Is Sustainability Dead?
"The experience starts when you first hear about it, and only ends when you stop thinking and talking about it." -Coney
In a week, I'll be at an event in Melbourne titled 'Is Sustainability Dead?'. With the ethos of the world's loveliest playmakers in my head, I've been thinking hard about the question.
Green Steps, a program from the Monash Sustainability Institute, is celebrating its 15th anniversary. It was designed in 2000 to bridge university to the workplace and equip students with positive, practical skills to enact sustainable change. The program predates An Inconvenient Truth by 6 years; the iPhone by 7; Australia's first Carbon Tax by 12; and the Paris agreement by, well, 15.
A lot has changed in the world in that time. Big progress has been made. But environmentalism and sustainability initiatives can still be sidelined as niche issues or face vocal and organised opposition.
So what's next for sustainability?
(This sign, in Mumbulla, NSW, caught my eye as I was driving out of a national park in 2010. It's clearly a battleground.)
To start bending my mind around the scale of the question, I've written posts arguing for and against the notion that sustainability is dead, to be published this week. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic, and if you're in Melbourne on March 1st, come along to continue the conversation in person!
Here are the posts: Declare Sustainability Dead, and Sustainability Must Be Alive!
