The pursuit of 'sustainability' is a mad fantasy based around the unsupportable notion that we know what the climate, what the weather, what the geological forces below the Earth's surface, what the sun and other astronomical bodies will be doing in ten, fifty, a hundred or a thousand years time. It rests on the denial of human progress, and the assumption, refuted at every stage of human history, that somehow today's problems are the ones that can never be solved by science and development. It relies on the natural human tendency to regard current issues as more intractable than those that have been successfully resolved in the past, and involves a sleight of hand to conceal the fact that we know as little about what to expect in 2070 as our parents and grandparents in 1960 knew about the world of 2012.

Let's build cities and towns for people to live happily and comfortably in NOW: that's a big enough job for anyone. The people of the future can worry about whether they are 'sustainable' or not.

< Many city administrations approach sustainability as an opportunity to save money, or to jumpstart the growth machine on the urban fringe, or, in the case of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, to accommodate predicted population growth. >

In other words, many administrations are being disingenuous about sustainability. If they are practicing greener technologies and efficiencies in energy and resource usage, it might sound like a move in the right direction. But if it is all aimed at better accommodating ever-more people, then it ain’t. Not at all!

It is in fact just the opposite – a facilitation of the continuous momentum AWAY from sustainability!

What a selfish attitude by Jon J. Let's not plan for the future? Let future generations cope with the results of our excesses? On the one hand he talks of "progress" and on the other denies that science can make useful predictions about the future. Denialism incarnate!

Good article by Andrew Ross. Obviously, the only sustainable path for our cities is to end population growth.

Yes, 'sustainability' is a mad ostensibly altruistic fantasy aimed at future generations. And yes, the total good would be better served if we worried about ourselves rather than obsess about posterity. The problem is, how does one prove those simple assertions?

I have long thought it is obvious. There are two components, the amount of finite resources (and they are all finite) we use now and the resulting amount of residue we leave behind.

Waste is inevitable. Leaving aside greenhouse emissions, managing waste is a matter of care, technology and a bit of common sense (unlike that other mad fantasy, common in Australia, of trying to leave behind pristine soil where once a service station stood).

Resource consumption is the tougher one. It’s where the affluent ecotopians, or whatever the current buzzwords are, have got it totally wrong. Buildings and cars, for example, can hardly ever be ecologically friendly if their lifetime costs are greater than that the supposedly less friendly but cheaper alternatives. For example the massively expensive so-called eco-houses featured on programs like ‘Grand Designs’ are nice, but laughable examples of sustainability.

The principle is simple. Money = resources, whether energy or mineral. So there’s nothing necessarily green about expensive gizmos. OK, some of them might indeed be ‘green’ but much careful analysis is needed before the claim can be sustained. And that can be hard, especially as the resource consumption will often be remote from the point of final use. The assessment is so complex that only by looking at data for the whole globe can one reliably track in full the resources involved.

Monetary value should be the default starting point. As the world becomes more affluent, energy use, for example, rises pretty much in proportion. The global picture is the key. That green fantasy created in some remote affluent corner inevitably uses a disproportionate amount of resources, perhaps hidden in the local ledger but not in the global account.

It's all tied in, of course.

Big oil and industry produce the fertilizers and pesticides that are washed away into the aquifers and into the oceans. The soil is rendered devoid of life and the farmers toss a bit more chemical into the mix to supplement that which has been washed away - a never-ending circle of despoilment.

What a stupid, stupid species to assume that it can continue to pollute its environment and kill its soils, and expect to do so without "serious" repercussions.

Now I'm really starting to get worried.

From Andrews article it would appear he actually believes in the global warming fraud.

I have not been too worried while it was obvious that the whole thing was just a funding rouse. Our elites are going to find some way to assure their comfortable easy life style. This was a nice way to justify good solid grants, lucrative consultancies & jobs.

However I from this article it appears that Andrew has fallen for the propaganda, & actually believes the whole fraud is true.

With no profile on him, I don't know how much math Andrew has, & math is the answer of course.

It is easy to prove that any time the humidity is above 10%, no amount of CO2 will have any effect on the behaviour of the atmosphere in response to radiation. Anyone who believes otherwise either can't do the math, or has a personal reason not to.

It is a worry if too many apparently educated people really start to believe the con job.