Sustainability Trap

Published on Mar 31, 2024, filed under misc, advocacy (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

We—you and I and everyone—are responsible for this planet and everyone’s well-being.

That includes consuming and polluting as little as possible, i.e., to live sustainably.

So far so good. (It does seem important to confirm that we all need to choose to adjust our behavior once we choose to survive on this planet.)

However, none of us is able to consume or pollute much.

Left to myself, I would probably be able to boil and then use water from the Lérez river, but then I likely drop dead because I’d eat the wrong plants (if any at all).

Likewise, there’s no oil around me to pollute the ground or the air or the future, by producing something that doesn’t rot within hundreds of years. I wouldn’t even know how to find or what to do with oil.

Consuming or polluting may be really hard to do for you, too.

This is the most interesting area where the idea of putting sustainability on every individual fails (one other being that spreading required sustainability knowledge doesn’t scale).

In most cases, we can only consume and pollute if we’re offered something to consume and pollute.

These offers need to change.

What we’re offered should consume as few resources as possible—and pollute nothing.

Until then, yes, we need to take responsibility for this planet and everyone’s well-being.

But we need to avoid the trap of missing where resources are being consumed and polluted.

Smarty-pants over and out.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)