IS SUSTAINABLE CLICHE...?

Is sustainable, cliché …?

Sunday – 29 June 08 ………….. A question posed in this morning’s issue of the Arizona Republic asks … is sustainable, cliché … in this moment in time and space a most perspicuous topic to contemplate…

For the last week this newspaper ran a series of reports on aspects of our state’s environment outlining those points and topics their reporter sees as paramount, requiring resolution to successfully negotiate an increasingly clouded future.

The question of whether sustainable is cliché was posed, I believe for each of us to ponder, analyze and resolve as we choose. The answer to this question defies a simple – yes – or – no, demanding instead thoughtful contemplation, time alone away from “stuff” and “things” allowing silence to dwell within.

Sustainable, I see like an octopus whose tentacles form a circle encompassing all and everything. Questions which give rise to circular thought confuse as well as anger us. We’re educated and geared to think linearly following a path which clearly leads from here to there. Pondering sustainable is clearly messy giving rise to concerns which overlap, solutions seemingly not resolvable today. Upsetting are these thoughts as they just might unlock and open each of us to question many prior paths and steps we took…?

As I look around, the notion of sustainable stares back affronting us from so many different realms. Might the notion of sustainable be attached to these…?

Discussions surrounding the current presidential race…?
The safety and quantity of our water within our state and around our globe…?
What we are putting into the air which comes back to us as rain and snow..?
How we choose to treat all of our fellow man…?
I am quite sure you can add to this list.

Sustainable, it seems incorporates all the aspects we normally associate with the universal symbol of infinity ….
It has no true beginning nor does it truly have an end. For us today, especially in America, this resonates as an enigma in our linear world. For quite clearly – sustainable – does not fit into any corporate, industrial or educational box we so dearly love to use to enable us to cleverly define controversial concepts like this one.

Individually and collectively we choke whenever the word – sustainable – manifests rears its head confronting us ‘head-on’ and leaving us no room to run, to hide. Hopefully the emotions and attitudes the word – sustainable – evokes will appeal to our ‘enlightened’ self-interest, and in the manner of an honest broker we allocate those resources available to us for the benefit of all. Honesty indicates the emotions and attitude which sustainable evoke are ones, we most likely choose to bury and turn away from.

Sustainable is cliché, it’s become aligned with our rules, laws and regulations which connotes as bad as the law allows. People - you and me – by and large want to do what’s right. This morphs into; we are only able to make decisions, based on being part of an informed market, though we live in America in a dominator culture. In an informed market environment transparency prevails granting to us honestly all the information we might need. The information reality in 2008 is based on a delivery system controlled by a corporate few. These corporate interests dominion over the disseminating reflects information which has now become mere - propaganda. Those entrenched inside this delivery systems manipulate and articulate the externalities which we most readily accept. Externalities, now there’s a word we at some time might want to discuss and contemplate.

Arizona’s stifling summer heat erases the memory of winter’s rain and snow the source of the moisture upon which we rely to support and catapult our economic growth. The shimmering heat waves rising from our roadways, parking lots and parked cars can serve to remind us of how precious water is to us. Is there a question of sustainable in this …?

To honestly own sustainability we must address the societal cost. Enter now those heretofore hidden externalities. Externalities are like locusts to sustainability, devouring everything in their path, leaving little unscathed. The safety and quantity of our water create externalities all their own. Though we do not choose to comprehend or acknowledge sustainable and externalities are inexorably intertwined and linked.

What I learned from this newspaper’s series of environmental reports is “$ustainable” in Arizona is … as bad as the law allows and do no more … where corporate bottom line trumps all and must be $erved.