survivability vs. sustainability

[ian2]

In the following:

Working toward sustainability requires many different types of actions in different subject areas. In light of rapidly advancing technology, however, sustainability alone is not enough. We need to be concerned with survivability. There must be a move away from the untenable course we are on today toward a world where we learn to control the diverse forces we are unleashing.

What does survivability stand for? I thought if you are sustainable, you must be survivable.

 

[euncu]

In the following:
I thought if you are sustainable, you must be survivable.

I don't thing that you can infer that. Managing to survive longer doesn't mean to survive until the end of the time.

 

[RonBee]

I don't think sustainability refers to a person. (Additional context might help here. As it is, this article is pretty mysterious to me.)

 

[Barb_D]

I write about sustainability every day in my work. I don't think the author was using it the way you and I understand it. Perhaps he was simply thinking of sustainability as "being green."

 

[ian2]

Thanks. Here is some additional text:

"Water is vital for our survival and for producing food. It takes about a thousand tons of water to produce one ton of grain that, fed to cows, produces only 18 pounds of meat. Today mankind is using about 160 billion tons more water each year than is being replenished by rain and fed back into water storages. If this water were carried in water trucks, it would require a 300,000-mile-long convoy of trucks every day—a convoy length 37 times the diameter of the Earth. This is how much water we are using and not replenishing.

During the lifetime of today’s teenagers, fresh water will run out in many parts of the world, making food production difficult. Many fish species will be too depleted to replenish themselves. Global warming will bring hurricanes far more severe than Katrina and will cause natural climate-control mechanisms to go wrong. Rising temperatures will lower crop yields in many of the world’s poorest countries, such as those in central Africa. The immense tensions brought about by such catastrophes will occur in a time of extremism, religious belligerence and suicidal terrorism, and this will coincide with terrible weapons becoming much less expensive and more widely available.

This interconnected set of problems has an interconnected set of solutions. If we humans implement these solutions, we can gradually achieve sustainable development and a sustainable but affluent life. Working toward sustainability requires many different types of actions in different subject areas. In light of rapidly advancing technology, however, sustainability alone is not enough. We need to be concerned with survivability. There must be a move away from the untenable course we are on today toward a world where we learn to control the diverse forces we are unleashing. "

I don't think sustainability refers to a person. (Additional context might help here. As it is, this article is pretty mysterious to me.)

 

[RonBee]

The human race was supposed to run out of resources a long time ago. Funny how that didn't happen. (Malthus made his famous prediction when there were fewer than half as many people as there are now.)

:roll: