Sustainability is the word

Thursday, February 07, 2008

By Brooke Williams

The January/February issue of Orion Magazine begins with the “From the Editors” column and the words: environment, ecology, sustainability, conservation, and green. The point they’re trying to make is that these words have been the core of the environmental movement since it first ‘moved’ the 1960s, that they’re used interchangeably and often improperly - that we need new terminology. The Orion editors believe that a new word is needed that involves everyone, even people who can’t afford to go out and buy a Prius, and that this is not just an issue of strategy, but one of morals.

The day after reading Orion, I happened onto the current issue of “What is Enlightenment,” a magazine dedicated to evolution of consciousness, based on the work of philosophers Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber. The cover features a huge green light bulb and the words “Envisioning the Future of Ecology, Politics, and Consciousness.” I had to have it. In the main article, “A Brighter Shade of Green,” the author, Ross Robertson, takes the reader quickly through the history of the conservation movement in an effort to illustrate a full spectrum of ‘greenness,’ highlighting the newest, hippest, ‘sickest’ hue: bright green.

Ross quotes Bruce Sterling, founder of the innovative design movement called Viridian Design: “Society must become green, and it will be a variety of green that society will eagerly consume. What is required is not a natural green, or a spiritual green, or a primitivist green, or a blood-and-soil romantic green…the world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green.” Ross goes on to point out that, looking back, a key factor in our current situation is that early conservationists, including John Muir, “constructed rigid dichotomies between nature and human civilization, between the utopian purity of the wilderness and the polluted plight of industrial society.”

This is old, dark green. Bright green is new, technological, and all about re-imagining civilization. Is there one word that can sum up the challenge we have before us? Is there one way to avoid the environmental catastrophe that looms in the future? Is that ‘one way’ a matter of creating new products and services to entice us to ‘buy’ our way to safety and salvation? Is it a matter of re-tooling our entire manufacturing system so as to not depend on our making the right choice? Is it our willingness to sacrifice our lifestyles? Or, as many continue to suggest, is our only hope the complete destruction of our current civilization? Do spirituality and a massive change of consciousness play any role?

 And how do we begin to see, as the Orion editors suggest, beyond the strategies, markets and politics to the morality of these issues? Perhaps there is no ‘one way’ to solve our environmental problems. And perhaps anytime spent arguing that my way is the way, is wasted time.

In answer to Orion’s question, “is there one word.” I think so, depending on definition.  That word is sustainability. The definition comes from John Ehrenfeld, a former professor of mine, who suggests that sustainability is the “possibility that human and all life forms will flourish on earth forever.” I would like to think that any philosophy, theory, mechanism, or even any product or service that at best, had this definition as a goal, but at least, did nothing to undermine it, would be a solid and positive step toward permanent solutions.
PERMALINK:
Sustainability is the word | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

Leave a Comment