United Nations World Commission          
on Environment & Development          

I've always liked this simple and straightforward definition of Sustainable Development, even though plenty of others exist.

Let's face it folks: we Americans have developed the most advanced and prosperous civilization in human history ... but it is definitely NOT built to last!

A dangerous combination of forces - unprecedented population growth, the extraction & burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels, ever more development in formerly untouched wilderness, traffic jams bringing our roads to a standstill, landfills reaching their bursting points, and others - are already starting to present America and the rest of the developed world with serious problems. Unless we make some major shifts in our habits - both as individuals, and as a society as a whole - our future will be filled with environmental disasters of cataclysmic proportions.

While some of us are at least aware of these problems, and a small minority are actually doing something to head it off, society keeps rolling along (usually alone in a big car!) as if this were a party where the keg will never run out. Yet technologies exist today - along with technologies from yesterday that can be revisited - that can make our future more sustainable, while making money for those who implement them ...