SUSTAINABILITY
Wikipedia provides the following definition for Sustainability.
Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, fisheries, and the systems on which they depend. In recent years, public discourse has led to a use of "sustainability" in reference to how long human ecological systems can be expected to be usefully productive. In the past, complex human societies have died out, sometimes as a result of their own growth-associated impacts on ecological support systems. The implication is that modern industrial society, which continues to grow in scale and complexity, will also collapse.
The implied preference would be for systems to be productive indefinitely, or be "sustainable." For example, "sustainable agriculture" would develop agricultural systems to last indefinitely; "sustainable development" can be a development of economic systems that last indefinitely, etc. A side discourse relates the term sustainability to longevity of natural ecosystems and reserves (set aside for other-than-human species), but the challenging emphasis has been on human systems and anthropogenic problems, such as anthropogenic climate change, or the depletion of fossil fuel reserves.
Our approach to "sustainability" will be based on the more commonly accepted definitions but will then move to where some "new" concepts may be found. We will want to focus on how we should conduct our lives as we relate to one another, what we call work, the creation of our "carbon footprint", how we conceptualize the world around us and how we see ourselves spiritually.
The various pathways below involve; Permaculture, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND), and the Eco-Cottage.
They represent a heirarcical system of organization that takes one from an overall world view to your very own back yard.
what you've always wanted to know but were afraid to ask
