Our Consumer Society
Here in North America, we are world-class consumers. Our living standards are among the highest in the world, and to support them we are consuming resources at an impressive clip. Just think about what we devour on a day-to-day basis:
Energy resources. Oil to fuel our cars, trucks, buses, trains and planes. Natural gas and coal to generate electricity to power virtually everything we do at work and play.
Fresh water. For drinking, irrigating farm fields and lawns, cleaning, waste removal and manufacturing.
Other natural resources. Used to make the bottles, cans, paper, cardboard and other packaging and products we discard.
We’re also leaving our mark on the environment. Air pollution from automobiles and power plants causes health problems and may contribute to changes in our global climate.
Runoff from farm fields and discharges from manufacturing plants foul our rivers and lakes. Mountains of garbage and hazardous wastes are buried in landfills that grow larger every day.
And our consumption can hurt society as a whole. Workers who produce the goods we consume sometimes must work for low pay and labor in poor working conditions.
Freeways are increasingly clogged for longer periods of the day, limiting our mobility and hiking our collective blood pressure. We have fewer opportunities to enjoy outdoor recreation when water pollution closes our beaches, or exhaust from automobiles makes our air unhealthy to breathe.
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that as much as we enjoy our comfortable lifestyles, we can’t go on in this way forever.
The resources we’re using are in limited supply. For example: some experts predict that the world’s oil supply will last only another forty years. Environmental damage and worsening social conditions create problems for our children and grandchildren to solve - not the kind of legacy we hope to leave them.
In short, our current lifestyles are "unsustainable." That’s not to suggest that we should reduce our living standards. Quite to the contrary, virtually everyone wants to at least maintain - if not continuously improve - their lifestyle. But in order to do so we must find ways to change.
We must use resources more efficiently
We have to minimize our negative impacts on the environment
We must improve peoples’ lives
Achieving all three of these objectives is what "sustainability" is all about.
