Sustainability has really come to mean a way of life for me at this point. While I know the definition of sustainability is somewhere along the lines of “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the Earth’s ability to meet the needs of future generations…” to me that just means a change in lifestyle and ways of thinking.
I think sustainability can really be applied to all aspects of society, and what seems most pressing to me at the moment is the need to incorporate it into our economic system. Sustainability can mean a lot of things, though we usually think of it in environmental terms. But it’s really much broader than that. We are in an economic crisis partly because they way we, as Americans, we living, consuming, and spending was not sustainable. And of course these factors can be related back to the environment (consumption with food, agriculture, material things, etc. which affects environment).
What happened, I believe, is a reflection of our inability to live within our means –a concept which transcends boundaries; we spend more than we make, we take more than we eat, we eat more than we need, we waste more than is necessary. It’s all relevant. So I guess I would say that sustainability is an all-encompassing term that requires a change in lifestyle and mindset to a more forward-thinking, long term scale.
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