Some say it's an over-used word.
Sustainability. It's just for tree hugging eco-freaks, right? It's for people out in the woods with solar hookups tending their gardens in Birkenstocks, right? What does it even mean anyway?
From "sustain":
1. To keep in existence; maintain.
2. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
3. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; prop.
4. To support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of; encourage.
To sustain something is to keep it going. To be sustainable is to keep something going, presumably forever. Sustainability is the ability to sustain.
If the way cotton is grown is unsustainable (the opposite of sustainable) it means that it cannot be grown that way forever. I'm sure OrangeClouds or someone else here can go into great detail on how cotton is grown and why it's not sustainable... suffice to say that it uses the most pesticides of any crop on earth, 300 pounds of pesticides per acre... 1 pound of pesticides to grow enough cotton to make a pair of jeans. EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
"So what?" the naysayers will counter. "It's sustainable - we've been growing cotton this way for years and we still have cotton."
Where are these chemicals mostly coming from?
Oil.
Where are they going?
75% of pesticides sprayed from cropdusters (still in wide use) drift away in the wind and never hit their intended crops.
Multiply this out. Let's say you're growing 100 acres of cotton, which is a pretty small farm. That's 30,000 pounds of pesticides. If you're spraying them from a cropduster, that's 7,500 pounds on your crops, and 22,500 pounds that go... somewhere else. Like where I live.
I'm in the middle of Stanislaus National Forest, 30 miles west of Yosemite. Pesticide drift from the farmlands of the central valley are carried up to my house on the wind, and are leading to the extinction of amphibian species here. One of these is the Red-Legged Frog, which Mark Twain wrote about in his story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (which is about 1.5 hours north of me).
And, as most people paying attention should know by now, amphibians are the world's coal-mine canaries. They are the first types of animals to be harmed by pesticides and other chemicals, such as teflon, which is now being detected in the arctic ice caps and inside of all humans across the earth, no matter how remote they may be from "civilization."
Back to "sustainability". In the short-sighted corporate "only the next financial quarter matters" world, everything's fine. But in the real world we call planet earth, using petroleum-based chemicals by the boatload to kill every living thing except the cash crop you're growing for profit is eventually going to be a fatal mistake. It cannot go on indefinitely.
It is not sustainable, especially considering how expensive these chemicals are becoming due to peak oil. Eventually, when there is no more cheap oil to be had at all, even the current level of pesticide use cannot be sustained.
Sustainability is a way of living that can be sustained indefinitely, either locally or globally.
It matters to every single living thing on this planet.
Including you.
Last weekend I gave a short talk on "10 Things You Can Do to Live More Sustainably." These are things anyone can do, no matter what their income level, no matter where they live. In fact, you can save a lot of money by living a more simple, sustainable life. You don't have to do all 10 - even one thing on this list is a step in the right direction:
* Buy Locally. Of every dollar you spend on cheap plastic crap at SprawlMart, over half (57 cents) leaves the local communityand takes the express train straight to corporate HQ. And that doesn't even take into account how huge the US trade deficit has become because of these corporate mega-stores, and how much US manufacturing has been forced out of the country to stay "competitive".
* Is this trip really necessary? Not only does gas cost you a lot more these days, but unnecessary driving around causes pollution, urbanization, and traffic wrecks. Before you hop in your H2 to get a pint of milk for tonight's dinner from the store 4 blocks away, stop and think.... can you walk there? Can you stock up instead of getting smaller, overpackaged and more expensive portions? Can you combine trips or purposefully NOT drive a few days a week?
* Turn off the TV. Not only will you shut off the constant stream of BUYBUYBUY that's shoved down your throat at maximum volume (thanks, President Reagan, for that corporate perk), but you will have TIME. Time to talk to your family. Time to read a good book (I recommend Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them). Time to take up a hobby that makes you happy. Time to exercise and take walks. Time to research issues important to you. Time to go to political meetings and help with campaigns and voter drives. I'm not saying stop watching ALL television (I recommend The Colbert Report), but at least stop suckling at its cold, hard teat so much.
* Teach your children well. Also make your kids (if you have them) turn off the TV and (gasp!) go outside. Their huge, pale eyes will take some time to adjust to the Yellow Face, and you should probably have some SPF 200 sunblock at first, but it will help them mature physically and mentally into intelligent people. Also lead by example and use your own journey into a more sustainable life as teaching moments. If you decide one day not to go into MegaBigBoxLots and are going to shop at Main Street Market instead, be sure to tell them why. Tell them no, they can't have that plastic toy cel phone from China this time because you're saving money to spend on raisins and oatmeal so you can make cookies together later.
* Reduce, reuse, recycle. Do I really need to explain this one?
* The Joneses are swimming in personal debt. Do you really want to keep up with them? I don't. We have no mortgage because we moved to my MIL's rural property and live in a singlewide we got for free, I'm paying off my one and only credit card (down to about $250), and we (unfortunately) have a large car loan that we're trying to pay down as quickly as possible. That's IT. That's ALL the credit we have, and we're trying to get rid of ALL credit completely ASAP. The Joneses can have their Shopping Channel trinkets and overpriced new kitchen cabinets. I'd rather work fewer hours and spend time with my family and doing hobbies I enjoy.
* Simplify! Stop for a moment and picture in your mind the most peaceful place you can imagine. What's there? What's NOT there? Is it a cluttered room full of George Carlin's STUFF? I didn't think so. What is all that stuff? Do you really, honestly need all that stuff? How much do you spend per month on a storage locker for the extra stuff you can't fit in your house? A fun exercise might be to cut or print out pictures of the most peaceful places you can find... places where you just want to go inside the picture and live there forever. Get rid of stuff until you have ONE room in your house that's like this, even if it's the bathroom. Then keep going.
* Grow your own, organically. Even if it's a few pots of herbs on a windowsill, you can grow your own food. It's satisfying, it takes pesticides out of your diet and the environment, and it adds life to your home. And it saves you a LOT of money! We have a very large organic garden plot full of potatoes, carrots, beans, pumpkins, corn, strawberries, onions, and loads of other stuff. We plan to increase this manyfold next year and be almost entirely self-sufficient (except a few things like chocolate, coffee, wheat flour, cane sugar, salt, spices, etc.). Even if you can't be this ambitious, just plant a few lettuce seeds in a window box... put a dwarf peach in a pot on your patio... take out a little bit of lawn and grow green beans... it's not hard. If you think you have a brown thumb, think again - food plants follow a pretty simple formula. Get a beginner's veggie/fruit/herb growing book and follow the directions carefully. If you need more advice, such as which varieties to plant, contact your local Department of Agriculture's Cooperative Extension which exists to help home gardeners succeed.
* Think about where everything comes from and where it goes. Meat is not a mysterious pink substance that comes from a styrofoam tray. Milk does not come from the milk faucet. The stuff in your house that says "Made in China" did not originally come from the store you bought it from. Who made these things? How were the animals treated that made your meat or milk? Where will your plastic yogurt container go when you throw it "away"? Where is "away"?
* Be willing to change your habits. This is the most important one of all. You have to not just think about these things, you have to act. Even if it means changing ONE thing this month, give it a try. Put a vase of flowers from your yard on your bathroom counter. Bake some bread. Stop driving to the store for your dinner ingredients every night - plan ahead for the week instead. Instead of zoning out in front of the boob tube watching some pointless and badly written sitcom, go to the library and get a nice coffee-table book on a subject you love. Take up a craft. Call a friend or someone in your family. Invite them over for a potluck (I'm big on potlucks). Go to a community event. Take a walk in the park.
Live sustainably. It really does matter.