I interviewed Tony Brown of the Ecosa Institute the other day in Prescott, Arizona. Tony used to be heavily involved with Arcosanti but has since created an education center called The Ecosa Institute. I sat down with Tony is his humble office that is responsible for the paradigm shifts within som many young minds.

He spoke about how he felt he had a choice a few years back on how to use his energy to work towards true sustainability. He came to the conclusion that the answer was in education on the principles and benefits of truly sustainable design.

The word sustainability is being tossed about so much these days that most of the people I speak with have developed a growing disdain for the phrase. Tony and others have pointed out that we see the touting of sustainability everywhere these days, whether it be on political billboards, landscaping company signs, or solar and wind energy companies. The fact is that sustainable design, thinking and life is about more about you vote, getting your lawn redone, or even slapping some nice solar panels on your personal dwelling. This is not to say that these things are not steps in the right direction, but it is to say we have to recognize that we've diluted the phrase to such an extent that we no longer understand the extent of change that's required of us all. Frankly we need to do more and we need to do it yesterday.

We need to look at our lifestyles and patterns of living from a truly holistic viewpoint and take drastics steps to address what sustainability really means. People have lost touch with the definition of the word,

Sustainable
1: capable of being sustained
2 a: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture> b: of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable society>

At this point maybe it's important to adopt new phrasing to carry us forward.. what that word would be I'm not entirely sure. But I have always like holistic since it speaks to the true reality of what we need to work towards.

Tony and I had a great on-camera dialog, it's always hard to remember the substance after the fact, but basically we talked about how we all need to educate ourselves towards a way of thinking and being that doesn't simply push the conventions but establishes new conventions altogether.

peace,
d