A Curmudgeon’s Thoughts on Sustainability

This is a different approach to the subject of sustainability which suggests: 1) that certain activities are inherently unsustainable; 2) that sustainability be defined with regard to a basic level of technology, economy, and demand; 3) that sustainability can be better managed by looking at the energy and waste and consumption from manufacturing, and treating the technologies as “black boxes”; 4) the environmental permit data from manufacturing concerns needs to be made more public because the effect of the publication of that information will enhance pollution reduction; 5) that we need to define  pollution receptors and assign the costs to develop trans-boundary solutions; and 6) that there is a lot of fruitful work still to be performed on developing very good estimates of the capacity of agricultural, non-agricultural, and oceanic receptors.