I have had some misunderstandings about what the term Sustainability really means. It is a complex word that references to much more than its literal definition. In my mind it had become a cultural catch all that is rarely thought out.

The following article clears some of my most basic concerns up.

From the March 2009 Special Editions

Top 10 Myths about Sustainability

Even advocates for more responsible, environmentally benign ways of life harbor misunderstandings of what “sustainability” is all about

By Michael D. Lemonick

When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. “Green” (or, even worse, “going green”) falls squarely into the first category. But “sustainable,” which at first conjures up a similarly vague sense of environmental virtue, actually belongs in the second. True, you hear it applied to everything from cars to agriculture to economics. But that’s because the concept of sustainability is at its heart so simple that it legitimately applies to all these areas and more.

Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0 has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is this take on the top 10 myths about sustainability. And after this introduction, it’s clear which myth has to come first….

Continue the article at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-myths-about-sustainability