There are three key principles: first, we must maintain or improve the air, water and soil quality; second, we must assure the completion of natural cycles; and third, we must use resources equitably and efficiently.
We put a lot of effort toward ensuring the quality of the food we eat. But consider, we can survive a month without food and only three days without water, but without oxygen we can only survive for three minutes. Oxygen is arguably the most precious resource on earth, yet we take it for granted.
In the first six months of life, an infant converts about 400 cubic feet of oxygen to carbon dioxide. Burning one gallon of gasoline uses approximately the same 400 cubic feet of oxygen, but the exhaust created contains many toxic gases that can't be assimilated in the environment. When we use the oxygen in combustion, we disrupt the cycle and compromise the quality of the air. When we breathe we are participating with the earth's plant life in a cycle that includes photosynthesis and respiration in a process that maintains the balance that makes life possible.
A sustainable lifestyle has to incorporate an understanding of the importance of completing natural cycles. For instance, human waste is a nutrient when buried in the soil, but when introduced into streams, lakes and oceans, it becomes a pollutant that disrupts the natural cycle. It's even worse with the fertilizers and poisons that we use on agricultural lands that leach into streams.
The word "waste" shouldn't even be part of our vocabulary. The concept of completing cycles precludes producing things that create waste. If it's not a nutrient, if it doesn't fit into a cycle, we shouldn't produce it. Reduce, reuse and recycle are hollow words if we don't practice them. We need to go way beyond plastic bottles to every manufactured product we use.
As for the third principle, understanding what equity means as it relates to sustainability requires some history. Both the oxygen that makes life possible and the resources that fueled the industrial revolution developed on earth over billions of years, yet we are depleting those resources in a matter of centuries or even decades. Sustainability implies intergenerational equity, which means that the earth's supply of resources should last until the sun burns out, some 5.5 billion years from now. At our present rate of use, petroleum resources will probably run out early in the coming century.
It all starts with the individual. Even the most environmentally sensitive people will get in their carsÑoften the gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUVs)Ñand drive for miles and miles without thinking of the environmental cost. Cars are extremely inefficient, considering the amount of fuel they consume, the embodied energy that goes into their manufacture and the infrastructure that supports their use. Burning a gallon of gasoline uses up 150,000 BTUs of energy. A car that gets 15 miles to the gallon uses about a million BTUs to go a hundred miles. Contrast that with the efficiency of a human being. We consume a net of about 2 BTUs of food energy a day. On that amount of energy we can walk 30 miles or ride a bike about 100 miles. Which means that people are half a million times more efficient than cars in converting fuel into mobility.
Unfortunately, the layout of our existing communities often does not support pedestrians or bicyclists. We need to plan communities around people, not cars, and we can do so using existing alternatives.
An enclosed ultra-light rail pedal-electric car offers a virtually frictionless mode of transportation between communities. An 8' wide, raised, two-directional rail system could carry as many people as 24 lanes of freeway and leave the ground undisturbed for wildlife corridors and agriculture. The other wonderful thing about rail is that you don't have to pay attention to the road, which leaves your mind and hands free. Constructing 24 lanes of freeway, weighing 130,000 pounds per linear foot, is an unconscionable use of resources when compared to the 150 pounds per linear foot of a raised ultra-light rail system.
Sustainability requires that we learn how to tap the virtually unlimited but dispersed energy that we get from the sun. More energy strikes the earth from the sun every day than the amount of energy available from the earth's entire petroleum resource, but we design our buildings to work from a utility grid that provides power from non-renewable sources. In addition, there are tremendous losses in transmission and distribution of electricity. We need to consider solar access when we do our planning, to build our shelter on south slopes, leaving the north slopes for forest and open space. If we orient our buildings toward the sun, the buildings' skins will generate the electricity and heat needed by the occupants and eliminate the need for artificial lights during daylight hours. The use of energy efficient appliances, like front-loading washing machines, can cut our energy needs in half.
Every one of us has the opportunity to chart a new course for the future by the purchases and decisions we make every day. We can choose to plant an apple tree, harvest the fruit of our labor and buy locally-grown organic produce and support our neighbors, or we can buy apples from New Zealand. We can choose to buy a $200 bicycle instead of a $20,000 SUV and use it at every opportunity for the mostly short distances that we travel. And when we walk or ride bicycles we improve our health and gain an understanding for how roads divide communities and where paths are needed. We can start to make informed decisions in the planning process. We can spend the $19,800 we saved by buying a bicycle on a photovoltaic roof on our home, and be energy independent, taking advantage of the inexhaustible supply of energy from the sun available to all of us, or we can keep on paying the utilities to continue operating nuclear power plants.
We can make choices to build our homes of durable materials with low embodied energy. We can design our houses to take advantage of the energy and light available from the sun. We can choose to live in a community where our homes are within walking or cycling distance from employment, schools and services. We can work at home and we can support businesses that follow the guidelines for sustainability.
With enough individuals making those choices we can start a shift to sustainability.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited