Sustainable development

mode of human development that meets current demands without compromising the needs of future generations
See also: Sustainability

Sustainable development is an attempt to reconcile economic growth with sustainability.

Meaning

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  • If you want to contribute to the fight against global warming, live in a city in a high-rise apartment—where radiant heat seeps through walls into other people’s units, lowering heating costs—and commute by subway.
    • Darrell Bricker & John Ibbitson, Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (2019), Robinson
  • The Green New Deal is modeled after FDRʼs New Deal, which is always celebrated as progressive action that lifted the US out of economic depression through infrastructure development projects like dams and extractive industries that put people to work. Whatʼs far less acknowledged, however, is how much environmental and cultural death and destruction all that development wreaked on Indian country. We see a similar pattern occurring globally in the realm of “sustainable” development, which has given rise to a modern global land rush that impacts Indigenous communities the most. Ultimately, unchecked capitalism is the problem and we need to heed the research that connects cultural diversity with biodiversity if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
  • When I use the term sustainable development – which I consider to be an oxymoron actually – I am trying to capture the meaning that most people seem to have. In so far as I can tell, people who use the term mean, essentially, that this would be a phase of development where they get to keep what they have but all the poor people can catch up. Or, they get to keep doing what they’ve been doing, but through the magic of technology they are going to cause less damage to the environment and use fewer resources. Either way you use the term, it is just a fantasy. Neither of those is possible – anymore.

See also

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