Sustainability - Within a given ecosystem, the ability for life to thrive and reproduce while ensuring enough resources remain for present and future generations.

"There is enough on earth for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed."   - Gandhi

Human activity occupies 40 percent of earth's surface. In all of recorded history, no other species has been so dominant and had such widespread impact. Our technology allows us to reverse the flow of rivers and hold back the tides. We harness the stored energy in fossil fuels to heat our buildings and travel faster than the speed of sound. Measured in such ways, our success as a species has been unmatched. We currently enjoy the longest lifespan in our history. Increased efficiencies in farming and agriculture have allowed us to grow and raise more food in less space than ever before, freeing us from farms and allowing our cultures to flourish.

Yet as we enter the 21st century it becomes increasingly obvious that our success comes at a terrible cost. Not only to ourselves, but across the entire breadth of earth's natural systems. Anthropological studies show that our hunter-gatherer ancestors succeeded when they took care of their own immediate needs, ignoring the future, ignoring whatever was just over the horizon. But we are no longer hunter-gatherers.

In a world of more than 6.5 billion people, acting solely on self-interest is no longer a choice we have. There are no horizons far enough to protect us when industrial pollution travels global air currents halfway around the world. We are only now beginning to understand the true scope of our impact on the earth. Unless we begin to act in our own long-term interest, and in the common interest, we face nothing short of a direct threat to our survival as a species.

If we are to become better stewards of the environment, if we wish to pass on a healthy planet to our children and future generations, then it's time for change.  Anything we use, however small, can only go one of three places when we're done with it - into our soil, into our air, or into our water.  We have to recognize and value these things as the precious givers of life that they are and make better choices.

What is our place on this earth?  What legacy do we wish to leave behind?  Are we here to bend our planet's natural systems to our short-sighted desires, or are we here to find a way to live within them?  We are faced with a million things to be done, staggeringly large and forgetfully small, but all are important.  If we are to transition from a throwaway world to a sustainable world, environmental considerations must factor into the choices we make.  If future generations are to inherit a planet of clean air and water, of thriving oceans and rainforests, it will be because those of us alive now saw a vision of the future that shocked and saddened us and changed our way of living.  If our children live sustainably, it will not be because we taught them it is the best way of life, it will be because we taught them it is the only way.