What is Sustainability?

       Robert Swan once said, "The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it". With the way that things stand on our earth today, sustainability is an important ideal that needs to be adopted worldwide in order to keep resources, habitats, and ecosystems around for many for generations to come. In the article, "What is Sustainability?" by Richard Heinberg, readers are introduced to the five axioms of sustainability. The first axiom states that any society that uses critical resources, the things necessary for human life and basic social functions such as food and water, will inevitably collapse. There is one exception to this and that is in the form of resource "substitutes". Substitutes can be good or bad and can be seen being used throughout history. For example, in the mid-nineteenth century when kerosene and petroleum was replaced by whale oil in lamps. An example of a substitute that didn't change things for the better when they used oil sands as a replacement for conventional petroleum.
        Another important key to understand when talking about sustainability is renewable resources. Renewable resources are any natural resource that can replenish itself over a period of time, as long as it is not being depleted faster than it can replenish itself. The important thing to remember about renewable resources, which are things like timber, water, oxygen, etc., is that we shouldn't take advantage of them. An example of this is when it comes to wood. Humans are constantly logging and cutting down trees to make paper without allowing the many years it takes to re-grow all the trees taken out of the ground. Another example of treating renewable resources unwisely is in the form of pollution. By burning coal we increase our greenhouse gas emissions with little to no concern for the rising greenhouse gas levels.
        With the "Big Foot" sized footprint that humans are currently leaving on the earth, I have a dwindling hope that we can achieve a world that is sustainable. I know that many more people are becoming conscious about what individually can be done to help the environment but I fear that it will not be enough.