Sustainability: An Exercise in Futility

Over the last twenty years there has been an increase in activity regarding the concept of sustainability. For example, The US EPA announced last year that the agency’s policies are going to be driven by sustainability (Cone, 2010).What is sustainability exactly? In the history of sustainability, the theme of overpopulation, prophecies of exhaustion or shortages of natural resources and cataclysmic consequences for mankind is a consistent in the concept of sustainability. Sustainable development suffers from the problems of being vaguely defined, having as many at seventy different definitions of sustainable development and that it would be virtually impossible to predict the needs of future generations (Taylor, 2002, p. 2). It is for these reasons why the notion of sustainability, in its current form, is an exercise in futility.