The Sustainability Generation

The advent of a “Sustainability Generation” is about finding greater balance to empower people to be good critical thinkers and tinkerers capable of building a new economy. This cannot be accomplished through petty political positioning, but instead requires grounded, innovative, and pragmatic approaches to meet the needs of the present by defining and pursuing common priorities and goals. This means short-term action and long-term thinking from all facets of society—young and old, Republican and Democrat, rich and poor.
Personal, generational and societal accountability is essential as the ideas of the Sustainability Generation become established in our local communities, governments, and economy.

Too often we look to external sources of fault as we reason our way through the chaos. But eventually this is fleeting and destructive. Change begins with us, as consumers, parents, working professionals, and citizens. The gift we have is life in and of itself. What and how we choose to use that gift is our ultimate challenge to reconcile within and among ourselves.

Much the way it takes a village to raise a family, it will take a collaborative global approach to achieve sustainability

right to own a car and the right to pollute the environment through combustion of fossil fuels are thought of as two different things by most consumers. Ask someone if she or he has the right to own and drive a car and the person will say a resounding YES! Ask that same individual if people have a right to burn twenty gallons of gas in an open pit, just because they can and the answers might be different.

unrealistic and fevered optimism to over-speculate in the stock market.

Alan Greenspan termed “Irrational Exuberance,” an un

there is a moment when watching the clock simply doesn’t matter anymore. It as if you enter a new phase of time, like just before takeoff. Sometimes when I fly, just before takeoff and right before the plane hits maximum altitude, I experience a moment of letting go. A self-awareness and realization that the moment, as much as I’d love to control it, has very little to do with me other than my being a participant as a passenger and observer of it. So all we can do, really, is to relax and try to enjoy these life moments.

there is a moment when watching the clock simply doesn’t matter anymore. It as if you enter a new phase of time, like just before takeoff. Sometimes when I fly, just before takeoff and right before the plane hits maximum altitude, I experience a moment of letting go. A self-awareness and realization that the moment, as much as I’d love to control it, has very little to do with me other than my being a participant as a passenger and observer of it. So all we can do, really, is to relax and try to enjoy these life moments.

However, somehow in human existence, and particularly in the past century of our evolution, we have shifted our notion of survival to an extreme. We now burn a proverbial candle at both ends of the stick. On one end, developed countries represent highly consumptive behaviors. On another end, growing populations, particularly in the poorest regions of the world, suffer from a lack of sufficient food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention.

While the threat and acts of terrorism, health epidemics, environmental pollution, and economic woes are not new with our generation, these issues are becoming more prevalent and cascading. With more than seven billion people now on the planet there is much greater potential for economic and environmental chaos that can directly affect us as humans. We don’t have just one or two major issues to address as a society. We have hundreds of small issues that if not monitored, analyzed, remediated, or acted upon can become big issues very quickly.