Sustainability…. good luck with that one. The ‘cake and eat it’ formal definition is near impossible given a planet full of humans. We have a slightly different take — solve FED and sustainability is possible...
Keep humanity going
Sustainability is slippery. It’s hard to define and even harder to achieve when the usual definition says “use a resource but also keep it for later”. Finding sustainability for food, ecology and diet is the only way to avoid humanity falling off a cliff of hunger, pestilence or worse. This sFED theme is about how we can become truly sustainable to 2050 and beyond.
Explore the posts below to restart your sustainability journey.
CharlieSustainability Topics
Sustainability is more popular than the Kardashians, but not entirely
Sounds impossible, but there is more sustainability content on the web than Kardashian content. A hopeful outcome until we look at interest.
Mark
Resilience of people, communities, and ecosystems are not the same thing
Finding and keeping enough food is every organism’s bane. The endless foraging means risking being foraged or failing to find enough food. Success is longevity and the ultimate aim of making more.
Political correctness means we miss the real driver of unsustainability
Humans use more energy today, roughly 173,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) than at any other time in history. This is an unfathomable number so let’s bring it back to a more human scale.
Is the energy transition easy?
Few people alive today can remember when society ran on horsepower—power equal to 550 foot-pounds per second that an imaginary horse could muster. Such meagre power barely touches the sides today.
Meeting human needs is basic thermodynamics
Humans are needy. Our egos would not have life any other way because, without need, we risk starving our bodies of fuel and the failure of our chemical engine.
Jevon’s paradox makes sustainability even harder
Efficiency gains should lower resource consumption but rarely does this happen, especially with energy. What can we learn from a Victorian gentleman who figured this out?
$4 trillion of new infrastructure every year
More than $4 trillion of new infrastructure is needed worldwide each year. Pause on that number for a moment, then explore below.
Is development sustainable?
Sustainable development has been around for 35 years, and the UN has a whole set of poverty alleviation goals built around it. So why the question mark in the title of this post?
Why it’s useful to think in lifetimes
Would you live for 200 years? How about the lifetime of a farm that needs to be thousands of years if humanity is to persist?
Interest in sustainability
Definitions of sustainability portrays aspiration rather than reality. Here we talk through an alternative…
10 laws for sustainable land management
Everyone loves a good law, they make us feel safe. Here are 10 from the world of land management that should help deliver sustainability and food security.
How valuable is the planet to you?
People care about cute animals, the Pope and the Denver Broncos. And the earth, too, someway down the list of priorities.
Textile waste is useful, so we need to recycle it
There are many ways to help farmers. Here is one that you might not have thought possible.
Win-win-win | Explaining the triple bottom line approach in farming
Triple bottom line is concept to shift minds with the hope of system change. Like many sustainability ideas it had a hard time.
The insect apocalypse and ways to avoid it
Insects and their spineless relatives deserve more than a bug's life.
Trees are 50% carbon
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a single, simple solution to the climate crisis that all political parties agreed to support.
Is coal sustainable?
When the Victorians discovered coal at the start of the industrial revolution, it changed the world. But was it a sustainable resource? Back then, they didn’t even think to ask the question.
Is your breakfast sustainable?
Hobbit meal times are breakfasting at 7 am, second breakfast at 9 am, elevenses, luncheon at 1 pm, then afternoon tea at 3 pm. What have Middle-Earth meal times got to do with sustainability?
Coal-fired Teslas
Electric cars are touted as the transport solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving the planet from excessive warming. If only it were so simple...
Do people trust science?
There is a growing lack of trust in society’s critical institutions. This includes science and the scientists who carry it out. This is bad news...
How full is the food glass?
Many believe humanity continues inextricable progress. Others that we career towards a cliff of resource scarcity. Is the glass half full or half-empty? There is a way to find out...
What do you click on in the endless feed?
Blink and you miss it. That is the nature of the modern newsfeed designed not for information but for commercial clicks. What can you do when the real issues slip quickly under your thumbs?
Don’t be surprised
Humans are so good at using resources we should not be surprised at any of the numbers. We are more making machines.
What is sustainability?
Sustainability…. good luck with that one. The ‘cake and eat it’ formal definition is near impossible given a planet full of humans. We have a slightly different take — solve FED and sustainability is possible...
Is food, ecology and diet the way to achieve sustainability?
There are times when it is important to reassert some fundamentals, the reasons for doing what you do. Here at sustainably FED, we had one of those moments a few weeks ago and it was reassuring...
Would a climate silver bullet make us sustainable?
It would be nice to fire a silver bullet at climate change to make it go away. If such munitions existed all our troubles would be over. We think not...
10 things we have to do to save Australia
The environment is heading south despite regular calls to reverse the trends of degradation. It could be that these calls fall on deaf ears or are strangled by institutional jargon so nobody can be sure what is required...
