Really Sustainable

>The most abused word of the year: sustainable. Tall glass buildings with a windmill on top: sustainable. Small fields that noone will ever plow in the middle of a city: sustainable. A rotating tower with solar cells in shadow: sustainable. It’s all so fucking sustainable you start to wonder what’s not.

Real sustainability requires sacrifice. Take it seriously, please. The oil will run out. No more cheap energy. Bottom line: we need to cut back on energy use. Easy things first: stop making war machines. Stop producing consumer goods. Reduce size of buildings, we have way more living area than we need.

Now the hard things: Introduce birth control. 6 billion and growing exponentially is not sustainable. Everyone needs to go vegetarian. Reuse old clothes. Introduce a law that makes picking up hitchhikers mandatory – share cars. Share computers. Make everything electronic – no books, no dvd’s, no game consoles.

This might happen automatically if oil runs out and energy becomes really expensive. Or maybe war will happen.

Sustainable = Efficient. A cheap car, mass produced, spare parts available, easily repaired is more sustainable. Mass production is more sustainable. Russian-style grey clothes with grey buildings in a grey world is sustainable.