What is sustainable?

Sustainable development has for three decades been a topic for discussion, research, a landmark United Nations report (‘Our Common Future’ published in 1987) and a global political process. Theories about how the problems can be tackled to provide a permanent solution have ranged from technical measures (such as plans for replacing specific infrastructure) to considering significant changes in the way we use energy in all of its forms (e.g. low and even zero carbon communities).

Energy is fundamental to our life and is required for all our actions (even our internal processes) but it is not something that is in our control because it can neither be created nor destroyed and the direction that it flows from greater concentration to lesser creates our concept of time.

The amazing size of the conversion and movement of energy generated by a growing human population (currently estimated to be close to 7 billion), which has been revealed especially by remote sensing from space, has already changed what we experience in the climate around us. This is due to the cumulative adverse impact of the release of energy into the atmosphere, water or earth, which is experienced in what some people see as ‘natural events’ such as high winds , intense rainfall or mud slides, as well as major man-made disasters and emergencies.

The only practical long-term way that we can achieve greater sustainability is by building-up our understanding of what happens to the energy we seek to harness and using this knowledge to modify our individual and collective behaviour so that we only convert energy into forms that can be reused by humanity, other life or natural chemical processes. This is what I would describe as ‘the renewable way’.

Over the past ten years I have been invited to give talks to many different groups and societies and also attend policy making meetings organised by local authorities in Staffordshire to make the case for sustainable development. The presentations and briefing papers that were produced in support of these activities were usually published on this web site (as well as on others sites and in other ways) to allow those who had heard me speak to view the data a second time and also make the information available to those who were not present. Now that this responsibility has largely been past on to others, I have taken the opportunity to pare down the contents of this section of the web site to what I hope is the most representative and up-to-date material to serve a more general readership.

§ What is Sustainable Development – a slide show presentation

§ Energy Conversion, the Economy and Sustainability

§ Money is not the problem – sustainability is

§ Nuclear energy - past & future

§ Why renewable energy is important for sustainable development

§ How to stop wasting our future

§ Understanding the real economy

§ New markets to support sustainable lifestyles