Archived Exhibit: What Is Sustainability, Sept-Oct 2009

What is sustainability? Local Answers to a Global Question

The Debut Exhibit of the APPLE Center for Sustainable Living

Showing through October 31, 2009

What is Sustainability?

Sustainability can be described as each of us doing our part to create a world that we want to live in, and one that we want our children and grandchildren to inherit. It means cultivating a consciousness of interdependence and an awareness of how our daily choices affect the intricate balance of social, economic and ecological systems.

It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule …Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

- Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce

Why sustainability matters

Nearly every indicator of ecological health and social well-being is in decline. Respected scientists and a growing number of leaders from around the world acknowledge that human existence as we know it is teetering on a precipice, the edge marks the earth’s capacity to function in a manner that sustains life.

We know what we have to do. And we know how to do it. If we fail to convert our self-destructing economy into one that is sustainable, future generations will be overwhelmed by environmental degradation and social disintegration. Simply stated, if our generation does not turn things around, our children may not have the option of doing so.

- Lester R. Brown, State of the World, 1993

Local Solutions: An invitation to participate

While acknowledging that our global society’s collective practices have placed the planet in peril, instead of dwelling on dismal realities, The APPLE Center’s debut exhibit wishes to celebrate and draw inspiration from the existing and emergent solutions that reside right here in this community, among people who are actively striving to realize a more sustainable future.

This exhibit serves as a sustainability assessment- a type of community inventory of the progress we’ve already made and the strategies emerging from a range of public agencies and community organizations, networks and coalitions.

The APPLE Center has been conceived of as a vessel in which to place our collective vision, to define and align our intentions, to learn from one another and to engage in a creative re-genesis that places the well being of future generations at the center of our present choices and actions.

We hope you also receive this exhibit as an invitation to participate, get connected, and join in the movement to transform our livelihoods, so that our social, economic and ecological systems resonate with life-affirming resilience.