What does sustainability mean?

photo credit: pexels - Brett Sayles

This article is about sustainability. It identifies several aspects about sustainability. The first is why it’s socially ignored and considered irrelevant. The cultural immersion into attention diversion bursts of entertainment video clips, is comparable to a plague on today’s technologically advanced society. Being plugged into the digitalization of the stratosphere, absorbs us into the aura of its web and disconnects us from nature. “Doing my part”, in terms of what is considered “saving the planet”; it’s now ordering a soy latte at Starbucks.

Sustainability? Government agencies turn politically “green” to regulate a paper bag or a plastic bag at the grocery store. It’s frivolous irrelevance. The triviality of minutia has no bearing on the macroscale of Earth’s surface.

Some things in life are by choice; others are a pre-set condition. Sustainability isn’t always a matter of choice in regards to individual choice. An area’s primary source of transportation establishes its land-use. Land-use design in urban growth is designated by government decree. The intertwining of land-use and transportation are set by government regulation.

As this article’s author, the level of tolerance to withstand this lethargic logic in motion, is exhausting. It’s understandable, but aggravating from frustration.

At what level does sustainability become serious? Consumption rates.

Sustainability is an absolute necessity for urban growth. But still, urban growth’s sustainability is socially ignored and bureaucratically stamped as unattainable (site EIR signoffs). The problem with urban growth is that it doesn’t allow feasibility for a reasonable choice. Urban growth is based on an area’s primary source of transportation. Urban growth is regulated by government dictate. Each and every day, consumption eats into the macroscale of Earth’s fragility. Should there be a concern for sustainability? Even if a person is concerned about it, a billion people would be unable to make a difference.

What can be done?

Solutions begin with questions. Let’s ask a few questions and get some answers. Who is accountable for the sustainability of urban growth? To be clear: urban growth is absolutely responsible for oil consumption. Is global oil consumption a concern for sustainability? What is the global effect of 100million barrels of oil being consumed every day? A barrel of oil is 42 gallons; that’s 4billion, 200million gallons extracted from the ground per day; 1,533,000,000,000 gallons annually. Is this a concern?

To be openly honest and fair, the Mississippi River discharges approximately 420 billion gallons of freshwater into the Gulf of Mexico each day. By Discharge Volume: The river is the 14th largest in the world by water volume, with an average discharge of approximately 600,000 cubic feet per second. But, the water from rivers doesn’t disappear, nature is sustainable.

What does sustainability even mean? Does the continual expansion of oil consumption enhance global sustainability? Are there any effective government mandates that actually deter the proliferation of consumptive growth? The political response, from the elite group that makeup the rules; is more about bureaucratic control. 

Solutions?

One of the great geniuses of the 1900s was Viktor Schauberger, yet, only a few recognize his name. As a multigenerational Master Forester, he observed nature. His most famous saying was: “Comprehend and copy nature”. In this statement he found that all modern transportation is centrifugal, nature is centripetal. To clarify this: all modern transportation opposes nature. And, because transportation is the foundation for all urban growth, a methodology of sustainable transportation is imperative to capture sustainable urban growth.

The cultural effects and the physics involved with modern transportation is not sustainable. It’s an issue of land-use to the population increase. All urban growth is based on its primary source of transportation. All current sources of transportation are friction based using centrifugal force. It opposes nature.

What organizations are working to create a mode of transportation using centripetal force? Do such a companies exist? And to this author’s anguish, is the presumption that there is a total absence of comprehending what was just read: that all modern transportation is centrifugal. 

This writing is more than an observation; it’s an authoritative claim that implementing new modes of sustainable transportation would provide sustainability in urban growth and provide greater quality of life. 

Writing about what direction society is going, is a reminder to the book of Ecclesiastics that declares there is nothing new under the Sun. People in society have never changed. So it is with choices for sustainability? While the political norms in legislative bodies vacillate on their view of sustainability choices with grocery bags of plastic or paper: that statement validates how legislator’s lack the comprehension of how transportation is the foundation of land-use design. For a restaurant to be legally restricted from suppling their customer a plastic straw without requesting one, is a frivolous waste of taxpayer resources.

The solution to sustainability, in regards to the serious issues regarding sustainability, is land-use planning design of urban growth. It begins with the discovery of a brand-new mode of sustainable transportation.