If a system is "sustainable," it has the capacity to remain viable, or alive, indefinitely.
So, who wants to live that long? Well, how about your grandkids? Do you care if the future is as generous to our offspring as it has been to us?
If the human species does not begin, and continue, to treat the Earth as though it is a gift of finite blessings, our species will revert to living as cave creatures, or go extinct, in just a few generations.
We don't need to detonate nuclear bombs to be reduced to stupid mammal status; all we have to do to ensure a dreadful future is to (continue to) treat the Earth as though its blessings are unlimited; live carelessly, let the future take care of itself.
Letting the future take care if itself will not affect the physical planet Earth much; but it will reduce us to mindless scavenging brutes, those of us who survive.
Natural gas and petroleum are both finite resources. We cannot use these precious resources slowly enough to give them time to replenish. We have to find a replacement for these energy sources or live with much reduced electric power.
Wild salmon, trout, tuna, swordfish are all endangered species. Unless we pull back from our current levels of consumption of these sea creatures, we will drive them to extinction within one generation. Replacing them with ranch-bred versions brings with it unknown consequences which may include cancer and heart disease. Ask a trout fisherman if he'd eat ranch-grown trout. Ask him why not. Be prepared for an angry response.
Reducing all wild predators to zoo creatures is as good a sign as any that we are prepared to live as tamed, controlled animals.
Clean air is not our birthright. If we keep on the track we're on, we will breathe from oxygen tanks.
Clean water is not our birthright. If we keep on the track we're on, we will all drink bottled water. Hey, don't we do that already?
Forests are the planet's lungs; they produce the oxygen we breathe. If we clear-cut forests to keep up with a growing human population, oxygen breathing organisms, like humans and animals, will find it difficult to survive.
If we allow Global Warming to keep on, the ice flows in the Arctic will melt and the ocean levels will rise 20 feet.
Sustainable living, forever, is possible; indeed, it ought to be fairly easy, if we are careful how quickly we consume the planet's renewable resources. But, it will and it must involve regulation, an ugly word in today's climate of freedom without responsibility. Curiously enough, it is bankers who use the tool that will allow us to calculate just how much salmon we can fish without reducing their numbers, or even increasing their numbers for a growing human population. It is the mortgage formula that makes such magic possible.
Consider a $100,000 mortgage:
a 20 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $760 / month;
a 25 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $700 / month;
a 30 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $660 / month;
a 40 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $615 / month;
a 50 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $598 / month;
a 60 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $588 / month;
a 70 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $584 / month;
a 80 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $582 / month;
a 90 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $581 / month;
a 100 year mortgage with an APR of 7% would cost the homeowner about $580 / month.
As you can see, banks love long mortgages as they get to see nearly as large a monthly payment as if the mortgage term were a little bit shorter! Look at these numbers again until the idea sinks in.
On the other hand, if you want to pay even less than you would have to pay for a 100 year mortgage, for example if you wanted to pay $575 / month, you would never ever ever own your own home! The bank's equity would remain the same (100%) (or increase!) as when you bought your home. No matter how long you paid, you'd still owe the bank $100,000 (or more) in order to close out the mortgage and own your house outright!!!
So how does this interesting exercise in mortgage calculations relate to sustainability of limited (but renewable) planetary resources, and thence to sustainabilty?
If we could assume that the number of salmon in the oceans were 100,000 and that their reproductive growth was 7% / year, and that fishers fished once per month, if they caught 760 salmon / month, salmon would become completely extinct in 20 years.
If we could assume that the number of salmon in the oceans were 100,000 and that their reproductive growth was 7% / year, and that fishers fished once per month, if they caught 700 salmon / month, salmon would become completely extinct in 25 years.
If we could assume that the number of salmon in the oceans were 100,000 and that their reproductive growth was 7% / year, and that fishers fished once per month, if they caught 660 salmon / month, salmon would become completely extinct in 30 years.
If we could assume that the number of salmon in the oceans were 100,000 and that their reproductive growth was 7% / year, and that fishers fished once per month, if they caught 615 salmon / month, salmon would become completely extinct in 40 years.
If we could assume that the number of salmon in the oceans were 100,000 and that their reproductive growth was 7% / year, and that fishers fished once per month, if they caught 575 salmon / month, salmon would never become completely extinct!!!
In other words, if salmon reproduced at the rate of 7% / year, etc., etc., they will become extinct real soon now. But if we limited our kill to 75% of the numbers that would lead to extinction in 20 years, they'd live on to our delight for forever!
Now consider 1,000,000 members of a consumable species:
20 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 15,200 / month;
25 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,940 / month;
30 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,850 / month;
40 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,795 / month;
50 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,770 / month;
60 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,780 / month;
70 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,780- / month;
80 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,780-- / month;
90 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,780---/ month;
100 years to extinction of a species with a reproductive rate of 18% would be accomplished by a kill of 14,767+ / month.
What these new calculations show, compared to the mortgage calculations at 7%APR, is that when a species reproductive rate is higher than 7% / year, the amount of cutback on consumption to achieve species sustainability is incredibly nominal; in other words, very little human sacrifice at all is needed for sustainability; but careful monitoring is needed to enforce that small "sacrifice."
For our purposes, I chose salmon as my example of a renewable food-source. As with all real-life examples, things are not as simple as I have drawn them. There are dozens | hundreds of salmon species; salmon live anywhere from two to eight years (human intervention notwithstanding); they spawn once and then they die (?); they produce thousands of offspring; and they are also raised outside of the wild in hatcheries.
Here, from Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2005, Salmon:
In the United States, wild Atlantic and Pacific salmon populations are severely threatened. In particular, the drastic decline of wild Pacific salmon populations has raised alarm and become one of the most important conservation issues in the Pacific Northwest. Less than 2 percent of the wild salmon population of the Columbia River Basin (including parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and British Columbia) remains and only one individual sockeye salmon returned to the Snake River in Idaho in 1994. Coho salmon in the Snake River have been declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as have 106 other salmon populations on the West Coast.
Many factors are responsible for this dramatic decline. The construction of dams on rivers interferes with both upstream and downstream migration of salmon—15 to 30 percent of young salmon die at each dam as they migrate down river. Urban and suburban development has destroyed much salmon spawning habitat, and withdrawal of water from rivers for irrigation or for industrial or municipal use sometimes leaves too little water for fish. Finally, logging and agriculture near waterways lead to erosion, siltation (the clouding of waterways with fine soil), toxic runoff, and high water temperatures, all of which interfere with salmon spawning and migration.
The decline of salmon populations is uniting environmentalists and fishers with industries that extract natural resources, such as hydroelectricity, timber, and water, to find a compromise that saves both the wild salmon populations and the fishing industries that depend on the species’ continued health. Efforts to protect salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest include constructing fish ladders to enable mature salmon traveling upstream to get around dams; barging or trucking young salmon around dams; reducing industrial and agricultural water withdrawals from river systems; prohibiting logging near streams or rivers; dramatically limiting salmon fishing seasons; restoration projects to improve degraded habitat; and increasing water flow, or spillage, through hydroelectric dams.
Since the late 1980s, the federal government has declared a number of salmon populations along the West Coast as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). By the late 1990s, 14 salmon populations were protected by the ESA. Some of these protected populations live in the metropolitan areas of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon, marking the first time the ESA has been broadly applied to large urban areas. Salmon conservation efforts are expected to intensify as local and state governments work with federal agencies to develop plans to recover wild salmon populations.
So shoving salmon into a mortgage formula is a bit of nonsense.
But the idea IS valid.
If we treat the animal and vegetable world with some respect and some restraint on our consumption of it, we will be able to live forever enjoying those things that we enjoy today, and more.
If we are careless of our fellow-creatures, we will doom them, and ourselves, as surely as by dropping H-bombs on our own cities one at a time.
The idea of sustainability demands only a small sacrifice: cutback on unchecked consumption by just a little and live forever; or live recklessly and damn your children to a life of scarcity.
ZPG
Sprawl
conservation vs development
diversity
habitat
types of damage, acid rain, air, water, thermal pollution, greenhouse effect, hazardous wastes, oil spill, radioactive fallout,
global warming
ecosystem
cleanup & waste
industry (lumber, mining, packaging, technology)
stewardship, regulation, dominion,
wild lands, environment,
automobiles, ozone hole, waste, deforestation, swelling cities, urban sprawl, degraded lands, coral crisis, fish farms, sea levels, toxic chemicals, oceans, extinction of forests, warming, CO2 pollution
Sustainability of: Health, Nutrition, Literacy; Energy & Minerals; Food & Forests; Economy; Conflict & Terrorism; Cultures; Population.