{"id":45868,"date":"2019-05-02T07:28:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T12:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45868"},"modified":"2019-05-02T07:28:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T12:28:50","slug":"against-sustainability-and-other-plastic-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45868","title":{"rendered":"Against \u2018Sustainability\u2019 and Other Plastic Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Against \u2018Sustainability\u2019 and Other Plastic Words<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How techno-speak is robbing us of our feelings and our future.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"DanielPauly.jpg\"\/
Marine biologist Daniel Pauly of UBC: \u2018Sustainability is a deceptive goal because human harvesting of fish leads to a progressive simplification of ecosystems in favour of… fish species that are adapted to withstand disturbance and habitat degradation.\u2019 Photo source: Common Sense Canadian video interview<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The word sustainability, were it up to me, would be extinct, wiped out, kaput.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard to escape the word\u2019s tyranny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economists promise \u201csustainable economies\u201d while business types explore \u201csustainability accounting.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greens promise a \u201csustainable future,\u201d and even greener pundits swear that technology will deliver \u201cglobal sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miners promise to dig more sustainable holes and foresters propose to mow down old growth trees more sustainably. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Nations champions<\/a> \u201csustainable development goals\u201d as though SDGs were a delightful venereal disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But apparently every nation must set some SDGs, and go for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why, there are even research chairs in sustainable development at universities. And I suppose, somewhere, there are people proposing to be sustainable journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have forgotten the original meaning of sustain, which stems from the Old French sostenir<\/em>, meaning \u201chold up bear; suffer, endure.\u201d In the 14th century \u2014 a period of pestilence and famine, it meant endure without failing or yielding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As civilization collapses we are going to need that old word again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But well-intentioned greens took a word with historic meaning and turned it into plastic soup with the Brundtland report published<\/a> by the United Nations in 1987. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That document let the word loose on the world like\u00a0feral cats<\/a>\u00a0in Australia\u2019s outback by defining \u201csustainable development\u201d as \u201cdevelopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Against \u2018Sustainability\u2019 and Other Plastic Words How techno-speak is robbing us of our feelings and our future. The word sustainability, were it up to me, would be extinct, wiped out, kaput. It is hard to escape the word\u2019s tyranny.  Economists promise \u201csustainable economies\u201d while business types explore \u201csustainability accounting.\u201d  Greens promise a \u201csustainable future,\u201d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5549,5327,769,23884],"class_list":["post-45868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-language","tag-sustainability","tag-thetyee-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45869,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45868\/revisions\/45869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}