What and where is the sustainable future

Nick Marks, a statistician with the New Economics Foundation, asks us to consider another vision of the future besides one of fear and environmental degradation, a vision, according to Marks, environmentalists have been preaching far too long and which really doesn't work very well if repeated over and over again.

Happiness as a measurement of sustainability

Nick Marks also thinks that using the Gross Domestic Product or GDP as the dominant measurement of progress is one that measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile. He introduces the Happy Planet Index 2.0. Substitute the word “efficiency” for “happy” and you can begin to see that the Index is far more than some feel-good gimmick. The Index is well worth perusing and can be downloaded.

The word sustainable is used a lot today and its definition changeable, but one of the better explanations may be one offered by Paul Raskin of Harvard University and President of Tellus Institute: “It is the passing on of an undiminished world.”