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Sustainability means to both maintain and *enhance*. So the conundrum here is quite obvious. To enhance means and implies also to compare existing practices to some *benchmark* of operability. And that notion of operability must derive from some deduction which cannot be found through empirical comparison or knowledge. There are few controls where antecedent conditions may be known prior to imposition of a sustainbility management regime. Thus all notions of sustainability infer only 'making progress towards sustainability' - otherwise there would be some 'benchmark' or some existing standard of operability which there is not.....except in neolithic cases. And these examples are about as meaningful to corporate and state governance as is the Dodo bird. The dichotomy between culture and nature cannot be a true dichotomy either since culture is totally dependent on nature, not vis versa. Humans have lived on earth for perhaps 3.5 million years. The earliest 'symbolic' culture existed perhaps up to 40,000 years ago. Thus if humans are no exactly sure about such primary functions such as *ecological sustainability*, then they cannot be very sure about any other 'judgements' which they may deduce from nature. In fact there are two primary distinctions in life: one is that there is a world of 'facticity' and (2) there is a world of 'expression'. For those judgements which are no factical, there is only 'human expression'. That which is 'consititutive' and that which is 'expression' thus are two different realms of meaning which are interdependent, but 'human expression' is dependent on the constitutive which is nature, and facticity. Aside from most neolithic societies, there are no examples of the modern form of symbolic culture forming and expressive humans of *maintaining and enhancing ecosystems* yet in modern history. All civilizations have failed and damaged their dependent ecosystems to beyond repair or to a point of nearly complete dis-repair. There are a few minor exceptions of 'civilizations' maintaining ecosystems ( a few in North America) but these have dissappeared because of the invasion of Europeans with muskets, disease, alcohol and residential schools ( in short genocide). The large civilizations are failures of human cultural expression (European, and middle east) and have only survived by spreading to dominate new lands to spoil. The recent decline and fall of the American Empire is only one example of many in the 7000 year history of ecological distruction. chao john foster ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Perley <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 7:15 PM Subject: Re: Environmentalism vs Anti-environmentalism: left vs right?