After Rio+20 we can now all celebrate the
great success of defining a global state of non-sustainability. For over 20
years, people have been telling us that sustainability was too hard to define
and an impossible state to achieve, but now we have not only managed to define a
state of non-sustainability ... we have actually achieved it.
The leaders at Rio+20 who bothered to turn
up all implicitly agreed that non-sustainability means to deliberately do something
which cannot logically or practically continue indefinitely into the future.
Non-sustainability means that no matter how much we would like it to be
otherwise, the very thing we would like to do cannot continue without massive
contradiction. As we consume or pollute the very thing we desire ... our
ability to continue doing so diminishes with every act of consumption and
pollution. In a world of finite resources and waste sinks, logic will ultimately
rule over desire.
It clarifies the issue for everybody when leaders
are presented with important data on indicators of non-sustainability and the
finitude of this planet yet they then all agree to continue with business as
usual. Such policy bravado is no better exemplified than with the amazingly
successful global agreement to continue increasing our greenhouse gas emissions
and massively change the world’s climate.
The Rio triumph is one where we ignore all
the indicators and agree to continue to do the very things that achieve a state
of non-sustainability. We not only agree to continue them, but also to ramp up
the kind of economic growth that is the primary cause of the non-sustainable end
state.
What our leaders have starkly demonstrated is
that non-sustainability for the time being, is so much easier to achieve than
sustainability. By failing to act, they have clearly defined what
non-sustainability is for all of us.
Now, I wonder what sustainability means?
