That’s a pretty good overview Fencepost. There are also things that should be 100% on the negative side of the charter that are added to the positive side of economic growth calculations, such as financial turnover produced as a result of car accidents or smoking-related illness.

The other great flaw with economic growth is that high population growth has the effect of producing continuously increasing economic growth, all else being equal….and this economic growth is touted as being of a benefit to us all when it is in fact just providing more and more of the same standard of living for the increasing population that is creating it.

There might be some advantages for the whole community due to economies of scale, but there are also disadvantages due to the over utilisation of infrastructure and services.

Overall, using economic growth or Gross Domestic Product as indicators of our national and average personal wellbeing is terribly misleading.

Politicians know this….or at least those with half a brain do. So what’s really going on here? Are they deliberately framing language in a misleading manner by perverting or at least never clarifying the meaning of growth and a few other key words? Or are they doing this subconsciously? Or a bit of both from different people?

“I believe that as soon as the reasoning behind sustainability is examined, it crumbles.”

Diocletian, the reasoning behind it is very basic. It seems as though you are making it out to be a whole lot more complex than it is.

At any rate, do you think it would be the right thing to not strive to achieve a sustainable society….and to just go on living in a highly unsustainable manner? That of course would mean that we would all either have to face a breakdown of society and/or undertake huge energy and resource consumption reductions and greatly simplify our lives.

You seem to be saying that we shouldn’t even be attempting to address sustainability issues….or even entertain any rational discussion on the matter… because the term is somewhat hard to define or is used in different sense by different people and that some people have framed their language in such a way as to present quite a different meaning to the word sustainability.

Let’s not worry about the nitty gritty of definitions or of perversions of the meaning of some words by those with vested interests in continuing on our highly unsustainable path. The concept is rock solid. And the need to address it is of the utmost urgency.

"It seems as though you are making it out to be a whole lot more complex than it is."

The other possibility is that you have not realised how complex it is.

You do realise you're talking about the entire human economy, and the entire world ecology?

If it's not so complex, perhaps you could list the steps that would be necessary to ensure ecological sustainability?

Nothing you have said has either established your argument or refuted mine.

“Nothing you have said has either established your argument or refuted mine”

Diocletian, the very fact that you gave a rather detailed and well-considered explanation (which I fail to comprehend I’m afraid) of problems that you perceive with addressing sustainability, sits at stark odds with your assertion that “the idea of 'sustainability' hardly qualifies as rational discourse”.

I mean, of course it needs serious and detailed discussion. It is just about the most important thing facing humanity isn’t it? Even if it is enormously complex, that is no reason to ignore it. Surely I don’t need to establish an argument to corroborate this.

“…perhaps you could list the steps that would be necessary to ensure ecological sustainability”

Well, we’ve established the basic principles. So now what we need is a government that is willing to take them on as its primary platform. In order for that to happen, we need a populace that will vote in such a government and support them all the way. And in order to get the public to really take up the cause of achieving a sustainable society, we need scientists, politicians, journalists and various other commentators to really start pushing the urgency of not outgrowing our resource base.

As things get tougher, I think that this will suddenly accelerate, in much the same way as the climate change issue has, after some years of simmering away in the background.

Then when the majority of ordinary people and politicians are onside, great things can happen very quickly….especially when the future is looking bleak if we don’t change our wicked ways fast.

In some ways it is happening now. Advances in fuel efficiency and alternative energy use are progressing quite quickly. But in other ways we are pushing against sustainability very strongly, not least with our enormous rate of immigration and worship of continuous growth.

Other countries will do this at the same time. The whole world will change quite fast. However, it won’t be enough to avoid major upheavals. But after experiencing economic and social catastrophes, we will redouble our efforts.

from
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9405-encyclopedia-of-all-human-gene-mutations-planned.html

About 100,000[human;gene-mutations]have been discovered,but this total represents[only]about 5% of the predicted total number of mutations>>>>[so please explain where are the benifitial ones predicted by evolution]seems to me evolution is about bad/mutations killing its genus off]

>>Genetic Mutations Offer Insights on Human'evolution'single"letter"changes[in the'3-billion-letter transcript']that makes up each-person's-genome.Every individual carries tens of thousands of these variations.{LOL}Some do not change the"words"that are the genes;some change a word but not its meaning;and some change the meaning in a way that can be beneficial or harmful

Each person's collection of these'changes'called"single nucleotide polymorphisms,or SNPs)contributes to his/her individuality.People with a common ancestry,however,tend to have similar collections of SNPs(pronounced"snips").

Genetic Mutations Offer'Insights'on Human Diversity/Genetic Mix Along the Ethnic Divide"There is no single gene,no single DNA marker,that would distinguish one population from another,"Myers said.Instead,[he said,"it is a pattern,like']a bar code with thousands[billions]of lines on it,"that allows researchers to tease apart the fine points of'relatedness'among populations...

..With such diverse and abundant starting material,[900]the researchers were able to sketch a picture of ethnicity far more detailed than previously known....>>thus clearly its about supporting racism[based on-a invalid EVOLUTION theory]

<<"Each group carried only a subset of the genetic variation from its ancestral population...there is a loss of genetic diversity with the distance from Africa,.."Rosenberg said>>so we are DE-volving![so where the increase of'genomic-material'come from[as evolution claims?.

>Carlos D.Bustamante of Cornell University and his colleagues measured SNPs in 20 European Americans and 15 African/Americans.They found that the'average'person carries at least 2,000 SNPs that change the meaning of a genetic"word."However, in the European/Americans, a larger proportion of those changes were'likely'to be unhealthy or unfavorable.>>>lol<<The reasons for this curious finding are not fully known,although there are theories.>>lol

The chief explanation is that the ancestors of'Europeans'(and most white/Americans)suffered repeated population"bottlenecks"in which their'numbers'crashed as result of epidemics,environmental catastrophes..and genocide.Each time that happened,the population lost a lot of its genetic/diversity'simply'because a lot of people died.[lol]

The survivors,like their ancestors,carried a certain random collection of..deleterious SNPs--genes that caused disease or increased the risk of disease...LOL

But if they were potentially bad,why weren't they flushed out by natural selection?>>LOL

continued at
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2411&page=0
human evolution-where to next?]

Ludwig

What you are saying assumes what is in issue, both:
1. whether sustainability is a problem in fact, and
2. whether the policy responses proposed will make the situation better not worse.

Assuming what is in issue means the argument is circular, which means it’s not logical.

You might think that the sustainability problem is so obvious that it goes without saying. If it’s obvious, it should be easy to prove. But you haven’t done that yet.

I’m sorry I didn’t express my idea about policy responses so that you comprehended it. The idea is simple. In order for our actions to be ecologically sustainable, we need a way of knowing that we are not wasting natural resources.

For example, if we’re going to fund the planting of a tree, we need to know that we’re not cutting down three trees to provide the funds; and similarly with all other production activities. Most humans now live by very long, complex production methods involving the co-operation of many people who don’t know each other, for example the making of a tractor – there’s the metal, the rubber, the fuel and so on. So how are we going to know whether we’re wasting natural resources in a given productive activity or not?

The very least we are going to need is a method of figuring out whether the inputs of an action are less than the outputs, or not. That is economic calculation: figuring whether the costs of an action are greater than the benefits.

Total government control would mean the abolition of economic calculation, because it depends on private property, which is what would be abolished to achieve total government control. This means that production activities will be much more environmentally destructive than they are now.

But less than total government control will leave us with the original problem – that people’s uncontrolled freedom to use natural resources is not sustainable.

So we still haven’t identified what government could *do* to ensure sustainability, consistent with not causing the deaths of large numbers of people