What is Sustainability?

Sustainability is a word that is being wrecklessly used today by many who think they have it all figured out.  The problem is that they don't.  It isn't enough to just be "green" to be sustainable.  I just went to a continuing education class to stay up to date for my MT real estate license and got an earful for 8 hours about sustainability.  It was supposed to be about sustainable real estate business practices, but instead it turned out to be 8 hours of "green" propaganda with unsubstantiated "facts" wrecklessly thrown around. For instance, we were told that each month, from tearing down old buildings, we throw into landfills enough material to make a 30' x 30' wall that stretches from the tip of Maine all the way around our southern border to the tip of Washington State.  Do you realize that if that were true, in 12 months we would have 176,000 acres 8' deep? I think we're about 8' deep in something else right now.  I wonder if theses same sustainability "experts" considered the amount of cars we just threw away in the "cash for clunkers" debacle that just increased our taxes and increased our debt. We're going to be at least $9 TRILLION in debt in 10 more years, and that's if they don't keep underestimating.  China will OWN us.

What most people miss about sustainability is that in order for anything to be sustainable, it must go on in perpetuity without draining resources (assets).  Don't get me wrong, I'm all about responsible reource management and not wasting; probably even more so than most self-proclaimed sustainability "experts". As a range management person, I actually understand ecosystem processes and know how to manage resources.  However, as I said earlier, it's not enough to just focus on the environment and run around wrecklessly saying that global warming is a fact and we all have to sacrifice.  I say "Bull____".  The economy is equally important to environmental issues. If a system isn't at least solvent and better yet profitable, then it isn't sustainable and I might add that any system without profitability can't maintain the environment as well as one that is profitable.  We need to wake up and start thinking for ourselves instead of listening to all these tenured academics who have no real world experience.