What is sustainability?

Sustainability is simply the ability to sustain. And sustain means to endure over time under changing conditions.

So what is it that we want to sustain? We want to sustain human health and well-being. We want to sustain the health and well-being of all life. We want to sustain the presence and availability of the resources necessary to sustain life. We want to sustain peace among people.

We are presently exhausting the resources necessary to sustain life faster than these resources can be renewed by natural cycles. We are adversely impacting the living systems on which our life depends. And the resulting scarcity causes us to make war on each other.

In order for life to be sustained, we must align our use of resources and our impact on living systems to fit inside of the natural rates of renewal of those resources and participate responsibly within those living systems. Where there is enough of what we need to spare, there is no need to make war.

In future posts, I will be examining just how we might allow the Life that has brought us forward to this point to sustain our health, well-being and peace indefinitely in Life's self-renewing and self-sustaining expression through us.