Sustainability

When discussing sustainability one has to consider what meaning of the term is being used. If the definition being used is the sustainability of the economy alone, in fact the sustainability of the economy at the expense of everything else, I would say it is probably sustainable for at least another 50 years.

The problem is when people confuse the sustainability of the economy with the sustainability of both the economy and the environment, and more specifically the living ecology of the planet. When discussing that definition the answer is easy, it is not possible.

The notion that there can be a healthy environment and a growing economy through better technology is not possible.

The economy can’t produce anything without raw materials and that means taking and destroying living ecosystems and turning them into dead products and later waste. There is no way to get around the fact that the economy is antithetical to the natural world or environment. If the economy were to really only produce things in a way that was not harmful to the environment and the natural world there would be a global economic collapse because the economy is extremely leveraged to growth. This means that any shrinking of economic output or production would cause more shrinking and more until the whole thing comes crashing down like it did in the Great Depression. This is not a controversial point of view either. Another way of thinking about this is that in order for the economy to not go into free-fall, there has to be a steady increase in consumption and consumption is dependent on income and income is dependent on production. The question is: if all production that is harmful to the environment is phased out, can even more stuff be produced with truly environmentally friendly technologies? Since there are virtually no ways of mass producing anything this way now, the answer is no.