• The term 'sustainability' can be traced back to the late 1980's.
• Before that time many of us talked about "Alternative Technology".
• 'Alternative' to what?
• The idea sounds strange to us, nowadays.
• It was borne out of a divided world that polarised capitalism and socialism.
• For many, the idea of 'alternative' (e.g. 'Alternative Technology') had positive political and economic overtones.
• In 1983, the British Ecological Party renamed itself as Green Party and gained an impressive 14.9% of the vote.
• Everybody wanted to be 'green'.
• Only after a year or two did some of its members begin to realise how different their respective political views were.Sustainabie Development
• Similarly, just before the end of the Cold War, the (1987) Brundtland Report popularised the notion of 'sustainability'.
• Economic development for the poorer nations needed to be squared with Capitalism's vision of endless growth.
• (...oh yes, and with a concern for the environment.)
• In this sense 'sustainability' is difficult to separate from the rise of globalisation.
• After a while we began to use the word in its own right...as though it was clear and simple..The idea of sustainability
• Arguably, most things are interdependent and non-linear.
• It may therefore be dangerous to think of 'sustainability' as a simple idea.
• When we try to explain something using a basic logic of cause and effect, we may soon find it limited.
• We may realise that it is better to analyse many different things in relation to one another.'Sustaining' may mean either integrating or prolonging
• We are inclined to forget that there is both a temporal and a non-temporal meaning for the verb 'to sustain'.
• Arguably, we usually assume that sustainability refers to the making permanent of our existing lifestyle and status quo.
• Yet even this instrumentalist, or technological mode of thinking is insufficient to explain how things work.
• Often the direction of causation is unclear. What we assume to be cause and effect are usually co-creative.
• Whereas the syntax of sustainability is linear and causal, ecology itself is emergent and manifold.
• The verb to 'sustain' is transitive, and implies that there is clear distinction between subject and predicate.
• What difference is there between 'something that sustains', and 'something that is sustained'?