Click here for more information about the 2010 Understanding Sustainability Conference.
Get involved in the conversation. Click on the links below to read what others think about sustainability. Respond.
Kim Stanley Robinson an American science fiction writer known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the fifteen years of research and lifelong fascination with the planet Mars.
Robinson prefers to distance himself from the word sustainability, preferring instead, permaculture:
"I thought the term "permaculture" was a way of shifting ground a bit, using a term from what you might call progressive agriculture, or sustainable agriculture. Permaculture suggest permanence but also permutation, which I like because that indicates that it is likely to be a flexible and dynamically changing system rather than any end state."
To read more of Kim Stanley Robinson on sustainability/permaculture, click here.
Derrick Jensen is the author of such books at Endgame and is often considered to be an anarcho-primitivist, by which is meant he concludes that civilization is inherently unsustainable and based on violence. He argues that the modern industrial economy is fundamentally at odds with healthy relationships, the natural environment, and indigenous peoples.
"Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization."
To read more of Derrick Jensen's Premises, click here.
The PCPH Keyword Project is an attempt to interrogate the terms that we associate with sustainability while tracing the connections to more disparate—though equally important—terms.
If you would like to contribute definitions to the project let us know. Click here to read our existing definitions.
The sustainability blog is devoted to following advances in sustainability with a special interest in its intersections with the humanities.
