Moving Beyond Sustainability

In a general sense, sustainability is essential, but it is not sufficient. If being sustainable just means being persistent, this is a pretty low bar, though even that seems difficult for most enterprises. (In fact, the average life span for U.S. companies is just around 15 years.)

And let’s face it: much of what passes for sustainability in modern corporations is really an attempt to preserve our ability to plunder the Earth. As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes, sustainability is about being able to keep on taking, as opposed to giving and receiving in a way that’s appropriate. 

The world around us is an extended conversation between “upward spirals”—nature in regenerative, procreative modes—and downward spirals toward entropy and disintegration. As nature refreshes and rebuilds, the downward spirals are overcome. Nature’s process becomes the process of replenishing hope.

— Book cover blurb for Paul Krafel’s Seeing Nature (2008)