A Sign of Sustainability

“Sustainability: ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’”

This definition heads a poster of two hands cupping what appears to be rich black soil…with an identifiably fake, plastic-needled, fir shooting up out of it. Radiating from this “fir” are heroic sentences printed in bolded green declaring the efforts of the establishment toward sustainability. But it prompted me to notice what is promoted first, those in the present; why do our needs come first? Eventually our generation is going to pass away so what is really “sustainable” about that? If sustainability is about the future and we are becoming the past, should not our efforts be geared for those beyond us? For those that can endure into the future we will not pass into? Rather the first stated concern of this advertisement is not those coming in the future but the satisfaction of us in the present.

So on a note of “us”, what exactly are our needs? The very first definition to appear to my online search query, “define needs”, states “a condition or situation where something is required or wanted” (answers.com, “the world’s leading Q&A site ®”). “Required or wanted”. In America our excess is glaring. We “supersize”, we rent storage space, we binge spend, binge drink, binge eat, we have “unlimited” minutes, “expanded” packs, hundreds of brands titled “infinity” and still somehow or another at one point our finite selves “needed” all of those things because we “wanted” them. Have we considered what future generations will want? It likely won’t be a downgrade from our present lifestyles, so how is this pattern of continually compounded need going to be provided for? And for how long will such rapid rates of increasing desires be feasibly fulfilled? It may be interesting to note that the threat of cancer, the disease associated with cells multiplying themselves at alarming rates, is damage to the very body that sustains them. At what point do the “damages” become noteworthy and the effects alarming? Is it when the finger is hampered in its ability to bend, when the hand becomes misshapen and less functional, or the aftermath when there is little left of a hand at all? And do not think that in this entire process the remainder of the body remains unscathed. For that little extra burden then that slight compensation by the other hand and then the nearly incalculable unevenness of step as the affected arm is no longer swinging in its natural pattern, the entire body becomes altered. Perhaps over short distances the unevenness of step will not be noticed, but as I learned from a good ship captain, “a matter of a degree change in course can mean you miss the continent”, and I predict this is applicable for longevity as well.

So sustainability, looking out for ourselves and our wants assuming the future can cut back for us? It sounds a lot harsher to examine the represented intentions of the current generation in this way, particularly off a poster showing a sprout in benevolent hands. But then again, it wasn’t a real tree we were shown nurturing, it was something we manufactured as a replacement…and plastic trees aren’t alive.