I have been using this diagram in my speaking engagements, and it is time to put it online where people can access it.  I call it the Timeline to Sustainability.

Environmental experts (such as David Holmgren, in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability) estimate that it will take 500+ years for humanity to achieve a transition to a truly Sustainable existence.

Sustainability is defined in many ways.  In my talks I remind people of 5th grade science class, where we learned that the natural world is made up of cycles.  The seasonal cycles, the carbon cycle, the water cycle.  These cycles continue, uninterrupted.  They self-perpetuate.  They are Sustainable.

In my talks, I ask the audience “What is ‘greener’?”  I make the point that we really cannot consider a new resource or a new technique to be “greener” unless it takes us closer to Sustainability, unless it takes us back closer to the cycles of the earth.  Anything short of forward progress on the Timeline of Sustainability merely constitutes treading water, remaining in Outrageously Unsustainable.

‘Compostable’ plastics, E85, ‘biodegradable’ disposable diapers, our corporate drive for more, more, more keeps inventing the products.  And in our desperate desire to salve our consciences, we switch our voracious consumerism over to these new products.  But many of these products are no ‘greener.’  (see “Dispense with Disposables“)

“Greener” can only mean “closer to Sustainability.”  David Holmgren, in his Aug. 2005 talk in Santa Barbara, CA, said that in the future, the symbol of solar energy will not be a photovoltaic panel, it will be a tree.  We must retain sight of the end-goal in order to determine whether we are still on the right path.

The Timeline to Sustainability shows us that we will need to experience a Transition period en-route to Sustainability.  During this transition period, we will likely explore many of these pseudo-greener ideas, later to discard them as we wisen up. 

The point is, to realize that the step is a Transition-era step (ex:  a 113mpg Prius) because in the Sustainable future, paradigm change may render that item archaic (ex: a paradigm which has us ReThink our “need” for transportation).

Additionally, the Timeline to Sustainability shows us that Sustainability itself is a goal which is beyond our lifetimes, beyond the lifetimes of the children now born, and beyond the lifetimes of the children of our children.  Yet we must begin the journey, if we are ever to attain the goal.

“We won’t see it in our lifetimes, Tia. Perhaps even Annis won’t. I hope her children will. But just because we won’t see Sustainability now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying, trying with everything we have, to move steadily in that direction. What we do now, every step we take to move in that direction, every bit of it brings us one step closer. We have to start now if we’re ever going to get there. We have to do the work now to turn the mainstream, so that then, humanity will make the mark.”      — Legacy character Ari

See “Use Sustainability as Your Yardstick” , March 2006

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