable, we are saying that the wrong "constraints" are employed to guide the way that it works.

Just a quick thought...

How can there be constraints on needs in general? If you are talking about physical needs, that's one thing and I'd agree(food, water, shelter, healthcare, etc.). Metaphysical needs are without constraints and are limitless. Mind is unconstrainable. There is and should be no constraint on metaphysical needs. We are only beginning to comprehend the possibilities of living. Needs will always grow even though the physical supports of those needs can forever diminish.

Physical and metaphysical are different.

Is overeating physical or metaphysical?

I like that you're trying to distill the definition. There might be a problem using of the word balancing. Isn't it a matter of using earth's resources to sustain the needs of humans? It isn't so much a balancing but an increase in performance of existing capacity. In other words, its a one-way street.

If so, then the definition could read:

Sustainability is increasing the performance of resources to meet people's needs.

DEF 1:

"Sustainability is a process of balancing the needs of a population with the capacity of an environment to support it."

MEANING:

It might be a good idea to start needing less in order to get into the balance with the environment. (meaning avoid the excess of both over-use or pollution of the environment).

DEF 2:

"Sustainability is increasing the performance of resources to meet people's needs."

MEANING:

Never mind if ther populatoon grows, never mind if the needs grow (and third world wanting the same life standard as the USA). All we need is to increase the performance of resources. Ad infinitum.

It's difficult to find anything in common in these 2 definitions.... my vote is for the first one, since this "ad infinitum" makes the second one quite unprobable...

1. No one wants to be the one who does with less. A world without pollution doesn't equal doing-with-less or decreasing our needs. It has to do with using what we have more intelligently.

2. Yes, everyone wins. No one needs to have a harder life than they do now. Ad infinitum and forever. Ten billion billionaires. The resources are here to do that.

Population decreases as wealth increases. Not to worry. There doesn't need to be some plague to control the population if that's what you think.

Hey Dick, please back up these utopian visions. Ten billion billionaires will not/can not happen. We need to figure out how everyone can live free of the economic shell game, not profit from it. If someone profits, someone loses. That's how it works. We are in a culture of increasing consumption, and that vision of "a good life" needs to be changed. Most folks in the US are living with far too much already. Thet need to live with less, lset they evolve into huge, obese lumps of brainless mush.

The resources are here for everyone to live comfortably and sustainably IF there are less "everybody" and we stop living like we want to all be billionaires.

I like your take on my distillation. Yeah if you use Bucky's way of thinking sustainability is at least partly a product of "ever more with ever less." Still the word balance, for me, implies reaching an equalibrium between important forces in this case. Whatever we call it I am certain the implication is, that nature/environment/ecology has needs also, that we must steward in order survive. Or we may wish to look at our environments and resources as extensions of ourselves and treat them as we would like to be treated! So we could further our definition by saying that sustainability is, the process of maintaining and furthering our human and planetary health through our ever-growing understanding of both. My email adddress is, timeleaper@gmail.com. Feel free to contact me whenever! Again, if you do contact me I will send you what I am working on and we can continue to discuss. That goes for everyone!

I would like to suggest the the concept of "Balance" is absolutely critical to a useful definition of sustainability, if that definition at all relates to "population" and the supporting capacity of an environment. BALANCE is the whole point!

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I don't know how to contact you.

I like your comment about the static quality of the word sustain. However, I think it is a good starting point in terms of speaking about survival in the immediate future under a variety of dire circumstances. Entropy is geopolitically, geologically, ecologically, and pathologically on the rise, as we head towards a paradigm shift in our civilization. I believe it will end well, but in the mean time let's start with sustainability and add whatever we as individuals or groups are moved to add (as you are already).

The term sustain and especially the definition of sustainability offered here is absolutely not a static concept. Remember that cetral to the definition is a concept of a particular kind of balance (between a population and the carrying capacity of an environment). Not only is that balance a very dynamic condition in itself depending, at any intant, on many interacting variables, but even more, it is actually a "balance point" which moves with time, as fundamental underlying conditions change. For example, in case of humans, technology has the property of completely changing what is conceived as the environment at any given time, hence expanding the limits in a very real sense. The World to some stone age tribes was completey confined to their very local sorounding. Before the age of the great maretime explorations the "environment" was confined to the known "old world. Even more dramatic, not long after the turn of the century (in the thirties?) science believed the Milky Way to be the extent of Universe...

I had difficulties with the Bruntland Definition because of its operational vagueness. No doubt that the idea, or sentiment, is correct, namely the general concern for future generations. But it does not offer more specific operationalizable guidelines. In fact, Sometimes, subscribing to the cross generational "ethics" raises argument which seem to rise from different interpratation of members of the current generation, of needs of future generations.

For example, in evaluating options for handling nuclear waste, a project in which I was recently involved in Canada, two entirely oposing views emerged by groups holding to the same conceren for future generations.

One group held that we created the mess, therefore it is our duty (to those future generations)to resolve it now and not pass on the burden. Other thought, that concern for future generation should manifest in not depriving them of the opportunity to come up with their own, possible supperior solutions in future...
I always felt the members of the bruntland commission selected this definition precisely because of its vaguness. It provided a statement, seemingly very meaningful, that was easily agreeable by all. Any more vigorous attempt would have been a non-starter since to important components of the sustainability equation: population and carrying capacities were considered taboos, each by a different side of the "north/south" devide.

The bruntland aside, I have sought a definition which will be consitent with the frame of the principles and with a view taht is anchord in a concept of stable interactions between components of a whole system.

bruntland definition is indeed very ambiguous. i mean it talks about the needs of future generations - what if the future generations have the needs of the average US citizen? can we talk of sustainability?

I agree re brundtland; it's "mom & apple pie". That's why I find the intellectual clarity, simplcity and distinct vectors of the TNS system conditions uniquely powerful.

(PS: re that canadian dilemma, why not resolve it now and allow future genertions "the opportunity to come up with their own, possible supperior solutions in future"?)