It's Only an Environmental Thing!

And to further cloud our view, the discussion of sustainability is often driven by environmental (ecologic) viewpoints, usually at the irritation of skeptics. Why does environment play so strongly in our sustainable future? Because the socio-economic spheres are inside of the ecosphere, there is no economy outside of society!

Think about it -- we are the only inhabitants of the planet who have strained its resource so critically. Most species of plants and animals have built-in controls. They don't truly have an economy that they must continually grow. Their supply of food limits their expansion, and if they become overburdened, their numbers suffer. Since most life forms are somewhere on the food chain, they often are rescued by predators that help to regulate their population, influenced by the many coincidences that shape their lives.

Not so with humans. Human populations through history always tended to outgrow subsistence, so disease and famine in the past would even things out. Technology and the growth of cities, however, have thwarted this pattern of balance. Ultimately our present population could become stable by increasing the death rate beyond the human birth rate. This seems to most people, however, to be an untenable solution! Instead, we must begin assuming the stance that humans will always be affected by their surrounding environment, natural or artificial. Envision a series of circles, where the economy circle lies inside the society circle, and both these lie inside the environment circle (Figure). Once we understand this hierarchy, sustainability begins to become more clear.

Thus, sustainable development must always consider environmental change, because in the co-evolution of human and natural systems, humans are directly related to and affected by the environment around them. Changes in the human system and its support system, and changes imposed upon humans by the environmental system, must be slower than corresponding adaptation processes in the human system and the natural system it depends upon.

For example, global change reminds us that the economy is embedded in the ecosphere, and human life is dependent on the maintenance of ecological life-support. Consider all the press now about world climate change and potential resulting dangerous economic and social impacts. If weather and global climate significantly change faster than life can adapt, major extinctions will occur, as when the dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth. Likewise, if changes in our environment affect our climate, evidence suggests these climate alterations will for example, impact coastal cities with flooding, change the makeup of whole bio-regions around the world, and directly affect the economies and comforts of society. This consideration for the well-being of all life is not only extended for those to enjoy in today's world, but for future generations as well.