Sustainability

The world passed the halfway point of oil supply in 2005. World demand for oil likely will severely outstrip supply in 2008, leading to increasingly higher oil prices. Consequences are likely to include increasing gasoline prices, rapidly increasing inflation, and subsequently a series of increasingly severe recessions followed by a worldwide economic depression. Consequences may include, particularly in industrialized countries such as the United States, massive unemployment, economic collapse, and chaos.

Published in: Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Volume 28, Issue 3, May 2008, Pages 187-191
Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0270467608316098

The catch-word of the day is Sustainability. It’s been used so much lately that it has become legitimate to preface any discussion about it by stating that the term itself has become depleted. On the other hand, if we set limitations on our future that are specific and concrete, sustainability becomes something other than a diffuse goal. Suddenly it is not just a distant somewhere or a sometime – but instead a Something that is generated en passant, in the process of attempting to solve an acute problem at hand.