The environment is among some of the top issues to be looked upon by the human population in the world today. Sustainability is a word often times used when speaking of this subject. This is a concept represented in the articles “Sustainability” by Christian R. Weisser and “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” by Robert Paarlberg. Each author addresses the issue in different ways; one giving examples of this issue and the other clearly defining it. Each author is writing to spread awareness of this issue. As overlapping topics, each article has similarities and differences to the other.
Population is a major reason as to why sustainability is important. This is an argument brought up in both articles. As our population grows, we must continue to have resources and food, which is stated nicely by Weisser in “Sustainability”:
“Many current discussions about sustainability focus on the ways in which human activity...can be maintained in the future without exhausting all of our current resources… there has been a close correlation between the growth of human society and environmental degradation - as communities grow, the environment often declines” (603).
Weisser explicitly shows that people are trying to figure out ways to help to sustain the environment while the human population grows. Humans do harm to the environment and sustainability is one way to help lessen that harm. Population growth not only harms the environment, however. In “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” it is
Sustainability is currently a global concern. In recent years scientists have publicised theories that the Earth will not be able to cope with the exponential growth of pollution and resource consumption.
At this point and time sustainability is just an idea. The human race has no intent on using just enough resources to live. We like to go above and beyond and we like to have the best.
One focus in the sustainability debate is the impact that we humans have on this planet including overpopulation. Lowering the population is important in sustainability. With a smaller population we use less
Sustainability is defined as the ability to endure.(1) Though the idea of sustainability can be applied to most anything from a sustainable ecosystem that has survived thousands of years to a sustainable workplace that uses green technologies. Paul Hawken captured today’s connotation of sustainability in saying “Sustainability is about stabilizing the currently disruptive relationship between earth’s two most complex systems—human culture and the living world.” (2) There are countless ways to live, work, and produce sustainably. Sustainability not only needs to be practiced by citizens, but businesses need to join the green movement as well. Without creating, following, and enforcing green policies, negative effects will be evident and innumerable
Governments, environmental agencies, and corporations alike have utilized the term “sustainability” in order to convey their respective agendas for general sustainability in environmental, social, and economic realms. In spite of their initiatives, there has yet to be a generally agreed upon, uniform definition for “sustainability.” This lack of semantic clarity has promoted skepticism among some parties, skepticism primarily focused in the legitimacy of sustainability agendas, as well as the idea of sustainability in itself (Context & Development, 1992). This essay seeks to inspect the concepts of sustainability generated by two
In Section 1 of Simon Nicholson and Paul Wapner’s text, Species Unbound: Humanity’s Environmental Impact, the authors bring significant insights into how humanity is producing a negative impact on the environment. Partly because “seven billion people” coupled with an ever-growing population are consuming scarce resources such as wood for paper/furniture etc. at rates faster than regeneration which is leading to resource depletion (Nicholson and Wapner 2015, 9-10). Furthermore, other key sustainability challenges are climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels and biodiversity loss, to name a few. Thus, humans are a negative impact on the environment in terms of not sustaining the Earth's resources, life, climate, and so forth. Since this effect on the environment is so profound some believe we are living in the Anthropocene- in which humans have become the central force in reigning supremacy over earth’s changing environmental conditions and resource depletion (11-12). The author’s claim that one way in which humans are altering the
It is extremely important for the modern day economy to remain sustainable. Sustainability is a process that continuously supports the economic systems that currently exist. This also There are four main opponents that are against sustainability: depletions, pollution, population, and migration. These four properties can be extremely harmful against the economy, which results in extremely large issues for whatever country has these problems that become a reoccurrence. In this summary essay, there is going to be a breakdown of the four main opponents that are against sustainability and why they are relevant to the world today.
Sustainability is not a temporary requirement of the ecology .Its permanent necessity of ecology .
For me sustainability is like a family house. Since I was a baby I have known that I have to take care of it, that I have to keep it alive, just like I have to take care of the community and its surroundings. To some extent, over the years the sole fact of its existence became something obvious, something that simply has to be present. However, simultaneously, every day, I am learning that there is always something more to do, to improve the current state. For example, just like fixing a faulty roof, lately our community improved the heating system in our neighborhood – we managed to convince the board to switch from gas-based to solar-based one. Not much later we’ve gathered enough money to build new bike lanes, then to introduce new bus line,
The word ‘sustainability’ has always inspired many ongoing debates among leaders, philosophers, researchers etc. These days it has become more like a stamp of approval.
As a short answer, sustainability means to me as the endurance capacity of an environment (what may be a city, a forest, or even the world itself) stays “alive” and productive for attending the needs of beings. Looking at this question from a different way, sustainability brings to my mind a lot of issues, but all of them related to humans. This relation comes to my mind because when I imagine a world without humans the sustainability will not be an issue to worry about. I’m not saying that the world will not have environment problems, but the point is that the nature will be balanced or balancing, as I think.
Scherer discusses in his article various problems related to sustainability when we make decisions based on choices, lifestyle or reusability and substitutability of resources. He further says that sustainability of any energy choice depends on its availability as it depends on rate of renewability. Any energy choice is sustainable if that can be chosen as a choice continually and indefinitely. So in short, if the rate of consumption is more than the rate of availability of the resource, that that energy choice would no longer be sustainable. Consider the example of Biomass as energy choice. If we call it a sustainable energy source, we expect it to be always available as a choice to us and to future generations. But, with increasing population,
In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus was ahead of his time. Malthus, an English economist and demographer, brought to life his theory on how an over-populated planet would not be able to provide for those who reside on it (Macionis, 2013 p .635). Although Malthus was an economic pessimist, he brought to light a very real truth. Now, 218 years later, Malthus’s theory has in some way become a reality. Although rich nations have slowed in regards to reproduction, poor nations continue to have high birth rates which put a strain on the global aspects of the environment. As our planet now holds over 7 billion people (US Census Bureau, 2016), scientists, economists, and environmentalist’s struggle to find a solution to our “growing” problem.
In today’s society there are many economic problems, such as pollution, global warming, and overpopulation. These problems have taken a toll on the environment, and its resources. Although all of these issues have an impact on our society, overpopulation stands to have the greatest impact on our environment, due to the large masses of people and the limited resources. There are many solutions to this problem but the common factor is the human race. The human race has to put controls in place and take care of the environment, so the required resources do not become extinct.
Over the course of the past few decades, humans have truly started to understand and study issues that threaten our environment in great depth. Modern environmental sustainability is defined as “the link between the health of nature and society, population growth, distribution of wealth and the combined approach to development, equity and conservation not new to social and environmental policy” (Oiamo 23). The definition of sustainability has transformed over time along with our knowledge and continually evolving understanding of the word. Sustainable development is a process that goes hand in hand with sustainability, however the definition is widely deliberated. Nonetheless, the most accepted definition was coined from the Brundtland Report in 1987 is “development that meets the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (Oiamo 28). Succinctly, sustainable development is only using the essentials needed to preserve ourselves as of right now, and nothing more. What lead to this present-day concept of environmentalism and sustainability were economic, environmental and social shifts prior to the 1970s.These are known as the three pillars of sustainability and were contrived by environmentalists such as Ebenezer Howard and Rachel Carson.