200 years ago we decoupled from the solar economy in the name of progress without questioning the implications of the alternations we were making on the ecology of the planet. Now we are no longer dependent on solar energy to grow and run civilization but now are altering the planetary balance in the atmosphere by relying on fossul fuels to sustain our societies. Even organic foods are not sustainable when you consider that most organic farming is reliant on heavy fossil fuel inputs. The fossil fuel economy has infiltrated every aspect of American life. If we extrapolate from current trends 20 years into the future energy consumption increases 30 percent while production increases 25 percent.

The Symptoms of unsustainability:
1. Over-population
2. Over-consumption
3. Economy that promotes waste—bad design of systems—resources are used inefficiently
4. Dehumanization

 

What is Sustainability?

A study conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, widely dubbed the Bruntland Report on Sustainable Development provides the most widely used definition of sustainability or sustainable development, ". . . development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The authors of the report add, “the habitation of any community or village can be viewed as a natural system with inter-related economic, environmental, and social sub-systems.”

Sustainable development should promote economic development and growth and social cohesion with minimum damage to the environment. The energy, water, transport, and agriculture systems are integrated to maximize use of local resources to the greatest extent practical, including the use of waste streams from these systems.

 

Restorative Economy

Underlying sustainability is a new set of criteria defining a more accurate and encompassing definition of progress and human evolution with consideration to ecological impacts and limitations. Leading ecological thinkers like Paul Hawken refer to this as the regenerative or restorative economy. Restorative sytstems go a step further finding solutions by rethinking manufacturing and resource cultivation processes and built environments to actualy restore degraded ecosystems. This inclides devising ingenius uses for resource flows that the society regards as waste. The restorative economy sees sustainable development as the new criteria for defining a more accurate and encompassing definition of progress and human evolution. Sustainable development will drive the restorative economy not as a piecemeal or symptomatic approach to healing and rejuvenation that we see among the conventional medical sciences, but as an integrated approach.

• Affirm and validate natural processes
• Allow for a cultivation of diversity
• Develop self-organizing that are local based and distributive rather than defined by arbitrary information flowed decided by a top-down hierarchy.
• Map out the phenomena that drive our world so that we can understand how our economy is altering it.
• Use ICT to rapidly build knowledge bases that allow humanity to adapt itself to the techniques nature uses to regenerate and restore the integrity of natural systems.

 

Natural Capitalism

Natural capitalism maps out a transitional system will allow us to phase out fossil fuel use and replace it with a hydrogen economy while also addressing the unsustainable way in which we are depleting biomass (natural capital) resources. The economy is the engine that sustains our activities but for an economy to be sustainable it must function like an ecosystem.

Bioneers—the Planet Healers and Innovators of the Restorative Economy
The planetary healers the practitioners of the restorative economy call themselves bioneers. The planet healers have many specialized areas of expertise for it is a complex and multi-dimensional world we live in with many different realities and experiences. What sets them apart from conventional disciplines is the interdisciplinary way in which they stitch all their many different ideas into a coherent whole. A proper mixing of these ingredients creates recipe for social transformation. This involves a process of creating things so that all the parts come together in proper balance and harmony to create the integrated whole. This is not simply a technical process. A healing process is needed to allow people to overcome the many years of mental and emotional baggage they have accumulated. It is these accumulations in life, which keeps them from working with others. The resulting uplift can literally move mountains� and this is exactly the kind of human momentum needed to get us out of the current conundrum.

Long term goals of global drive towards sustainability and sustainably designed humans systems:
1. Reduce emissions
2. Restore economy
3. Restore culture
4. Restore ecology
5. Promote feasible grassroots based models

Global Sustainability Starts with Community Redevelopment

One of the reasons that our society is consuming so much more than is sustainable and necessary for a prosperous existence is because the built environment and the popular culture is geared towards reinforcing consumerism. This impacts the way we feel about ourselves and others. People feel alienated from each other and an authentic sense of community so they turn to addictive behaviors overeating, smoking, consuming and accumulating. Yet so many even when they do all those things, still find something missing in their lives. Our life cycles begin to revolve not around people, and the earth but around consumption as an ends to itself.

The process of rebuilding our civilization therefore must start with the most basic building blocks the neighborhood, redefining success, and what it means to live in community in the modern world.Our aim is to start at the grassroots and create environments that are authentically geared towards people's locally based needs and to do without disrupting the integrity of environmental systems. The importance of a human scale, built environment is a vital part of an authentic attempt to create a restorative economy. This includes the creation of a built environment and infrastructure that mimics natural processes more harmoniously interacting with nature and creating products and services for use in other socially conscious communities.

 

A New Economic Model for the Developing World

The key to the development of a restorative economy is not technology but cultural cohesion. People who cannot think collectively can have all the sustainable technologies in the world but if they cannot create a social architecture from which to integrate it into a cohesive whole they are doomed to failure over the long term. Therefore those of parts of the world that have been able to maintain some level of cultural cohesion and identity have an advantage. Creating a thriving restorative economy may actually be less challenging in many developing societies than it is in developed world. Within this new economy human and economic capital will focus not just on sustainability at the local level but also in developing export services and products to spread the restorative economy to surrounding regions and even to distant parts of the world. These products and services such as consulting, ICT services and tourismwill be a significant form of foreign exchange for these communities. However the production of necessities like food, energy and building materials will because a refocus of these activities locally is central to any serious attempt at building sustainable/restorative community.

Defining and Institutionalizing New and more Accurate Measures of Success
This new sustainability combines urban and rural development with small-scale agriculture and micro-industry in industrial ecologies that represent an integrated approach to sustainable development. An important aspect of a more detailed and conscious accounting of the ecological and human impacts of modern economic activities is the development of local based efforts at organizing sustainable, locally based economic systems.

Embodied energy environmental scans determine how much energy does it take does it take to a make a product or building material.

Eco-footprint life cycle analysis studies determine the amount of energy and resources used to make a product or a material considering:
Climate footprint--costs of altering climate
Loss of biodiversity
Depletion of mineral resources
Cost-benefits analysis of economic growth in relation to social index of progress

The goal is to work towards a global cyberspace network that affirms and validates natural processes allowing for a cultivation of diversity that is self-organizing. To do this we need to map out the phenomena that drive our world so that we can understand how our economy is altering it. The validation and affirmation process involves the building of knowledge bases such as through the use of GIS information system to collect and portrary data. These systems need to be applied so that they enable humanity to adapt itself to the processes nature uses to regenerate and restore the integrity of natural systems.