Sustainability: the Need for a Complete Overhaul of Beliefs

Sustainability: The Need for a Complete Overhaul of Beliefs

The term sustainability has embodied a different meaning in every individual. Our ideas of what it means and the extent to which it is applied in our lives varies across an infinite spectrum of attitudes and beliefs. To some it is a commercially loaded catchphrase to push products on an ever increasing market of a so-called environmentally conscious new generation. Some people treat it as a lifestyle and constantly take into consideration their daily waste and energy demands while flaunting this behavior to others. Then, of course, there are those who see it as left-wing propaganda designed by hippies and ushered into society by people with absurd agendas. However, most people take ideas from each of these schools of thought and lie somewhere in between the extremes, often causing them to feel indifferent in an attempt to avoid any politically charged debate with their peers. Since it seems impossible for a group of people, let alone an entire society, to agree upon the definition and degree of importance around sustainability, it is imperative to begin building a unanimous concrete understanding of the matter. Once we can create an unquestionable and realistically substantiated claim of what sustainability is, the engine of social change should shift gears faster than it has over the past 50 years.

During the 1980’s the term sustainable development was defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development as the concept of needs, especially those for the poorest populations of the world, and the idea of limitations on the earth’s ability to support current and future generations (Lipschutz, p. 7). This is a basic interpretation of the overwhelming presence of environmental inequality and the disproportionate allocation of resources amongst the world’s population. It also attempts to address the realization that we live on a planet with a finite amount of resources that are being exacerbated...