I was reading a book by Jonathan Porritt the other day and he put something in words that made me sit up and think. He stated something along the lines that "Sustainable Development" was 'living as if we were planning to have a future on this planet' (I paraphrase but it was something along those lines).

Wow. Of course that idea had been in the back of my head for ages but it was great to see somebody else takes all those little bits of ideas and fit them together for you. Of course! Ureka. A moment of perfect clarity. All this talk about "sustainability"... What do we really mean? I mean REALLY? To be sustainable just means that we live out lives AS IF we expected the Human Race to be around for the next thousand years.

The implication? Prior to the sustainable living concept we did not assume we would be around for that long. Or did we? In honesty, of course, nobody though that. In fact we just didn't THINK about IT at all. We just didn't see where it was all going. Of course, a few people did back in the 1970's but they have been broadly ignored. We have only just started to realise that we are living in an unsustainable way. All this talk about sustainability masks the fact that it is NOT some choice. You are sustainable or you have no future. Sustain or die.

So, remind me, why haven't we done anything about it?