The Ecological Citizen: Confronting human supremacy
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What is sustainability? (A definition)
Sustainable means the ability to continue forever. That the Earth's inputs will be forever available as will be the Earth's ability to absorb the outputs in perpetuity and neither of these capacities will be diminished as time passes.
Strictly speaking ecocentrism ensures that all life, and the Earth's ecosystems, are included in the definitions of that which is to be left undiminished.
If a process is sustainable, its inputs it will not result in clearcut forests, polluted rivers, oceanic dead areas or huge loss of life, and its processes will not result in persistent toxins. Rivers will still flow as they have in times past. Its outputs will not be toxic or disruptive, and will not exceed the ability of whatever processes are relied upon to recycle or neutralize them.
Few, if any, of human activities are sustainable as shown by the above analysis. Fortunately, it would be relatively easy to make many activities more so. For instance, it would be easy to use much less plastic, and a deposit system could easily be used to keep it out of the environment.
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