"Sustainability." That word gets thrown around so much today. What does it really even mean? According to Wikipedia, sustainability is "1) The capacity to endure. 2) The ability of biological systems to remain diverse and productive over time. 3) The potential of long-term maintenance of [human] well-being in environmental, economic and social dimensions."
This month's CSA news from the Crop and Soil Science societies of America is entitled "Sustainability: Learning the lessons of past civilizations." There is a drawing of the iconic Easter island statues on the cover. Easter Island has become the poster child of unsustainable human activity - deforestation, soil degradation, over population. UCLA geography professor Jared Diamond has written a book called "Collapse: How Societies Fail or Succeed." At the 2010 tri-societies meeting in Long Beach, he used the Easter Islanders as an example of the kind of damage we are doing to our planet with massive deforestation, over population and un-sustainable agricultural practices. He issued the warning that once we destroy this planet, we will have no where else to go.
