The Fifteen Criteria Points

of Genuine, Meaningful Sustainability

The Fifteen Criteria Points of Genuine, Meaningful Sustainability

  1. What people commonly refer to as “sustainability” is not truly sustainable.
  2. Genuine, meaningful sustainability is defined by a rigorous set of criteria including, but not limited to the use of nonrenewable resources and the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.
  3. Genuine, meaningful sustainability is a dauntingly complex, remote, far-flung ideal.
  4. As difficult as it may be, genuine, meaningful sustainability WILL be achieved because to do anything less is unsustainable.  Whatever the human family fails to do voluntarily, it WILL do involuntarily.
  5. The longer we wait, the more wrenching and traumatic the change to sustainability will be.
  6. Growth is unsustainable.  Period.
  7. The best efforts at sustainability will be in vain if population isn’t addressed.
  8. When the consequences of a given action are not fully understood, it is best to err on the side of caution (The Precautionary Principle).
  9. Carrying on with business-as-usual, assuming that technology will emerge to save us is optimistic to the point of irresponsibility.
  10. Human labor is environmentally neutral.  So, wherever any toxic, energy intensive industrial or agricultural practice can be replaced with a different process using human labor, that’s what we should do.
  11. In order for market forces to govern a sustainable world, environmental and social costs must be accounted for.
  12. So many powerful economic interests make so much money from such unsustainable business practices and so many people enjoy such great levels of comfort, convenience and entertainment through such unsustainable means that achieving genuine, meaningful sustainability will be very upsetting to a lot of people.
  13. Therefore, in order to achieve genuine, meaningful sustainability, those in positions of power must carry out dramatic, sweeping changes for which there may not yet be widespread, popular support.
  14. In order to achieve widespread, popular support for sustainability, the public must be educated – a task too important to be left to the mainstream media & “education”.
  15. Human Consciousness