The IPCC has just released a major Report in relation to climate change:

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

Take no notice and sustainability is a dead concept.

The current situation of sustainable and unsustainable options is itself not sustainable.
Sustainability needs to be built into everything, and that requires environmental engineers not social workers.

An ecological consciousness? What like a brainwashed from birth, ideological imperative? Merely masquerading as an ecological consciousness? Pacifists who will fight at the drop of a hat if any of their "mantras" are challenged by irrefutable if inconvenient facts?

In this morning's news, a statement attributed to 91 eminent climate scientists, many volunteering for non-profit organisations, have said. We need to end our use of thermal coal for anything by 2050 if we're to limit GW to just 1.5C. And even then may witness the destruction of the great barrier reef, and droughts even more terrible than the current one and as three out of every four-year events, rather than one out of two as present.

Even so, these same "thinkers" will argue for sustainability if that means abandoning food production and importing all our food from elsewhere? And paid for by the export of rocks from foreign-owned mines?

Nowhere in their "allowed" thoughts, are there plans to adapt to climate change or resuscitate a manufacturing industry, that also manufactures products the rest of the world can afford, let alone, we Australians.TBC.
Alan B.

In a climate-changed world, sustainable agriculture/food production will require significant adaptation. All irrigation will be done underground via taped irrigation and under film that further limits evaporation as well as effectively controlling all weed species! Dams will be lined and covered to save valuable water!

Yes, it will cost. And only as facilitated and financed co-ops? Would any broad scale agriculture be possible? Unless we would follow the Zimbabwe example and see a loaf of bread retailed for a million dollars? Well, our offshore owners need to make a profit and maintain a dividend for their shareholders etc!

Even so, there will be savings and increased production opportunities. No pesticide will be needed in any of these scenarios and where the seed is sown through the biodegradable film. And in the small troughs that concentrate any rainfall right at the root systems of the sown crops, which would include, saltbush as graze along with various seed producing wattle and native wisteria.

And implies, we will stop wasting billions of annual litres of nutrient-laden water and valuable carbon-rich soil improver. The like of which we would create/recover, with the mass production of biogas from waste!

And then only available to farming with the rollout of truly affordable carbon-free energy. None more affordable than MSR thorium. Albeit, possible, with very large-scale solar thermal and or, biogas production coupled to ceramic fuel cells. Where the exhaust product is mostly pristine water vapour

However, only MSR thorium allows the required AFFORDABLE energy to be produced exactly where it's needed, whereas the other two options will need transporting pipelines and or, very high voltage transmission towers.

And I don't need to tell you the risks inherent in the latter as new record heat waves force the mercury above 50C, even as demand trebles! And where bone-dry vegetation only needs a single spark to create an unstoppable firestorm! We've talked non-existent energy policies/issues to death! Time for action to replace endless poly waffle!
Alan B.

Sustainability? Indigenous populations the world over practised sustainable selective logging for millennia. Except in the case of Easter Island and among the Mayan cultures, which resulted in a barren deforested landscape that resulted in climate change, in the latter as the rains failed?

And on Easter Island as the eventual loss of a viable fishing industry,(NO TREES, NO CANOES) that saw them reduced to theft and cannibalism for essential protein/food?

We can take lessons from all these early cultures!

That said, what can we use a much as we like and never ever run out? Well, seawater for one and biological waste the other? Biological waste can be treated in closed cycle smell free systems to turn poo into methane gas.

In fact, every Australian family produces enough waste, when converted to methane, would enable them to power their domiciles 24/7.

Adding in food wastage etc. would create a saleable surplus. and replacing the ratling methane powered diesel with ceramic fuel cells more than doubles the saleable surplus, either as gas or electric power.

Nuclear power alone would allow us to turn seawater into alternative fuels. [ And not theoretical science! ]

[Only the most asinine policy/regulations created by the most obtuse politicians ever handed the keys to the treasury, allows effective prohibition of a viable and safe, affordable (MSR thorium) nuclear industry?]

And alternative endlessly sustainable fuels as combinations of carbon and hydrogen or nitrogen and hydrogen.

Interestingly, as one vacuums carbon directly from seawater the degassed seawater absorbs nearly as much CO2 again, directly from the atmosphere.
Alan B.

Well what do you know! Here we have an academic & a "Professional" casting around trying to find some form of taxpayer funded jobs for graduates of a meaningless course in a so called discipline.

Obviously anything will do, but of course, it will have to be taxpayer funded, as no one is going to believe the garbage, & pay for it them selves.

Come off it girls, we have far too many well "qualified" numskulls interfering in peoples lives, with out you introducing yet another load of gobbledygook into the current mess.

The world would be a lot more sustainable we got rid of half the universities & three-quarters of the blood sucking social workers costing squillions, which would be better given to the needy.

Bullseye! Hasbeen. Got it in one.

This is just another puff piece by social worker wannabees dreaming up reasons to justify the creation of another useless government department, which sucks up taxpayer money to solve a problem which does not exist. If "sustainability" is such a huge problem in this country, how about writing a piece supporting the elimination of immigration into Australia? But you won't do that because it might inconvenience the third world minorities who all want to live in a western country, a situation you support.

These authors seem distressed that ordinary people go to work and earn money which they spend on consumer goods that make them happy. Isn't that just terrible? Better that the public should be taxed until they can no longer afford to buy anything, so that the public service can expand forever until it regulates every aspect of human society.

All the usual trigger words such as "sustainability" and "equality", as are calls to a higher Quixotic morality, are used to justify this blatant self interest. Sorry girls, your little PR exercise might work with the young and naive, but us older and mature people can see right through it.