April 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

« I knew I was doing it for a reason | Main | Work order »

Jan 08, 2009

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

cheripicker

"Sustainable Greensboro envisions citizens, businesses, institutions, and government working together and collaborating to gain meaningful progress on issues of sustainability."
With deepest apologies to scharrison, the organization's definition of its purpose, I cannot sustain. Can someone define sustainability for me, without using the word "sustainable"?

confused

“to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

RBM

@ cheripicker

Wotsamatta ? you bored, so you thought a picking a fight might get rid of the boredom ?

cheripicker

I am dead serious, I told you I was honest about my stupidity

scharrison

What confused said.

I've also (personally) described it as, "behavior that can be prolonged indefinitely." Poisoning the environment is not sustainable, pursuing idealistic goals that ignore economics is not sustainable, etc.

or more poetically, "The continuous pursuit of an ideal balance between man and nature."

cheripickr

sus·tain·a·ble

adj
1. ABLE TO BE MAINTAINED: able to be maintained
2. ENVIRONMENT: maintaining an ecological balance: exploiting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of a particular area

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

So it's one of those green things. I swear to God I didn't know. Of course I knew the general definition. How come I haven't seen it on Volkswagen bumpers next to 'Coexist'?

RBM

@ cheripicker

Honest ? Hmmm ... Did you read the link ?

newtogso

I remember hearing Professor Peter Jacobs from U of Toronto say that sustainability has over 130 different definitions. The one that will matter will be the one we define for Greensboro, and I would say number 2 from cheripicker is in the neighborhood. Come to the meeting and find out more.

Beelzebubba

Nature is one mean bitch. She has personally seen to it that 99% of every living thing on the planet has become extinct, in spite of the living thing's absolute fidelity to its own nature. Whether nature is filmed with a hidden camera or by a production crew..she doesn't care. She's ruthless. She doesn't care what happens to us. She doesn't care what happens to you. Try to appease her all you want. She's gonna kill you after you spend your life's energy protecting yourself and the ones you love from her. I'm sorry..I can't coexist with something that is trying to kill me. Practice crazy environmental cultism somewhere else. It's killing me here. When you try to institutionalize this bitch, she's gonna kill us all. I wish you could hear yourselves.

cheripickr

RBM, see?, 130 definitions. Maybe I'm not so dense after all.

RBM

@ newtogso

Got a link ? I didn't come up with one with a brief look.

@ cheripicker

Beelze's post is a good philosophical start - because your question was so broad.

There are plenty of points one can attach to from there.

So where are the 130 definitions intersections with your life ?

Do you eat, how much, of what ?
Do you live in a house, how big made of what ?
Do you use fossil fuels, what kind, how much ?

Consider that there are 6.8 billion people, or so, that all would answer those questions differently.

For a concrete example of where one might go I like the way Armory Lovins of RMI thinks.


newtogso

I'd have to search for the quote from Peter Jacobs. It was something I wrote down when I heard him speak about 11 years ago at, I believe, an ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects)conference in Portland, OR.

RBM

@ newtogso,

Thanks for the reply. I don't doubt that someone somewhere made what I would most likely consider a valid observation.

I was just curious as to his personal take.

Generally speaking, the broad umbrella of sustainability was a major element in my choice of a retraining career in HVAC/R.

The comments to this entry are closed.