Sustainability and Standards of Living

Sustainability was defined at a 1987 UN conference as being able to "meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs"(19). Another definition of sustainability is given as the capacity to endure. Both of these definitions lead to the conclusion that sustainability, in terms of energy use, means to use only what you can produce (or less). This also quite subtlety includes the negative effects of energy production methods and the impact on a healthy environment that also must be maintained in order to achieve a sustainable world. Every form of energy production has different resources and costs involved and those factors limit the amount of energy that can be produced. The production techniques will be discussed in later posts as research continues.
After some initial research, it is obvious that sustainability and the standards of living that we enjoy today are inherently linked.Luxuries we enjoy on a daily basis use mass amounts of energy causing the United States to produce more CO2 per person than nearly every other country (Figure 1). As the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases, the planets ability to release energy in the form of infrared light decreases leading to the "greenhouse effect" . With the current rate of increase in CO2 production around the world, expert models, like those created by Dr. James Hanson of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, predict the effect of the increases would result in dramatic changes in the climate. If the models are accurate, sustainability with the current energy profile would be impossible. (13)

Figure 1. (McKay)

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