Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise

7. Achieving Sustainability

7 Achieving Sustainability The opportunity for a gradual but complete break with our destructive environmental history and a new beginning is at hand. —1999 Our goal as a society is to successfully address the fundamental issue of our time—the forging of a sustainable society. Every nation on the planet faces the same challenge: the creation of a society whose activities do not exceed the carrying capacity of its resource base; that is to say, a society that manages its natural resources in such a way that their ability to support future generations is not diminished. The massive grassroots demonstrations on Earth Day 1970 finally forced the environmental issue onto our national political agenda. Happily, in the years since, we have learned a lot and achieved a lot. We have seen a reduction in our air and water pollution, eliminated the use of DDT in this country, established a broad-based program of environmental education, created a legal framework for protecting endangered species, and much more. In the meantime, however, the leadership of both political parties together with the president have, for years, pursued population policies that will destroy the environmental achievements of recent years and frustrate any efforts to forge an environmentally sustainable society— by all odds the overarching challenge of the century. Current policies, if continued, will double the U.S. population to more than 500 million by around 2075, and to around 1 billion sometime in the next century. As noted earlier, a doubling of the population will translate to doubling the total infrastructure of the country—twice as many, airports , grade schools, high schools, houses, apartment buildings, 133 office buildings, and more. It will mean more traffic jams, more crowding, half as much open space per capita, and less freedom of movement, opportunity, and choice. Doubling our population will do all of this and much more. At the United Nations’ 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 179 countries endorsed a proposal that every country is responsible for stabilizing its own population.1 The United States endorsed the proposal but has done nothing to keep its part of the bargain. In fact, indications are that the political leadership of the country, including Congress and the president, has no interest in reducing population growth. Over time, we have learned that most environmental problems are either preventable or at least manageable. With this knowledge in hand, we now stand at the threshold of a golden opportunity to change the course of history. This era marks the start of the environmental challenge of the future—the challenge of sustainability. The degradation we witnessed from the start of the twentieth century to the end was a warning sign. The world’s oil supply may be nearing its peak at a time when demand is exploding to meet the increased auto, truck, ship, and train transport of a global economy. Most ocean fisheries have reached capacity production or are overstressed. Countless components of the plant and animal world are being dislocated and devastated. Water tables are falling on every continent as the population expands. Those knowledgeable of the key environmental facts know that we face a serious problem involving the total intricate ecological system that sustains all life. Stewardship of the environment is a practical necessity, not a philosophical choice. Opinion polls reveal that the public is aware of these problems, is concerned, and wants solutions. But motivating people can be difficult. Many solutions require a change in behavior, and often denial is the easiest path. The lack of political leadership by our elected representatives is the biggest hurdle, however. Without vigorous and persistent leadership, the goal of sustainability cannot be achieved. A way to make environmental problems appear less daunting is to relate them to our communities and convey their relevance to our 134 AN ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA daily lives—as they unquestionably are relevant. Practically, the citizens of this country can make a big difference for the planet by focusing here at home, where we have the most influence. As a nation of more than 280 million people living on land larger, richer, and more diverse in geography than all of Europe, we have a caretaker’s responsibility to this land, to ourselves, and to the world. Since the first Earth Day, much work has been done. In what has been a piecemeal approach to the environmental challenge, we have tackled some of the most popular...