| Achieving a sustainable lifestyle today is of | | | | example is harnessing the energy of the sun. |
| paramount importance for the health of future | | | | Solar energy can be captured in a variety of |
| generations. The devastation of our natural | | | | ways. The most basic way, passive solar energy, |
| environment by individuals and corporations who | | | | refers to the type of construction materials used |
| carelessly pollute the water and air, clearcut | | | | and their placement. For example, a house |
| forests, and destroy topsoil and natural habitats is | | | | designed to face the south allows the heat of the |
| in many cases irreversible. Those of us living an | | | | sun to warm the house all day long. Add to that |
| urban or suburban lifestyle may just be beginning | | | | other passive solar features such as thermal |
| to feel the repercussions of our industrial lifestyle | | | | mass and the house is already well on its way to |
| in the form of climate change. However, the | | | | energy-independence.Industrialism and the |
| perpetuation of anti-environment practices is sure | | | | Information Age have provided our society with |
| to cause consequences that we cannot even | | | | the tools it needs to reverse our current path of |
| imagine.The world in which we live is a system in | | | | environmental degradation. Solar panel technology |
| which all elements interrelate and coexist in a | | | | and the multitude of other inventions for collecting |
| harmonious balance of creation and destruction. | | | | the energy of the sun are constantly improving |
| Nothing exists or functions in isolation. Everything | | | | and becoming more affordable. We may also |
| is interconnected and every act affects the | | | | gather energy from the wind, water, ground and |
| future of countless other elements. This concept, | | | | even our own waste products.The key to |
| also known as systems thinking, is easy to see | | | | becoming sustainable as individuals and as a |
| when observing an ecosystem, especially when | | | | society is our own willingness to change and to be |
| the harmony of that ecosystem is disrupted. The | | | | creative. Permaculture is a design system that |
| extinction or reduction of one species rebounds | | | | guides us to build and manage sustainable living |
| through the entire food chain, causing havoc on | | | | and working environments in which all of the |
| the lives of the rest of the species.A sustainable | | | | elements overlap and interrelate to create a |
| lifestyle is one that seeks to harmonize with the | | | | functioning whole. Combining our knowledge of |
| elements of the natural world. We can use the | | | | ecological principles with our earth-friendly |
| forces of nature to our advantage, without | | | | technology we have only to succeed in achieving |
| abusing them and causing as little disturbance to | | | | a more sustainable lifestyle today, and a brighter |
| the natural environment as possible. One such | | | | future for our children and grandchildren. |