Someone asked "why did you join this site". I thought about it for a while, and wrote this:
I believe that the word "sustainable" has been terribly watered down, largely by marketing departments looking to cash in on our desire not destroy the planet. Too bad: the laws of nature don't respond to greenwashing. We need to take the true meaning of "sustainable" seriously, if we want to survive.However, I am not satisfied with even full, true sustainability. Mere survival is not enough - I want a rich, joyful, connected life for all.I believe the environmental movement has made a big mistake here, harping on the convergence of crises around us today. "Global warming! Poisoned atmosphere! Genetic mutation!" - it's so scary, it's no surprise that most people run away and hide in the safety of the life that is offered to them. That life of comfort, convenience, and safey is a natural refuge when we are bombarded by prophecies of doom.I believe that a future of joy and connection with for all beings is compatible with "sustainability". We feel the pain of planetary destruction every day, and it leads to a lot of anxiety and misery in our lives as currently lived. Only a truly joyous lifestyle can be sustained!I am particularly excited about new technologies that offer true sustainability in a way that conventional technologies cannot. A perfect example is Permaculture. It doesn't require great sacrifice; in fact it offers to heal the ecosystem while producing a wide vareity of delicious, nutritious foods, with minimal energy required - the opposite of what conventional agriculture offers.And yet nothing in Permaculture is new: it does not require a quad-core CPU or genetic engineering or a jet engine. We could have invented Permaculture a century earlier, but we weren't ready yet, as a species.Today I think we are becoming ready for these new technologies. We will turn waste streams in to inputs for other systems. We will people together with each other and with nature.I hope that Sustainability.SE will be a conduit for sharing these ideas more broadly than we have before.That is why I have joined this site.
