"I hate that word, 'sustainability' because what does it mean? Why is it so hard to say?"
I hear this often. Sustainability is simply you never take more than you can put back. Or, more than the system can generate before the next time you take from it. But perhaps what we really need, is a new word, one that's easy and fun to say, one that suggests human interaction with a complex, dynamic, all-inclusive environment. I like the suffix "-osphere" because it conjures up that aspect of universality. What's the main word then? I looked up Ancient Greek for "forever," "continual," "always," "renew" and got "aei," and "ananeoo." So from those parts, I can build these words:
aeiosphere (You just have to say that one outloud)
ananosphere
aeiananeoosphere
"Ananosphere" is probably the best, especially since the Sanskrit word "ananda" means "ever new joy." I suppose I could shorten it to "Anosphere," since that suggests a cycle (año, annual).
I'll keep working on this. I think the sustainability movement does need a word, and maybe it's my task to come up with it. Maybe the word is Ernest Callenbach's "Ecotopia."
you know which sustainability words bother me? conservation and preservation. Conserving resources is good, but being a conservationist is lame. In Urban Planning we learned that the Conservationists, as a group, plan to leave nature intact to store it for later commercial use, and to take supplies from nature but let it replenish itse;f. The Preservationists are the really hardcore ones! They think that nature is nature so why can't it be off limits to the public who would ruin each tree? That was lame. I'm sorry.
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