Sustainability Concepts

Definitions

• Sustainability




• The pursuit of 'sustaining' a process, allowing it to continue for a longer period of time. In terms of environmentalism, this means reserving natural resources such as water, clean air, and energy sources for future generations.




• Freegans




• This recent following is a contraction of 'free' and 'vegan.' These oddballs feed off the trash of others in a protest to our rampant consumerism. Learn more here.




• Stewardship




• A steward is someone who is entrusted with taking care of something. We are the only stewards of our planet, and as such we must work to keep our environment conducive to our existence, even if others will not.




• Biomimicry




• A contraction of 'bio', meaning life, and 'mimicry', copying, biomimicry is the process of designing something based on an animal's natural adaptations to solve a particularly vexing problem.




• Ecological Footprint




• An ecological footprint is the impact one has on the environment, based on the resources that one uses and such. It is related to the more familiar term, carbon footprints, but is a broader-reaching footprint that deals with things like water use in addition to gaseous emissions.




• Overshoot




• When human consumption out runs the Earth's ability to replenish its resources, you have overshoot. We currently use about 30% more than the Earth has to offer, and have been since 1987. This trend is expected to continue, unless we take drastic measures in the next few years.

Supply and Demand

Supply : Area × BioProductivity = BioCapacity

Demand : Population × Consumption per Capita × Footprint Intensity = Ecological Footprint

Basic economics, when demand exceeds the demand, all is not well. The global Ecological Footprint, the demand, exceeds its BioCapacity, the supply, by about 30%.

1987

1987 was the year that the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE closed at over 2000 for the first time. It was also the first year in which our consumption of natural resources was greater than nature's ability to replenish them. We've come a long way since then - DOW JONES now closes at over 12000, and we use all of our resources for the year several months early. We obviously don't go without food, water, or fuel for several months out of the year, so to continue to function regularly we must buy resources from other places.

October 6, 2007

Last year, the day that we used all of our resources for the year was Oct.06 - leaving a good three months when we had to actually borrow natural resources from other countries.