On behalf of Paul Harris:

“If people are left to their own devices, there is little incentive to ‘do the right thing’, thus alleviating any broad-scale threat, and often much reason to ignore the threat altogether.”

I think this reveals a fundamental flaw in thinking and advice from experts. Why is there little incentive? All the evidence shows that living simpler lives, consuming less “stuff” and spending more time socializing is what makes people happier and healthier. Aren’t health and happiness incentives? What’s more important? To be sure, looking at the problem this way doesn’t fit the obsession with economic growth, but it can lead to growth in happiness that is far less harmful to the environment. If even experts don’t see this, can’t escape the consume-to-grow paradigm themselves, how can we possibly expect everyone else to do it? Maybe what is necessary is to first get the environmental experts to change the way they live, individually, and then to advocate for this — rather than expecting governments, which are locked into the growth model, to solve provide solutions. (Of course we need governments, too.)

-Paul Harris

On behalf of Tim Hicks:

I find myself questioning the concept of sustainability as a state in which we have existed in the past and that we have somehow lost. It is, rather, perhaps the case that humans have never lived sustainably but have always drawn from the resource bank account at a rate greater than renewal. The problem has only become starkly apparent at this point in history when the account balance, so large to begin with, has become sufficiently depleted.

If this is the case, then we will find ourselves barking up the wrong tree looking for answers to the problem with an inaccurate perception of the situation as it is and its causes. In this understanding, sustainability is not under threat. Sustainable behavior, in this understanding, has never been a species characteristic over the course of millennia. With this understanding, that we have begun to see the consequences of our millennial-old patterns of behavior during the past and brief 60 or so years and have not changed those behaviors is not cause for surprise.

Within the system we call “nature”, unsustainable behavior is “corrected” by definition. The point beyond the availability of continued deficit “cash flow” (resource contribution) is limiting. The behavior must end, typically with a reduction of population.

We seek an alternative to the systemic governor. That is, we seek an internal adjustment to patterns of behavior that have been species defining. Not an easy shift. Such an adjustment will require incentives and structural constraints. Those in positions to institute effective incentives and constraints will have to perceive and believe, or, ultimately, experience the problem as worse than the solution, the alternative to action as worse than the remedy. It appears that we haven’t quite reached that point, though the equation is daily being recalculated. Efforts are being made. This is not a turn-on-a-dime circumstance, even as the point of no-return bankruptcy (however that is defined and might look) presses upon us.

Some research suggests that more information is not sufficient or effective. Decision makers face economic and political pressures that counter bold and wise action. Individual and group actors behave in response to perceived self-interest, geographically and temporally local. Nevertheless, more information and continuing educational efforts seem necessary. All efforts to shift humanity’s behavioral patterns will contribute to whatever change will happen as the future unfolds. Of this we must be confident, even though efforts to date seem to have led to insufficient change. (Better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right.) But, it seems to me important that we face the truth of our behavior from earliest times. The primary thrust of human behavior, whatever exceptions might be identified, has always been to live beyond sustainability, with, until so very recently, the extravagant means to do so. Is there any meaningful difference, in this regard, between early pottery industry kilns and modern coal-fired power plants? If we mislead ourselves into believing that the solution is easier or more obvious than it is, we may make it more difficult to achieve the solution we seek.

-Tim Hicks

On behalf of Jenny Goldie:

Congratulations on this excellent initiative i.e. Sustainability Central. I hope that resource depletion will be central to its thinking, along with population, affluence and technology. At the recent Fenner Conference in Canberra, we not only heard about peak oil, but peak mining. The only way supplies are being maintained of some minerals, such as copper, is by digging deeper and wider but the point of diminishing returns is not far off as the energy and water required for extraction are ever greater. Peak Energy will probably hit around 2017. This has to be central to the whole issue of sustainability if we are to retain any semblance of civilisation.

-Jenny Goldie

On behalf of Tamra Engelhorn Raven:

Sustainable development is local. Humans are selfish. Buffering climate change can only be done locally. See #10km3x2 imagine #opendata #global #citizenscience #K12 #educategirls.
See GEOCODED SPATIAL TRANSPARENT METRIC global metric for the Anthropocene
Map fires, carbon, water, EID, #VAW ( http://youtu.be/wz8craTfLz0 )
NEW LOCAL METRC 10km3x2
1/2:SEVEN=3.5billion<25years old think #YOUTH
http://youtu.be/QI0XTbT7hM0
VEGETATION BIODEPTH
http://youtu.be/-Bbh_gAs5pU
VERIFICATION CBD UNFCCC UNCLOS POPs.
http://youtu.be/6rDIjXNTSkc
SHIFT EXPOENTIAL TIMES
http://youtu.be/kFOPGilwiB4

-Tamra Engelhorn Raven

On behalf of Maria Cohen:

The environmental discourse today is about climate change and Sustainability : full of managerial expressions :stakeholders, mission, civil society, and others, which confuse a rather simple issue.
“Health Sustainability”,or Famine or any other problem named in this otherwise informed article are to be traceabled to a growing population.
The “threats to sustainability are not being adequately dealt with.” Of corse they ARE NOT, if the “lack of sufficient response……is resulting almost entirely from human activities” , but ignores the fact that these human activities are multiplied by the number of the People , no matter what their behaviour .
We should instead reflect on the words of WWF’s co-founder, Sir Peter Scott, on a visit to an elephant project in Zambia: “You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms.”

-Maria Cohan