Sustainability has become the most abused word in the English dictionary.

There's nothing wrong with sustainability, just the vague interpretations that come with the word.

In fact many government and corporate entities confuse it with the word 'sustained'. Thus 'sustainable mining', in the eyes of the mining industry, means 'sustained mining'.

All strength to those who are working for genuine sustainability but beware of those using the term to rationalise what they always intended to do - albeit with a slightly different language.

Meanwhile, academic bodies pragmatically switch program titles towards sustainability because that is where the money is. They would be silly not to if they want research money.

The most important - yet totally ignored - area of sustainability is population, both world-wide and in Australia.

Our first responsibility is to Australia. Unfortunately, Australian politicians have a totally irresponsible attitude to population: both Coalition and Labor Governments have encouraged a steady, alarming increase in immigration and are still providing a breeding bonus.

The optimum population for Australia is said to be between 10 – 13 million. If this is the case, the problem is now out of control with a 20 plus million population and still growing. An estimated 3 million increase in Australia’s population annually is borne out by a 400,000 increase last year, due mainly to immigration.

Australia is now suffering serious housing shortages because of high immigration.

The main areas of population are experiencing water shortages.

Australia has an unemployment level of 5%, and an under-employment level of 5%.

People thinking that Australia can be another America, taking in people, are sadly mistaken. Australia’s ancient and impoverished soils; its knife edge environment and overall lack of water mean that two thirds of the country is uninhabitable.

We need politicians who actually care for the country and not for unsustainable growth and greed.

We need a population policy.

Right on Mr Right.

^^^^

There might be a fadist aspect to the new push for sustainability studies. But more significantly, there is no doubt that the concept of sustainability is pretty flimsily or even totally bodgily associated with some of the studies that purport to be sustainability-oriented.

And more significantly again by far; there is still far too LITTLE overall effort being put into the sustainability of our society, environment, country and planet!

There isn’t really anything wrong with fads per se. If it is trendy to be involved with sustainability, then fine.

But I would think that a whole lot of purported sustainability studies are not in themselves sustainability-oriented at all! They are geared to improving energy and resource efficiency, the minimisation of waste and pollution, etc, which all sounds good, but for as long as we maintain the absurd continuous-growth-with-no-end-in-sight paradigm, it is only going to serve to prop up society more or less as we know it and foster continuous high population growth….which will take us rapidly further away from true sustainability!

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Most people involved in these sorts of studies would argue that they are doing their bit and that it is up to our government to manage the overall arena. I’d argue strongly that this is not the case, and that every single person who is involved with anything sustainability-oriented (or every single person who is alive and breathing actually), should be very mindful of the whole picture and be lobbying very hard to make sure that their work is effectively used in the effort to achieve a sustainable society, and not misused to prop up the continuation of a strong antisustainability momentum!

There is far too little true sustainability research and adaptation by industry and society. In fact, I could argue that there is precisely NONE going on….and there won’t be until such a time as we realise that an end to population growth and continuous human expansionism is by far the single biggest sustainability factor of all…and in Australia, is one that could very easily be addressed…. and MUST be forthwith!.

When immigration gets greatly reduced and the baby bonus gets throttled, then we will be able to say that this country has actually launched itself at the very start of the long road to true sustainability.

Sustainability – OLO here has chosen a timely article.

On the other hand, during June it published twenty articles by nineteen authors on the issue of adequately sustaining Agriculture.

The articles were all structured around enhancing agriculture in order to sustain increasing population. Not one of the authors chosen for publication thought fit to incorporate the fundamental driver of un-sustainable agriculture – unimpeded population growth.

*The articles were all structured around enhancing agriculture in order to sustain increasing population. *

IMHO a few of those articles were written by some of the scientific
community, clearly worried about the future of their jobs.

They have reason to be concerned, agricultural research has been
put on the back burner.

OTOH none of them addressed the issue of agricultural sustainability.
Agriculture is little more then mining, unless you put back the
nutrients removed by crops.

One cannot keep removing more and more nutrients, with ever
increasing yields, unless they are returned to the soil.

That is where agriculture is facing a crisis. Whilst the price of
oil has doubled in a short time, the price of potassium and
phosphorus has increased by up to 800%.

Forget all the research, unless farmers can afford to return to
the soil, what their crops remove and we export.

Long term it is just not sustainable and if its not sustainable,
then long term it will crash.

We ignore nature at our peril, be that in terms of plant nutrients
or be that in terms of the global human population.